Killing in the name of?

This week Canadian police arrested several “hit men” involved in a murder, allegedly orchestrated by the Indian government. I was first struck by how young the arrestees are - 22 does not say “seasoned pro” - and it got me thinking about the hitman in our culture.

Of course murder goes back as far as humanity, but the middle-man element comes much more recently.

ninja assassin

As someone who reads a lot of about police work and crime, I can say that independent hit men do not come up a lot in official records. They are as much a cultural invention as they are a criminal phenomenon. (They are an endless resource supplying the plot for Liam Neeson movies - there’s new one every few months).

There have been high profile assassinations throughout history, and people carried them out. We think of the world of the Medici and the Borgias in Italy, where people seemed to be knocking off their rivals at a terrifying pace. (Machiavelli believed it was a valid strategy). But largely those who did the killings were those who directly benefited from it.

For the historical assassinations we know of, which go back to the Ancient world, the killers were courtiers, wives, bodyguards. Not hired outsiders.

The word “assassin” supposedly derives from Arabic, from the same root word as hashish. The Order of Assassins were functionaries of the Crusader-era Nizari Isma'ili state, killing its political and religious foes.

Having enemies eliminated was hardly unique, but this order were more effective: hence their name continued to describe political or high profile murders. But they were in the employ of a ruler, carrying out that ruler’s goals.