Assassination attempts are the boiling point at which politics explodes. They are the final straw, the irascible tension when consensus cannot be reached. In history they signal the end of civilisation, and herald in a period of discord and revolution. They signal a warning to history; that the present status quo is at a nadir. That the existing modus operandi has overextended itself, corrupted itself. It signals the time in history when dialogue and consensus have broken down. Neither the left nor the right are innocent. They are both fanning the flames against consensus. Social media, as an advanced aspect of technology, is anti-civilisation in that it disrupts and destroys truth through constant misinformation. In the land of the blind, the algorithm is our guiding light.
Political Courts, whether in America or Russia, operate within a nepotistic and medieval patronage system, allowing individuals to plunder national assets as long as they operate within the court system. It is propped up by oil and business money but succumbs eventually to a dirge of talent. Machiavelli saw the military as an exemplar of political power, an extension of power. In the Discourses on Livy Machiavelli extends the concept of the military to the machinations of the state. Hence political assassinations are ‘de rigueur’. Machiavelli, like Putin, saw that successful states employ total mobilisation of resources. For peace or war. It was the modus operandi of the 20th Century; the industrial mode led to the total use of resources, both economic, technological, and human. Modernity, as Einstein noted, has made science but also set itself a mousetrap. The West is also stuck in the mousetrap. Assassinations are the epitome of the mousetrap.
Assassinations are a global phenomenon. Yet they are accentuated in times of crisis; the occidental world is entering a period of upheaval and destruction. Central and Eastern Europe also is embroiled in a Tolkien clash between the world of the globalised mercantile Anglo-American Earth and a cultural, grounded alliance of the traditional European post-Westphalian states. This fight for the Nomos of the Earth has resulted in the Ukraine war and a reassertion of anti-EU sentiment in the borderlands east of the Elbe. The contest in America is nothing less than for the ‘soul’ of America. A new liberal soul versus a traditionalist southern soul (excuse the musical pun). It was Bismarck who allegedly proclaimed that to own Bohemia was to own the world. Yet this was a metaphor for the primacy of the ethnic nation state. That era is drawing to a close. China and Russia, as civilisational empires, are selling themselves to the global south as a more efficient model. This needs to be fought against by regaining the telos or soul of the West, by finding consensus. Both Europe and America have a feeling of ‘disintegration’, the end of empire, a destruction of culture and civilisation.
Homo Liberalis needs spectacle. Politics and assassinations are theatre to work out a new order or consensus, if all traditional dialogue has collapsed. The result of media ‘spectacle’ is the assassination attempt on Trump or earlier on the Slovak Prime Minister, Fico. The liberal media, and especially the EU, mounts a constant ‘far right’ and ‘extreme right’ vendetta on anyone who champions family, community and nationality. Likewise, the right pursues a misplaced notion of race, of nationhood based on ethnicity. There is no consensus.
In September 2022, in Lower Saxony, a little Pony called Dolly was killed by a wolf, known now as assassin GW950m. Unfortunately for the Wolf population of Europe, who have survived despite their near extinction in the 20th Century, little Dolly was owned by the President of the EU Commission, Ursula Von Der Leyen, whose tumbling ranch sits near the village of Beinhorn, Saxony. Then began a hunt for the killer, with no expense spared, including the gathering of forensic evidence with DNA samples taken on other ‘victims’. You would think Jeffrey Dahmer was on the loose. GW950m has been labelled by the EU Commission as a ‘problem wolf’, another ‘bug’. His problematic status has not been communicated to him or his pack, having not received the ‘directive’. Due to incessant pressure from Von Der Leyen, a hunting permit to kill the naughty wolf was issued. Then in December, the previously protected status of wolves received a shock. The Commission declared that their status from ‘strictly protected’ will be reduced to ‘protected’. It is now envisaged that a Europe-wide culling of wolves will occur. Like in the political sphere, no nuance, no consensus.
This is the see-saw nature of modern politics; an assassination – then a vendetta. The causes of deep cultural divides are forgotten. Unfortunately, the elites of the US and the EU only provide a parody of democracy and self-interest. In many ways it is an allegory of our ‘Democracy’; at first nourished and encouraged, then descending into vaudeville spectacle.
Brian Patrick Bolger LSE, University of Liverpool. He has taught political philosophy and applied linguistics in universities across Europe. His new book- ‘Nowhere Fast: Democracy and Identity in the Twenty-First Century’ is published now by Ethics International Press. He is an adviser to several Think Tanks and Corporates on Geopolitical Issues.
