assassination

victor steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Wed Mar 23 18:22:32 UTC 2011


Jon may be right about the degree of power/influence that the target
has--and I would also add public exposure to those two conditions. But
there is still an essential point that all dictionary definitions are
missing--it's a targeted killing.

One issue is that there has been a divergence between "assassin" and
"assassination/assassinate". I doubt anyone would dispute that
assassins /target/ specific people for killing. This distinguishes
them from terrorists who may have the same political goals (or not)
but usually don't care who is killed. Unabomber makes an interesting
case, as he has characteristics of both. And terrorists can be
involved in assassinations (political purposes, right?), but an
assassin is generally not a terrorist.

Retributive killings usually don't fall under either terrorism or
assassination. What about Milk/Moscone? In many details it resembles a
couple of cases where grad students killed faculty members in their
programs--some individuals may have been targeted, but others were
killed in their place or in addition to the targets. But I would
classify all those as retributive, not assassinations--essentially in
the same category as the more general loss of life when someone "goes
postal". However, the distinction for all those cases was that the
reasons for attack were largely personal. Still, aren't there some
assassinations where the motive may be retributive? So, at least for
me, there are some subtle variations that preclude some acts from
being called assassinations even when they target specific
individuals. At the same time, the notoriety/public exposure of the
victim cannot be the main criterion either, as has been pointed out.
And political motive is not essential either.

Wikipedia makes things more interesting by giving a dual definition.
First, it cites a bunch of dictionaries for the standard definition.
Then it gives an alternative one for which there is no citation.

> An assassination is "to murder (a usually prominent person) by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons."[1][2] An additional definition is "the act of deliberately killing someone especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."

Well, the lack of citation is not entirely accurate--it's simply
misplaced (I may fix it later in the day). The phrasing is similar to
one found in Black's Law Dictionary, which is cited under [1]. Also
note that the Wikipedia definition differs from Wiktionary:

> killing or murder for political reasons

In any case, there is considerable muddle here. The standard
definitions may best be represented by a Venn diagram, but the actual
meaning for any particular speaker is neither the intersection nor the
union of those and it differs from speaker to speaker.

One reason for the Georgia item is that there have been news reports
that mention "assassination" in connection with some militia groups
targeting not only judges by policemen and other law-enforcement
agents. But the key word in those cases is "targeting", which is not
present in this case. It was a crime of opportunity (or
"mis-opportunity", as may be the case).

VS-)
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 1:50 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I would think not either, but he was not nearly so prominent as Kennedy. I'd
> think, on the basis of usage and expectation, that if a national leader is
> murdered under any circumstances it would be considered an "assassination."
> How about a drug lord?  Possibly, if he was extremely powerful and killed by
> a rival or a subordinate.
>
> An entertainment celebrity? Probably not unless there was a clear-cut and
> comprehensible political motive.
>
> Perhaps the power and political influence of the victim is also a factor.
>
>
> JL

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