ON ASSASSINS
Assassins are generally losers. Failed assassins especially so. Killing an important figure is one of the few ways someone who would otherwise be totally irrelevant can directly change history. There's a Hobbesian egalitarianism to this1. Even a prince or president can be killed by a random incel. To great effect too, at times. The most recent of high-profile political assassinations, Shinzo Abe getting killed with a makeshift shotgun, succeeded in its aim of bringing scrutiny and political repercussions to the Moonies in Japan2. As infamous as the assassination of Franz Ferdinand is, after four years of war and tens of million dead, Gavrilo Princip nearly lived to see his dream of an independent Yugoslav state come true.
Of course, they don't all work out, even the successful ones. The cliché is that assassinating someone will turn him into a martyr. When Charlotte Corday stabbed Jean-Paul Marat in his bathtub, she declared that she had “killed one man to save a hundred thousand.” But, in the immediate aftermath, it intensified Jacobin fervor — at least while they were in power. In Marat’s eulogy, delivered by the Marquis de Sade, he was compared to Jesus and became a rallying cry for the revolution. Christ parallels are an easy chord to strike, but also speak to the perception of assassination as a cowardly act, as done by a Judas.
People will also be eager to point to the Ides of March, with Julius Caesar being stabbed to death, only for Octavian to eventually become emperor. In the Inferno, Dante places Brutus and Cassius, along with Judas Iscariot, in Lucifer’s mouths at the ninth circle of hell. The plot against Caesar is one of the larger and more politically cohesive assassinations on the list — although, that could have something to do with the gravity of the situation itself. Saving a republic is a more difficult task than simply killing someone you don't like. And, at the end of the day, that tends to be a victory in itself. Several thousand Sikhs were killed in riots following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her bodyguards, but it's difficult to see that dim the pride in a righteous revenge that spurred the killing.
Moreover, revenge and genuine hatred tend to be greater motivators than discrete political ends. Vengeance from a losing or aggrieved side becomes a theme. Amidst the Eighty Years' war, when the king of Spain placed a bounty on the head of the Dutch stadtholder William the Silent, his call was answered by a man named Balthasar Gérard in what would be the first assassination of a head of state with a handgun. Gérard was captured, tortured and executed before he could receive his reward3, but in interrogation he ascribed a higher purpose to his act, likening himself to David slaying Goliath. When John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln, he shouted "Sic semper tyrannis," an ancient phrase variously attributed to both the Brutus who overthrew the Tarquins and the Brutus who stabbed Caesar4.
Booth was a successful actor when he killed Lincoln in 1865. Enraged by the North’s victory and the emancipation proclamation, he resolved to take matters into his own hands to avenge the South’s loss. Reflecting on what he would give up in doing so, he wrote, “I know how foolish I shall be deemed for undertaking such a step as this, where, on one side, I have many friends and everything to make me happy... to give up all... seems insane; but God is my judge. I love justice more than I do a country that disowns it, more than fame or wealth.” Of course, he would become far more famous — or infamous — after the assassination. But his life ended twelve days later, having been shot in pursuit.
That night in Ford’s Theater marked the first successful assassination of an American president. An attempt had been made on Andrew Jackson’s life decades earlier by Richard Lawrence, but both of his pistols misfired, leaving the shooter to be beaten by Jackson with his cane5. As of a week ago, Lincoln was one of six presidents to be shot in an assassination attempt.
In 1881, James Garfield was killed — at least in part, as the actual cause of death was sepsis exacerbated by doctors — by Charles Guiteau, a delusional schizophrenic6 who believed Garfield owed him the consulship to Paris for his support. Mentally ill and politically incoherent, Guiteau fit a killer archetype familiar to Americans today. He had spent time at the Oneida community, switched political affiliation several times and been unhappily divorced. Ultimately, he shot the president at a train station because visions from God told him to. Guiteau was hanged after the defense unsuccessfully tried to plead insanity.
In 1901, McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz, a Polish immigrant and avowed anarchist who had suffered hard times through a recession. He was inspired by the assassination of the king of Italy, also by an anarchist, and shot President McKinley at a meet-and-greet in Buffalo, using a revolver hidden in his handkerchief. The reasoning is simple enough. What could be more anarchist than shooting the president? Particularly during a presidency overseeing nascent American imperialism. Czolgosz was unapologetic. Before his execution by electric chair, he said, “I killed the president because he was the enemy of the good people — the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime.”
