Four ways Trump is trying to be king.

Trump keeps saying ‘enemy of the people’ — but the phrase has a very ugly history

Over the last two weeks, President Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to media outlets that he dubbed the "fake news media" as " the enemy of the American People."

Trump repeated the attack at a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, saying, " They are the enemy of the people."

The phrase "the enemy of the people" has a long history that Trump may or may not have known about.

Over the couse of the last century, it has been used repeatedly by dictators and autocrats to delegitimize foreign governments, opposition parties, and dissenters.

Though the phrase dates back to Roman times and the reign of Emperor Nero (who was declared "an enemy of the people" by the Roman Senate), it came into use in the modern period during the French Revolution. Ennemi du peuple was used to refer to those who disagreed with the new French government during the "Reign of Terror," a period during which thousands of revolutionairies were executed by guillotine.

While it was featured as the name of a Henrik Ibsen play, its next prominent use was by the Nazis. During the Third Reich's rule in Germany, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels referred to Jews as "a sworn enemy of the German people" who posed a risk to Adolf Hitler's vision for the country, according to The Washington Post.

It gained its widest use by Joseph Stalin during the early years of the Soviet Union. In the nation's early years, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin used the term vrag naroda (enemy of the nation/people) to refer to those who disagreed with the ideologies pushed forth by the Bolshevik government and, later, adopted by the newly-formed Soviet Union. This could include anyone from the clergy who did not want to adopt state-enforced atheism to writers to political opposition that questioned the ideologies of the new government. Later picked up by Stalin, such a designation could mean immediate imprisonment or removal to a labour camp.

"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," said Lenin in November 1917.

As reported by The New York Times, the phrase lost popularity in the 1950s when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev came into power and denounced Lenin and Stalin's use of the term to refer to anyone who disagreed with the leaders.

"The formula 'enemy of the people was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals," Khrushchev said in a 1956 speech to the Soviet Communist Party.

Nina Khruscheva, Khruschev's great-granddaughter and international affairs professor at the New School in New York, told The New York Times that it was particularly shocking to hear the language of "state nationalism [that] is always the same regardless of the country."

In recent years, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez also called political dissenters "enemies of the homeland."

The phrase and Trump's statements about the press, in general, drew similar comparisons from some users on Twitter:

Notice Trump used the personal pronoun "they"

Taking aim specifically at the media, Trump repeated his attack from a tweet last week that "the fake news media" is "the enemy of the people."

"And they are," he said. "They are the enemy of the people.

"They're very dishonest people," he added. "In fact, in covering my comments, the dishonest media did not explain that I called the fake news the enemy of the people. The fake news. They dropped off the word 'fake.' And all of a sudden, the story became the media is the enemy. They take the word 'fake' out. And now I'm saying, 'Oh, no, this is no good.' But that's the way they are. So I'm not against the media, I'm not against the press. I don't mind bad stories if I deserve them. And I tell ya, I love good stories."

Bannon on Thursday said the Trump administration's agenda can be broken up into "three buckets": its economic-nationalist and trade-reform platform, a push for "national security and sovereignty," and the "deconstruction of the administrative state" — a targeting of the federal regulatory system.

you ignoramus,

THE FACTS: Trump may use extraordinary rhetoric to undermine trust in the press, but Obama arguably went farther — using extraordinary actions to block the flow of information to the public.

The Obama administration used the 1917 Espionage Act with unprecedented vigor, prosecuting more people under that law for leaking sensitive information to the public than all previous administrations combined. Obama’s Justice Department dug into confidential communications between news organizations and their sources as part of that effort.

In 2013 the Obama administration obtained the records of 20 Associated Press office phone lines and reporters’ home and cell phones, seizing them without notice, as part of an investigation into the disclosure of information about a foiled al-Qaida terrorist plot.

AP was not the target of the investigation. But it called the seizure a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into its news-gathering activities, betraying information about its operations “that the government has no conceivable right to know.”

Obama’s Justice Department also secretly dogged Fox News journalist James Rosen, getting his phone records, tracking his arrivals and departures at the State Department through his security-badge use, obtaining a search warrant to see his personal emails and naming him as a possible criminal conspirator in the investigation of a news leak. “The Obama administration,” The New York Times editorial board wrote at the time, “has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.”

The Obama administration used the 1917 Espionage Act with unprecedented vigor, prosecuting more people under that law for leaking sensitive information to the public than all previous administrations combined. Obama’s Justice Department dug into confidential communications between news organizations and their sources as part of that effort.

In 2013 the Obama administration obtained the records of 20 Associated Press office phone lines and reporters’ home and cell phones, seizing them without notice, as part of an investigation into the disclosure of information about a foiled al-Qaida terrorist plot.

So do you think the journalist in the media will not be protected under the constitution but only the media will be protected? Both the journalist and the company they work at are protected under the constitution. Which is why Trump is now going after CNN by calling for a boycott of ATT. He is mad at CNN because of the Time Warner deal and the JD tried to stop it but were unsuccessful. (link to this is at the Trump thread)

Quote:

Trump keeps saying ‘enemy of the people’ — but the phrase has a very ugly history

Over the last two weeks, President Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to media outlets that he dubbed the "fake news media" as " the enemy of the American People."...

Brandon9000 wrote:

Real Music wrote:

Shep Smith: Journalists are not the enemy of the people....

The implication seems to be that at some point in time, president Trump said, "journalists are the enemy of the people." He didn't. Please provide a link to that quotation.

Strange as my memory is not all that bad at 70 an I remember him making such and similar statements.

Not even fox news agree with you it would seems.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtP3yDf4yuo[/youtube]

I wonder if Trump and his kids are still cleaning Putins mafia money in their casinos like they have been doing for the last 10 or 15 years?

BillRM wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

Real Music wrote:

Shep Smith: Journalists are not the enemy of the people....

The implication seems to be that at some point in time, president Trump said, "journalists are the enemy of the people." He didn't. Please provide a link to that quotation.

Strange as my memory is not all that bad at 70 an I remember him making such and similar statements.

Not even fox news agree with you it would seems.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtP3yDf4yuo[/youtube]

You have failed to provide a link to the president saying "journalists are the enemy of the people," which was the request in my post which you purport to answer. This is a link to people talking about him. You cannot back up your contention that he said it. You lose.

It like hearing the old 1950s radio Moscow short wave broadcasts.

I wonder if Trump and his kids are still cleaning Putins mafia money in their casinos like they have been doing for the last 10 or 15 years?

I wonder if Trump and his kids are still