I came across this while reading the article:<p>"unlike Napoleon and the Tsars, Roman emperors before Diocletian were not absolutists"<p>This is one of those little "red flag" moments when you realize the writer is either ignorant of the facts, or thinks the reader is. Just picking a few that come to mind quickly: Caligula, Nero, and Commodus would certainly have answered to the description "absolutist" (and would have been proud of it), and one could argue that <i>all</i> of the emperors, from Augustus on, were "absolutist" for at least some reasonable interpretations of that word.<p>At that point I lost interest in the article; a writer can have his own opinions, but he can't have his own facts.<p>(In fact, I'm even more confused by the choice of Diocletian as the starting point for absolutist emperors: he abdicated.)
I got about half-way through, and I don't exactly understand the point of it. Is it just supposed to be a shoddy history of the Hashshashins? Is it just supposed to be focusing on their tactic of proving they could kill a target, without going through with it?<p>It seems this article could use a TL;DR
I'd like to read this, but the moment I touch the thing on my tablet a window pops up promoting me to download their app. A lot of websites DJ this these days, and it's quite frustrating not knowing how to get around this.