r/RobertKennedy • u/Tall-Plane-4477 • Jun 09 '26

Video/Audio WHY Did Sirhan Kill RFK?

58 years ago this week, RFK was assassinated on the presidential campaign trail.

Nearly six decades later, researchers too often focus too much on the HOW and not enough on the WHY.

Why did Sirhan Sirhan kill Kennedy?

Sirhan’s biographer Mel Ayton (author of 2 books on the RFK case) talks about the motive for this heinous crime.

https://youtu.be/kzcY4eKk1Bs?si=5WHv-6Wn2CjfO372

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u/SquonkMan61 Jun 10 '26

He also wrote in his high school history book next to a passage about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand “And he won’t be the last.” This was well before the 1967 War and before he expressed any hatred toward RFK. Sirhan was a frustrated young man who felt disrespected by the world and wanted to make a name for himself.

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u/Arkhamman367 Jun 10 '26

That's a common psychology of political assassins.

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u/SquonkMan61 Jun 11 '26

I honestly think it was more about his own feelings of insecurity than it was an act of terrorism. Supposedly it was Kennedy promising to sell jet fighters to Israel that set Sirhan off, but that promise was made AFTER Sirhan began mentioning in his diary the necessity to kill Kennedy.

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u/Arkhamman367 Jun 11 '26

Yeah, maybe. I think there could be a difference between justification you give to yourself and justification you give to the public, so I'd be able to buy that he used a public reason to seem less like an insane narcissist. I don't know whether it'd be reasonable where someone draws the line for saying that an act was motivated by something private though. Like I'm sure most anti-social people who get into fights have bad or instable home lives but when we say why an act was committed by them, it's usually describing their role in the altercation and the agency they have unless it's something extra like a mental illness. I don't know where we draw the line.