The lens of history can clarify the present. Emzari Gelashvili in a Washington Examiner op-ed compared New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pied-a-terre list to Stalin’s list of kulaks, which preceded Holodomor. The history of proscription lists is long, and the pattern is sharp: Proscription lists of targeted individuals historically have appeared when democracies were in the process of being transformed into dictatorships.
The reason is that the rule of law requires government to apply general rules impartially. Publicly identifying individual citizens because they belong to an unpopular economic class pushes politics away from that ideal.
Consider ancient Athens. In 404, Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War and then forced it to replace its democracy with an oligarchy, the Thirty Tyrants, who restricted political participation to an approved list of 3,000 citizens. According to Aristotle, their regime went on to kill roughly 1,500 Athenians. Wealth, birth, and character were the motive.
Rome provides another example, one of which the Founding Fathers were aware. James Madison, for example, made note of “instances of proscriptions of rich in Antient & Italian Republics.”
In 82 B.C., after defeating his political enemies, Lucius Cornelius Sulla drafted Rome’s most famous proscription list. The names of designated enemies were publicly posted, their property was confiscated, and those who killed them could receive rewards. The killings escalated. The list itself was an escalation of earlier violence.
The Roman republic saw another list and further decline in republicanism 40 years later when the Second Triumvirate of Octavian, Mark Antony, and Lepidus renewed listing. The three leaders bargained over which enemies — and even friends and relatives — would be sacrificed. Cicero was among the most famous victims.
My point is not that Mamdani’s intent, or the existence of a list, will directly lead to murder. Rather, my point is that identifying citizens as members of a disfavored political or economic class is an old instrument of factional government. As Madison urged in “Federalist 10,” disputes based on inequality and envy lead to distrust, which leads to the dissolution of the rule of law.
The pattern occurred in Renaissance Florence. During its republican period, factions exiled their opponents and confiscated their property. Dante was a victim. Eventually, the Medici transformed the republic into a monarchy.
The pattern reappeared in revolutionary France. The 1793 Law of Suspects amounted to an enemies list. Political classification replaced neutral administration. The result was the Reign of Terror.
The 20th century supplies still darker warnings. In April 1938, Nazi Germany required Jews possessing more than 5,000 Reichsmarks in property to register their assets. The resulting list facilitated the regime’s expropriation of Jewish property during Kristallnacht.
Maoist China didn’t use a centralized list but classified individuals such as landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, and “capitalist roaders” and viewed blacklisted individuals as enemies. During the Cultural Revolution, those blacklisted were publicly named and denounced.
Ironically, Hollywood employed a similar method under McCarthyism, whereby writers and actors deemed politically threatening were blacklisted.
These examples differ in severity and circumstance from the New York case. Mamdani’s list is neither Sulla’s proscription list nor a Nazi asset registry, nor has his list inhibited property or contract rights.
SOCIALISM DIDN’T DIE WITH THE SOVIETS — MAMDANI JUST BROUGHT IT TO CITY HALL
The relevant historical similarity is narrower: Governments should be reluctant to stigmatize individual citizens because doing so threatens the rule of law. That principle should transcend party.
Madison’s solution to faction gives reason for optimism: A large and diverse republic makes it difficult for one faction to dominate. States can pursue radically different policies, while citizens and capital remain capable of moving among them.
Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D., is a retired college professor who has written on labor, education, and politics. He has recently moved from New York to Florida.