Assassin’s Creed

Assassin’s Creed

Sacred Ends, Identicalism and the Seduction of Elimination Assassin’s Creed: Sacred Ends, Identicalism and the Seduction of Elimination examines a recurring civilisational pattern in which the sanctification of the future dissolves the integrity of the present. Beginning with the mythology of the Hashashin and the psychology of promised paradise, the essay traces how elimination becomes reframed as virtue when a cause is declared sacred. Moving from medieval fortresses to modern alliances, institutions and digital culture, the article explores how assassination evolves from the blade to narrative warfare, administrative exclusion and reputational destruction. It interrogates the infected premise that outcomes outrank constraints, and how this premise gives rise to what is termed identicalism, the compulsion to enforce sameness as a precondition for safety and legitimacy. When sacred ends are absolutised, difference becomes intolerable, dissent becomes contamination and transformation is replaced by forced convergence. Drawing on archetypal psychology, including the vampire as a symbol of systems that feed on vitality in the name of preservation, the piece argues that low-capacity structures externalise tension through elimination rather than integrating polarity. The article contends that sacred ends do not purify corrupted means. They reproduce them. The real strength of a civilisation lies not in its capacity to eliminate or assimilate, but in its capacity to constrain itself, host contradiction and resist the seduction of righteous destruction.
Ashkan Tashvir
Ashkan Tashvir

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Mar 03, 2026

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45 mins read

Before the Creed

There was a time when civilisations laboured to institutionalise disagreement.

Debate replaced duel. Negotiation replaced vendetta. Law replaced private retribution. Parliaments, courts and diplomatic channels were not built because human beings became morally superior. They were built because unrestrained elimination proved destabilising.

Dialogue was not idealism. It was structural intelligence.

Over centuries, societies learned that perpetual retaliation produces cycles, not order. They constructed processes through which conflict could be metabolised rather than annihilated. Disputes could be argued. Rivals could be constrained. Power could be limited by procedure.

None of these mechanisms eliminated violence entirely. But they signalled an aspiration toward maturity. Toward containing force within boundaries rather than allowing force to define the boundary.

Yet under pressure, regression is always possible.

When fear intensifies, when identity hardens, when threats are amplified, systems can begin to view negotiation as weakness and restraint as naïveté. Dialogue becomes slow. Debate becomes obstruction. Due process becomes inconvenience.

And when patience erodes, elimination reappears as efficiency.

Assassination is not innovation. It is regression. It is the reactivation of an older logic that predates institutions of deliberation. It bypasses complexity and restores immediacy. Remove the obstacle. Silence the rival. Neutralise the threat.

The irony is sharp. The more sophisticated a civilisation’s tools become, the more retrograde its instincts can appear when fear dominates.

This essay is not a defence of passivity. It is an inquiry into what happens when systems abandon the hard work of integration and return to the simplicity of eradication.

The creed does not begin with the blade.

It begins when dialogue is no longer trusted.

The Ontology of Elimination

This article is not about a single assassin.

It is about a pattern.

Across history, certain systems do more than eliminate threats. They normalise elimination as a legitimate instrument of order. Over time, what begins as exception becomes policy. What begins as emergency becomes doctrine. What begins as defence becomes identity.

The assassin is not merely an individual with a blade. He is the visible edge of a deeper ontology. An ontology in which tension is intolerable, polarity is destabilising and difference is experienced as contamination.

In such systems, elimination is not perceived as violence. It is perceived as restoration. Removing the obstacle feels like restoring coherence. Silencing the dissenter feels like stabilising unity. Neutralising the rival feels like protecting the future.

The act is not aberration. It is structural expression.

More dangerously, once elimination proves effective, systems begin to rely on it. Each removal produces temporary clarity. Each neutralisation simplifies the field. Each act of suppression narrows complexity.

And systems, like organisms, gravitate toward what produces short-term relief.

Over time, elimination ceases to be reluctant. It becomes efficient. Then justified. Then strategic. Eventually, it becomes instinctive. The creed no longer needs to persuade. It is assumed.

At that stage, a civilisation does not merely permit assassination. It metabolises it. It integrates it into governance, narrative and self-conception. It becomes addicted to the simplicity that elimination provides.

Because integration is hard. Constraint is demanding. Hosting polarity requires capacity. Elimination is faster.

The assassin, then, is not the anomaly. He is the symptom of a deeper structure that has chosen simplicity over maturity. 

To understand assassination, one must understand the ontology that makes it feel normal.

Only then does the blade make sense.

The Blade and the Dream

The word assassin did not begin as metaphor. It entered European languages through encounters with a medieval sect often referred to as the Hashashin. The term is frequently linked to the Arabic word hashish, though historians debate whether this association was literal, polemical or exaggerated by adversaries. Whether or not narcotics were truly central to their practice, the myth endured because it captured something psychologically potent.