Social Killing

People everywhere are the same: events by themselves, however atrocious, do not arouse them; they are only aroused by events that have an escort. The most atrocious killing takes place every day among individuals, in wars, and indeed among peaceful subjects. Yet all of that seldom arouses the attention of society the way the killing of a head of state does, like a sultan or king or president of a republic. This is probably the reason that anarchists and all those who seek to wreak vengeance on the political regimes in society have killed national leaders: not for personal revenge, nor to vent their anger on those regimes. Indeed the ones who are killed might be among the better leaders while the worst remain safe and sound. The purpose of these assassinations, rather, is to make people think and to provoke minds into action.

An examination of such things, therefore, should not rest content with appraising the act itself as good or evil. It should go way beyond that, to deal with many social issues, beside which the initial small crime is forgotten as attention turns to those other greater crimes of which those unjust regimes are guilty, as they turn individuals and the masses into victims, their energies wasted and their readiness to benefit society thwarted if not driven to destruction instead; the masses becoming content with the situation, lulled into a deep slumber by the force of habit, by complacency, or by easily attained ambitions to the point that they cannot imagine that there could be any alternative to their present situation.

Shaking out of people's heads this sickly notion, which is the root of all social afflictions, is the aim of everyone who would reform the social structure. It is this that the minds of peaceful reformers aim for as they seek to spread noble ideas and urge the expansion of education, critical thought, and of everything that could lead to peaceful, gradual reform yielding results in every area. It is this that those who wreak vengeance on the system strive for too, those whose patience is exhausted, who use violence even if it means sacrificing themselves for the principle of driving evil away with evil. They want to send a jolt to the minds of those worn-out social bodies, of the rulers and the ruled, of the oppressors and the oppressed so that those whose rights have been outraged might rise up, shake off their trammels, and demand their stolen rights on land where it seems that they have no right to step, under a sky where it seems they have no right to shade, so that the oppressors might take heed, lighten their step, and not allow their own interests to blind them to the interests of others.

Whoever looks at the history of civilization from the day it began until today can only concede that those who wreak vengeance in every age have done so to demand the return of their outraged rights. Had it not been thus, society would not have advanced as it has by the efforts of those two groups - now peacefully and quietly, now with revolutions and convulsions - exactly following the natural law of evolution. The desired reform is still an urgent need today as it was in the past, the difference is only relative. Similarly, the need for progress in the natural world has not yet stopped, just as it has not stopped in the social world, i.e., civilization. No one with intelligence can stop where the sluggish, the complacent, or those with vested interests say there is no possible alternative.

The assassination of McKinley, the President of the republic of the United States, has preoccupied the newspapers and has been the topic of everybody's conversations. It has worried the crowned heads more than the killing of a peaceful people who humbly pay their dues to their government, more than the killing of the thousands involved in the war going on in South Africa, more than the killing of the interests of the masses every day and by every single government on earth, even the most advanced. They all have been preoccupied with the assassination, not to find cures or treatments for social ills so as to remove the greed, the outrages, and rapaciousness that cause them. No, what concerns them instead is striking the hands of the wrongdoers, by whom they mean the anarchists. The two sovereigns that today control the world have met and have begun to consider, not how to reduce their haughtiness or reform the situation of the masses so as to eliminate afflictions and reduce the causes for complaint, but to think up what means will guarantee that they will be able to hang on to their scepters of authority so they can continue herding people like cattle. They seek to guarantee for that gang who rob society that they will have whatever they need to go on stealing and plundering, seizing, extorting, and amassing wealth through any form of trickery so as to invest in places of business whose workers derive from them just what they need to eke out an existence. Thieves these are, who go about as they like, protected by the laws that are enforced by the governments.

Even if the masses look upon this atrocious act [of assassination] in isolation, seeing just the atrociousness of it, there are some people, albeit a small number, to whom it has occurred that they must search out the reasons for the act. Socialists have called for a diagnosis of the disease so that a cure might be prescribed and recovery hastened. Even if this hasty recovery is still a long way off in terms of social history, it is closer than it might be, and every step forward demolishes one more stone in that wall that the oppressors have built on the backs of the inattentive.