Saturday 10 April 2010

Another one bites the dust

Via EU Referendum, it appears that the fairly nationalist/authoritarian Polish president has died in an air crash.

Is it just me, or do these things tend to happen to right-wingers, e.j. Jörg Haider, Theo Van Gogh, Pim Fortuyn, or going further back, Wolfgang Schäuble who was shot in the back and has since been in a wheelchair and Airey Neave? And of course the IRA had a pop at the whole Tory Cabinet back in 1984.

The only leftie I can think of who was assassinated/murdered in recent times is Anna Lindh.

UPDATE: Dearieme adds Olof Palme to the list, also in Sweden. Maybe the rules are inverted in that country?

8 comments:

The Great Simpleton said...

JFK? But I suppose it depends on you how define recent. It happened in my lifetime so I think of it as recent.

Mark Wadsworth said...

TGS, fair point, but I'm covering Europe and who says that JFK was not right-wing?

sobers said...

Its because the Left are convinced of their own ideological superiority - therefore it is OK (in extremis) to kill one person(or a few million people) if it will further 'the cause'. Those on the right tend to have a more rigid sense of morality.

Ross said...

JFK was killed by a far left individual, Lee Harvey Oswald, probably because of his anti-communism so he is the exception that proves the rule.

dearieme said...

What about that Swedish PM chappie? They never caught anyone, did they?

neil craig said...

The BBC has an interesting list of leaders killed in air crashes, several of them suspect http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8613049.stm
The one they, inexplicably, miss out is the Ruandan President, which touched off the genocide. Suspicion officially lies on his friends & unofficially, but more credibly, on his foes, who now make up the government.

Considering how very rare air crashes are 12 of them dying since the 1960s seems extremely unlucky.

Mark Wadsworth said...

NC, that's a good list, but...

a) a lot of those on the list are third world dictators flying around in small aircraft on an ad hoc basis, not yer regular passenger on a 747 from Heathrow to Malaga, where the flights would simply be suspended if conditions are either end were too bad.

b) Politicians tend to fly a lot more than most people.

orangutan of the UN said...

Kurt Waldheim? What were his politics?