History Main / PersecutedIntellectuals

* 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.

* UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte fancied himself as an intellectual and usually made a show of giving rewards and sinecures to important scientists and artists. But in practice, the likes of Madame de Stael were driven into exile, the media was policed and subject to strict control. He also had Creator/MarquisDeSade imprisoned in Charenton for the rest of his life, solely because he read his works and found them disgusting, which to be fair they were and De Sade comes across as a depraved monster for anyone who has read about his personal life. Far less well known, except in Germany, is the time he ordered the execution of Johann Philipp Palm of Nuremberg, a publisher of a pamphlet criticizing the French occupation.

* 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.

An UpToEleven situation of this trope (mainly in SF) happens when the intellectuals lean so much on the side of {{Ubermensch}} that they seem to form a new species to any "normal" human. Expect TorchesAndPitchforks, maybe also HumansAreTheRealMonsters.

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

->''"I think the people of this country have had enough of experts".''
-->-- Michael Gove (anti-intellectual British MP during the campaigning for the Brexit referendum)

* 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 impersonate 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 the miniseries ''Series/{{V|1983}}'', [[ANaziByAnyOtherName 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 actually reptilian aliens with [[ToServeMan a nefarious agenda]].

* Exaggerated to the extreme in the short story ''Harrison Bergeron'' 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/TalesOfTheBountyHunters'': In "The Last One Standing: The Tale of Boba Fett" we learn that the Empire had arrested and killed famous musicians who spoke out to protest them, along with trying to destroy all their music. Kardue'sai'Malloc, Fett's bounty at the end of the story, owns the only remaining copies of many such musicians' work. He comes quietly with Fett in return for bringing his music recordings and disseminating them. Fett agrees to his arrangement.

* In a flashback in the ''AudioPlay/BlakesSeven'' audio "Solitary", Federation troops march into a school, round up the students and the teachers and then execute the teachers for the crime of "agitation". The children are sent off to factories.

* ''Film/ThePromise2016'': The main protagonist is an doctor who gets rounded up by the Ottoman authorities alongside several Armenian notables during the Red Sunday, the event usually regarded as beginning the Armenian Genocide (when over 200 intellectual Armenians were rounded up, with most killed).

* In ''Literature/{{Anathem}}'', mathematicians (called "Avout") are confined to monasteries (called "Maths"), and only allowed contact with the outside world once per year, decade, century or millennium. On three occasions the Maths were invaded because the Avout invented technologies considered too dangerous ("new matter", genetic engineering, and [[spoiler: magic]]). There are lesser schools within the Maths, where outsiders can go for a limited amount of time (not more than a month) to learn needed skills, but the more advanced orders are shut off from the rest of society for the most part.

* Solzhenitsyn's novel ''The First Circle'' dramatizes Stalin's imprisonment of scientific intellectuals. The paradox, as noted in many of Solzhenitsyn's novels, is that intellectuals are actually freer in the Gulag, where the worst has largely already happened to them, than they would be in the Soviet Union outside. Their bodies might be imprisoned, they might be on a poor diet, but their minds are free to interact and think and speak heresy.

* 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.

* Exaggerated to the extreme in the short story ''Harrison Bergeron'' 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.

* In an episode of ''Series/{{Becker}}'', Becker is called to jury duty but keeps getting rejected. He believes that lawyers don't want him because they believe as a doctor he is too intelligent. At one point he almost gets accepted on a jury until he mentions he was reading a book. Meanwhile his ditzy assistant Linda is quickly put on a jury and made foreman.

* In the miniseries ''Series/{{V|1983}}'', [[ANaziByAnyOtherName 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 actually reptilian aliens with [[ToServeMan a nefarious agenda]].

** 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]].

* John [=LaMarr=] from ''Series/TheOrville'' grew up on a farming colony where eggheads weren't exactly prized, so he learned to adapt via ObfuscatingStupidity. When [[NumberTwo Kelly Grayson]] discovers how smart he really is, she gets [[TheCaptain Captain Mercer]] to promote him to chief engineer.

* A Vox Populi rebel in ''VideoGame/BioshockInfinite'' tells his comrades to kill anyone they see wearing glasses, probably in reference to the Khmer Rouge doing the same. The Vox are not specifically anti-science or anti-intellectual, but as the poorest and most oppressed citizens of Columbia they oppose anything that represents the upper classes.

** In "The Monkey Suit", we get one of the worst examples of TheLopsidedArmOfTheLaw in fiction (and the current page picture) when Ned Flanders forces the Springfield school system to switch to creationism. As a result Lisa gets arrested for daring to continue to read Charles Darwin's "''Theory of Evolution''" in school grounds, and this police force [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feEU2gyIjGE decides to wilfully ignore]] Snake ''[[SpreeKiller going on a killing spree]] right in front of them'' (in Wiggum's defense, [[BadCopIncompetentCop extremely feeble as it is]], he sheepishly mentions the police department only has enough budget to enforce the most recent law passed, and he does admit that it's the absolute worst, far as policy goes).

