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  2. February 2017

February 2017

President Trump Embraces ‘Enemy of the People,’ a Phrase With a Fraught History

The phrase was too toxic even for Nikita Khrushchev, a war-hardened veteran communist not known for squeamishness. As leader of the Soviet Union, he demanded an end to the use of the term “enemy of the people” because “it eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight.”

“The formula ‘enemy of the people,’” Khrushchev told the Soviet Communist Party in a 1956 speech denouncing Stalin’s cult of personality, “was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals” who disagreed with the supreme leader. It is difficult to know if President Donald Trump is aware of the historic resonance of the term, a label generally associated with despotic communist governments rather than democracies. But his decision to unleash the terminology has left some historians scratching their heads.

Why would the elected leader of a democratic nation embrace a label that, after the death of Stalin, even the Soviet Union found to be too freighted with sinister connotations? By using the phrase and placing himself in such infamous company, at least in his choice of vocabulary to attack his critics, President Trump has demonstrated that the language of “autocracy, of state nationalism is always the same regardless of the country, and no nation is exempt.”

Assailing the White House From Hollywood’s Glass House

Given the cultural and political rifts that have followed President Trump’s election, and the aggressive way in which President Trump has pursued his agenda, it was natural that some would want to use their international Oscar platforms to make big statements about free speech, diversity and cherished American values. But they were treading on tricky terrain.

First, there was the question of whom they were actually winning over with political oratory delivered amid a bacchanalia of self-celebration and haute couture, some of it costing as much as the average American’s home down payment. And for all the talk of inclusion in the political speechifying leading up to, and during, the Oscars, how inclusive is Hollywood itself? The answer is that despite the big honors that black actors and black-themed films took home, the industry still has a long way to go to improve diversity throughout its ranks. Hollywood’s judgment would go a lot further if it directed some of that political energy back at itself.

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