In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt, McKinley’s successor, was also shot, after his presidency. John Schrank, a German immigrant, saw in a dream that the ghost of William McKinley told him to avenge his death. Schrank saw Roosevelt’s decision to run again for a third term, under his own Progressive “Bull Moose” party, as an affront to the spirit of the constitution7 and shot the former president at a campaign stop. Instead of dying, Roosevelt famously finished his speech and namedropped his party’s nickname, saying, “I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a bull moose.” In jail Schrank refused to bathe and was found criminally insane, and was committed for the rest of his life.
John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 is the most infamous, partly because of the mystique and significance surrounding it, but also because we can see his head getting blown off on film. Whether Lee Harvey Oswald was the only shooter is unclear, but it’s hard to take the Warren commission’s report at face value. The sixties also saw the assassinations of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, all with credible degrees of conspiracy involved. Whatever connections Oswald had to the USSR, the CIA or the mafia, he declared himself a patsy. He had a history of emotional issues and was a communist, even defecting to the Soviet Union for several years, but insisted on his innocence in shooting the president. He was killed by Jack Ruby before he could stand trial.
Reagan was, until recently, the last president to be shot. In 1981, John Hinckley failed to kill the president and also failed to impress Jodie Foster. He was inspired by Travis Bickle’s goal of assassinating a politician in Taxi Driver, the movie from which he fell in love with the twelve-year-old actress playing a child prostitute. Hinckley became obsessed and believed killing the president would impress her8. He nonfatally shot Reagan but did paralyze press secretary James Brady. It came just months after another assassination attempt by a mentally unstable man vaguely inspired by a work of fiction — Mark David Chapman killing John Lennon and proceeding to read Catcher in the Rye9. And only weeks before a Turkish professional assassin shot Pope John Paul II, who, like Reagan, survived10. All three of these shooters are still alive. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and, having been released from parole, now posts on Twitter.
Of these six American presidential assassins and would-be-assassins, Guiteau, Schrank and Hinckley fit the mould of the clearly mentally ill, with eccentric delusions informing their decision. Booth and Czolgosz were sane and acted out of pure political hatred. Oswald, the only one to deny his own involvement, showed glimpses of mental issues and political motivation, but too much ambiguity surrounds the possibility of a larger conspiracy.
Donald Trump has now joined the group of presidents to be injured in assassination attempts. Barring the possibility that Trump and his campaign have been lying about an injury actually caused by shrapnel from a teleprompter, he was shot in the ear by Thomas Crooks mid-rally. Crooks was only twenty years old, and had not yet even had a chance to vote in a presidential election. He left no manifesto and was killed immediately after by snipers, so, as of right now, his motive remains subject to speculation. It wouldn’t be the first time an American politician was killed with unclear motivation — when Huey Long was shot in 1935, so was his alleged killer, Carl Weiss, leaving a similar uncertainty.
There are some tenuous and contradictory pieces of evidence. Crooks was briefly in a BlackRock ad, but realistically they were just filming at his school. People who knew him said he was a Trump supporter, and he was a registered Republican. Despite that, he donated $15 to ActBlue on the day of Biden’s inauguration. It’s possible that he had turned on Trump by then. It’s also possible he just lost a bet. He had no real social media presence that we know of. The descriptions from classmates painted a picture of him as a gun enthusiast, kind of a loner. According to adults who knew him he was a quiet kid, good student. More than previous American political assassins, he looks the part of the typical school shooter.
That could be it. It’s possible that any political implications were second to a pure impulse toward public violence. Maybe he was too much of a nice guy to gun down his classmates and picked a former president instead. Since Columbine, plenty of spree shooters have murdered innocents as a way to inflict violence as a form of cathartic vengeance and become famous in the process. And yet, with them it feels like there are usually a clearer signs. Crooks had no manifesto, no history of documented mental illness. If there’s any mass shooting this resembles, it’s the Mandalay Bay shooting of 2017, for which we still have no motive.
That said, it’s been a week. It’s very possible a clearer picture will be painted soon. But in the immediate aftermath, with so little in the way of clear motivation, the tendency toward conspiracy theories is understandable. And yet, there isn’t much there either. Unlike Lee Harvey Oswald, whose life story is riddled with suspicious connections, this is just a twenty-year-old kid who grew up in suburban Pennsylvania. The level of Secret Service failure that allowed him to come so close to killing Trump definitely raises eyebrows. But a clear narrative about how Crooks was involved with anyone doesn’t exist yet.
