History Main / PersecutedIntellectuals

[[caption-width-right:350:"There so many ''worse'' crimes! [[TheLopsidedArmOfTheLaw Why are you persecuting]] '''[[WouldHurtAChild me]]?!'''"[[note]]And she is [[SpreeKiller proven right]] five seconds later, to boot.[[/note]]]]

See also BookBurning, which often accompanies the persecution of academics, and TallPoppySyndrome, where any sort of specialness is equally dangerous. Compare and contrast EvilLuddite and IntelligenceEqualsIsolation. For ''works'' that portray intelligent or learned people in a negative light, see DumbIsGood and ScienceIsBad.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E8TimeEnoughAtLast Time Enough at Last]]", everyone looks down on and picks on Henry Bemis for being a reader.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E65TheObsoleteMan The Obsolete Man]]", Romney Wordsworth the librarian is considered obsolete, as books have been banned.

* In ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', those who are too openly intelligent are quietly [[{{Unperson}} eliminated]], both from the Party ranks and the proletariat. This happens to Winston's friend Syme -- even though he's a vociferous supporter of the regime, he "sees too clearly and speaks too plainly", and simply disappears one day.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'':
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E8TimeEnoughAtLast Time Enough at Last]]", everyone looks down on and picks on Henry Bemis for being a reader.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E65TheObsoleteMan The Obsolete Man]]", Romney Wordsworth the librarian is considered obsolete, as books have been banned.
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': In the episode "Examination Day", the government exterminates anyone who scores too high on a mandatory examination at twelve years old. Dickie Jordan is one such victim.
* In ''Series/{{V 1983}}'', The Visitors begin [[InferredHolocaust persecuting and rounding up scientists]] and getting humanity to go along with it, because scientists had readily identified that the Visitors were not actually HumanAliens, so they feared exposure of their [[LizardFolk true natures]] or [[ToServeMan nefarious agenda]]. In order to do this, they {{brainwashed}} famous scientists who blow the lid on a fake international conspiracy among scientists to seize Visitor technology, and say that they withhold breakthroughs like cancer treatments for money.

* In ''Series/ThirtyRock'', Dotcom is often ridiculed, disrespected, or even disliked by others for being intelligent, articulate, and well-read. He's even told he has a "need to be the smartest guy in the room" and believes this is why he's still single.

* ''TabletopGame/GeniusTheTransgression'' has Clockstoppers. Walking avatars of anti-intellectualism who can turn even communities of scientists into an angry mob looking to persecute the intelligentsia.

* ''WesternAnimation/CowAndChicken''. The episode, "Black Sheep of the Family," invokes and lampshades this. Because Cousin Black Sheep is actually a very articulate sheep, and the rest of this universe is a CloudCuckooland, other characters [[CallingMeALogarithm take Black Sheep's big words as insults]], to the point that even [[NewJobAsThePlotDemands Red Guy, who is Officer O'Fannihee]], deems Black Sheep as a wanted criminal.
* [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in ''WesternAnimation/JimmyNeutronBoyGenius'' when ChildProdigy Jimmy runs from the AngryMob of kids [[TeenageWasteland demanding to know where their parents were]], assuming this trope to be in effect and stating "In times of crises intellectuals are always the first to go!"

** In "A Star is Burns", Mayor Quimby shows a video of one time when Seymour Skinner ''saying that the Earth revolves around the Sun'' almost has him torched on the stake. [[EvenEvilHasStandards Quimby is upset at how this has ruined the town's reputation.]]

''[a reporter takes a picture of him]''\\

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/MyGymPartnersAMonkey'', Adam convinces the school to switch their grading system from picture stickers to competitive letter grades. Due to the animals' natural instincts to destroy all they declare a threat, Adam, as well Phineas Porpoise and his "Spiffy" gang, gets persecuted for being smart. [[spoiler:The trope then gets inverted in the climax, where Adam gets other students to join him and the Spiffys by pointing out they are intelligent in their own way. The conflict ends with the "smart" students ganging up on the not-so-smart [[ButtMonkey Henry Armadillo.]]]]

->'''Carl:''' Let's make litter outta these literati!
->'''Lenny:''' That's too clever. You're one of them!

* In ''Manga/OnePiece'', in Robin's backstory, the scholars of Ohara got annihilated by the Marines because they pursued forbidden knowledge. Specifically, they sought the history of the "Void Century" which the World Government keeps hidden at all costs. Since Robin was affiliated with them and managed to escape, she became a wanted criminal at the age of 8.

* ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'': The short strip ''Danger! Genius At Work!'' features a society where intelligent people are persecuted because IndividualityIsIllegal. Literally; all the men and women look exactly the same, are respectively named Terry or June, and anyone who tries to create progress by getting ideas for new inventions is forcibly put into the Equalizer, a machine that turns a person into a Terry or June. However, at the end one of the police officers who arrests intelligent people is [[HereWeGoAgain shown getting struck by the spark of creativity himself]].

