The terms enemy of the people and enemy of the nation are designations for the political opponents and the social-class opponents of the power group within a larger social unit, who, thus identified, can be subjected to political repression.
Like the term enemy of the state, the term enemy of the people originated and derives from the Latin: hostis publicus, a public enemy of the Roman Empire. In literature, the term enemy of the people features in the title of the stageplay An Enemy of the People (1882), by Henrik Ibsen, and is a theme in the stageplay Coriolanus (1605), by William Shakespeare.