“Assassination has never changed the history of the world,” so insisted two-time British PM Benjamin Disraeli. Never let it be said that even the most intelligent among us do not, at times, make wildly absurd statements.
From Brutus and his co-conspirators’ daggers in 44 BC to the bullet that felled Japanese PM Shinzo Abe in 2022, political assassinations have ever been part and parcel of civilisations. Yet it remains tempting for many to dismiss such violence as aberrations—a glitch in what is an otherwise orderly civil society. But history suggests the opposite: assassination is a recurring feature, hardcoded into the very architecture of political life itself.
The Veneer of Civilisation
Indeed, assassinations have always been part of it—particularly when institutions fail or when the formal transfer of power is poorly institutionalised. In ancient Rome, no emperor could rest easy. Caligula was butchered by his own Praetorian Guard; Domitian was stabbed by court insiders. Murder was not treasonous; it was often seen as a corrective. Civilisation, in that era, did not mean peaceful bliss—it meant the contestation of power, often by any means necessary.
Likewise, in feudal Japan, employing ninja to perform hits on high-profile targets was a matter of pragmatism. While in the clear light of day the code of the Samurai ruled, when it came to realpolitik, poison and knifings in the shadows were often preferred. Even in early Islamic history, the feared hashashin—the etymological origin of the word ‘assassin’— systematised political killings into something close to doctrine. Their targets were not chosen at random; they were ideological obstacles to be cleared. The logic behind them might have been dark, but it was perfectly rational.
Modern liberal democracies like to think themselves above such tactics. After all, don’t we have elections to replace leaders peacefully? Yet, even in nominal democracies, the killing (or near-killing) of political figures has remained a pervasive phenomenon—often reappearing when consensus breaks down or when movements radicalise.
The United States offers a particularly grim example. Abraham Lincoln was shot in a theatre in 1865. William McKinley was killed by an anarchist in 1901, signalling the rise of a global anti-elite movement. The 1960s witnessed an extraordinary spasm of violence: John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Robert F. Kennedy all fell within a five-year window; all were victims of a febrile, highly charged political climate.
While the US of today finds itself in such a climate again, and again has to grapple with politically motivated assassinations, the frequency of such incidents is on the increase all over the globe.
A Permanent Fixture
There is a reason why assassinations endure: they happen to work. Or at least, they send a message, and can have a chilling effect on speech or political engagement. Indeed, the point of such acts is not always to seize power directly, but to disrupt political momentum and demoralise the opposition. Of course, at times they can backfire, animating the opposition even more.
But what does this say about civilisation? That its surface is thinner than we think. The rituals of democracy, the courtesies we afford our political rivals are brittle things. In their own way, political assassinations reveal the raw struggle for power that lies underneath.
Civil societies do not eliminate political violence; they domesticate it. From a certain point of view, elections are assassinations by other means—one candidate slaying another, metaphorically. But when electoral politics is no longer respected or found wanting, the blade (or in modern times, a gun barrel) often comes out.
It may be comforting to imagine a world in which leaders are chosen, serve, and retire peacefully. But that has rarely been the rule. Especially in the West, its relatively peaceful post WWII era should be considered a historical anomaly.
This is not to romanticise political killings. But to treat them solely as interruptions in an otherwise functional system is to misunderstand both history and the way power works. Assassination is not the opposite of politics. It is one of its oldest instruments. Civilisation may aspire to rise above it, but at best it can mitigate against it, not eradicate it completely.
Statement
Political assassination is not a historical glitch—it is a way through which power is negotiated in any society. Violence has long served as a tool of political recalibration. Liberal democracies cling to the illusion of peaceful discourse and the transfer of power succession, yet assassinations keep emerging because they’re sadly very effective: they silence voices, bring a momentum to a halt, or bring about upheaval. Elections may civilise the raw conflict over power, but they do not erase it. Beneath democracy’s rituals lies a primal contest—sometimes fought at the ballot, sometimes by killings. History has seen plenty of both.