The Murder of Dialogue: Political Violence in the Age of Civilizational Transition
05.23.2025
By Valikhan Tuleshov
It will soon be a year since Kazakh journalist and opposition figure Aidos Sadykov was killed in Kyiv on July 2, 2024. On the evening of May 21 this year, at approximately 9:08 p.m., 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago opened fire outside the Capitol Jewish Museum, killing Yaron Liszczynski (30) and Sarah Milgrim (26), employees of the Israeli embassy and a couple preparing for their engagement. They were attending an event dedicated to interfaith dialogue and humanitarian aid to Gaza.
I believe these two events are deeply connected. They are alarming signals of ongoing—and in many cases escalating—violence around the world. The murders of diplomats, opposition figures, journalists, and activists are not just individual tragedies, but symptoms of a deeper systemic instability: the degradation of international and domestic norms.
Each such crime erodes trust in both security and the rule of law, especially when it involves diplomats, who should be protected under international law, or opposition figures, whose existence is vital for political pluralism. In general, the murder of iconic public figures should be viewed as a sign of crisis in the global system of checks and balances. When politically motivated killings occur even in the capitals of countries like the United States, it calls into question the effectiveness and universality of international norms.
Clearly, the murder of public figures reflects a growing intensity in geopolitical and ideological confrontations, where state and non-state actors increasingly use physical elimination as a strategic tool. Taken together, these events confirm that the world is entering a transitional phase—one where traditional mechanisms for conflict regulation, such as diplomacy, the United Nations, and international law, are proving ineffective in the face of new forms of violence.
This demands a reevaluation of violence management methods. Each historical regime—modernity, postmodernity, and now the age of civilizational texturing—develops its systems of managing violence that align with the logic of the era, its institutions, and its anthropological sensitivity.
During the era of modernity (17th–20th centuries), violence was managed through centralization and a monopoly on force (as described by Weber). The state became the sole legitimate actor of violence, establishing armies, police forces, and courts in a vertical structure of control. International law served as a tool of war and peace, exemplified by the Westphalian system that eventually led to the formation of the UN. Racism and colonialism were institutionalized forms of external violence. Thus, violence was legalized through the state and the empire.
In the postmodern era (late 20th to early 21st century), the logic of governance underwent significant changes. Metanarratives lost legitimacy, and the subjects of violence became fragmented. New actors — terrorists, corporations, private military companies, and hackers—emerged. Information violence gave rise to simulacra of fear (as Baudrillard argued). States lost their monopoly on violence, and global zones of instability emerged. While human rights ideologies aimed to counter systemic violence, they often became tools for new political interventions—recall the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the rise of radical right-wing ideologies. Violence became dispersed, borderless, and networked, manifesting through extremist groups, proxies, terrorist parties (like Hamas), and organized cyberattacks by states, groups, and individuals.
Now, in the era of civilizational texturing — the post-global 21st century—the logic of violence management must evolve into a synergy of ethical, cultural, and technological tools for reprogramming the structure of conflict itself.
I propose the following new principles for managing violence:
Decentralized Ethical and Cultural Architecture: Each civilization must develop its own means of neutralizing violence based on internal codes. The principle should not be the universalization of force, but the universalization of peacekeeping culture.
Cognopolitics and Conflict Management through Cognitive Environments: Artificial intelligence, neural networks, media, and algorithms must be governed by the ethics of dialogue, not manipulation. We must create peacekeeping AI capable of predicting and preventing conflict before it escalates.
Civilizational Ombudsmen and Violence Interceptors: Transnational structures of civil moderators—spiritual leaders, philosophers, and artists—should be involved in negotiations on equal footing with politicians.
The Culture of Nonviolence as an Educational Paradigm: "Violence is a thinking error." Future education should teach individuals to see aggression as a failure of identity, a response to trauma or fear, not a display of power.
Global Biosocial Security: Based on the principle, “Without peace between humans and nature, there can be no peace between civilizations.” The destruction of ecosystems is also a form of violence. Ecological protection ("econation") must become part of anti-war policy.
In this new era, the management of violence must no longer be the sole responsibility of the state or security forces. It becomes a “textural” function of civilization, embedded in its philosophy, culture, technology, and ethics. We cannot manage 21st-century violence with 20th-century tools. The fabric of the world has changed. We need a new ethical and ontological framework in which violence is not simply controlled but understood as a trauma to be healed.
As for political assassinations, they are especially unacceptable in our time. They destroy faith in the very idea of dialogue. Politics is the language of words, persuasion, and compromise. When it is replaced by a bullet, the space for differences disappears. Murder cancels the future—the future in which negotiation, change, and alternatives are still possible.
These acts set a precedent for impunity. If opposition figures can be murdered, then dissent itself can be erased. This leads to self-censorship, stagnation of thought, and societal decay. Fear becomes the foundation of power, not law or legitimacy. This is the road to political necrostructures, where violence outlives ideas.
In a multipolar and culturally complex world, the right to dissent is the cornerstone of civilizational coexistence. Political assassination must be recognized not just as a crime, but as a rejection of our shared civilizational contract and the dream of global ethical consensus.
Firstly, Political murder must be declared a crime against civilization, not just condemned but treated with the same institutional severity as crimes against humanity. Secondly, A Global Registry of Political Crimes must be established—an independent body tracking the killings of oppositionists, activists, journalists, and diplomats. Thirdly, Automated Sanctions Mechanisms must be implemented—any state implicated in a political assassination should immediately lose its right to participate in international forums until the case is fully investigated. Fourthly, an Ethical Code for Global Leaders must become binding—each head of state should sign a declaration rejecting political violence, with violations resulting in loss of international legitimacy. And lastly, political murder must be a core part of global civic education. The world must understand: when a thought is murdered through the murder of its speaker, meaning itself is destroyed.
