Enemy of the People Trump's War on the Press The New McCarthyism, and the Great Treat to American Democracy by Marvin Kalb

Enemy of the People Trump's War on the Press The New McCarthyism, and the Great Treat to American

Democracy by Marvin Kalb is a book by Brookings and as all the books published by this publishing house, it is not just pretty clear and vivid, but also written with great passion.

President Trump has represented, from the day of his elections a big abnormality in an American System where check and balance, respect for all institutions, (legislative, executive, judiciary power) passing through the press was the normality.

Mr. Kalb explains that there wasn't difference if the President was Republican or Democrat, each of them before the advent of Trump respected the role of the press.

A free press does it; it reports what happens in a daily base. In a healthy, and real democratic country, free press is the companion of democracy, because they live in complete friendship; there are problems when segments of power starts to attack systematically the press, reporters, journalists, considering them liars;  the Washington Post, the New York Times two examples of newsmagazines not seen well. When this segment of the State is the President, telling to his electors that "the press is the enemy of the people" it is terribly destabilizing because a leader means that who voted for him is approving, following, what the President is saying, and will believe at his words; these electors will start to hate reporters of the NYT, the WP, just for the fact that they exist; the people who didn't vote for him will start to develop a strong adversion and hate for the President, with all the possible consequences that the story implies: the country is confused, divided, conflictual, peaceless and the compass seems like broken. Phantoms that people thought completely forgotten after the arrival of Trump strongly re-emerged: the white suprematists became more strong with him; they are a group of people who can't see minorities, immigrants, Jews, and so on.

The same policy of the President was not amicable from the beginning with immigrants; the desire of building a big wall for discouraging the potential Mexicans and their arrivals in the Land of Opportunities was just one of the ideas; chaos after chaos, reported by the press, the President delegitimized the role of the press from the beginning, adding that what journalists wrote was all fake news. People hadn't to listen to them. They were just liars. They had just to listen to him. Let me add: thanks at the media, if not it would be impossible.

This one as also wrote Kalb is an age of Darkness or: obscurantism.

But...Was there a precendent in the USA? Someone similar to Trump, who fought against something strongly and that at the same time hated the press?

Yes there was; in the differences of the case, this one was McCarthy. Cold war, the world divided in two Blocks, the enemy could just be the Communism. And the press, seen as an allied or an enemy. It depended.

McCarthy's hate for Communism, for Communists, he saw Communists in every corner of the street created the so-called historical period: McCarthyism.

Problem won't be just this historical moment, but how the USA will be left, once the age of the Trumpism will be over.

I strongly suggest you this book. It gives coverage to decades of American policy and journalism with passion, enthusiasm and desire of being helpful. This book was born for remarking to everyone that no one is an enemy, and the press is not the enemy of Trump but as the author will conclude: "...with all due respect to the office you hold, Mr. president, the "enemy of the people" is not the press. It is you."

I thank Eurospan and Brookings Institution Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori