When Lenin took power he said: “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.” That party had a large representation in the Russian Duma which Lenin dissolved.
The Soviet Union made extensive use of the term. It was applied at one time or another, according to Wikipedia, to “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 KVZhD (China Far East Railway), particularly the Russian population of Harbin, China), those considered bourgeois nationalists(notably Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Armenian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian nationalists, Zionists, Basmachi)”
Enemies of the people could be: “lmprisoned, expelled or executed, and lose their property to confiscation. Close relatives of enemies of the people were labeled as “traitor of Motherland family members” and prosecuted. They could be sent to Gulag, punished by the involuntary settlement in unpopulated areas, or stripped of citizen’s rights. Being a friend of an enemy of the people automatically placed the person under suspicion.”
Nikita Khrushchev noted: “Stalin originated the concept ‘enemy of the people.’ This term automatically made it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven. 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.”
Hitler’s Nazi magazine speaking about the Jews said: “in former times sane people and sane leaders of the peoples made short shrift of enemies of the people.” Joseph Goebbels referred to Jews as “a sworn enemy of the German people” Hugo Chavez also used the term. Robert Mugabe speaking of the people involved in the Movement for Democratic Change said: “There cannot be unity with enemies of the people.”
No democratic leader has ever used the term before Trump. Think of that. Duly elected leaders do not libel their fellow citizens.
Look at the company Trump has put himself in: Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mugabe, Chavez. After meeting in Helsinki with Putin Trump tweeted: “The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media.” He continues up to yesterday when he tweeted: “The Mainstream Media has never been as corrupt and deranged as it is today. FAKE NEWS is actually the biggest story of all and is the true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! That’s why they refuse to cover the REAL Russia Hoax. But the American people are wise to what is going on….. 4:20 AM – 20 May 2019″
Who ever thought the day would come when an American president would call fellow Americans the same name as used by Stalin and other cruel dictators? Even the Soviet Union stopped using the term after Khrushchev came into power. It is left for Trump to revive. It is a term that is alien to America with its First Amendment guarantees.
The use by the president is plainly disgraceful. It is a sad state of affairs we find ourselves in as Americans when the president sets one group of us against the other. Slowly, but inexorably, he is turning our nation into a dystopian state.
Sounds like a lot Howie Carr rhetoric being employed. “Corrupt Midget” comes to mind. Didn’t Kafka get some mileage out of the phrase?
OOPS. Ibsen
Trump should never criticize the news media because they have been honest, objective and fair to him, his family and his Administration? Not really. The media was devastated that their candidate Crooked Hillary lost. They have spent the last two plus years vilifying and denouncing Trump.. They invented the bogus story of Russia collusion with Trump. They essentially said he was a Russian asset. How would anyone respond to such gross slanders other than saying the Fake News is the enemy of the people? The media undermined our country by trafficking in false, unsubstantiated stories against the President. They gave us the war in Iraq by promoting the WMD story and Viet Nam by pushing the Gulf of Tonkin episode. 2. America is closer to Utopia today than Dystopia. 3.6% unemployment. 7 million jobs available. More jobs than people seeking work. A better quality of judges to the Federal bench. Trump has made the judiciary, military and our economy stronger. Let the good times roll. Happy days are here again.
There is a term in psychiatry “LOOSENESS OF ASSOCIATION” applied as one of the four signs of schizophrenic psychosis.
When you take one phrase used by Stalin and Hitler and note Trump used the same phrase, and declare equivalency your are loosely associating.
My friend Larry Tye, one of the good former writers of the Boston Globe, and one of the great joggers with the Noontime Nuts, a subset of the L-Street Running Club, wrote a book about the history of the Advertising Industry. Mass Advertising used tactics that Josef Goebbels borrowed in his Propaganda attacks against Jews, Slavs, the Disabled and other UNDESIRABLES, i.e., “DEPLORABLES”
Your tactics are “Goebbles” tactics . . .to demonize with smears, with loose associations
Your tactics are HILLARY’S and her followers, whom I label Hillarians, who resort to smears, identity politics, LOOSENESS OF ASSOCIATION
Paraphrasing yourself, “Whoever would have thought that the day would come in America when a Presidential Candidate (Hillary Clinton) would call millions of ordinary Americans “DEPLORABLES” and falsely label them with leftist epithets du jour, RACIST, HOMOPHOBE, SEXIST, ISLAMAPHOBE….
WHERE ARE THE GULAGS AND CONCENTRATION CAMPS, MATT? WHERE ARE THE WARS OF AGGRESSION? WHERE ARE THE STARVATIONS OF MILLIONS, THE EXECUTIONS OF MILLIONS, WHERE ARE THE INVASIONS OF POLAND, OF THE SUDENTENLAND.
THE ANALOGIES TO HITLER AND STALIN ARE SCHIZOID.
HAVE A NICE DAY, AND REMEMBER TO HAVE FUN, LIFE IS SHORT AND WASTED ON NOT BEING OF GOOD SPIRIT.
FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT. PROTECT THE UNBORN. END THE WAR ON THE UNBORN. FOLLOW ALBERT SCHWEITZER’S PHILOSOPHY OF ‘reverence for life’. Fight the power abusing FEDs. Do good and fear no man. Freedom of speech. Freedom of press means every American can wield a pen, typewriter, publish a pamphlet, not just the leftist media.
ANALOGY TO HITLER AND STALIN