This lack of clarity in motive, coupled with immediate clarity that Trump was fine, is why I think the reaction has been so muted. Crooks came within an inch of ending Trump’s life11, which could have had an unfathomable impact on the country. But he missed, just barely, and so instead it’s like nothing even happened. If there had been a drawn-out period of hospitalization where Trump’s fate wasn’t known, emotions would probably be stronger. But, knowing right away that Trump would live, supporters were able to breathe a sigh of relief and opponents could take the opportunity to condemn political violence or say they wished Crooks had better aim. A Trump supporter was killed, but even then it’s hard to effectively galvanize people when you can’t credibly claim the shooter was Antifa or radicalized by the Democrats.
That isn’t to say people haven’t tried to politicize it. But people who don’t care don’t care. Sure, getting up to pump his fist up in the air in front of the American flag was pretty cool. But people who hated Trump aren’t going to start liking him, and the rhetoric has already been at an eleven from Trump fans. Most of the country has been pretty desensitized to open hostility in the public forum. Even culturally — Not Like Us is the biggest song of the year and it’s Kendrick Lamar calling Drake a pedophile who should die. The idea that someone would hate Trump so much that they want to kill him is not shocking to Americans. For an assassination attempt to really move the needle, it would probably have to be successful. There may be copycats, but, frankly, it’s remarkable that this one even managed to get this close.
Regarding Thomas Crooks, I expect some more information to come out, but it’s possible we never get a sufficient explanation. Personally, I suspect he was right-wing and supported Trump in the past, but became disillusioned with him. For a gun enthusiast, it could have been over bump stocks, or any number of issues. A sense of betrayal can be very powerful. He may not have posted under his own name, but an online presence seems obvious. It just might have been on 4chan or 8chan or anonymous Twitter and Discord accounts. Until we have more information to work with, I think he probably acted out of a sincere political aim, reinforced by an accompanying sense of purpose.
That’s my best attempt, but the reality of the event is still difficult to make sense of. The takeaway is shocking — that even today a random guy can manage to shoot a president — but, at the same time, that isn’t anything new. Sure, it’s more difficult than when you could walk up to the president on the street, but apparently it’s possible. People in this country, for good reason, feel more powerless than they have in decades. They don’t see our democratic system working as it should. It feels fake. An overwhelming result of that is apathy. Another is far more desperate attempts to take action12. In a world where nothing is real, everything is permitted.
Hobbes begins his famous description of the state of nature in chapter thirteen of the Leviathan as such: “Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind; as that though there bee found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind then another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himselfe any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others, that are in the same danger with himselfe.”
Public opinion on Abe turned, with Prime Minister Kishida forced to reshuffle his cabinet and pursue political investigations of ties to the Unification Church. Famous fake friend Barack Obama also backed out of the funeral.
King Philip compensated his family with estates and peerages.
The phrase is of course featured on the Virginia coat of arms as well. Interesting Medium post about its origin in the American revolutionary context: https://medium.com/in-medias-res/the-real-source-behind-sic-semper-tyrannis-b2bc3ddc70dc
Lawrence, an unemployed housepainter from England, was ruled innocent by insanity and spent the rest of his life in asylums.
Theorized at the time to be a result of his penis having phimosis (inability of the foreskin to retract — the same thing Stav from Cum Town had).
Roosevelt initially shared this view, declining to run again in 1908 in the spirit of George Washington. However, growing dissatisfied with Taft and the direction of the Republican party, he changed his mind and ran again in 1912, losing the Republican nomination but founding his own Progressive party.
Hinckley did get a chance to share a room with Foster when she testified, but she refused to look at or acknowledge him, leading to him throwing a pen at her and being removed.
Chapman was a Beatles fan but turned on Lennon for saying the band was “bigger than Jesus” when he converted to Christianity.
The shooter, Mehmet Ali Ağca, was pardoned by the Italian president at the request of the pope.
Trump’s erratic mannerisms might have saved him, as he turned his head right before the moment the bullet would have pierced his skull.
Recall the pro-Palestine activist who lit himself on fire.