Why all these assassinations?
One answer is: copycats. It’s in the air. I believe the same was true in the JFK, MLK, RFK assassinations. The latter two took place in April and June of 1968, a time of extraordinary upheaval. It was also an era with revolutionaries planting bombs, and featured multiple cop killings.
Of course the killers back then came from different backgrounds and political persuasions, and had different motives. Were they crazy? No. The fact that some – such as Oswald – could be described as somewhat disturbed is irrelevant. They were all sane in the legal sense.
And I believe that is true of most political assassins, such as Robinson (and would-be assassins like Brooks), as well as long-ago assassins like John Wilkes Booth.
On the other hand, would-be assassin Hinckley chose a political target – Reagan – but his motive was not political and he came closer to the definition of “crazy” in that he was trying to impress Jodie Foster and was likely schizophrenic (although his diagnosis was disputed). In fact, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was kept in a mental hospital until 2016. I wonder whether he’d have been found not guilty if his trial had occurred nowadays, however. And I wonder if the fact that Reagan recovered factored into it as well.
Now the left is bound and determined to say all assassins are MAGA until proven otherwise, and that when their bullets are engraved with leftist sayings, they’re just being ironic and cute. Likewise, when they have leftist political histories, the left claims it’s a lie. When all of that falls through, the killers are just random crazy people, as good old Jimmy Kimmel – he’s baaack! – said on his return to TV last night:
This was a sick person who believed violence was a solution and it isn’t — ever — and also selfishly, I am a person who gets a lot of threats, I get many ugly and scary threats against my life my wife, my kids, my coworkers because of what I choose to say, and I know those threats don’t come from the kind of people on the right who I know I love, so that’s what I wanted to say on that subject.
So there we have the “sick person” description, as well as the “I’m actually the victim” and the “both sides” argument. All of which you hear a lot of these days.
Of course Robinson almost certainly is a “sick person.” The internet and the furry gaming community was part of that, a world into which he descended in recent years (did COVID lockdowns also have a role, perhaps?) But that doesn’t mean he’s not also a cold-blooded political assassin of the left, motivated almost certainly by political hatred and propaganda. It doesn’t mean he’s crazy. And it also doesn’t mean that it’s equal on both sides.
What’s more – and this is key – Kimmel also stated: “I don’t think the murderer who shot Charlie Kirk represents anyone.” Wrong, and we have the “X” posts to prove it, the ones from the leftists who celebrated the shooting. They were very numerous, and very chilling, and although Robinson wasn’t formally allied with these people in an organization, they nevertheless support him and it’s no stretch at all to say that Robinson represents them.
Words are not violence. But words can spark violence in a receptive mind, and Robinson’s mind had become quite receptive. I have a hunch the reasons were a toxic stew of the following: immersion in an internet world; the idea that Kirk was a “hater” (particularly of trans people) and a “fascist,” things the left has been saying for a long time; and especially the idea that trans people are under physical attack and even victims of a “genocide.”
I noticed that latter assertion – that there’s some sort of genocide going on against trans people – around the time of the Floyd riots and Black Lives Matter’s ascendance. The latter was pushing the “trans genocide” myth in addition to the anti-police myth of widespread killing of unarmed black people by cops. Somewhere I believe I even have an old draft for a post on the subject, which I don’t have time to look for now. Fortunately I don’t need to, because Andy Ngo – a longtime expert on Antifa – has done the work on this:
These assassins are fostered by the left, and it is almost certainly quite intentional.
In the past, I have read thumbnail blurbs on the assassination of Pres. McKinley that describe his killer, Leon Czolgosz, as completely insane.
This essay on Czolgosz in Wikipedia is not bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Czolgosz
Well, he had progressed from milder socialist organizations and influence, to more hardcore Marxist ones and had a keen interest in the anarchist Emma Goldman, and her thoughts. It strikes me that he was completely in possession of his faculties.
There is also the copycat angle with Czolgosz. He was sympathetic to the killing of King Umberto in Italy about 15 months earlier.
Jared Loughner, John Hinckley, and Giuseppe Zangara were arguably insane. No one was too concerned in re Zangara and he was executed within weeks of his attempt on (Roosevelt? Anton Cermak? No one quite knows).
Charles J. Guiteau was another lunatic. They executed him.
It doesn’t matter whether they’re insane or not, an assassination is a unilateral decision to deny the victim’s right to life. Implicit to that decision is the perpetrator’s voluntary forfeiture of their right to life.
The principle of reciprocity, enshrined in international law applies. After trial and conviction, society should recognize and respect the perpetrator’s decision to forfeit their right to life and apply consequence accordingly.
Knowing right from wrong is a moral determination subject to the individual’s discernment, assassination is an act. To accomplish one requires the ability to act in accordance with reality. Justice requires that actions must have proportionate consequence.
I watched last week’s All In podcast—highly recommended to those who may not have heard of it—and Chamath (I’d mangle his last name so I’m not going to try) posited that so many disaffected young people got that way, or had their problems severely exacerbated, by the covid shutdown. They became shut ins, playing video games, connecting to weird, frightening internet communities that affirmed their aberrant thinking. This didn’t happen to all young people of course, but certainly to many of the most susceptible. Say hello to your future assassins, courtesy (at least in part) of stupid government policies.
Neo asks: “Why all these assassinations?”
Maybe because the Left rewards the assassins.
Douglas Murray (h/t PowerLine):
https://www.city-journal.org/article/political-violence-left-charlie-kirk
IMO, Murray has to use the somewhat murky episode of Paul Pelosi’s assailant for an example of (non-governmental) political killing by the Right because there is not another one available, in Britain or America (or anywhere else in the world, perhaps).
If there is, I would really like to know what I have missed.
Note: I make an exception for governmental killings because obviously Trump taking out Qassim Soleimani is a political killing from the Right, but in the context of the undeclared war with Iran.
Because “by any means necessary” means what it says.
GM, it’s the “necessary” which is arguable.
Get ready, it has become religious to them. If you are a lefty and fail, you’re idolized. They think they really think they can win an armed conflict!