German news magazine Der Spiegel sparked controversy Saturday with a cover depicting US President Donald Trump holding the severed head of the Statue of Liberty in one hand and a bloodied knife in the other.
The weekly used for its front page an image by US-Cuban artist and political refugee Edel Rodriguez with the Trumpian slogan “America first” next to it.
“On our cover the American president beheads the symbol which has welcomed migrants and refugees to the United States since 1886, and with democracy and freedom,” Spiegel’s chief editor Klaus Brinkbaeumer told German news agency DPA.
The image, which shows an orange face featureless save for a wide-open mouth, was seized upon for discussion by other media outlets in Germany and beyond.
Bild tabloid saw a direct parallel with Mohammed Emwazi, the British national known by the pseudonym “Jihadi John”, who was seen in several videos showing the beheading of Islamic State hostages.
Speaking to Bild, the vice-president of the European Parliament, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff of Germany’s liberal Free Democrats, slammed the image as being in “bad taste” and one which “plays on the lives of terror victims in a very nasty manner.”
Liberal conservative broadsheet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for its part warned that if the media demonised Trump that could play into his hands.
“The Spiegel cover is just what Trump needs — a distorted image of him which he can use to further his own distorted image of the press,” it said.
