ANOTHER WINGNUT HISTORICAL BLUNDER

Do you remember Sean Hannity's TV show segment, Enemy of the State?  I had forgotten about it until I read this 2009 post by Paul Mulshine.  Mulshine traces the history of this phrase back to Stalin:

Back in 1932, there was a 13-year-old kid by the name of Pavlik Morozov who became a national hero in the Soviet Union.

It seems little Pavlik's father had been forging travel documents for his fellow peasants to help them escape the wrath of Stalin. Pavlik, being a good little Marxist, turned his father in to the authorities. Trofim Morozov was thrown into a labor camp, from which he never emerged.

Later that year, someone killed the little squealer. It wasn't clear just who did the deed, but the authorities offed four of his family members just to make sure they got the right one. After all, every single one of them was an "enemy of the state," a term Uncle Joe liked to apply to anyone who opposed him.

This is similar to their ignorance about the origins of the phrase "American Exceptionalism."