Talk:Tyrannicide

Indira Gandhi?
If I remember right, she was assassinated by her Sikh guards after she took actions that damaged a Sikh temple. Memorable quote: "My father was a saint, I ain't." 24.121.199.3 (talk) 00:57, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Indira Gandhi was a tyrant who tried to usurp democracy in the 70's, and orchestrated the killing of several thousand Sikh civilians in and around Amritsar in 1984. The Golden Temple attack was far more than mere 'damage', it was a massacre on par with some of Assad's war crimes today. Operation Bluestar took place at the same time as Operation Woodrose, a genocidal act of violence which resulted in the arrest, torture and execution of thousands more young Sikh men. Army units were ordered to surround Sikh villages and line the populace up in the streets. All baptised Sikh men were taken away in trucks and 'disappeared'.

The official Indian line is that Operation Bluestar was launched to 'remove terrorists from the temple complex'. Why, then, were 38 other Sikh temples simultaneously attacked? Why were all foreign journalists deported from Punjab province? Why were the contents of the Sikh Reference Libary dumped into sacks and confiscated (to this day they are held by the government, or destroyed)? Why were troops issued with a batch sheet ordering them to arrest (aka secretly execute) all Sikh men as they were 'basically committed to terrorism'? Why do leading western human rights organisations (inc. Amnesty Interational and HRW) all dispute the Indian army claim that there were only a few hundred 'enemy combatants' killed at the Golden Temple, and instead support independent estimates of at least 1000?

To this day, the assassination of Indira Gandhi is the only justice that Sikhs have recieved for these massacres. There have been no prosecutions in court, and the international community has been kept largely ignorant of the events of 1984.

The killing of Indira Gandhi is of monumental historical importance to the Sikh Nation today, and should at least be given a mention in this article. Unless of course, Wikipedia has to kow-tow to the Indian Government hero-worship of Mrs. Gandhi in the name of 'NPOV'. The killing of Gaddaffi is rightly given a mention, Indira Gandhi's death should too. The Gandhi assassination is one of the defining examples both of bodyguard assassination and of suicidal tactics.

2.27.217.184 (talk) 11:31, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Context and significance
"Tyrannicide" is not a useful term if it just means the killing of a classical tyrant. The real significant meaning I think is an assassination that is justified by claiming the person killed was a "tyrant" in the modern sense of the word. I voted to delete the "modern tyrants" section on list of tyrants because such an 'authoritative' list is inherently POV; nevertheless, to illustrate this article I think it is not only helpful but necessary to include some examples of claimed "tyrannicides". For example, Johm Wilkes Booth justified his killing of Abraham Lincoln by claiming the latter was a tyrant; he is even said to have shouted "Sic semper tyrannis!" upon firing the shots. Saying that Booth considered his act "tyrannicide" is just factual, and in no way indicts Lincoln as a "tyrant".--Pharos 23:44, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Macbeth was not murdered, he was killed in battle by Macduff. Thats not tyrranicide!
So there. Also, please do read your shakespear. Macbeth was not "murdered". He murdered King Duncan and was then killed in battle. So thats not tyrannicide according to the definition.Tourskin 06:12, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually Macbeth of Scotland was the victim of regicide (according to that article and the following article). He was killed "by treachery" by the man who became Malcolm III of Scotland. James500 (talk) 01:12, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Saddam Hussein
Per the definition, the execution of Saddam Hussein doesn not qualify--rather than an assassination, it was an execution as a result of trial and sentencing (regardless of where you stand on the legitimacy of his removal from power). Tlesher 23:36, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

- I came here to say that. Hussein and Kadhafi have been killed by foreign invasion. It was an act a war, not a tyrannicide. --86.162.36.205 (talk) 20:16, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Revert of 4.242.186.245's addition
I reverted User:4.242.186.245's edits diff due to verbatim copyright violation taken from this site. Cheers. -- slakr 23:55, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Trivia
I actually think that there is a place in this article for a section on tyrannicide in fiction. As a literary device, it is extremely popular, though I'm a bit miffed by the video game trivia there now. A lot of our common folklore, and it seems every Disney animation deals with the subject. Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia are probably more classic encyclopedic examples than Yu-Gi-Oh. So I'm removing the current trivia. Most of it, like King Ganondorf, are regicides not tyrannicides anyways.--Patrick «» 05:29, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Anwar El Sadat, a tyrant?
I removed Anwar El Sadat from the "Notable Tyrannicides' list. He was the president of Egypt, not its tyrant, until his assassination in 1981 by Khalid Islambouli. A real tyrant could hardly have been a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, as Sadat was in 1978. He may have been impopular among the more radical portion of Egypt's muslim population, but that does not make him a tyrant. Regards, --AVM (talk) 01:46, 3 October 2008 (UTC)


 * That's fair. Sadat was a dictator, though tyranny is hard to pin down. Clearly there need to be independent sources in this section. Perhaps it needs a banner above it.--Patrick «» 02:58, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Inedeed some LOS Racist called LIncolns death a "Tyrannicide". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.86.250.2 (talk) 18:05, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Why is Lincoln missing?
Lincoln was the most famous tyrant in American history, and died a famous death. Why is he missing from the list? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.32.58.125 (talk) 04:43, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Lincoln comes and goes from the list on this page. While I disagree with your statement that he was a tyrant, I do believe he belongs on this page, which is why he is mentioned in below the list, along with Saddam, both of which are not really tyrannicides.--Patrick «» 15:36, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Unclear issues
Unclear issues:

Harmodius and Aristogeiton are called "the original tyrannicides" without any motivation given. Because we can almost certainly rule out that they were the first to murder a tyrant, the claim is either faulty or based on some other criterion, e.g. that they were the first to which this specific term was applied. Depending on which the statement should be removed or clarified.

Naming Gustav III as a tyrant is highly contentious, and I suggest either removing him or putting him in the separate list of contentious cases. (Which could very well include several others named: I just happen to be more well-read in the history of Sweden than other countries.)

Ceausescu was executed after a (military?) trial, and is therefore not the victim of tyrannicide in the stricter meaning. 88.77.191.244 (talk) 15:07, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Tyrannicide in fiction
The entire "Tyrannicide in fiction" section is Original Research. We need suitable sources that SAY something about Tyrannicide - not some people reviewing primary sources (works of fiction) and deciding they constitute notable instances of tyrannicide. (Note that even the Shakespeare reference says nothing about "tyrannicide", but only tyranny.) 214.4.238.180 (talk) 16:08, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Since when lincoln would be a tyrant? Only far right southern advocates would say that. Or something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.131.208.248 (talk) 05:57, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

List of tyrants removed
There is currently a list of ancient Greek tyrants that was created out of an article called "List of tyrants". List of tyrants was deleted because it was see as inherently POV. The current list in this article is the reverse coin of that list. Therefore I am going to delete most of it and only leave two categories:

Those ancient Greek tyrants who were assassinated:
 * Hipparchus (527 BC-514 BC) was assassinated by Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the original tyrannicides.

and those where the killers claimed that they motivated assassinate some one because they believed that they were killing a tyrant eg:
 * Julius Caesar, Roman Dictator, stabbed to death in 44 BC by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and numerous others (Liberatores). The phrase Sic semper tyrannis! ["thus, ever (or always), to tyrants!"] is attributed to Brutus at Caesar's assassination.
 * Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, shot to death in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth who having carried out the assassination, cried out as he fled the scene "Sic semper tyrannis" (attributed to Brutus and was (and is) the motto of Virginia who's Confederate army had just surrendered to the Union's armed forces).

'Attribution: Most of the words after the bullet points above are copied from this article, list of ancient Greek tyrants and assassination of Abraham Lincoln

I would suggest that only those men in those categories are listed in this list or else the list will become what it is at the moment inherently POV. -- PBS (talk) 23:14, 26 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree with the deletion of the article List of tyrants, which clearly could be POV, but I have to disagree with removing the list here. Though I understand why it might be perceived as POV, the list of examples of the event in history is both finite, and by your definition, appropriate. You're suggesting that we only include the incidences "where the killers claimed that they motivated assassinate some one because they believed that they were killing a tyrant", which is basically what the text introducing the list said:
 * Throughout history, many leaders have died under the pretext of tyrannicide. As there exist no objectively defined criteria for a "tyrant", many rulers and heads of state had been considered as such by their enemies but not by their adherents and supporters - correspondingly making debatable their death's definition as "tyrannicide"...
 * The assassins of Rafael Trujillo or Emperor Domitian would certainly meet the definition of killers so motivated. This is a list of people called tyrants by their killers. There's nothing wrong with describing the dispute that one historical (or even living) figure had with another.-- Patrick, o Ѻ ∞ 00:40, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * If the assassins of Rafael Trujillo or Domitian were so motivated then it will be easy to find sources that say so (otherwise how do you know?). It is too easy to do OR in this area. For example Charles I did not call a parliament for 11 years this is either known as his Personal Rule or Eleven Years' Tyranny but that does not mean his regicide was a tyrannicide. It might have been if he had been considered a tyrant, but his contemporaries who decided to try and executed him used the term Charles Stuart, that man of blood and based their killing on biblical references. Looking through the list that was there before I deleted it, first it had an American POV, (why highlight an American assassination in the text before the earlier Greek or a Roman ones?) and not one of the names in the list carried any sort of citation that show a scholarly consensus that the those assassinated were tyrants. -- PBS (talk)


