I had thoughts about this which turned out to be irrelevant during the Sri Lanka thread. The Easter Sunday bombers, the Christchurch shooter, and apparently the OP assassin were inspired* by mostly unorganized, and so conventionally difficult to counter, ideological communities.
While this makes them a headache, I think they should be discounted** because their actions are aimed essentially at in-group kudos rather than actual political ends, and so by their nature tend to be ineffective.
So, the Christchurch shooter got props from his buddies in Austria, but didn't do anything to stop immigration to NZ; if anything probably the opposite.
Similarly the Easter Sunday bombers blew their wad attacking Christians and Westerners, to get props from their buddies in Syria, while the locally optimal move for jihadism would have been to attack Buddhists. It so happens there were so many Buddhist assholes already that the attacks did a lot of damage anyway, but that isn't due to the internet terrorists, it's due to chance local politics.
I assume likewise the German case will just result in stronger headwinds for the right.
*Probably a bit more than just inspired in the SL case. But they weren't IS veterans or anything.
**By which I mean, discounted, not written off.
It may be the case that these shootings don't contribute to their intended ends, but I suspect there's still a lot of indirect damage to the polity from the climate of mortal danger they instill.
I disagree with viewing prominent, explicitly political murder as a detail. Both by making a violent response seem more normal and realizable and by making a civil society seem like an impractical fantasy, this causes real harm now.
I'll admit my own background perhaps makes it impossible for me to appreciate how this might feel from inside a developed society. On the numbers though, I think a modern state can ride it out indefinitely.
I mean West Germany had frequent assassinations right through the 1980s, yes? Much of Western Europe likewise. Yet, Europe remains.
If you call peacefully existing while providing a high standard of living to most of the population along with civil and political rights living, sure.
The many European political assassinations and terrorist campaigns of the last 50 years, being traditionally perpetrated by extreme leftists or minority religious extremists, have not led to their adherents gaining support from the public. A new wave of political assassinations and terrorist campaigns led by right-wing nationalists backed by large factions in the police and military might be different.
7: Good point - Japanese leadership in the 1930's was powerfully influenced by fear of assassination.
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There has only ever been (so far!) one political assasination in Canada: the killing of Thomas D'Arcy McGee, on 7 April 1868, in Ottawa. It was an ugly episode.
As a young man, McGee was an Irish patriot who was involved with the Young Ireland movement. After he fled to the United States in 1848, he found his faith in American republicanism sorely tested. He eventually moved north to Canada, where he argued for a rapprochement between English Protestants, on the one hand, and French and Irish Catholics, on the other. He is, quite justly, imo, considered one of the fathers of Canadian Confederation.
He was murdered by a Fenian, who probably didn't even have a plan.
(I may be related, by marriage, to Patrick James Whelan, the tailor from Galway who shot Thomas D'Arcy McGee, but we don't talk about that in my family.)
My dad loved Thomas D'Arcy McGee. A good Irish Catholic who was loyal to the faith, instead of kowtowing to the Yankees.
The École Polytechnique massacre was pretty political.
Was it? What were the politics, exactly, or even approximately?
7: What sections of the German security services are supporting the right wing? What reasons are there for those services not to protect politicians?
11-13 it was definitely political but it wasn't an assassination.
11: Pierre Laporte, no?
I guess the FLQ didn't mean to kill him, exactly, but still.
11: Wiki also lists the Turkish military attache, Atilla Altikat, murdered in 1982 in Ottawa by Armenian nationalists, which seems to qualify.
Pierre Laporte too - his killers were convicted of his murder. Deliberate killing of a prominent individual for a political end counts as assassination, I would say.
An assassination has to involve the killing of a public or otherwise prominent figure, no?
And for reasons connected with their position, I think. If Senator Smith's wife finds out about the affair and clobbers him over the head, that's not an assassination.
I would say it also has to be targeted: if the IRA put a bomb outside a school and it happens to catch a passing junior minister on her way to the shops, that's not assassination either, even though it's the murder of a prominent figure for political reasons.
19: My mistake, thought you were talking about the OP case.
7: What sections of the German security services are supporting the right wing? What reasons are there for those services not to protect politicians?
A: These ones and these ones
B: Because they are betraying their nation by letting in too many foreigners. Same as here.
I don't know what the news source "The Trumpet" is, but this looks like a well supported and well reasoned article.
German stereotypes let me down again!
The Philadelphia Trumpet also known as The Trumpet is a free of charge monthly magazine published by the Philadelphia Church of God, also available online. The magazine's focus is on domestic and international current events, societal commentary, and Bible based self-help articles, which often source Biblical writing as prophecy relating to world events (Wikipedia). The Trumpet does publish credible news and also aggregates news from other credible sources, however many stories that are written by The Trumpet attempt to relate current events to biblical prophecy. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-trumpet/
Occasional outbreaks of lunacy: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Philadelphia_Trumpet
Like, I'd seen the righty Bundeswehr/whatever in the headlines, but just assumed it was handfuls and intelligence had things well in hand.
11: Pierre Laporte, no?
Yes, okay, that was a political assassination, according to any reasonable use of the term. I stand corrected.
(Also, the FLQ's kidnapping of British diplomat James Cross was pretty darn stupid, and I guess Cross was lucky he wasn't killed by mistake!).
The École Polytechnique massacre seems a bit different, though. Lone gunman; deep and intense hatred toward women; radical disengagement from the ordinary processes of the society to which he belonged: is that political?
What if the IRA agent is in a fifth-floor apartment and looking out the window with a rifle getting ready to shoot down on a junior minister on her way to the shops, but when the shoot is fired it misses because it strikes another junior ministor who is falling from a higher apartment because he leapt out the window after a learning his wife was seeing Benny Hill on the side?
Take out the IRA agent in the first place, of course.
I guess I'm not willing to view the IRA as an official state actor, so: no?
The assassin doesn't need to be an official state actor. Otherwise Abraham Lincoln wasn't assassinated. Also, I was mostly just referencing an old joke thing.