The terms enemy of the people and enemy of the nation are designations for the political opponents and the
social-class opponents of the
power group within a larger social unit, who, thus identified, can be subjected to political repression. 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
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
(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. In the 21st century, U.S. president
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
regularly used the ''enemy of the people'' term against critical politicians, journalists and
the press.
Like the term ''
enemy of the state'', the term ''enemy of the people'' originated and derives from the , a
public enemy
Public Enemy is an American Hip-hop, hip hop group formed in Roosevelt, New York, in 1985 by Chuck D and Flavor Flav. The group rose to prominence for their political messages including subjects such as Racism in the United States, American r ...
of the
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...
. 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
William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
.
Origins
Imperial Rome
The expression ''enemy of the people'' dates to
Imperial Rome. The
Senate
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
declared Emperor
Nero
Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68) was a Roman emperor and the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 until his ...
a in 68 CE. The direct translation of the phrase 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
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
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
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are a ...
.
French Revolution
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". 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 "
ose who have disseminated
false news in order to divide or disturb the people."
[Higgins, Andrew (26 February 2017]
"Trump Embraces ‘Enemy of the People,’ a Phrase With a Fraught History"
''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
''
Marxist–Leninist states
Soviet Union
The
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
made extensive use of the term ''vrag naroda'' (), 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 October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...
. The
Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee printed lists of "enemies of the people", and
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...
invoked it in his decree of 28 November 1917:
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
The 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union, also known as the Stalin Constitution, was the constitution of the Soviet Union adopted on 5 December 1936.
The 1936 Constitution was the second constitution of the Soviet Union and replaced the 1924 C ...
, in Article 131 about public property: "Persons who encroach on public, socialist property are enemies of the people."
The term "enemy of the workers" was formalized in the
Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code), 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
A royal family is the immediate family of monarch, monarchs and sometimes their extended family.
The term imperial family appropriately describes the family of an emperor or emperor, empress, and the term papal family describes the family of ...
,
aristocrats, the
bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted wi ...
,
cleric
Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the ter ...
s,
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
Harbin, ; zh, , s=哈尔滨, t=哈爾濱, p=Hā'ěrbīn; IPA: . is the capital of Heilongjiang, China. It is the largest city of Heilongjiang, as well as being the city with the second-largest urban area, urban population (after Shenyang, Lia ...
, China), and those considered
bourgeois nationalists (notably
Russian,
Ukrainian,
Belarusian,
Armenian,
Lithuanian, Latvian, and
Estonian nationalists, as well as
Zionists and the
Basmachi movement).
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
On 25 February 1956,
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...
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. "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."
For decades afterwards, the phrase "was so omnipresent, freighted and devastating in its use under Stalin that nobody
n Russiawanted to touch it. ... except in reference to history and in jokes", according to
William Taubman in his biography of Khrushchev.
Cambodia and China
According to
Philip Short, an author of biographies of
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...
and Cambodia's
Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge is the name that was popularly given to members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), and by extension to Democratic Kampuchea, which ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The name was coined in the 1960s by Norodom Sihano ...
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.
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."
Albania
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.
After the communist takeover, many who were labeled with this term were executed or
imprisoned.
Enver Hoxha
Enver Halil Hoxha ( , ; ; 16 October 190811 April 1985) was an Albanian communist revolutionary and politician who was the leader of People's Socialist Republic of Albania, Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985. He was the Secretary (titl ...
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. Thousands were sentenced to death. 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. Many who were targeted held important leadership positions in the party and state structures of the regime. 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!"''. 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. In 1954, Hoxha condemned the American and British liberation of Albania calling them "enemies of the people". 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". 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".
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."
Russia
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.
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.
United Kingdom
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
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
(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
The royal prerogative is a body of customary authority, Privilege (law), privilege, and immunity recognised in common law (and sometimes in Civil law (legal system), civil law jurisdictions possessing a monarchy) as belonging to the monarch, so ...
to bypass parliamentary approval.
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.
The
Secretary of State for Justice
The secretary of state for justice is a secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom, with responsibility for the Ministry of Justice. The incumbent is a member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom. Since the office's inception ...
,
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.
United States
1960s
In the United States during the 1960s, organizations such as the
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was a Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist and Black Power movement, black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newto ...
and
Students for a Democratic Society 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.
Donald Trump
In 2020 the
Committee to Protect Journalists published a special report by
Leonard Downie Jr. titled "The Trump Administration and the Media".
[ Leonard Downie Jr.]
The Trump Administration and the Media
/ref> 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.”[
]
From his inauguration in January 2017 through October 15, 2019, Trump called the news media the "enemy of the people" 36 times on Twitter.[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).
See also
*
* Class conflict
* Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...
* Extremism
* Hate group
* Ostracism
*
* Public enemy
Public Enemy is an American Hip-hop, hip hop group formed in Roosevelt, New York, in 1985 by Chuck D and Flavor Flav. The group rose to prominence for their political messages including subjects such as Racism in the United States, American r ...
* Social death
* Struggle session
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Enemy Of The People
Authoritarianism
Communist repression
Communist terminology
French Revolution
Ideology of the Chinese Communist Party
Ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Nationalism
Political repression
Political repression in the Soviet Union
Totalitarianism
Trumpism
Soviet phraseology