User:NBeale/Enemy of humanity

The term Enemy of humanity was originally applied to pirates by Cicero whose description of them as "hostes humani generis" (Lit enemies of the human kind" is said to be "a concept of enduring relevance especially with respect to universality jurisdiction". It is now used in wider senses, and is considered an anthropological concept. For example:

• Some theologians, such as Ignatius of Loyola, asserted that Satan is the "deadly enemy of humanity".

• "the Jew" according to Adolf Hitler was "the real enemy who menaces the world today". Hitler wrote that "we must devote ourselves to arousing general indignation against the maleficent enemy of humanity"

• Fidel Castro's description of the United States as an "Enemy of Humanity" attracted considerable attention

• Ayatollah Khomeini described President Carter as an "enemy of humanity"

• According to German scholar Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein are incarnations of a 20th century anthropological concept he called the "Enemy of Humanity". He considered Hitler a deadly enemy of not only Jews and the peoples who suffered under the Nazi regime, but ultimately to Germans as well. Warning against viewing Hitler as merely a one-time localized phenomenon, he writes "the new enemy of humanity behaves no different than his predecessor", and he considers such continuity evidence that the enemy of humanity constitutes a recurring anthropological fact.

• Theologian Alister McGrath used to believe as a teenager that "religion was the enemy of humanity."

• Pope Benedict XVI, was described by Richard Dawkins in a widely reported speech as "an enemy of humanity", in particular "an enemy of children...gay people...women...truth...the poorest people on the planet...science...the Queen's own church..[and] of education"

• Rep. Trent Franks described President Obama as "an enemy of humanity"

The analogous legal term is Hostis humani generis which historically was applied to pirates and has been applied to torturers.

Books and Academic Discussion

The concept of "Enemy of humanity" has been extensively discussed in books and academic papers. For example:

• Enemies of humanity: the nineteenth-century war on terrorism Palgrave Macmillan, 2008 Is a collection of essays about "the definition and origins of terrorism, broadening the field to include slave revolts and urban tensions, and considering how the " war on terrorism" had already matured by 1870 as a way to justify often bloody campaigns against labor unions, nationalist freedom fighters, and reformers."

• Nick Bostrom describes ageing as the "enemy of humanity" which is cited as a "clever portrayal"

• Jacques Derrida argued that "there is no enemy of humanity"

• Legal scholars suggest that "in the case of an enemy of humanity, the right to punish is a duty to the world at large".

• The concept of "enemy of humanity" is explored as a feature of the present war on terror and the more general connection between state and non-state violence in "Enemy of Humanity: The Anti-Piracy Discourse in Present-Day Anti-Terrorism"