How important must you be for your murder to be an "assassination"

[Xephyr]

Very long topic title. 


To the topic, this has been bugging me for the longest time, and I figured I would ask my good rmxp friends their opinions.


How important, do you believe, do you have to be for your murder to be an assassination, assuming that you were murdered?

Most of my friends believe you have to be higher than a mayor status, for the US.  I, however, don't really think so.  Would they call the murder of the governer of New Jersey an assassination?  Do you even know the name of New Jersey's governer?  If Arnold Swartzeneger was murdered though, it would easily be called an assassination, because he governs a much larger state, and has a very large name in the society of America.  Then there's another thought: what if the mayor of New York or Los Angeles was murdered?  Would that be an assassination?

It's a very confusing subject, to me.  What are your thoughts?



EDIT:
would this topic have been better in "general discussion"

unsure.

 

[FlippyD]

If you hire an assasin, and the assasin kills the target, and the target isn't a mayor or anything else, is it still an assasination?

Yes.

Case closed! Another victory for the Ixis detective agency!

EDIT: Less dickish answer,
A murder is usually a crime of passion thing, an assasination is professional. An assasination is a kind of murder, but a murder is not a kind of assasination.

 

[Xephyr]

If you hire an assasin, and the assasin kills the target, and the target isn't a mayor or anything else, is it still an assasination?

Yes.

Case closed! Another victory for the Ixis detective agency!

EDIT: Less dickish answer,
A murder is usually a crime of passion thing, an assasination is professional. An assasination is a kind of murder, but a murder is not a kind of assasination.

But if, say, I hired a professional assassin to kill my Geometry teacher, I doubt it would be listed as an assassination on the news.

 

[Zekallinos]

It must be planned in advance (important), and as said before, generally the murder is not by the person who actually wants someone dead, but another who knows he can do it.

The thing is, I don't think anyone will ever hire a killer to kill your geometry teacher. Something like that might happen a few times in history, but it's meaningless, and people don't know of them. Because of that, the term assassination is mentally associated with high-ranked people, the only cases we know about, but it doesn't have to be.

 

[___]

Meh I think it's semantic nonsense meant to set 'important' people out as special even in death. Like titles, it's bullshit invented to perpetuate the mystique of governance and celebrity, to keep you thinking you have a place and it's somewhere below theirs. Screw 'em. I'm willing to go out on a limb and say most people who get 'assassinated' more than deserve it (I can't back that up for Kennedy offhand, he was a dickwad but I don't think it warranted death).

Actually the whole concept of assassination in that context sits somewhere on my disgust-o-meter close to the spot occupied by the way there's always massive news coverage of murders and disappearances of adolescent, white, and almost always blond girls while the dozens or hundreds that happen around the same time aren't even a blip on the radar. Fucking stupid.

 

[FlippyD]

An assasination requires an assasin though, and Johnny "bludgeoned his wife with a bowling trophy" Smith ain't no assasin.

As the Sniper from TF2 would say.

An assasination requires that the person would have been killed by a professional hired to make the hit. I say that be the definition, it's pretty clear cut and makes sense.

 

[mawk]

But if, say, I hired a professional assassin to kill my Geometry teacher, I doubt it would be listed as an assassination on the news.

If the news cared to report about your geometry teacher and evidence suggested that it was hired work, the media would brand it an assassination. Maybe they'd use the term "hired killing" or "hit" if it sounded better in the headline, but the facts would remain the same.

I'm going to agree with ixis on this one. Murder is killing someone. An assassination is an assassin assassinating someone. That is, a professional killer. I don't know about you, but as I've learned the term, social standing has nothing to do with it.

 

[sixtyandaquarter]

Assassination is one part conspiracy to commit murder and success.

True if there is an actual ASSASSIN involved it's assassination.. but!
An assassin can be anyone, the term assassination is broader than murderer.
John Wilkes Booth is not an assassin by the definition of a "professional killer" or "hired killer", yet... he assassinated someone?! D:

Social standing has nothing to do with it, however social views does.  The biggest difference is actually MOTIVE.

I can simply destroy you, put a lot of resources and energy into mangling you in some way before or during your death - including mental harm, this can be an assassination.  But if my MOTIVE is something far greater than your or I, it's assassination.  Martin Luther King isn't an assassinated figure in history because of his stance in the public eye - although he's in history because of that, he's an assassinated figure because of the motive for his death, not that he was well known.  If I kill to further my ideology, it doesn't matter who I kill.

The killing of someone by treacherous violence, someone in public view for a goal (IE: an example death of a man of another faith or a protester), or someone in high social standings (political figure perhaps), also count as assassinations.

