Some day I want to write an essay about history’s great lowlifes. Harvey Matusow would be one. John Doggett would be another. (Doggett was the guy who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Anita Hill was an erotomaniac who made up fantasies that he was interested in her because she couldn’t handle being rejected by him.)

These are men, sometimes women, who crave escape from their anonymity, who want to be noticed, and will do anything, destroy anyone, to get that notice.

What fascinates me about these guys is how parasitic they are on one of the nobler aspects of democracy.

Democratic movements and moments have a way of churning up anonymous men and women from the lower ranks, giving them a much longed-for opportunity to demonstrate their heroism and greatness. That’s the conceit of the musical Hamilton, and it’s not entirely untrue. But even if you don’t want go to Broadway to get your history, you can’t read the history of the labor movement or the civil rights movement or the women’s movement without being awestruck by the individual talent and personal courage that breaches the storied pages of these sometimes impersonal struggles.

History’s lowlifes prey on a similar dynamic but for ends that are far more sordid and insidious. Their preferred venue is not the open contest for democratic rights but the staged assault on justice and dissent. Where the genuine democrat displays her mettle and achieves her greatness in a revolution or social movement, history’s lowlife finds his level in a more populist (or pseudo-populist) and poisonous setting: the inquisition.

Like other, more genuine democratic moments, inquisitions summon men and women from below. Unlike other, more genuine democratic moments, they summon men and women who are willing to play their toxic role in a ritual of degradation. So out of McCarthyism you get Matusow; out of the Anita Hill hearings, you get John Doggett.

On Twitter, you can see some potential candidates for History’s Great Lowlifes.