martyrdom

The current focus on the martyrdom of figures like the Chinese agents portrayed in “The Silent Honor” is serving as a similar effort to shape public views, the people close to Beijing’s decision-making said.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson saw it, Brown’s death on the scaffold turned him into a “new Saint awaiting his martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the cross.”

And he would have been deprived of a martyrdom that resonated between the coasts and still does, confirming Middle America’s worst stereotype of Washington and its dishonest media elite.

Whatever costs—in time, money and potentially even personal liberty—these legal actions bring may be more than offset by the halo of martyrdom conferred on the defendant.

"They told us that the world had become infidel and godless, and only martyrdom would take a person to heaven," he says.