Another difference is honestly in terms of procedure.  Murder can be planned, but it can still be quick.  I can plan to kill someone, in an elaborate way.  The act can be called either an assassination or a murder interchangeably in both court, common talk, and correct word use.  In truth this is a social correct, but grammatically wrong definition that is commonly used.  If I went out of my way to kill you in some horrible way, it should be plain old murder, but the word assassination is lumped on as an adjective to describe the... quality of work.  Or rather the intensity of the murder.

Also assassinations generally take place in a rather different torque than plain old murder... generally I won't actually know you, if I assassinate you.  Unless we're talking mob hits and the sort.  But the more of the most famous of assassinations in history are cases of someone either killing or having another kill a figure whom they saw as a threat to their ideology, despite never knowing them.

Several religious people were assassinated by a rich merchant in Italy who had no clue who they looked like - he just had reasons to further along a set of religious practices and morals.  If he knew them, and did it out of anger or shame that they had insulted him, sure that's murder.  But adding the fact that he was defending something "greater than he himself was" (at least in his eyes), makes it an assassination.  The fact that they were not familiar to each other, socially strengthens the use of the word.  And btw this merchant, whose name escapes me did not hire an assassin - he went and killed them in their churches.

And that includes an assassination of a teacher by a parent in Arkansas saw the teacher as a threat to social and moral standings by contradicting a morale and social code of ethics.  See... MOTIVE not POSITION.

Look up "teacher assassination" in google.  While many were assassinated for actual means (a leader of a revolution movement, a maker of bombs in the middle east, etc) you'll also find the previously mentioned example in Arkansas and other places of much lower "civilized stock" than the teacher position usually holds.

 

[___]

But if, say, I hired a professional assassin to kill my Geometry teacher, I doubt it would be listed as an assassination on the news.

If the news cared to report about your geometry teacher and evidence suggested that it was hired work, the media would brand it an assassination. Maybe they'd use the term "hired killing" or "hit" if it sounded better in the headline, but the facts would remain the same.

I'm going to agree with ixis on this one. Murder is killing someone. An assassination is an assassin assassinating someone. That is, a professional killer. I don't know about you, but as I've learned the term, social standing has nothing to do with it.

If that's the case most things we consider assassinations weren't. Julius Caesar? Killed by a mob of senators who had probably never murdered in their life up till that point. Kennedy? Well, conspiracy theories aside, if you take the standard story it was a lone nut who was most definitely not a professional assassin - he wasn't even a terribly good shot by many accounts. John Wilkes Booth? Stand-up guy and popular actor (okay he was also a huge piece of shit racist by today's standards but that wasn't exactly uncommon back then) before he decided that Lincoln was destroying the founding principles of our country. He was certainly no assassin.

 

[FlippyD]

@N, just because they're called assasinations doesn't mean they are assasinations. I still say if it's carried out by a professional then it's assasination.

60, I don't think motive works because what if I hired an assasin to kill my neighbor's dog on a farce? The dog was still assasinated by an assasin, although there was no higher moral motive for it, yet it is still a planned and calculated kill by a professional.

The reason to have a distinction between assasination and plain old murder is to differentiate a planned professional kill than from a crime of passion kill. The term originates from assasin, which originates from the Hashshashin, a muslim group who carried out assasinations on muslim leaders of whom the group believed to be impious (they did so while consuming hashish, a cannabis resin.) Their motives were political, but I think that's a side-effect of the killings being planned and professional in nature. Oftentimes a planned and professional killing will be aimed at an important political figure because of their influence. They will have reached a level of popularity so great that they probably have guards, or that the person wanting to commit the murder cannot get close enough to the target themselves, and thus a professional approach is required. This however is not the case, as with John Wilkes Boothe or the Kennedy assasinations.

Here's more proof to the conundrum relating assasinations to status causes:

Notable instances in which this definitive problem might come into effect include the attempt on the life of United States President Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, who was determined subsequently to have serious psychological problems and publicly stated his intent was to get the attention of actress Jodie Foster rather than make any political statement. The killing of former Beatle John Lennon would raise the same problem — despite Lennon's outspokenness on many liberal political issues, his killer does not seem to have been more than an unstable fan. The use of the term "assassination" to describe Lennon's murder is a matter of some additional debate, since Lennon was primarily an entertainer, not a political figure, and it could be argued that describing his killing as an assassination is no more appropriate than, for example, using the term to describe the murders of singers Selena Quintanilla or Marvin Gaye. In another example, although conspiracy theorists suggest the apparent suicide of Marilyn Monroe might have been a politically motivated murder, the term "assassination" is rarely, if ever, used in this context. The attempt on the life of President Gerald Ford by a member of Charles Manson's cult could be the same; while it might perhaps be considered part and parcel of the anti-government, neo-fascist ideology to which Manson and his group adhered, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, the assassin, was not widely considered legally competent in her judgment at the time (although she was later tried and convicted). Should these cases be classified as attempted assassinations? The issue is further complicated by the fact that while Lennon was likely as outspoken politically as Reagan and Ford, and certainly as famous, Reagan and Ford were elected officials at the time, possibly requiring different criteria for Lennon's case.

