What’s the distinction between the two? I ask because MSNBC is running a special tonight about the doctor who performed late term abortions, calling it an assassination. IMO, the term should be reserved for political/social leaders.
Assassinations are politically motivated. Murders are not politically motivated.
That makes sense. By that standard, MSNBC is using the appropriate word.
“I’m watching the news … Tupac Shakur was assassinated, Biggie Smalls assassinated, struck down by assassin’s bullets … no, they wasn’t. Martin Luther King was assassinated, Malcolm X was assassinated, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Them two niggas got shot! Shit, I love Tupac, I love Biggie, but school will be open on their birthday”
- Chris Rock
Not quite. The accusation of assassination is politically motivated. Murders are only assassinations when other people use the word about them. The murderers themselves seldom say “I assassinated somebody.” They killed them.
That’s why assassination is now used for everything from John Lennon’s death to abortions. People think they gain legitimacy for ascribing additional societal weight to the death by using it. Whether it has much meaning that way is debatable.
I think the term has a couple of meanings.
It comes from assassin, which in turn comes from an Arabic word meaning a consumer or addict of hashish. It was applied to the zealots of an Ismaili sect who reputedly doped themselves with hashish in order to commit sectarian murders of public figures.
From here it entered the English language where, for a long time, it basically referred to murder involving treacherous violence. The murders of kings, etc, were assassinations because to attack the king was inherently treacherous, but the premeditated murder of a friend, or a murder which involved deceiving the victim so that he allowed himself to be put into a vulnerable position, could equally be described as an assassination. The common element was treachery or betrayal.
Over time, though, the sense involving political treachery came to predominate, and an assassination was normatively of a king or political figure. And from this there develops a sense that an assassination is normally committed for political or ideological reasons and from this we have an extended meaning in which the murder of any victim selected for political or ideological reasons is an assassination.
The murder of a doctor because he carries out late-term abortions would be an assassination in this last sense.
The murder of John Lennon was arguably an assassination in the early sense, because the murderer got close to him by pretending to seek his autograph. (Though I think that one is a bit of a stretch, myself.)
If Mrs Obama catches Mr Obama cheating and puts a cap up his presidental place, resulting in his death, that’s murder.
If Mrs Obama, doesn’t like the fact Mr Obama refused to sign a bill to guarantee women the right to abortions, the it’s an assasination
You murder someone when you want them dead.
You assasinate them when you want them no longer alive.
(A subtle difference I know.)
Sondheim disagrees with you. You’re not going to call Steve a liar, are you?
*You *murder someone.
You hire someone else to assassinate someone.
It’s assassination if you look cool doing it.
Example: planting a bomb in your target’s car, and walking away in slow motion while the car explodes behind you, without even turning to look at that boring explosion, because you’re a badass assassin and have seen a million of 'em.