Who Killed Jesus, JFK, RFK, MLK, Lennon — and Charlie Kirk?
From Gandhi to Sadat, Rabin to Charlie Kirk, blood is the coin of political power.
By Janet Kira Lessin
JESUS BEFORE PILATE Jesus stands calm before Pontius Pilate as the Roman governor weighs political pressure and public unrest.
The death of a prophet is never just a death. It is a battle for meaning.
Two thousand years ago in Judea, the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth — preceded by the beheading of John the Baptist — was not merely a spiritual rupture. It was a political calculation. Rome’s governors ruled through fear, local client kings through compromise, and Temple elites through sacred authority. Into that volatile landscape walked prophetic voices who baptized crowds, overturned temple tables, and threatened established order. The imperial response was brutal and public: crucifixion as spectacle and deterrent. The intended lesson — silence the dissenter — became a different kind of power: the story of the cross became the seed of a movement Rome could not kill.


The Politics Before the Cross

Judea was boiling. Rome taxed heavily, garrisoned cities, and tolerated client rulers whose compromise alienated the people. Multiple sects — including the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots — vied for moral and political authority, while a widespread hope for a deliverer, a “messiah,” made crowds prone to projection.
John the Baptist publicly confronted Herod; he was beheaded. Jesus’s claims and actions — especially in the Temple — were read as political threats.
JOHN THE BAPTIST
Bio: (c. late 1st century BCE – 30 CE) Preacher and baptizer, executed by Herod Antipas. His fiery calls for repentance paved the way for Jesus’s ministry.
Pilate’s calculus favored order over mercy. Crucifixion followed. The political “solution” became, over time, a religious revolution.
PONTIUS PILATE Bio: Roman governor of Judea (26–36 CE), ordered Jesus’s crucifixion under political pressure—symbol of imperial authority and compromise.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
His murder put Southerner and Negro-Hater Johnson in charge and blocked reconstruction until U.S. Grant took over and, for the only time in American History (until Lindon Johnson and Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in , gave Black men full citizenship. Lincoln’s Bullet Reconstruction Reforged

Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865 did not merely remove a leader; it redirected history. At the time, the Civil War’s end might have allowed Lincoln to shepherd a gentle, reconciliatory Reconstruction; his death, however, handed power to forces that pushed for a harsher settlement and, later, to politics that permitted the rise of Jim Crow. The assassination hardened Northern resolve and altered the balance among competing political visions for the reunited nation — a sober reminder that a single bullet can change policy for generations.

The Modern Martyr’s Roll Call
JFK (1963)
A charismatic presidency cut down in Dallas; the country reeled, and conspiracy debates began that have never fully stopped.


RFK (1968)
A second Kennedy slain amid a hopeful campaign — America’s optimism fractured.

Martin King, a nonviolent peace advocate and hero of the civil rights movement, was probably murdered (with FBI connivance)in Memphis; his death mobilized sorrow into both rage and legislation. Lennon, an artist who expressed the conscience of many of us, was gunned down outside his home in New York. : Killed by a domestic extremist; his assassination enshrined him as India’s conscience. Egyptian military killed Sadat for signing a peace treaty with Israel; his death reshaped regional politics and sent shockwaves across the Middle East. An Israeli Colonialist opposing the Oslo Accords and their provisions for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian confict, murdered Rabin. Across cultures, martyrdom serves as a form of political currency. The narrative formed in the immediate aftermath — who is blamed, who sanctifies the death, who profits — often does more harm or more good to a political project than the life that ended did. Every violent death births competing narratives. In antiquity, Rome’s line regarding Jesus was “He was a rebel; crucifixion maintains order,” the Temple elites insisted he had threatened their authority, and followers insisted he was the Messiah. Today, narratives explode across social platforms in minutes. One camp blames ideological enemies; another blames radicalization of the perpetrator’s home movement. Conspiracy culture offers dozens of alternative truths. Meanwhile, the evidence that courts weigh — communications, payments, authenticated metadata, sworn testimony — takes time to surface, and often never entirely does. When Charlie Kirk was shot while speaking on a college tour, political actors raced to claim the story and to morph grief into mobilization. At significant memorials, high-profile speakers sanctified him as a martyr and invoked earlier American icons — an act of rhetorical consecration that immediately reshaped fundraising, recruitment, and political legitimacy. The forensic investigation proceeds; the political reframing has already moved faster than the court calendar. History shows that the most revealing answer to “who killed X?” is often “who benefits from the death?” That question can point to motives, to beneficiaries, to the institutions that advance after the body is gone. In psychology, we say intentions are made manifest by results. John the Baptist’s execution eliminated a critic but fed the mythic soil that nourished Jesus’s following. Lincoln’s death handed Reconstruction to other hands and remade policy. Rabin’s killing crushed a peace momentum. So when a movement instantly sanctifies a fallen leader — when memorials become rallies and grief becomes fundraising — it is vital to ask not only who pulled the trigger (a legal question) but who is writing the story of the cross (a political and moral question). Official investigations often name “lone gunmen” like Lee Harvey Oswald and the current accused assassassin of Kirk— neat, contained explanations that reassure the public–are doubted by many. JFK, for example, may have been hit from many bullets coming from several directions and the autopsy on JFK may have been faked with a JFK look-alike cop, killed for the occasion by the CIA. Quen Sabe? History warns that lone wolves are politically convenient narratives. Some assassins have been proven to be part of broader plots; others were indeed solitary actors. The decisive evidence is documentary: communications, financial trails, corroborated witness testimony, and authenticated metadata. Without those, gesture and timing make for powerful suspicion but not proof. Consider MICHAEL JACKSON’S DEATH: his physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, was tried and convicted for involuntary manslaughter — a court verdict, not a conspiracy theory — demonstrating the difference between a documented legal outcome and speculative narrative. But still, to this day, some people believe Michael was targeted and killed because he dared to challenge the power elite and major corporations like Sony. Who killed Jesus? The Romans, the Temple elite, the mob — all complicit. Who killed JFK, RFK, MLK, Lennon, Gandhi, Sadat, and Rabin? The names are recorded, but their stories remain contested, reframed, and reappropriated. Who killed Charlie Kirk? A suspect has been charged, and the courts will do their work. But the deeper, political question will not be answered by the charging documents alone: who benefits, who consolidates power, who writes the martyrdom into the future? That question should shape our reporting, our protests, and our politics — because once blood becomes myth, evidence often fades into the background. The Anunnaki Legacy: Gods, Gold, and the Making of HumanityMLK (1968)
JOHN LENNON (1980)
MAHATMA GHANDI (1948)
ANWAR SATAT (1981)
YITZAK RABIN (1995)
YITZHAK RABIN’S PEACE RALLY Prime Minister Rabin waved to the crowd at a Tel Aviv rally, moments before an assassin shot him dead.
CHARLIE KIRK (Shot Dead, 2025: Identity of shooter still in doubt as of this post)
The Question We Must Ask: Who Benefits?
Lone Wolves, Hired Hands, and the Assassin’s Afterlife
The Modern Cross
Final Question
🔹 References / Sources
Other Articles in This Series
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