Donald Trump and the Enemies of the American People

When the leaders of the Bolshevik movement--Lenin, Stalin, and the rest--used the term vrag naroda, an "enemy of the people," it was an ominous epithet that encompassed a range of "wreckers" and "socially dangerous elements." Enemies included clergy, intellectuals, monarchists, Trotskyists, "rootless cosmopolitans," and well-to-do farmers. To be branded an enemy of the people was to face nearly inevitable doom; such a fate was soon followed by a knock on the door in the middle of the night, a pr...