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Enemy of the people

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This article is about the epithet. For other uses, see Enemy of the people (disambiguation).
"Class enemy" redirects here. For the Bosnian play, see Class Enemy (play). For the Slovenian film, see Class Enemy (film).

Hostis publicus: In the year 49 BCE, the Roman Senate declared Julius Caesar the enemy of the people of Rome
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The terms enemy of the people and enemy of the nation are designations for the political opponents and for the social-class opponents of the power group within a larger social unit, who, thus identified, can be subjected to political repression.[1] In political praxis, the term enemy of the people implies that political opposition to the ruling power group renders the people in opposition into enemies acting against the interests of the greater social unit: society, the nation, etc.

In the 20th century, the politics of the Soviet Union (1922–1991) much featured the term enemy of the people to discredit any opposition, especially during the régime of Stalin (r. 1924–1953), when it was often applied to Trotsky.[2][3] In the 21st century, the former U.S. president Donald Trump (r. 2017–2021) regularly used the enemy of the people term against critical politicians and journalists.[4][5]

Like the term enemy of the state, the term enemy of the people originated and derives from the Latin: hostis publicus, a public enemy of the Roman Empire. In literature, the term enemy of the people features in the title of the stageplay An Enemy of the People (1882), by Henrik Ibsen, and is a theme in the stageplay Coriolanus (1605), by William Shakespeare.

Origins

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Rome: the Republic and the Empire

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The expression enemy of the people dates to Imperial Rome.[6] The Senate declared Emperor Nero a hostis publicus in 68 CE.[7] Its direct translation is "public enemy". Whereas "public" is currently used in English to describe something related to collectivity at large, with an implication towards government or the State, the Latin word "publicus" could, in addition to that meaning, also refer directly to people, making it the equivalent of the genitive of populus ("people"), populi ("popular" or "of the people"). Thus, "public enemy" and "enemy of the people" are, etymologically, near synonyms.

French Revolution

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The words ennemi du peuple were used extensively during the French Revolution. On 25 December 1793 Robespierre stated: "The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation; it owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death".[8] The Law of 22 Prairial in 1794 extended the remit of the Revolutionary Tribunal to punish "enemies of the people", with some political crimes punishable by death, including "spreading false news to divide or trouble the people".[9]

Marxist–Leninist states

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Soviet Union

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The Soviet Union made extensive use of the term vrag naroda (Russian: враг народа), literally meaning enemy of the people. The term was first used in a speech by Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first chairman of the Cheka, after the October Revolution. The Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee printed lists of "enemies of the people", and Vladimir Lenin invoked it in his decree of 28 November 1917:[10]

...all leaders of the Constitutional Democratic Party, a party filled with enemies of the people, are hereby to be considered outlaws, and are to be arrested immediately and brought before the revolutionary court.[11]

Other similar terms were in use as well:

  • enemy of the labourers (враг трудящихся, vrag trudyashchikhsya)
  • enemy of the proletariat (враг пролетариата, vrag proletariata)
  • class enemy (классовый враг, klassovyi vrag), etc.

The term "enemy of the people" was used in the 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union, in Article 131 about public property: "Persons who encroach on public, socialist property are enemies of the people."[12]

The term "enemy of the workers" was formalized in the Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code),[13] and similar articles in the codes of the other Soviet Republics.

At various times these terms were applied, in particular, to Tsar Nicholas II and the Imperial family, aristocrats, the bourgeoisie, clerics, business entrepreneurs, anarchists, kulaks, monarchists, Mensheviks, Esers, Bundists, Trotskyists, Bukharinists, the "old Bolsheviks", the army and police, emigrants, saboteurs, wreckers (вредители, "vrediteli"), "social parasites" (тунеядцы, "tuneyadtsy"), Kavezhedists (people who administered and serviced the Chinese Eastern Railway, abbreviated KVZhD, particularly the Russian population of Harbin, China), and those considered bourgeois nationalists (notably Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Armenian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian nationalists, as well as Zionists and the Basmachi movement).[14][15]

After 1927, Article 20 of the Common Part of the penal code that listed possible "measures of social defence" had the following item 20a: "declaration to be an enemy of the workers with deprivation of the union republic citizenship and hence of the USSR citizenship, with obligatory expulsion from its territory". Nevertheless, most "enemies of the people" suffered labor camps, rather than expulsion.

