‘Enemies of the people’ is a threat

It’s possible that neither Donald Trump nor Richard Ranzau understood what he was doing when each labeled large groups of Americans “enemies of the people.” At least that is to be hoped, because consciously using that condemnatory, historically blood-soaked phrase should be beneath the dignity and outside the moral framework of any public officeholder, whether president or Sedgwick County commissioner.

Being offended by their words is not what they both would derisively call “political correctness.” Instead, wincing acknowledges that those words preclude any possibility of political discussion, leaving drastic action as the only remaining option.

Even former Soviet Union premier Nikita Khrushchev appreciated that. The designation, he said in a 1956 speech denouncing Joseph Stalin, “eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological” contest. “The formula ‘enemy of the people’ was specifically introduced for the purpose of annihilating” people who disagreed with Stalin, he declared.

Using “enemy of the people” as a death sentence to political foes stretches back at least to Nero (37 A.D.), who took his own life when the Roman senate so labeled him.

It runs through the French Revolution, when the charge “ennemi du peuple” consigned thousands to the guillotine during the Jacobin “Reign of Terror” of 1793-94. Many of America’s founders, completing their work on the new constitution in 1789, were initially sympathetic to the aborning French revolution, but, as enlightenment thinkers, were soon horrified by its excesses.

By contrast, in 1917 Vladimir Lenin, Stalin’s communist predecessor, openly endorsed those Jacobin excesses as a necessary weapon against capitalists and handed off the concept of “enemies of the people” to Stalin, who relentlessly “purged” millions.

Then in the 1930s, Adolph Hitler adapted it to his own evil uses, designating Jews as “enemy of the German people” and sending millions of them to death camps.

And now, in 2017, we have the president of the United States and a twice-elected county commissioner voicing it, forcefully and deliberately.

Trump designated journalists who do not write to please him “enemies of the American people,” and, to make sure he was not misunderstood, repeated it several times, to his supporters’ delight.

Ranzau, indulging himself during the “other business” time at last week’s County Commission meeting, over-trumped Trump by designating millions more people – “the progressive movement” in its entirety, not just journalists – the “enemy of the people.” During his ten-minute homily, his captive audience of county employes were forced to listen as he mounted an unwanted and ultimately nonsensical defense of Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, against a Richard Crowson editorial cartoon in this newspaper depicting her as Gov. Sam Brownback’s lap dog. On her part, Wagle was so offended by the cartoon that she requested a personal copy of it.

Casual, repeated use of such historically freighted language not only forecloses political discussion and devalues the words themselves but also invites private violence by unstable individuals.

From Nero’s accusers to the Jacobins to Lenin to Stalin to Hitler to Trump and Ranzau? That’s hardly a linear progression, because the Romans, Jacobins, communists and Nazis knew exactly what they were saying and understood the implications.

If that could accurately be said of Trump and Ranzau, they crossed a line that is more than rhetorical, and they should be condemned. But perhaps – our best hope – it was merely ignorance.

This story was originally published March 7, 2017 at 5:03 AM with the headline "‘Enemies of the people’ is a threat."