Heads of state and murderers
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, March 10, 2026
For the first time in history, we see the head of a self-proclaimed civilised state speaking openly like a murderer, saying of the religious leader of a country he assaulted: “we’re gonna kill him”, and of that country’s inhabitants: “we’ll massacre them”. Neither Hitler nor Stalin ever spoke like this. And yet, not only is this man not charged and deposed, but the heads of state of the so-called Western democracies approve of him, implicitly accepting that now politicians express themselves publicly as perhaps not even murderers dare to do among themselves.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, March 10, 2026
For the first time in history, we see the head of a self-proclaimed civilised state speaking openly like a murderer, saying of the religious leader of a country he assaulted: “we’re gonna kill him”, and of that country’s inhabitants: “we’ll massacre them”. Neither Hitler nor Stalin ever spoke like this. And yet, not only is this man not charged and deposed, but the heads of state of the so-called Western democracies approve of him, implicitly accepting that now politicians express themselves publicly as perhaps not even murderers dare to do among themselves.
(English translation by I, Robot)
Edvard Munch, The Murderer, 1910. Courtesy of WikiArt.
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