An Eruption of Assassinations

The current peak in the number of assassinations has exceeded that of the 1960s

In this blog I usually don’t comment on events as they occur, because my focus is not on individual occurrences, but on broader societal trends. Also, our understanding of a particular event often changes as more information becomes available. The chaotic reporting on the assassination of Charlie Kirk over the past several days (and retractions) is a good example of this. But, actually, I was planning to write about the recent increase in the frequency of assassinations, as well as their broader social context anyway, so it is a coincidence that this post comes out in the wake of this tragedy.

According to my US Political Violence Database (USPVDB), the five years from 2020 to 2024 saw seven assassinations. This is higher than the previous peak during the 1960s, although only half as large as that of the late 1860s:

This count includes an assassination attempt against Donald Trump, the assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, the shooting of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Luigi Mangione killing Brian Thompson, and a few lesser-known others, but not the assassination of Charlie Kirk (which will be part of the count during the next 5 year period).

At the same time, we are experiencing a huge outbreak of terrorism, most of which takes the form of indiscriminate mass shootings. The Database classifies a political violence event as terrorism when the intent is to attack a social group or the society as a whole, while assassination is an attack against a particular representative of such a group, often its leader or another prominent member.

The reason my research group devotes a lot of effort to gathering data on political violence events, which include assassinations, terrorism, violent urban riots, rural insurrections and so on up to all-out civil wars, is that this allows us to quantify how the intensity of political violence changes over time. And that, in turn, gives us a way to empirically test the predictions of the structural-demographic theory, whose goal is to understand what factors drive political instability up or down. You can read more about this project in my 2012 article, Dynamics of political instability in the United States, 1780–2010 (and recently we’ve been updating the data through 2024).

Constructing such data requires some judgment calls. For example, there is no sharp boundary between assassinations and terrorism. Consider the case of Wesley LePatner, a senior executive at Blackstone Inc., who was killed in a mass shooting event on July 28, 2025 at the firm's headquarters in Manhattan. According to police and public officials, the shooter in the NYC building where Wesley LePatner was killed appears to have been targeting the NFL offices, but then took the wrong elevator, ending up on a different floor. Yet, it is a curious coincidence that Blackstone is one of broadly detested corporations, and its executives have been accused by leftist groups for its “greed-driven agenda” that fueled housing affordability crisis (see, for example, Housing Is A Human Right Exposes Billionaire Landlord Stephen Schwarzman). In USPVDB we classify this incident as “terrorism,” but if the shooter specifically wanted to kill a Blackstone executive, it would be an assassination.

In any case, from the point of view of the structural-demographic theory, cleanly distinguishing between assassinations and shooting rampages is unimportant, because the root cause for both kinds of political instability events is the same. As I’ve argued in many of my publications (and most systematically in End Times) the structural conditions underlying the exploding incidence of assassinations and terrorism are popular immiseration and overproduction of credentialed elite aspirants. And, as my long-time readers know, the same factors also explain the increase in the support for assassins, terrorists, as well as radical groups.

In brief, declining well-being and growing “precarity” of the commoners and overproduced degree-holders, coupled with an explosion in the numbers and wealth of the uber-rich, results in the feeling of profound injustice among the non-elite population. While many of them meekly accept their diminishing prospects, some minority radicalizes and becomes motivated to strike a blow against the unjust system. In social psychology such individuals are characterized as moralistic punishers.

In End Times (Chapter 4) I use a fictional character, “Jane”, to explain the motivations of people who join extremist organizations. Such people become counter-elites who organize popular discontent against the established elites. But others, often loners without organizational skills, decide to act as individuals, turning into terrorists/assassins.

A great example of the close relationship between terrorists and revolutionaries is the brief career of Alexander Ulyanov, a lesser known brother of Vladimir Lenin. He was executed in 1887 for an attempted assassination of the Russian Tsar, Alexander III. There is a famous Soviet-era painting, which depicts young Lenin (at that point, still Ulyanov) with his mother on the day of execution, titled “We Will Choose Another Way.”

Source

Returning to the here and now, few people are motivated enough to sacrifice themselves in this way, but there is a larger group that support and cheer them. According to one poll, taken in December of 2024, 10% of responders viewed Mangione as a "hero" (Only 10% Consider Man Who Murdered United Healthcare CEO a Hero"). This is much smaller than the 53% who viewed him as “villain”, but still­, one in ten Americans support and cheer a cold-blooded murderer? Interestingly, support for this assassination was particularly high among the overproduced degree-holders: “Among voters with a postgraduate degree, 15% consider the killer a hero. Only 8% of those with a Bachelors' degree share that view along with 9% of those without a college degree.”

It's important to note, that by themselves political assassination and terrorism don’t overthrow the established elites (at least, I can’t think of any examples). An assassination of the state ruler may serve as a triggering event for a revolution or an onset of civil war, but it still requires a well-organized and committed counter-elite party. The failure of Alexander Ulyanov and ultimate success of his younger brother illustrate this principle perfectly.

The significance in the rising frequency of such instability “micro-events” is that they signal that something is deeply broken within the social system in which they happen. I tried to draw attention to the rising frequency of shooting rampages back in 2008 (you can read about it in my 2012 blog post, Canaries in a Coal Mine). A canary dropping dead in a miner’s cage is not the cause of the explosion to come, but rather an advance warning.

Similarly, the increasing incidence of assassinations and terrorism tells us that we aren’t out of the woods yet, by a long stretch.