You can have an assasination without strong motive, and you can also have what people claim to be an assasination with a strong motive. And sometimes we can't even be sure of the motive.

 

[sixtyandaquarter]

60, I don't think motive works because what if I hired an assasin to kill my neighbor's dog on a farce? The dog was still assasinated by an assasin, although there was no higher moral motive for it, yet it is still a planned and calculated kill by a professional.

True if there is an actual ASSASSIN involved it's assassination..

Umm... if there's an assassin involved, it's an assassination by default.  If you hire an assassin, it's an assassination by default.  Now the bulk of my post was about when there isn't a hired gun.

I'm not sure if the following quote is aimed at me or not...
But, since I'm here.

Lennon was NOT assassinated.  He was simply murdered.  To call that an assassination makes anything and everything that can be tried as murder - under any degree of law, an assassination.  It practically makes aggravated assaults attempted assassinations, and planned brutal beatings a conspiracy to assassinate.  I'm not sure the rest of the point of that quote.  Since all those other attempts and such, were highly motivated.

The Manson family were assassins.  They had a grand scheme (plus they were killing on order :p)

So, let me rephrase my post...
If there is a hired killing = assassination.
If there is a grand motive for the death = assassination.
If there is both = assassination plus a book deal if you aren't taken down by police gunfire first.

 

[FlippyD]

Lennon was NOT assassinated.  He was simply murdered.  To call that an assassination makes anything and everything that can be tried as murder - under any degree of law, an assassination.  It practically makes aggravated assaults attempted assassinations, and planned brutal beatings a conspiracy to assassinate.  I'm not sure the rest of the point of that quote.  Since all those other attempts and such, were highly motivated.

That was the point I was trying to make, and it was actually aimed at Xephyr. That the fact that most people don't have a concrete idea of what assassination means most people run under the pretense of whatever they feel it should mean (popular people being killed.)

And a grand motive doesn't seem to qualify for assassination in my opinion. My earlier point was that most murders classified as assassinations usually are motivated by ideological differences, but that's because if you want to kill someone for ideological reasons it's usually someone in power that's hard to murder, thus a professional approach is required. It's a symptom of most assassinations.

 

[Dissonance]

I still say if it's carried out by a professional then it's assasination.

Mob goombas are professional killers, but if somebody drove by your house and shot you up with a tommy gun they wouldn't call it an assassination, it would be a mob hit or professional hit or possibly a gang killing or whatever.  Look at what an assassin is.  Is he just a generic hired gun?  Can it be a professional hitman, a regular guy slipping poison into a drink, somebody spraying gunfire into a crowded mall/school, a mafia flunkie?

Assassinations are assassinations if one of the following is fufilled:

- The person is extremely noteworthy
- The method of killing occurs privately, quietly, discreetly, and the deed remains unnoticed for a short period of time, and even then the methods used have to be hard to trace back to the killer (leaving the gun that fired the bullet with your handprints on it at the scene doesn't make you an assassin chump, it makes you a retard)
- The method of killing is extremely public, but from a long distance with minimal chance the assassin will be caught immediately during the act (sniper, possibly remote/time bomb, etc)
- It is a single target per job.  Shooting up a hallway of people or bombing a building is more of a terrorist thing as that's simply causing as much damage as possible - assassins are hired to kill their targets and it's usually easier to remain undiscovered if there's no collateral damage

 

[FlippyD]

- The person is extremely noteworthy

Like John Lennon?

- The method of killing occurs privately, quietly, discreetly, and the deed remains unnoticed for a short period of time, and even then the methods used have to be hard to trace back to the killer (leaving the gun that fired the bullet with your handprints on it at the scene doesn't make you an assassin chump, it makes you a retard)

So, if that old lady a block from my house murdered her sister, it would be an assasination because the murder occurred quietly, discreetly and the deed remained unnoticed for 20 years?

- The method of killing is extremely public, but from a long distance with minimal chance the assassin will be caught immediately during the act (sniper, possibly remote/time bomb, etc)

This conflicts with your previous criteria and your next one.

- It is a single target per job.  Shooting up a hallway of people or bombing a building is more of a terrorist thing as that's simply causing as much damage as possible - assassins are hired to kill their targets and it's usually easier to remain undiscovered if there's no collateral damage

Your whole point seems to hinge on the assumptions that mob gangsters are assassins, when they are not. That's another misconception, in my opinion. Mob men are gangsters, professional gangsters, but crime men/women nonetheless. Killing people is only a part of their job, as they may also deal with a myriad of illegal situations to gain territory, influence and money. A professional killer is one who murders people as a job, and only that. For gangsters, their motive for killing someone is different from that of the assassin: the gangster may have to kill someone else for notoriety, theft, initiation, respect, dominance, strategic warfare, and/or money. The hired gun merely kills for money.

