The cover article of the February issue of the Irish magazine Village debates whether President Donald Trump should be assassinated.
The magazine’s cover, out Friday, features a photo of Trump with cross-hairs over him and the title,”Why Not.” The magazine doesn’t identify an author of the piece, just that it’s written by “Village.”
Village February out today, Friday. Cover and editorial: why taking #Trump out would be unethical pic.twitter.com/Wr2lmgTtvx
— Village Magazine (@VillageMagIRE) February 3, 2017
The article concludes that one shouldn’t undertake “tyrannicide” and kill Trump, but the magazine makes sure to provide plenty of justification for the killing of the president.
“Donald Trump is a purveyor of hatred, a contrarian: anti-liberal, anti-democratic and hostile to a free press, an anti-environmental, corruptible bully; a liar, a misogynist groper and a boor,” the article states. “[Trump] holds the reins of power in the most powerful country in the world. He holds the nuclear codes, he can start wars, he can ensure nothing is done about climate change, so that civilisation itself is threatened.”
After listing a bunch of Trump’s policies, and misstating many of them, the article asks, “So what is to be done?”
“Around the time of Trump’s inauguration as US president, there was a spike in searches for odds on his assassination. Some punters were even asking bookmakers on Twitter for odds on Trump to be killed before the end of his term,” the Irish magazine states. “So perhaps the solution is tyrannicide. As he might say himself – ‘take him out.'”
The Village piece says that “tyrannicide has had support from various philosophers and theologians though the centuries.” The piece then cites three different philosophies that are related to whether killing Trump would be justifiable. It quotes St. Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic theologian, saying: “He who kills a tyrant (i.e. an usurper) to free his country is praised rewarded.”
The piece then adds: “Outside of religion and the ‘Natural Law’ perhaps the best known relevant moral theory is Utilitarianism. Like other forms of consequentialism, its core idea is that whether actions are morally right or wrong depends on their effects. More specifically, the only effects of actions that are relevant are the good and bad results that they produce.”
The Irish magazine then refers to “rights theories,” and says, “Mature rights theories would weigh the right of Trump to life against the rights of others to equal concern, respect and rights.” Finally, the Irish magazine reaches “The Calculus,” and says that since Trump is likely to fall “on a metaphorical sword,” shooting him would be “unnecessary and disproportionate.”
The article has received backlash by social media users and the magazine’s editor defended himself to The Sun Online by saying the article is “not an incitement to anything,” and that the cover is just “a provocation to think.”