Rejection of the phrase

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On 25 February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev delivered a speech to the Communist Party in which he identified Stalin as the author of the phrase and distanced himself from it, saying that it made debate impossible.[16] "This term automatically made it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven," Khrushchev said. "It made possible the use of the cruelest repression, violating all norms of [...] legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had bad reputations ... The formula ‘enemy of the people’ was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals."[17]

For decades afterwards, the phrase "was so omnipresent, freighted and devastating in its use under Stalin that nobody [in Russia] wanted to touch it. ... except in reference to history and in jokes", according to William Taubman in his biography of Khrushchev.[9]

Cambodia and China

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According to Philip Short, an author of biographies of Mao Zedong and Cambodia's Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, in domestic political struggles Chinese and Cambodian communists rarely if ever used the phrase "enemy of the people" as they were very nationalistic and saw it as an alien import.[9]

In 1957, in the speech and in the essay On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, Mao said that: "At the present stage, the period of building socialism, the classes, strata and social groups which favour, support and work for the cause of socialist construction all come within the category of the people, while the social forces and groups which resist the socialist revolution and are hostile to or sabotage socialist construction are all enemies of the people."[18]

Albania

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Enemy of the people (Alb: Armiku i popullit) in Albania were the enemy typology of the Communist Albanian government used to denounce political or class opponents. The term is today considered totalitarian, derogatory and hostile. There are still some politicians who use the term on political opponents with the intention of dehumanization.[19]

After the communist takeover, many who were labeled with this term were executed or imprisoned.[20] Enver Hoxha declared religious leaders, landowners, disloyal party officials, clerics and clan leaders as "enemies of the people". This is said to have led to the death of 6,000 people.[21] Thousands were sentenced to death.[22] From 1945 to 1992, around 5,000 men and women were executed and close to 100,000 were sent to prison as they were labeled enemies of the people.[23] Many who were targeted held important leadership positions in the party and state structures of the regime.[24] Hoxha also used the term against the Soviet Union and the US when he spoke: "as to ’Albania being only one mouthful’, watch out, gentlemen, for socialist Albania is a hard bone that will stick in your throat and choke you!".[25] On 1 June 1945, The Albanian Central Commission for the Discovery of Crimes, of War Criminals and Enemies of the People requested the International Commission for the Discovery of Crimes and War Criminals to hand over a number of Albanian war criminals found in concentration camps in Italy such as Bari, Lecce, Salerno and others.[26] In 1954, Hoxha condemned the American and British liberation of Albania calling them "enemies of the people".[27] In the 1960s, many Albanian migrants returned from Austria and Italy after having fled in the 1940s, and despite having been promised not to be punished, were immediately arrested as "enemies of the people".[28] In 1990, Ismail Kadare applied for political asylum in France, which was granted, resulting in him being condemned by Albanian officials as an "enemy of the people".[29]

Nazi Germany

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Regarding the Nazi plan to relocate all Jews to Madagascar, the Nazi tabloid Der Stürmer wrote that "The Jews don't want to go to Madagascar – They cannot bear the climate. Jews are pests and disseminators of diseases. In whatever country they settle and spread themselves out, they produce the same effects as are produced in the human body by germs. ... In former times sane people and sane leaders of the peoples made short shrift of enemies of the people. They had them either expelled or killed."[30]

Russia

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See also: Russian foreign agent law

The term returned to post-Soviet Russia in the late 2000s with a number of nationalist and pro-government politicians (most notably Ramzan Kadyrov) calling for restoration of the Soviet approach to the "enemies of the people" defined as all non-system opposition.[31][32][33]

On 28 December 2022, Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, said that Russians who fled Russia after the invasion of Ukraine and are opposed to the war should be labeled "enemies of society" and barred from returning to Russia.[34]

United Kingdom

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Main article: Enemies of the People (headline)

During the aftermath of the referendum on membership of the European Union, the Daily Mail was criticized for a headline describing judges (in the Miller case) as "Enemies of the People" for ruling that the process for leaving the European Union (i.e. the triggering of Article 50) would require the consent of the British Parliament. The May administration had hoped to use the powers of the royal prerogative to bypass parliamentary approval.[35] The paper issued character assassinations of all the judges involved in the ruling (Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas, Sir Terence Etherton, and Lord Justice Sales), and received more than 1,000 complaints to the Independent Press Standards Organisation.[36][37] The Secretary of State for Justice, Liz Truss, issued a three-line statement defending the independence and impartiality of the judiciary, which some saw as inadequate due to the delayed response and failure to condemn the attacks.[38][39]

