The first modern Jewish political murder was motivated by poetry

Evidence

In the remnants of the Persian imperial imagination, however, we have a medieval text, Chahar Maqaleh-ye Aruzi, in which a chapter is devoted to poets and their necessity to the smooth operation of a kingdom—or an empire. They sing the praises of the emperor in beautiful and memorable words, which are memorized by the courtiers and through them handed along to the rest of the world. It is not so much that people are ignorant of the emperor’s atrocities as that they have fallen prey to the beauty of the poet’s lies. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 330 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Poetry served as a political mediation that cost the poet his life — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 448; Religious jealousy over divine favor underpins the first recorded murder — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 557; Imperial power depends on poets to prettify atrocities into memorable praise — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 330

Broader Connections

• Imperial power depends on poets to prettify atrocities into memorable praise #complicates (0.75) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 330