Trump Embraces = =E2=80=98Enemy of the People,=E2=80=99 a Phrase With a Fraught History

President Trump on Fr= iday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Md.

Doug Mills / The New York Times

By= ANDREW HIGGINS

February 26, 201= 7

MOSCO= W =E2=80=94 The phrase was too toxic even for Nikita= Khrushchev, a war-hardened veteran communist not known for squeamishne= ss. As leader of the Soviet Union, he demanded an end to the use of the ter= m =E2=80=9Cenemy of the people=E2=80=9D because =E2=80=9Cit eliminated the = possibility of any kind of ideological fight.=E2=80=9D

=E2=80=9CThe formula =E2=80=98enemy of the people,=E2=80=99=E2=80=9D Mr= . Khrushchev told the Soviet Communist Party in a 1956 speech denouncing St= alin=E2=80=99s cult of personality, =E2=80=9Cwas specifically introduced fo= r the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals=E2=80=9D who disa= greed with the supreme leader.

It is difficult to k= now if President Trump is aware of the historic resonance of the term, a la= bel generally associated with despotic communist governments rather than de= mocracies. But his decision to unleash the terminology has left some histor= ians scratching their heads. Why would the elected leader of a democratic n= ation embrace a label that, after the death of Stalin, even the Soviet Unio= n found to be too freighted with sinister connotations?

Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Mr. Khrushchev and a prof= essor of international affairs at the New School in New York, said the phra= se was =E2=80=9Cshocking to hear in a non-Soviet, moreover non-Stalinist se= tting.=E2=80=9D Her great-grandfather, she said, =E2=80=9Cof course also us= ed Soviet slogans and ideological idioms but still tried to stay away from = sweeping denunciations of whole segments of the Soviet population.=E2=80=9D=

In Mr. Trump=E2=80=99s case, however, he is brandi= ng as enemies a segment of the American population =E2=80=94 specifically r= epresentatives of what he calls the =E2=80=9Cfake news=E2=80=9D media, incl= uding The New York Times.

He has used the phrase more tha= n once, including Friday during an attack on the news= media at a conservative gathering in which he said that some reporters= were making up unnamed sources to attack him.

=E2= =80=9CA few days ago, I called the fake news the enemy of the people becaus= e they have no sources =E2=80=94 they just make it up,=E2=80=9D the preside= nt said, adding that the label app= lied only to =E2=80=9Cdishonest=E2=80=9D reporters and editors. Hours later= , Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, barred journalists from sev= eral news organizations, including The Times, from attending a briefing in = his office.

By using the phrase and placing himself= in such infamous company, at least in his choice of vocabulary to attack h= is critics, Mr. Trump has demonstrated, Ms. Khrushcheva said, that the lang= uage of =E2=80=9Cautocracy, of state nationalism is always the same regardl= ess of the country, and no nation is exempt.=E2=80=9D She added that, in al= l likelihood, Mr. Trump had not read Lenin, Stalin or Mao Zedong, but the = =E2=80=9Cformulas of insult, humiliation, domination, branding, enemy-formi= ng and name calling are always the same.=E2=80=9D

T= he White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The phrase =E2=80=9Cenemy of the people=E2=80=9D first entered the po= litical lexicon in 1789, with the French Revolution. The revolutionaries in= itially used it as a slogan that was hurled willy-nilly at anybody who oppo= sed them. But, as resistance to the revolution mounted, the term acquired a= far more lethal and legalistic meaning with the adoption of a 1794 law tha= t set up a revolutionary tribunal =E2=80=9Cto punish enemies of the people= =E2=80=9D and codified political crimes punishable by death. These included= =E2=80=9Cspreading false news to divide or trouble the people.=E2=80=9D

The concep= t resurfaced in a more benign form nearly a century later in =E2=80=9CAn En= emy of the People,=E2=80=9D an 1882 play by the Norwegian writer Henrik Ibs= en about an idealistic whistle-blower in a small town at odds with the auth= orities and locals who, to protect the economy, want to suppress informatio= n about water contamination. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 returned the = term to the blood-drenched dramas of the French Revolution, with Lenin decl= aring in Pravda that the Jacobin terror against =E2=80=9Cenemies of the peo= ple=E2=80=9D was =E2=80=9Cinstructive=E2=80=9D and needed to be revived, so= as to rid the Russian people of =E2=80=9Clandowners and capitalists as a c= lass.=E2=80=9D

Stalin, who took over as Soviet lead= er upon Lenin=E2=80=99s death in 1924, drastically expanded the scope of th= ose branded as =E2=80=9Cenemies of the people,=E2=80=9D targeting not only = capitalists but also dedicated communists who had worked alongside Lenin fo= r years, but whom Stalin viewed as rivals.

