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 U.S. President Donald Trump referred to the news media recently 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 AD. As Amanda Erickson explains in her Washington Post column, that term has been widely used by everyone from revolutionaries to dictators.
Specifically, “enemy of the people” had a long history in the Soviet Union 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 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.
In another Post column, Marc Thiessen rightly points out that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were also quick to label political opponents as enemies. Clinton compared the Republicans, the National Rifle Association, American health-insurance companies and U.S. drug companies to Iran, an actual enemy of the United States, in the first presidential debate.
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. Of the more than 60 million American voters who cast their ballots for Trump, many 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.
That’s why politicians near and far, left and right, often talk about “the will of the people,” because of the embedded meaning that the politician has the people’s support and knows what they want. On the flip side, the people who support the politician in office get to claim that they are “the people” and those who supported the losing candidates or still oppose the agenda of the winning candidate are not “the people.”
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 toward reporters.
“The people elected me, not some journalist jerk,” they complain.
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.
George Rodrigue’s column Tuesday in the Cleveland Plain Dealer is a sombre reminder that if journalists are the enemies of the people, they sure have a funny way of showing it. There is a wall at The Newseum, just down the street from the White House, recognizing the more than 2,000 American journalists who have died doing their job in the past 100 years or so.
Closer to home, reporter Michelle Lang was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan while on assignment for the Calgary Herald.
Journalists are no more enemies of the people than other private citizens with the audacity to challenge the wisdom of politicians and their decisions. Reporters and pundits publish their work knowing some will appreciate it 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 politicians who will sincerely work for all of the people, not just the ones who voted for them.
Neil Godbout is managing editor of the Prince George Citizen.
