Enemy state

Hostis publicus. The fact there’s a Latin phrase shows how long politicians have been throwing around the phrase “public enemy” or “enemy of the people” to discredit their opponents and inflate their popularity.

When President Donald Trump referred to the news media last week as “an enemy of the American People” in a tweet, he joined a long line of leaders throughout history, going back to the Roman Senate, which declared Emperor Nero “a hostis publicus” in 68 A.D. Specifically, “enemy of the people” has a long history in Soviet Russia as a phrase used by Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin to identify and eliminate political opponents. In the United States, the phrase “public enemy” was popularized by the FBI during the 1930s to target wanted gangsters, which is the origin of the phrase “public enemy No. 1.”

For the folks insisting that Trump is just a puppet of Russian president Vladimir Putin, the fact that Trump used the Russian, not the American, version of hostis publicus to tarnish the news media is just more ammunition.

For ardent supporters, a politician labelling a certain group of people as enemies is a call to arms against these threatening others who don’t share the same values. For the 60 million American voters who cast their ballot for Trump, many of them knew their social conservative values did not coincide with Clinton and the Democratic Party. Therefore, they voted Republican because the Grand Ol’ Party prides itself on its conservative values and Trump, as flawed as he is, was not that “nasty woman.”

Yet the sharpest part of the “public enemy” slur isn’t about who is the enemy, it’s about who is the people. Taken literally, an enemy of the people isn’t even a person and a public enemy poses a threat to every member of the public. Moreover, it allows the politician to imply that his or her interests are in the public interest and that he or she is of the people, regardless of whether either is true.

Seen from a different angle, politicians use “the people” as both human shields and human battering rams, protecting themselves from criticism while simultaneously attacking those who disagree with them.

Trump joins a long line of U.S. presidents, Republican and Democrat, who despised the free press. As Canadians, we only have to look to our city halls, our provincial legislatures and the House of Commons to find politicians brimming with bitterness and resentment towards reporters and editors.

“The people elected me, not some journalist jerk,” they complain to their confidants.

That self-pity ignores two essential ingredients of a healthy democracy: the public’s right to choose or reject political leaders in free elections and the media’s right to report and comment on those elections and the decisions made by the victors once in office.

Journalists are no more enemies of the people than other private citizens with the audacity to publicly challenge the wisdom of politicians and their decisions. Reporters and pundits publish their work knowing some will appreciate their work and others will condemn it. The best politicians hold the same ethic.

So if Trump or anybody else in public office can’t take the criticism that comes with the job, perhaps they should step aside for those who sincerely work for all of the people, not just the ones who voted for them. The Canadian Press