United States

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1960s

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In the United States during the 1960s, organizations such as the Black Panther Party[40][41][42] and Students for a Democratic Society[43] were known to use the term. In one inter-party dispute in February 1971, for example, Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton denounced two other Panthers as "enemies of the people" for allegedly putting party leaders and members in jeopardy.[41]

Donald Trump

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Main article: Donald Trump's conflict with the media

In 2020 the Committee to Protect Journalists published a special report by Leonard Downie Jr. titled "The Trump Administration and the Media".[44] In the very beginning the report stated:

Trump has habitually attacked the news media in rallies, responses to reporters’ questions, and many hundreds of tweets. He has repeatedly called the press “fake news,” “the enemy of the people,” “dishonest,” “corrupt,” “low life reporters,” “bad people,” “human scum” and “some of the worst human beings you’ll ever meet.”[44]

From his inauguration in January 2017 through October 15, 2019, Trump called the news media the "enemy of the people" 36 times on Twitter.[45]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Enemies of the people", A Dictionary of 20th-century Communism (2010) Silvio Pons and Robert Service, Eds. pp. 307–308.
  2. ^ Remnick, David (1 August 2018). "Trump and the Enemies of the People". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 22 August 2019.
  3. ^ Remnick, David (20 August 1990). "Trotsky in Afterlife". The Washington Post. For decades, Soviet reference books referred to him only as an anti-Soviet plotter and "enemy of the people" – if they referred to him at all. Stalin's historians air-brushed Trotsky from every official photograph.
  4. ^ Graham-Harrison, Emma (3 August 2018). "'Enemy of the people': Trump's phrase and its echoes of totalitarianism". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 22 August 2019.
  5. ^ "Opinion: Calling the Press the Enemy of the People Is a Menacing Move". Retrieved 22 August 2019.
  6. ^ see also Jal, Paul (1963) Hostis (publicus) dans la littérature latine de la fin de la République, footnotes 1 and 2
  7. ^ Garzetti, Albino (2014) From Tiberius to the Antonines: A History of the Roman Empire AD 14–192, Routledge. p. 220 ISBN 978-1317698432
  8. ^ Robespierre, "Le but du gouvernement constitutionnel est de conserver la République; celui du gouvernement révolutionnaire est de la fonder. […] Le gouvernement révolutionnaire doit au bon citoyen toute la protection nationale; il ne doit aux Ennemis du Peuple que la mort" (speech at the National Convention
  9. ^ a b c Higgins, Andrew (26 February 2017) "Trump Embraces ‘Enemy of the People,’ a Phrase With a Fraught History" The New York Times
  10. ^ The black book of communism : crimes, terror, repression. Stéphane Courtois, Mark Kramer. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1999. ISBN 0-674-07608-7. OCLC 41256361.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  11. ^ Werth, Nicolas; Bartošek, Karel; Panné, Jean-Louis; Margolin, Jean-Louis; Paczkowski, Andrzej; and Courtois, Stéphane (1999) The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-07608-7
  12. ^ s:ru:Конституция СССР (1936)/Исходная редакция
  13. ^ "Article 58", an online excerpt
  14. ^ "Seventeen Moments in Soviet History". [permanent dead link‍]
  15. ^ "«Объявить всех врагами народа»: Как пропагандистский штамп превратился в страшный приговор" [To declare everyone the enemy of the people: how a propagandistic cliche turned into a sinister verdict]. Kommersant (in Russian). 29 November 2019.
  16. ^ Higgins, Andrew (26 February 2017). "Trump Embraces 'Enemy of the People,' a Phrase With a Fraught History". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
  17. ^ Khrushchev, Nikita (26 April 2007). "The cult of the individual (25 Feb 1956)". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
  18. ^ Mao Zedong (27 February 1957) On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People pp. 2–3
  19. ^ Enemies of the People, History, Ideology Behind The …. Remarks by Head of Presence, Ambassador Bernd Borchardt, at the international scientific conference "The portrait of ‘people’s enemy’ during the dictatorship of proletariat in Albania (1944–1990) 17 May 2019. 2019..
