He was doing what other Socialists have done before him: target people who stand in the way of totalitarianism for destruction. And I mean that quite literally--the elimination of over 100 million people last century started in a similar fashion.
I have been reading a lot about the American Revolution, and that’s how it happened here. If you made it known you were a loyalist you were likely to get your house burned down, or dragged in chains to a ship embarked for England with nothing but the clothes on your back, or tarred and feathered, or murdered.