 * Yes, I agree some sources would be nice. But if you're saying the whole thing is POV, then a source won't really change it. Putting Abraham Lincoln in the prose was just a choice to keep him off the list, and there's discussion about that above and in the logs, and doesn't constitute an "American POV".-- Patrick, o Ѻ ∞ 13:08, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Okay, I'm going to work tonight to restore as much of the old list as I can reference.-- Patrick, o Ѻ ∞ 00:04, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * And now I've finished that effort. For those keeping score at home, not making the cut were Commodus, Reinhard Heydrich, Aurelian, and Gustav III of Sweden, while Andronikos I Komnenos and Mohammad Najibullah have been added.-- Patrick, o Ѻ ∞ 04:38, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Upon further reflection, the list is indeed a bad idea. The names I removed will be readded eventually, as will others. Using these references, I'm going to try to turn what we now have into several paragraphs, ultimately to just make it a "History" section. Thoughts?-- Patrick, o Ѻ ∞ 13:02, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

You have again put Lincoln second in a list instead of placing JC second. But much more important you are synthesising actions.

For example also as since modern use of tyrant and tyrannicide pass a moral judgement rather than a legal judgement if you are going to use the term then you will have to attribute it to the person making the moral judgement et in the case of Nicolae Ceauşescu you need to attribute the words to "Richards Graubard", but is Richards Graubard notable and expert enough to have his opinion about what is or is not a tyrannicide quoted in an encyclopaedia? This is why I suggest that we keep the list to those assassinations (or as the American Government prefer to describe then "targeted killings") where the perpetrators have justified the killings as the killing of a tyrant.

There are further problems with the list that you have constructed, there is synthesis in it, just because someone was in someone's opinion a tyrant it does not mean that the killers were motivated to kill a tyrant. Now if the term has a legal definition like king then the motive does not matter as it is a regicide, but if not, then the person may be selecting a target not because they are a tyrant but for some other reason. If you say that so and so says x was a tyrant and he was killed therefore it is a tyrannicide you have [[WP:SYN]NED.

There is also a question of sentences such as this: "Throughout history, tyrannicide has been connected to revolution, with many taking place during successful revolutions, and others sparking revolutionary upheavals. In the midst of the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre, took power as the President of the National Convention, but after leading the Reign of Terror from 1793 to 1794, he was executed by beheading by the National Convention."

Who says "Throughout history tyrannicide has been connected to revolution" What is the point of the sentence "In the midst ..." there was a regicide but where was the tyrannicide?

-- PBS (talk) 07:29, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

My problem is that your reinstatement of the list even as text is a breach of POV and is exactly the reason that List of modern tyrants was deleted. -- PBS (talk) 07:32, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I guess I do have trouble with the way you are contracting the definition. If we limit it to people who killed leaders that had the chosen job title of "tyrant" or "dictator", or who declared themselves as tyrannicides while standing over the body, then yes we would have a very short list indeed. But tyrannicide, as I understand it, is further applicable in these historic situations when the killers were trying to bring about greater liberty and freedom with their action. This is a group of murders for a political outcome, as opposed to murders for personal gain.-- Patrick, o Ѻ ∞ 13:15, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * We should keep it to a short list otherwise it is a list with rampant POV. You say "when the killers were trying to bring about greater liberty and freedom" what exactly was Booth trying to bring about by killing Lincoln as the war between the states was all over bar the shouting? I pick that example because he is one of the few who has specifically given tyrannicide as a motive (yet your definition would probably exclude that killing). See the list Regicides many of those killings fit your description but the victims were not tyrants the were kings and queens (which has a formal definition). On 20 December 1973 ETA blew the prime minister of Spain in his car over a five-storey building (obviously killing him) was that a tyrannicide? They were after all motivated by "greater liberty and freedom" for the Basques? -- PBS (talk) 12:28, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Literature Section
In the Literature Section there are far too many 'likes' in there. I don't have the time to change it but just to put it out there.Dmcl404 (talk) 21:28, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

ancient theories
i'm rather surprised by the dearth of reference to specific ancient ideas about tyrannicide. aristotle and plato do not speak, for example, of a moral duty to kill the tyrant, but cicero (see on duties, bk 3, for example) and the romans generally assumed it to be a moral duty without much argument. i think this calls for further discussion because this roman tradition informed medieval thinking about resisting and killing tyrants. -- chris — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.97.132.246 (talk) 00:43, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

#TyrannicidePUTIN
Vladimir Putin is guilty of WAR crimes "Special Military Operation" in 2022. 2603:900B:A0D:57FF:4CEA:2EEE:65C8:7624 (talk) 08:48, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Liber OZ is not an appropriate see also
Liber OZ is not an appropriate see also on this topic.