* In ''Emprise'', the first novel in the Trigon Disunity trilogy by Michael P. Kube-[=McDowell=], society has mostly collapsed and backslid technologically after an ambitious effort to improve the world horribly backfired resulting in laws against intellectuals and Kangaroo court executions. The astronomer who sets off the efforts by the leader of India to change things after revealing an alien spaceship is coming is executed by the American Redneck court for the trumped-up charge that he had wasted resources on such nonsense as studying the stars instead of turning over his solar panels for 'proper' use by the community.
* ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'' has the ''heroes'' conducting a brutal purge of StrawLiberal college professors, while wearing Crusader surplices and wielding swords, with a Gregorian choir providing live musical accompaniment. This is broadcast throughout their new nation, to show that 'Cultural Marxism' has no place there. In fairness, the professors in question ''had'' done things like force men to prostrate before a temple to Artemis and publicly confess to PC "sins", but [[DisproportionateRetribution still...]]

* Exaggerated to the extreme in the short story ''Literature/HarrisonBergeron'' where even having, by today's standards, an average intelligence, athleticism, or appearance is handicapped in order for all to be equal by way of lowest denominator.
* ''Literature/GuardianCatsAndTheLostBooksOfAlexandria'': In the 4th century, anti-intellectuals did mass {{Book Burning}}s of libraries under the guise of "protecting" the [[ThinkOfTheChildren youth]] from harmful ideas and bloated egos. They'd murder and imprison the librarians, with the imprisoned ones also being executed eventually.

* ''Theatre/{{Parade}}'': The violently anti-Semitic people of rural Georgia are already suspicious of Leo Frank because he is Jewish, but the fact that he is one of the few men in town with a college degree doesn't help matters. Prosecutor Hugh Dorsey, milking the SimpleCountryLawyer persona for all it's worth, even cites Leo's "big fancy talk" as evidence that he can't be trusted.

* The Creator/DCComics series ''The Atomic Knights'' featured a post-Atomic War setting where scientists were blamed for creating the superweapons that destroyed civilization and made the world a radioactive wasteland. The Knights wore their concealing helmets partially to obscure the fact that some of them were scientists, and thus AcceptableTargets for the mob.

* [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] in the ''Series/CosmosASpacetimeOdyssey'' episode "Hiding in the Light", which depicts the Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars that took place in [[UsefulNotes/DynastiesFromShangToQing the Qin dynasty]]. UsefulNotes/NeilDeGrasseTyson points to this as one of the great dangers to science and human achievement.
* Several episodes of ''Franchise/TheTwilightZone'' deal with this:
** In "Time Enough at Last", everyone looks down on and picks on Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith) for being a reader.
** In "The Obsolete Man", Romney Wordsworth, the librarian (also played by Burgess Meredith) is considered obsolete, as books have been banned.
** In ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'' episode "Examination Day", the government exterminates anyone who scores too high on a mandatory examination at twelve years old. Dickie Jordan is one such victim.
* In the miniseries ''Series/{{V|1983}}'', The Visitors begin [[InferredHolocaust persecuting and rounding up scientists]] and getting humanity to go along with it, because scientists had readily identified that the Visitors were not actually HumanAliens, so they feared exposure of their [[LizardFolk true natures]] or [[ToServeMan nefarious agenda]]. In order to do this, they {{brainwashed}} famous scientists who blow the lid on a fake international conspiracy among scientists to seize Visitor technology, and say that they withhold breakthroughs like cancer treatments for money.

** When [[spoiler: Emily]] meets a Wife who was sent to the Colonies, the Wife assumes that she was sent there for that reason, and tells her that she opposed the "university purges" because "getting an education doesn't make you a sinner." [[spoiler: Emily]] doesn't correct her assumption until [[spoiler: right before she kills the Wife]].
** In the second episode of season 2, [[spoiler: Offred]] encounters another version of this while hiding in the offices of the Boston Globe. All their desks are filled with their personal things as if they never left. When she goes to the basement of the building, [[spoiler: she finds nooses, bullet holes, and human-sized bloodstains, suggesting they were all assassinated by the Gilead regime]].

* ''{{Series/Trotsky}}'': In 1922 the Soviet government starts rounding up all kinds of dissident intellectuals, mostly poets and university professors. They initially want them shot, but Trotsky successfully convinces the government to just exile them (in a rare moment of mercy, though he says it's practical as mass executions could alienate many Western Communist sympathizers, urged on by Maxim Gorky).

** Seymour Skinner ''saying that the Earth revolves around the Sun'' almost has him torched on the stake once.

* During the Bangladesh Liberation War, over 1,111 Eastern Pakistani intellectuals were murdered by the army, terrorists, and Islamist militias from March to December 1971 because they protested discrimination from their Western counterparts and encouraged nationalism and sedition. Today, their tragic deaths are honored on December 14 in Bangladesh as the Martyred Intellectuals Day.

* ''Literature/TheBurningKingdoms'': Ahirani poets and scribes who has written in support of their country being independent are viciously executed for it by the Parijati who rule them.

** UsefulNotes/{{India}}, despite being UsefulNotes/TheLargestDemocracy, has draconian censorship policies and tends to have a poor record in upholding freedom of speech under threats. Famously and ironically, India was the first nation that banned Literature/TheSatanicVerses despite being a secular democracy with a Hindu majority, and that its author Creator/SalmanRushdie was British-Indian. Likewise, books critical of certain public and historical figures will lead to riots. [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement We shall leave it at that.]]