The Soviet leader Nikita K= hrushchev at the United Nations in 1960. In a 1956 speech, he demanded an e= nd to the term =E2=80=9Cenemy of the people.=E2=80=9D

Agence France-Presse =E2=80=94 Getty Images

=E2=80=9CIn essence, it was a label tha= t meant death. It meant you were subhuman and entirely expendable,=E2=80=9D= said Mitchell A. Orenstein, professor of Russian and East European Studies= at the University of Pennsylvania. =E2=80=9CThis is the connotation for an= yone who lived in the Soviet Union or knows anything about the Soviet Union= , which Donald Trump obviously doesn=E2=80=99t =E2=80=94 or he doesn=E2=80= =99t care.=E2=80=9D

He said that it was hard to figure out whether Mr. Trump was a= ware of the resonance of the phrase or simply used it because =E2=80=9Che k= nows it riles up people who have a certain degree of knowledge.=E2=80=9D

=E2=80=9CHe is only alienating them, and they are the= people he wants to alienate anyway,=E2=80=9D Mr. Orenstein continued. =E2= =80=9CHis base sees comparisons with Stalin as just more evidence of the li= beral mainstream media going haywire.=E2=80=9D

Moreover, by using such a loa= ded term in such a cavalier fashion, the president =E2=80=9Cis in the proce= ss of rendering it meaningless,=E2=80=9D Mr. Orenstein said. =E2=80=9CIt be= comes just na-na-na-na-na,=E2=80=9D he added, because nobody really thinks = Mr. Trump will bring back the guillotine.

Philip Sh= ort, a British author who has written biographies of Mao and Cambodia=E2=80= =99s genocidal leader Pol Pot, said Mr. Trump delighted in =E2=80=9Cshaking= things up, and this kind of language does just that.=E2=80=9D

=E2=80=9CWe try to = analyze it from an establishment point of view, but this leads nowhere,=E2= =80=9D he added. =E2=80=9CI don=E2=80=99t know if Trump has ever read Stali= n, but if he wants to destabilize people, he is doing it perfectly.=E2=80= =9D

Willia= m Taubman, the author of a biography of Khrushchev and emeritus professor o= f political science at Amherst College, said it was =E2=80=9Cshocking=E2=80= =9D that Mr. Trump would revive a term that had fallen into disrepute in th= e Soviet Union after Stalin=E2=80=99s death in 1953. =E2=80=9CIt was so omn= ipresent, freighted and devastating in its use under Stalin that nobody wan= ted to touch it,=E2=80=9D he said. =E2=80=9CI have never heard it used in R= ussia except in reference to history and in jokes.=E2=80=9D

Ms. Khrushchev= a said Mr. Trump had =E2=80=9Cbeen using a lot of this kind of political-id= eological branding=E2=80=9D favored by revolutionary leaders, deploying ter= ms like =E2=80=9Cliberal sympathizer=E2=80=9D and =E2=80=9Clanguage about g= loom and doom in America that is much more forcefully negative than that ev= en used by the Russians.=E2=80=9D

He has also gone = one step further than Chinese and Khmer Rouge communists in Cambodia, who g= enerally preferred homegrown insults to those imported from the Soviet Unio= n.

Mr. Short, the Mao and Pol Pot biographer, said = Chinese and Cambodian communists, all fiercely nationalistic, rarely if eve= r used =E2=80=9Cenemy of the people=E2=80=9D in domestic political struggle= s because it was an alien import. Instead, Pol Pot attacked enemies as =E2= =80=9Cugly microbes=E2=80=9D who would =E2=80=9Crot society, rot the party = and rot the country from within,=E2=80=9D while Maoists coined insults like= =E2=80=9Cthe stinking ninth category=E2=80=9D to denounce experts and inte= llectuals.

Mao, Mr. Short said, =E2=80=9Cused Chine= se expressions and spoke like a Chinese, not a Russian.=E2=80=9D

=E2=80=9CHe did not use the Soviet jargon much,=E2=80=9D Mr. = Short said. =E2=80=9CBut Mr. Trump does, which is extraordinary.=E2=80=9D

Ma= o did on occasion use =E2=80=9Cenemy of the people,=E2=80=9D but he directe= d it not at his domestic foes but at the United States, declaring in 1964 t= hat =E2=80=9CU.S. imperialism is the most ferocious enemy of the people of = the entire world.=E2=80=9D

=E2=80=9CPoliticians nor= mally use phrases that resonate with their own people,=E2=80=9D Mr. Short s= aid. =E2=80=9CMao and Pol Pot did not just regurgitate Stalinist terms. Wha= t is extraordinary about Trump is that he has taken up a Stalinist phrase t= hat is entirely alien to American political culture.=E2=80=9D

Julie Hirschfeld Davis contributed reporting from Washington.

<= /div>

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