An assassin is someone who commits acts of murder for money and without ulterior motive. If an assassin killed someone for emotional reasons, or any other motivation other than money then it would be considered murder. (EDIT: Let me clarify this, an assassination is in my opinion a service an assassination gives to his client for payment of some kind. To expand the definition more, if someone paid me to kill despain, I would be paid to carry out an assassination, even though I am not a professional. Wether or not this counts as murder or assassination is where the real argument lies, I think.) Gangsters may have to engage in assassinations at one point or another, but not every killing they'd preform could be counted as an assassination (for example, the example you gave.)

 

[Venetia]

Assassination is the targeted murder of a high-profile person. An added distinction between assassination and other forms of killing is that the assassin (one who performs an assassination) usually has an ideological or political motivation, though many assassins (especially those not part of an organization) also demonstrate insanity. Other motivations may be money (contract killing), revenge, or a military operation.

as·sas·si·nate      (É™-sÄ

 

[sixtyandaquarter]

Wikipedia carries more than one definition, likewise the Oxford dictionary carries both definitions discussed here.

That being a "hired assassin" attempt, as well as the motive attempt - which does NOT require being in the greater public eye.  That it boils down to when combining both definitions is the death of someone to further an ideology.

The American Heritage Dictionary is like for high schoolers in public schools.  It's omissions are laughably known with words and definitions.  That and it's more of a social word vs. original word dictionary, IE: it's dumb.  It's the inbred cousin of a thesaurus who once fucked her real dictionary brother on a drunken bet.  Bahabaduduuuhh wurds are fun :D

An assassination OFTEN targets people of fame because it is EASIER to spread the word, but this doesn't always occur.  Several historical assassinations are known because people were famous, read up on the word.  Read the "Good Assassin's Journal" (translated name - it's in English but as a Russian that in the states was translated for whatever reason), etc.

It's a collection of real life near auto-biographical accounts (as in, the guy talked to people, and wrote their stories with the words "I" and "me" and the sort, while still being third person - like taking court writtings and filling in description to the breeze and shit), it follows several hit men, a few hired thugs, and discusses the difference between them an assassinations.

Guess who else is in the book?  A few assassins who have assassinated HUT FARMERS for various political terror groups.  You obviously aren't famous if your in a hut and a farmer, sure you might be a local political figure - and you probably visually have this small li'l town where everyone knows each other right?  Wrong, near a city.  The guys were assassinated to further the advancement of the people.  The idea being if you kill the farmers, you won't have the back bone of society any more.

If you assassinate a king for the same reason by stupid definitions it's assassination, but oh- wait, dirt farmer in North Eastern Africa?  Haha, that's a murder, no that's not assassination.  Same exact definition, but hardly can be the same.

 

[Dissonance]

http://www.court-records.net/animation/killer-doe(b).gif[/img]
Assassins must also be eloquent.

 

[Venetia]

Sixty my point was that even if it's done by an ASSASSIN, it will not be referred to, by the media, and by people in general, as an assassination. Assassinations are only really considered as thus unless they are targeting people of power.

Like I said, even celebrities who are killed are still considered MURDERED. The difference is POWER.

 

[___]

Personally I think the media is a disparate bunch of cock-knockers whos only point of consistency is that they knock cocks. Small Town Attentionwhore Anchorwoman A calls a student killing his teacher a "brutal assassination", Big City Attentionwhore Anchorman B calls the slaying of half the city council a "chain of senseless murders". Being the cock-knockers they are, they both repeat verbatim what the other knocker said with no attention to accuracy, semantics, or other concepts of journalistic loltegrity.

Basic point being if you make an argument based on what the media defines as 'assassination' you are committing either argumentum ad authoritatum or argumentum ad populum depending on how you view the media. What you need to argue is not the current state of affairs concerning the semantics of the word but rather an objective definition independent of popular stupidity.

 

[FlippyD]

But the media is stupid and wrong and influenced by whatever will get the most ratings.

They say there's an explicit sex scene in Mass Effect but no matter how many times I watch it I won't see a single goddamn blue nipple.

The media has said that Obama's a terrorist, but no matter how hard you wish he isn't. The media and people in general have said killer bees are coming from Texas and will take out the entire southeast, black people have a higher disposition to kill you, cybersex leads to depression, women don't deserve rights, aliens enjoy probing human beings, Thomas Edison wasn't a complete jackoff with Tesla penis envy, up is down, black is white, and I don't preform exceptionally well in bed, all things we know aren't true or mere abstractions of the truth.

Instead of weathering the miasma of wrongness that is the collective conscious it's more important to try and find a solid ground that appeals to logic and reasoning, or should the technical incorrectness of the situation be great enough where the new definitions lie.

EDIT: Err... N said it... Better? I think?