'Enemies of the people': Trump remark echoes history's worst tyrants

[Eugene]

Source: BBC

'Enemies of the people': Trump remark echoes history's worst tyrants

18 February 2017 US & Canada

At a different time, in another country, it was effectively a death sentence.

Being branded an "enemy of the people" by the likes of Stalin or Mao brought at best suspicion and stigma, at worst hard labour or death.

Now the chilling phrase - which is at least as old as Emperor Nero, who was called "hostis publicus", enemy of the public, by the Senate in AD 68 - is making something of a comeback.

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"Charming that our uneducated President manages to channel the words of Stalin and fails to hear the historical resonance of this phrase," tweeted Mitchell Orenstein, a professor of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39015559

[liberal N proud]

1. Classic fascist practice