His ideas informed Giuliani’s reforms in the 1990s.
The “riot ideology” that Fred Siegel described in his 1997 book, “The Future Once Happened Here,” played a significant role in the decline of America’s cities in the 1970s and ’80s. Siegel, who died Sunday at 78, wrote that the riot ideology rested on the assumption that “the sins of racism” justified violence and criminality—and that only federal spending could solve those problems.
As a New Yorker, Siegel had witnessed the city’s rapid deterioration under Mayor John Lindsay, whose “faith in a free market of morals” led to a vast expansion of crime and social disorder. Siegel and other conservative intellectuals at the Manhattan Institute argued that the sharp rise in urban chaos wasn’t inevitable or irreversible.
In fact, disorder was a choice. By cutting police and sanitation budgets to boost welfare spending, officials had sparked an exodus of New York’s middle class. The worse things got, the more the city invested in addressing the supposed underlying causes of crime rather than re-establishing order. Siegel, who defined cities not by their government-dependent populations but by their achievements, called this “rewarding failure.”
New York’s revival began with Rudy Giuliani’s 1993 election as mayor. Other cities copied New York’s success, creating sharp declines in crime and a resurgence in urban neighborhoods and downtowns. Congress enacted a federal crime bill in 1994 and bipartisan welfare reforms in 1996. Poverty fell and work participation rates surged. Siegel advised and occasionally wrote speeches for Mr. Giuliani, but he understood that victory wasn’t permanent.
In the evolution of modern liberalism Siegel, himself an ex-liberal, saw a type of snobbery. His 2014 history of contemporary American liberalism was called “The Revolt Against the Masses.” The Obama administration, especially, was staffed by people “who believe they deserve more power because they act on behalf of people’s best interests—even if the darn fools don’t know it.” The takeover of the Democratic Party by an antidemocratic elite presaged the return of riot ideology.
Siegel saw it coming in the wake of the 2014 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. “A new riot ideology has taken hold, one similarly intoxicated with violence and willing to excuse it but with a different goal,” Siegel wrote in City Journal. “The first version of the riot ideology assumed that not only cities but also whites could be reformed; the new version assumed that America is inherently racist beyond redemption and that the black inner city needs to segregate itself from the larger society.”
What followed was another era of sharply rising levels of crime, disorder and property destruction. A new generation of middle-class urbanites is fleeing places like San Francisco, Chicago and New York.
While victory isn’t permanent, neither is defeat. Fred Siegel saw New York at its worst and helped explain how it got there. He also helped set the agenda that lifted New York back to its best.
Mr. Malanga is senior editor of City Journal, where a longer version of this article appears.
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Appeared in the May 10, 2023, print edition as ‘An Ex-Liberal Saw New York Fall and Rise’