A few days ago, the Slovakian Prime Minister, Robert Fico, was shot at close range and gravely wounded. Yesterday, the Iranian President, Ebrahim Raisi, died in a helicopter crash along with his foreign minister. Two heads of government struck down inside a single week is the kind of thing that stops even the most casual observer and makes them ask: what is going on?
The honest first answer is a sober one. World leader deaths are far more common than most people imagine. There are nearly two hundred countries, each with presidents, prime ministers and monarchs, many of them elderly, many in dangerous jobs in dangerous places. Accidents, illness, and violence take a steady toll every single year. Against that baseline, two deaths in a week is startling but not, by itself, proof of anything.
But that is not where the conversation stayed, and you already know why. Within hours, a list began circulating across social media — most visibly from the account Shadow of Ezra — compiling recent world-leader deaths and pointing out a claimed common thread: that the fallen leaders had, in one way or another, publicly broken with the dominant Western agenda — the so-called "2030" programme and, especially, the COVID-era directives. Fico had turned sharply against Brussels and NATO orthodoxy. Raisi led a state at open odds with Washington. And so the list grows, and the question hangs in the air.
World Leader Deaths. A few days ago, the Slovakian Prime Minister was shot. Yesterday, the Iranian President died in a helicopter crash. One man compiled a list — and, interestingly, the leaders who died had all opposed the same agenda.
@ShadowofEzra, X, 20 May 2024
Now here is where we part company with the breathless version of this story, because a socialist reads the world with cold eyes, not credulous ones. A list of deaths is not a proof of murder. The moment you decide in advance that these leaders were "taken out," you can slot almost any death into the pattern and ignore every leader who opposed the same agenda and is alive and well today. That is how a coincidence disguises itself as a conspiracy — by showing you the hits and hiding the misses. Raisi's helicopter went down in brutal weather over mountainous terrain in an aircraft under decades of sanctions-era wear; the simplest explanation may well be the true one.
And yet. We are the last people who will tell you that powerful states never remove inconvenient leaders — the history of the twentieth century, from Lumumba to Allende to Gaddafi, is written in exactly that ink, and much of it was once dismissed as "conspiracy theory" too. So we hold both truths at once: most leaders die of ordinary causes, and empires really do kill the ones who defy them. The task is not to swallow the list whole, nor to laugh it off, but to demand what we always demand — evidence, investigation, and daylight. Ask who benefits. Follow it where it leads. And be honest when the trail runs cold.
So is the list a smoking gun, or a trick of the eye? On the public evidence today, it is neither confirmed nor dismissible — and anyone who tells you they are certain, in either direction, is selling you something. This is probably just a coincidence. We say that with one eyebrow raised, and both eyes open.