Assassination

The justification of political violence is a very difficult subject for political philosophy, but also one that can hardly be avoided. Recent assassinations and attempted assassinations have raised this issue in the U.S. political context. Here are a few thoughts on assassination as a particular form of political violence.  It seems to me to have four logically possible (not to say necessarily valid) justifications: 

1. Elimination. Assassination conceivably could be for the purposes of eliminating an individual who poses a distinct, particular, and grave threat to innocent people. For example, if you could kill Hitler and you knew that would prevent millions of people from being killed, maybe it's justified. If this is the sole justification, it would seem to depend on the level of certainty that the harms to others would actually be prevented. 
2. Revolution. In other words, sparking a larger, violent struggle for a cause that is of utmost worthiness. Often assassins entertain hopes (usually narcissistic fantasies) that their actions will galvanize a revolution against some evil power structure. I would think this is rarely the sole justification in the mind of an assassin (assuming they are concerned with justifications at all). For it to be even an ancillary justification, one would need to credibly believe it would actually work to significantly advance the cause or struggle, and the worthiness of the cause would, of course, be paramount. Maybe there are examples in history where an assassination actually led to a successful larger movement for a worthy cause, but I cannot think of one off the top of my head. One might think of Brutus's killing of his sons to restore the Roman Republic. But that was more about elimination, and I don't think he was a very good dad. WWI was triggered by an assassination, they say. But, on balance, did enough good come of that war to justify a murder? It seems like the situation rather left us with a lot more murders in need of justification. 
3. Retribution. This is basically just revenge. Perhaps it can be said that those who oppose the death penalty would, in order to be consistent, have to reject this as a sufficient justification for assassination. But I've found that many people who do say they oppose the death penalty will seem to justify assassinations on grounds of retribution. What seems to explain this seeming inconsistency is how the relative power of the killer and the killed person are imagined. With assassination, we imagine the killer as weak, and the targeted person as very powerful. If you imagine a situation where a very powerful person is knowingly causing pain and death to others who are too weak to defend themselves, and the powerful person continues to do so with an attitude of contempt for the weaker victims, and when the assassin is personally and grievously affected, retributive assassination seems justifiable. We can think of a case of a slave killing an abusive master. 
4. Deterrence. One might imagine that, if an abusive powerful person is killed, other powerful people will be deterred from being similarly abusive. Similarly to some of the above justifications, it seems to me that, here, one would need to be fairly certain of the intended effect, and also certain that the person was indeed abusive in the ways alleged. In criminal justice, I do not condone "making an example" of someone by excessive punishment just to deter others. So, for me, deterrence on its own can't justify killing someone.

For the most part, these justifications map onto the justifications of punishment through the criminal justice system. Anyone who has taken Criminal Justice101 knows that criminals are imprisoned for four basic, official reasons: 

• to remove a threat to the public, 
• to get retribution for the victim and the public
• to deter others from doing similar crimes
• to reform and rehabilitate the criminal, which is essentially understood as curing the "disease" of criminality. 

In the case of the death penalty, the last one is out the window, hence why it is not in my list of possible justifications of assassination. The justification that potentially applies to assassinations and not to criminal justice (number 2 above) is starting a revolution. This applies to assassination because the person is acting on the state or some similar large power structure. And said structure is the target, assumedly, of the revolutionary struggle. In the case of the death penalty, the structure (the state) is doing violence to the (criminal) individual.

Morality aside, I'll raise a few practical cautions against assassination for purposes of starting a revolution. 

• It usually doesn't work, although assassinations can and do destabilize societies and states to some extent. And that destabilization can militate against improving things by means of democracy, because destabilization and lack of social trust can feed authoritarianism.
• In cases where revolution is justified, non-lethal tactics of provocation and reprisal seem to work better than assassination. See for example, the Boston Tea Party or the actions that initiated the Bougainville Revolution.
• Revolutions cause a lot of suffering and evil, so if the goal is to alleviate suffering and evil, there is math to be done. Causing violent revolutions is best done when one's cause is just and when one is near certain of success, so that it will be a short and relatively bloodless revolution. 

The most compelling justification of assassination, at least in realistic scenarios, is number 3. (retribution). But for me, that can only apply if the person is willfully and knowingly doing the most wrong kinds of things. My own limited life experience has taught me that the types of people who are targeted for political assassination often do not think they are doing anything wrong. I imagine this was the case with the United Healthcare CEO. I have not met any CEO's of that caliber in my life. But I have personally met some other people who are in the kinds of positions that could similarly draw the ire of left-leaning political activists like Luigi Mangione. I have spoken with few members of Congress. I knew someone that worked for the World Bank. And I had a brief professional relationship with a security consultant whose clients included overseas facilities of "Big Pharma" corporations. These people, I found, truly did not think they were doing anything wrong, even though there are compelling arguments that they are active participants in structural violence. Maybe I am naive, but my actual experience has led me to believe that such people think, on balance, that they are doing good. They can be charged, perhaps, with a kind of stupidity or willful ignorance which is their fault. But to me, that does not justify killing.

Assassination, by definition, is premeditated, and is therefore not an act of self-defense against an immediate bodily threat. I imagine that many people are, in the right (by which I mean the most wrong) circumstances, capable of being driven into murderous rage that could be, if not justified, at least understood and perhaps forgiven. If someone knowingly killed someone close to me, someone I loved; if they did so for their own profit, power, or convenience; if they did so remorselessly, contemptuously… perhaps I could become one of those people. Is that selfish of me? Why should I privilege those close to me? Especially when, in my time and place, I have the privilege myself of being protected, and having my loved ones protected, from the structural harm and systematic violence that befalls other people in other places. My defense is only this: if I were to exact retribution on behalf of abstract others, I would be killing in cold blood.