Why political assassinations will become more common

It is like a news item from the early 20th century: an autocratic prime minister shot by a poet in some remote Mitteleuropean town. But the more we consider the assassination attempt on Robert Fico, Slovakia’s strongman, the more contemporary it looks.

Fico himself is a creature of the modern age, a former communist apparatchik who rose to power by railing against economic liberalism and who, more recently, took to engaging in Trumpian culture wars. The murder attempt is a product of those culture wars, which see every political difference catastrophized.