  20. ^ Elsie, Robert (2013). A Biographical Dictionary of Albanian History. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-1780764313. Retrieved 10 November 2019..
  21. ^ "Gendered legacies of Communist Albania: a paradox of progress". openDemocracy..
  22. ^ "Enver Hoxha's personality cult lives on in today's Albania". New Eastern Europe – A bimonthly news magazine dedicated to Central and Eastern European affairs. 5 October 2018..
  23. ^ "Arct – Denial of Memory: It is Time for Albania to Confront Its Communist Past". arct.org. Archived from the original on 2 April 2021. Retrieved 12 January 2020..
  24. ^ Meta., Beqir (2018). Framework Study On prison system, internment and forced labor during communist regime in Albania with a focus on establishing a museum of memory in the former internment camp in Tepelena (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 31 July 2020. Retrieved 10 November 2019..
  25. ^ "Regarding China's Withdrawl [sic] of Aid from Albania". marxists.org..
  26. ^ "Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1945, Europe, Volume IV – Office of the Historian". history.state.gov..
  27. ^ (Central Intelligence Agency), CIA (15 April 1954). "Tirana Spy Trial Proceedings Continued. Tirana, Albanian Home Service, Apr. 12, 1954, 2000 GMT-41 (Recordings of Prosecutor's summation) (Text)" (PDF). No. Official Use Only LL 1 – Albania 15 April 1954. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 February 2017. Retrieved 10 November 2019..
  28. ^ Woodcock, Shannon (7 August 2014). "'Against a Wall': Albania's Women Political Prisoners' Struggle to be Heard". Cultural Studies Review. 20 (2): 39–65–39–65. doi:10.5130/csr.v20i2.4093..
  29. ^ "Albania Condemns Writer's Defection as Ugly Act". AP News. Retrieved 10 November 2019..
  30. ^ "The Germ". Der Stürmer. No. 38. September 1938.
  31. ^ Staff (2006). "Опубликован шорт-лист претендентов на звание "враг народа в левом движении"". Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  32. ^ Staff (2015). "Кадыров призвал относиться к внесистемной оппозиции как к врагам народа". Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  33. ^ Staff (2014). "На площадке путинского "Народного фронта" предложили вернуть в употребление статус "враг народа"". Archived from the original on 15 November 2015. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  34. ^ "Medvedev Calls for Recent Russian Emigres to Be Banned From Returning". The Moscow Times. 28 December 2022.
  35. ^ Phipps, Claire (4 November 2016). "British newspapers react to judges' Brexit ruling: 'Enemies of the people'". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 February 2017.
  36. ^ Pells, Rachael (10 November 2016). "Daily Mail's 'Enemies of the People' front page receives more than 1,000 complaints to IPSO". The Independent. Retrieved 3 February 2017.
  37. ^ Coe, Jonathan (27 January 2017). "Is Donald Trump 'Mr. Brexit'?". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 February 2017.
  38. ^ Worley, Will. "Liz Truss breaks her silence but fails to condemn backlash over Brexit ruling". The Independent. Retrieved 11 February 2017.
  39. ^ Staff and Agencies (5 November 2016). "Liz Truss defends judiciary after Brexit ruling criticism". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 February 2017.
  40. ^ Hilliard, David, ed. (2008). The Black Panther. Simon and Schuster. p. 48. ISBN 978-1416552895. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  41. ^ a b Ashbury, Edith Evans (10 February 1971). "Newton Denounces 2 Missing Panthers". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  42. ^ Faraj, Gaidi (2007). Unearthing the Underground: A Study of Radical Activism in the Black Panther ... Ann Arbor, Michigan. p. 161. ISBN 978-0549528524.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  43. ^ Hogan, Doug (9 February 1970). "In Search Of The 'Real S.D.S.' Favoring A Campus Worker-Student Alliance". The Stanford Daily. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  44. ^ a b Leonard Downie Jr. The Trump Administration and the Media
  45. ^ Michael D. Shear, Maggie Haberman, Nicholas Confessore, Karen Yourish, Larry Buchanan and Keith Collins, How Trump Reshaped the Presidency in Over 11,000 Tweets, The New York Times (2 November 2019).
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