The Psychobabble Theory of Assassination

Age of Assassins: The Loners, Idealists and Fanatics Who Conspired to Change the World

Faber and Faber (2013)

Book Review

In essence this book is an encyclopedia of modern day assassinations. In addition to providing comprehensive details of more than a dozen political murders, Newton proposes a general theory of what motivates assassins. In my view, this aspect of the book is a total failure. Mainly because it largely omits compelling evidence of US intelligence/military complicity in the assassinations of Malcolm X, JFK, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and John Lennon and the attempted assassinations of Reagan, Ford, George Wallace and John Paul II.

I also have a problem with Newton’s assertion that the era of assassinations began with the Lincoln assassination. Assassination via poisoning dates back to Roman times at least.

According to Newton, the Lincoln assassination inspired the Russian Nihilist movement and their numerous assassination attempts (which were ultimately successful) against czar Alexander II.

The Nihilists, in turn, inspired the Irish nationalists and the “propaganda of the deed” (see Why Social Studies Never Made Sense in School: The History of Anarchism ) tendency of the anarchist movement. The result would be a wave of attempted and completed assassinations across Europe and in the US.

The book contains a long section on the life of US anarchist Emma Goldman and the attempted assassination oshe plotted with her lover Alexander Berkman on Henry Clay Frick (hired by Carnegie to break the steel workers union) s. Although she would later renounce violence, her huge public following (according to Newton) would inspire Leon Czolgosz to assassinate president William McKinley.

The book devotes a long chapter to the rise of Serbian nationalism, the Black Hand and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the purported cause of World War I. It devotes numerous pages to the Armenian genocide by Ottoman rulers and several assassination attempts against Roosevelt and Truman.

I found the later chapters, beginning with the assassination of John Kennedy, a big disappointment. In my view, this section of the book is pure pop psychology and psychobabble.

Newton identifies three primary motives for assassination:

1) A desire to end the suffering engendered by capitalist greed.

2) The drive for violent retribution in reaction to other killings.

3) A desire to smash the state and other authoritarian structures.

This leaves out all the lone nut assassinations – in which misfits try to murder prominent political figures for no apparent reason at all. Except for the JFK assassination (Newton acknowledges Oswald had accomplices* ). Newton seems to be a strong supporter of the lone nut theory of assassination. He blames the rise of lone nut assassins on deep seated decay and alienation in US society, which he believes is aggravated by the motion picture industry.

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*Based on an acoustical recording obtained from a Dallas police microphone, the 1978 House Committee on assassinations ascertain that Oswald had to have at least one accomplice. See  https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKassassinationsC.htm

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Why Social Studies Never Made Sense in School: The History of Anarchism

No Gods No Masters: The History of Anarchism – Part 1

Icarus Films (2017)

Film Review

This three-part documentary series provides an eye opening look into the history of anarchism and its pivotal role in the development in the development of Marxism, communism and the trade union movement. The powers that be would have you believe that Karl Marx simply dreamed communism up sitting on his lonesome in the British Library.

Part 1 covers the period 1840, when Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (the father of anarchism) published What is Property, to 1906. Like socialism, anarchism grew directly out of the abject misery (eg starvation, malnutrition, epidemics, workplace injuries, alcoholism, etc) of early industrial capitalism. When French scholar and activist Jean-Pierre Proudhon first declared himself an “anarchist” in 1840, the life expectancy of an industrial worker was 30 years.

I was previously unaware that the global anarchist movement organized the First International (aka The First International Workingmen’s Association) in 1964. In fact, anarchists comprised the vast majority of the First International before Karl Marx and his Russian follower Mikhail Bakunin conspired to expel  them. The anarchists, who disagreed with the call by Marx and Bakunin for a centrally run revolutionary political party, subsequently formed the Anarchist International Workingmen’s Association.

Prior to watching this film, I was also unaware that the anarchist movement initially came up with the strategy of the general strike, nor that it was first tried in the US. On May 1 1886, 340,00 workers came out on strike to demand an 8 hour day. The violent police reaction (and extreme government corruption it exposed) led to extreme disillusionment with the notion of worker organizing as a route to reform. The result was a brief period  “propaganda of the deed”* activism in which a handful of anarchists tried to trigger mass insurrections though a series of bombings and assassinations of world political leaders (including US President William McKinley and Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand**).

With the turn of the century, international anarchist groups abandoned violence (which Proudhon had expressly opposed) to return to trade union organizing. This would give birth to “anarchosyndicalism”***, which promotes the general strike as the principal means of accomplishing revolutionary change nonviolently.

Their efforts would bear fruit in 1905-06, with political revolutions in Russia and Persia, and mass insurrections in France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Chile, India, Japan, Mongolia.

1905 would see the formation of the International Workers of the World (IWW), the first anarchosyndicalist movement in the US.

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*”Propaganda of the deed,” refers to violent direct action meant to serve as an example for other oppressed peoples and a catalyst for revolution.

**This assassination of the heir to the Austrian Hungarian throne would be used as a pretext for the launch of World War I, when Serbia rejected an ultimatum by the Austro-Hungarian government to extradite one of the Serbian assassins.

***Anarcho-syndicalism is a theory of anarchism that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of the economy and, with that control, influence broader society.