Assassination and the Fragile Fabric of Social Cohesion
There is something inherently weak in resorting to murder as your best argument. It seems the old adage of “might is right” has taken center stage...
Written by: Christopher Paul Szabo
What is happening out there? I cannot think of a time when the threat of murder, by assassination, for public figures who evoke strong emotions has seemed greater, or has been greater.
It feels like something profound in society has shifted. A change in the psyche, it seems. I sense madness, not mental illness. I sense impotent rage, where words and better arguments are no longer the weapon of choice. Guns are the weapon, but of course humans are the agents. I am not a lobbyist for gun ownership but in my view gun control will not curb murderous intent, it will simply necessitate finding an alternate means to follow through.
Where there is a will, there is a way. I have no evidence to support my claim but I can point to countries with high gun ownership and low murder rates (such as Finland and Norway) albeit that contrary data exists and it seems data is interpreted to support whatever the agenda might be related to gun control. Further, has suicide been reduced by controlled access to guns? Maybe gun related suicide, with data to support such an association (Squires, 2022). However, according to USA data, suicide rates have increased since 2000.
Neither the assassinations of Charlie Kirk (by Tyler Robinson) or Brian Thompson (UnitedHealthcare CEO) by Luigi Mangione were random, impulsive acts. One can add the failed assassination attempt on Donald J Trump. These were intentional, thought through - no matter the many unanswered questions that lead to the ultimate question “who actually was behind either killing or attempt?”. “Conspiracy!” I hear you scream.
“Prove me wrong” I respond, as Charlie Kirk used to say. But back to the signal - what is going on out there? To quote Luke Lyman from a recent piece on the need for re-spiritualization: “Are these the End Times?” In the same piece he quoted Margarita Simonyan (editor-in-chief of Russia Today) as saying “We are moving towards losing ourselves as a species”. Provocative, but sobering.
One might argue, two assassinations in just over 9 months, in one country, what’s the big deal when placed in the context of murder rates generally? It’s the silencing, the targeted elimination – not just of people, but free speech in the case of Charlie Kirk. For context, in South Africa we live in a country that has documented over 450 political assassinations between 1994 and 2013 in KZN, with over 1000 cases of attempted or actual assassination reported. Crisis, what crisis? It seems to have become normalised, locally. Babita Dekoran comes to mind – her murder still under investigation years later. And so, as much as one might focus on young American men who assassinate, who are the killers in our midst?
Beyond the issue of gun control, we now see the increasing realization that social media may be the driver if not the instrument of violence. In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s and Brian Thompson’s assassinations there were those who celebrated, openly, on social media or justified the killing. A kind of righteous callousness. Celebrating murder is surely never acceptable, although I suspect some might challenge me e.g. the execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu by firing squad immediately after the guilty verdict of a military tribunal in Romania in 1989, a so-called “show trial” for crimes against humanity.
Was a brutal end, in this instance, simply justice delivered? But back to the present, and the seeming normalization of killing as a legitimate action to eliminate those labelled- racist, fascist, misogynist...any “ist” one can think of to demonize and vilify, often based on isolated social media clips taken out of context to support the contention which is then widely distributed and consumed, on social media. Is this the fuel for the fire of madness, of rage, that seems to justify brutality? Here I am cautious to speak of “fuel for the fire”, and not assert social media as the fire itself.
There is something inherently weak in resorting to murder as your best argument. It seems the old adage of “might is right” has taken center stage, and for some it seems clearly acceptable when one sees the lack of uniform condemnation for such murders, whether one agreed with the opinions and views of the person murdered. There has to be a reckoning in society.
There can be no expressions of “sorry, but...” or “hopes and prayers…”, but business as usual. Condemnation must be absolute, and then we search for the cause of the act. The cause beyond the individual act. We look within, at ourselves, and beyond ourselves we examine what our society has become. Seemingly increasingly intolerant and murderous, high profile assassinations aside. In South Africa, there were 26 232 murders in 2024, 42 per 100 000 – amongst the highest in the world.
I do not have a ready-made, straightforward solution, yet there is a simple truth oft stated in various forms, that when dialogue ends violence begins. Another is ‘social cohesion’, with a high level of ‘social cohesion’ cited as one factor associated with low levels of gun homicide and I suspect homicide in general too.
The Inclusive Society Institute has measured ‘social cohesion’ in South Africa, noting how it is linked to individual, subjective, well-being. They used a specifically developed instrument which comprised multiple domains i.e. ‘Social relations’, ‘Connectedness’, and ‘Focus on the common good’ with each domain further comprising a range of dimensions. Whilst the overall level of social cohesion was rated as ‘moderate’ – tellingly it was lowest in KZN and showing a decline generally from 2023-2024 for the dimension of “respect for social rules”.
If we are, in this beloved country of ours, to have a National Dialogue then maybe this issue of ‘social cohesion’ should be front and centre, and not just in relation to gun homicide.
Christopher Paul Szabo is a psychiatrist and the former Academic Head and an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand