Enemy of the people

The term enemy of the people is a fluid designation of political or class opponents of the group using the term. The term implies that the "enemies" in question are acting against society as a whole. It is similar to the notion of "enemy of the state". The term originated in Roman times as Latin: hostis publicus, typically translated into English as the "public enemy". The term in its "enemy of the people" form has been used for centuries in literature (An Enemy of the People, the play by Henrik Ibsen, 1882). Currently this form is mostly used as a reference to Soviet phraseology.[1]

Origins of the expression

The expression dates back to Roman times.[2] The Senate declared emperor Nero a hostis publicus in AD 68.[3]

The words "ennemi du peuple" were extensively used 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".[4] 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".[5]

Marxist–Leninist states

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union made extensive use of the term (Russian language: враг народа, "vrag naroda"), as it fit well with the idea that the people were in control. The term was used by Vladimir Lenin after coming to power, as early as in the decree of 28 November 1917:

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.[6]

Other similar terms were in use as well:

In particular, the term "enemy of the workers" was formalized in the Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code),[7] 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 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).[8]

An "enemy of the people" could be imprisoned, 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.

A significant fraction of the enemies of the people were given this label not because of their hostile actions against the workers' and peasants' state, but simply because of their social origin or profession before the revolution: those who used hired labor, high-ranking clergy, former policemen, merchants, etc. Some of them were commonly known as lishentsy (лишенцы, derived from Russian word лишение, deprivation), because by the Soviet Constitution they were deprived of the right of voting. This automatically translated into a deprivation of various social benefits; some of them, e.g., rationing, were at times critical for survival.

Since 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.

In his 1956 speech denouncing Stalin’s cult of personality, Stalin's successor Nikita Khrushchev called for an end to the use of the term, stating "the formula 'enemy of the people' was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals" who disagreed with Stalin.[5] For decades afterwards, "It 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 an author of a biography of Khrushchev, William Taubman.[5]

The term returned to Russian public discourse 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.[9][10][11]

China

In Mao Zedong's 1957 speech On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, he comments 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."[12] (According to Philip Short, an author of biographies of Mao 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.)[5]

Nazi Germany

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."[13]

1960s

United States

In the United States during the 1960s leftist organizations such as the Black Panther Party[14][15][16] and Students for a Democratic Society[17] 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.[15]

Recent usage

United Kingdom

During the aftermath of the referendum on membership of the European Union, the Daily Mail was criticized for a headline describing the judges which ruled (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.[18] 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.[19][20] 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.[21][22]

United States

On February 17, 2017, President Donald Trump said on Twitter, "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" Trump declared these news organizations "fake news" and an enemy of the people.[23][24] Trump repeated the assertion on February 24 at the Conservative Political Action Conference, saying "A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people and they are. They are the enemy of the people."[25][5]

See also

Non-communist:

Films:

References

Notes

  1. ↑ . Sarnov, Benedikt (2002) Our Soviet Newspeak: A Short Encyclopedia of Real Socialism., Moscow. ISBN 5-85646-059-6 (Наш советский новояз. Маленькая энциклопедия реального социализма)
  2. ↑ see also Jal, Paul (1963) Hostis (publicus) dans la littérature latine de la fin de la République, footnotes 1 and 2
  3. ↑ Garzetti, Albino (2014) From Tiberius to the Antonines: A History of the Roman Empire AD 14-192, Routledge. p.220 ISBN 9781317698432
  4. ↑ 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
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Higgins, Andrew (February 26, 2017) "Trump Embraces ‘Enemy of the People,’ a Phrase With a Fraught History" The New York Times
  6. ↑ 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
  7. ↑ "Article 58", an online excerpt
  8. ↑ "Seventeen Moments in Soviet History"
  9. ↑ Staff (2006). "Опубликован шорт-лист претендентов на звание "враг народа в левом движении"". Retrieved January 13, 2016.
  10. ↑ Staff (2015). "Кадыров призвал относиться к внесистемной оппозиции как к врагам народа". Retrieved January 13, 2016.
  11. ↑ Staff (2014). "На площадке путинского "Народного фронта" предложили вернуть в употребление статус "враг народа"". Retrieved January 13, 2016.
  12. ↑ Mao Zedong (February 27, 1957) On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People pp.2–3
  13. ↑ "The Germ". Der Stürmer (38). September 1938.
  14. ↑ Hilliard, David (ed.). The Black Panther. Simon and Schuster. p. 48,. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  15. 1 2 Ashbury, Edith Evans (February 10, 1971). "Newton Denounces 2 Missing Panthers". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  16. ↑ Faraj, Gaidi (2007). Unearthing the Underground: A Study of Radical Activism in the Black Panther ... Ann Arbor, Michigan: Proquest. p. 161. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  17. ↑ Hogan, Doug (February 9, 1970). "In Search Of The ’Real S.D.S.’ Favoring A Campus Worker-Student Alliance". Marxist.org. The Stanford Daily. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  18. ↑ Phipps, Claire (November 4, 2016). "British newspapers react to judges' Brexit ruling: 'Enemies of the people'". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 February 2017.
  19. ↑ Pells, Rachael (November 10, 2016). "Daily Mail's 'Enemies of the People' front page receives more than 1,000 complaints to IPSO". The Independent. Retrieved 3 February 2017.
  20. ↑ Coe, Jonathan (January 27, 2017). "Is Donald Trump ‘Mr. Brexit’?". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 February 2017.
  21. ↑ Worley, Will. "Liz Truss breaks her silence but fails to condemn backlash over Brexit ruling". The Independent. Retrieved 11 February 2017.
  22. ↑ Staff and Agencies (November 5, 2016). "Liz Truss defends judiciary after Brexit ruling criticism". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 February 2017.
  23. ↑ Trump, Donald J. [@realDonaldTrump] (18 February 2017). "Donald J. Trump on Twitter: "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enem" (Tweet). Retrieved 18 February 2017 – via Twitter.
  24. ↑ Erickson, Amanda (February 18, 2017)"Trump called the news media an ‘enemy of the American People.’ Here’s a history of the term" Washington Post
  25. ↑ Shuham, Matt (February 24, 2017). "Trump: ‘Enemy Of The People’ Media Makes Up Anonymous Sources". Retrieved 2017-02-24.
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