This is the same discussion has already been had and decided by consensus on Project 2025, where the same link was added by Skyerise. See also human rights inflation, where Skyerise added the same link (again, inappropriately in my view).

Although Liber OZ is a more appropriate see also link on Tyrannicide than on Project 2025 or human rights inflation, it nevertheless is not an appropriate see also--tyrannicide has been a topic of many political works going back to Aristotle, and Liber OZ is not sufficiently notable to merit being linked in See Also when, e.g., Plato's Statesman and Aristotle's Politics are not.

I am removing it, and I ask Skyerise not to revert unless a different consensus emerges here. Mosi Nuru (talk) 18:05, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Removal of paragraph about Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley is notable, Liber OZ is notable, the paragraph is backed up by third-party reliable sources. There is no justification for its removal.

If anything the paragraph about David George should be removed. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia article. What makes his opinion more notable than Crowley's who we have a long article on?

The Crowley paragraph is no longer than the paragraphs on either of the other two individuals reported on immediately before and after his paragraph, the latter of which doesn't seem to be anywhere nearly as notable as Crowley or there would be an article on this individual. So it would seem to me that the removal is motivated by dislike for Crowley rather than any valid argument about due weight. In context, the weight is not undue.

A more relevant policy is that Wikipedia is not censored. We do not remove material just because an editor has negative views of Crowley. Skyerise (talk) 20:27, 18 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't have negative views of Crowley anymore than I have negative reviews of David George (actually, this is the first I've heard of David George); further, you are failing to AGF here, which I notice is a consistent theme with you given how often you've been brought to ANI. You, on the other hand, have a userpage filled with references towards your interests in esotericism, so who is the biased one here?
 * My issue here is that Crowley's words are undue, as he is not known for political science or anything along those lines. He was an occultist. There are dozens, probably *hundreds* of more qualified people whose writings we could (and probably SHOULD) include on this page.
 * By the way, it looks as if David George is a respected political scientist with a PhD, which would make his opinion far more due. 208.87.236.180 (talk) 01:11, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Also, accusing me of "censorship" is just low. Be better. 208.87.236.180 (talk) 01:11, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * First, Crowley was not just "an occultist", a glance at the lead paragraph of his article is enough to establish that. Second, Crowley's work was extremely political throughout. Third, he is indeed recognized for the political elements of his work: the recent independent third-party source cited is specifically about the political elements of Crowley's works. As you point out, you've never heard of George, but you're heard of Crowley. The fact that Crowley is indeed well-known and that there are independent third-party sources argue for his inclusion.
 * The work cited is not the only source that treats of politics in Crowley's works. These several works that focus on his political theories. There are other more general works including multiple biographies which also touch on this aspect of his work in less depth which I have not included.


 * Bolton, K. R., Crowley, A., Johnson, G. R. (2010). Aleister Crowley As Political Theorist. New Zealand: Renaissance Press.
 * Lingan, E. B. (2016). A Disturbing Mix of Religion and Politics: Aleister Crowley’s The Savior. PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 38(3), 90–93. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26386811
 * Nilsson, J. (2023). “If the Kingdom be Ruled According to the Tao”: Politics as “Eastern Wisdom” in Aleister Crowley’s Reception of the Daodejing. Numen, 71(1), 94-109. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685276-20231716


 * Now that you have been informed that multiple works specifically discuss politics in Crowley's works, the title of one even calling him a political theorist, I hope you will desist. Skyerise (talk) 08:38, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * K.R. Crowley the neonazi? Lovely. Meanwhile, that fact that I've heard of Crowley but not George is not an argument. Regardless, you've continued to edit war to push your view into the article *before* gaining consensus and continued to be uncivil.
 * I am indeed going to "desist" reverting you, but this isn't over. 208.87.236.180 (talk) 18:19, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Where have I been uncivil? That's a baseless accusation! And yeah, I'm not a fan of Bolton either, but Crowley is usually associated with left-leaning libertines, so the fact that someone on the opposite end of the political spectrum also considers him a political theorist means that the view that he was a political theorist is acknowledged from both ends of the political spectrum (Pasi's book disparages his adoration for some authoritarian figures, for example). Since Bolton is also an Odinist, it provides an example of the penetration of Crowley's political philosophy into neopaganism, which is incidentally also supported by two academic sources. Skyerise (talk) 18:25, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * And in a show of good faith, I have reduced the verbosity of the paragraph. I've also requested another opinion from WP:3O. You're welcome. Skyerise (talk) 21:01, 19 July 2024 (UTC)