** Intellectuals were targeted in the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn USSR]] as part of UsefulNotes/JosefStalin's "Great Purge". The primary example was persecution of biologists who disagreed with "Lysenkoism", a doctrine promulgated by an obscure agronomist named Trofim Lysenko who believed {{Lamarck was right}}. For ideological reasons the regime favored Lamarck/Lysenko over the then-new synthesis of Darwin/Mendel.[[note]]Lamarkism was associated with a revolutionary hero and agricultural scientist named Ivan Michurin, whose work on plant selection was misinterpreted as a rejection of genetics, and Darwin's theory of natural selection was rejected due to a false association with Social Darwinism.[[/note]] Persecution of dissidents from Lysenkoism went on into the 1950s, helping to cause the Soviet famines as its methods were painfully disproven and setting back genetic science in the country by decades. To a lesser extent, astronomers began to disappear when sunspot research was deemed "un-Marxist", linguists who disagreed with Stalin's preferred pseudoscientific "Japhetic theory" were killed or imprisoned, and the Meteorological Office was purged for failing to predict weather harmful to crops. Mathematicians who disagreed that the Law of Large Numbers was false also suffered persecution.

** China's UsefulNotes/CulturalRevolution included a war against academia, with many scholars, teachers, scientists and especially historians (a major goal was to abolish old traditions) beaten up, foreclosed on, killed or drafted for menial labor.

** France during the Terror was not shy of using the guillotine against anyone they felt were threats to the state or who had shady political pasts. Of course as a rule, they did not persecute people solely because they were intellectuals but in practice they did claim populist ideas and subscribed to GuiltByAssociation and [[KangarooCourt show trials]]. Prominent victims include chemist Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier, who was guillotined because of his past as a tax collector, Creator/ThomasPaine and Marquis de Condorcet, both of them imprisoned for their connections to the Girondins, with Condorcet committing suicide in captivity. Likewise, Creator/MarquisDeSade was confined because his son defected to the enemy and he was an ex-aristocrat, who as judge of the local Revolutionary tribunal let many people escape the guillotine.
** In America, during the RedScare, there were the Palmer Raids which deported many radical intellectuals, local and international, out of America. During TheThirties there was the Dies Committee which investigated the Federal Theatre Works committee and accused Creator/ChristopherMarlowe and Creator/{{Euripides}} [[InsaneTrollLogic of being communists]] and even argued [[AntiIntellectualism that art was inherently subversive of American values]]. During the era of [=McCarthyism=], you had [[UsefulNotes/TheHollywoodBlacklist the Blacklist]] where many Hollywood film-makers, screenwriters and actors were forced out of work and into exile because of suspected and actual communist sympathies and affiliations. Similar persecution existed during the Civil Rights Movement and [=FBI=] chief J. Edgar Hoover was notorious for wire-tapping and building files on many artists and other intellectuals who had been accused of being subversive.

* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Armenian_intellectuals_on_24_April_1915 Red Sunday]] was the deportation and eventual execution of 200 some Armenian intellectuals like artists, journalists, lawyers, clergymen and doctors by the Ottoman Empire under the Committee of Union and Progress just prior to the Armenian Genocide in order to decapitate any resistance by Armenians before it could happen.
* Similarly, during the German occupation of Poland, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion intellectuals were targeted for elimination]] to prevent them leading any Polish resistance efforts. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Lviv_professors 25 professors in Lwów were killed along with their families]], for instance. Teachers and clergy (sometimes overlapping) were especially targeted. It didn't work, as Poland soon had the occupied countries' largest resistance movement.
* 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.
* The UsefulNotes/AlgerianCivilWar really came to a head with a series of assassinations of university academics, intellectuals, writers, artists, journalists and medical doctors by the GIA (Armed Islamic Group in English), a renegade faction even more radical and fundamentalist than the other Islamists, who targeted intellectuals more than government officials because they were seen as a "corrupting, foreign influence" due to speaking French. One infamous quote by GIA leaders are "those that fight us by the pen will die by the sword". The most well-known victims were Rai singer Cheb Hasni and secularist/poet Lounès Matoub.

* The infamous UsefulNotes/YeonsangunOfJoseon made a habit of persecuting intellectuals. First he organised two purges of scholars and their families. Then he executed scholars who criticised his great-grandfather. Then he outlawed all forms of writing because the common people wrote against him. Then he turned the Seonggyungwan, the most prestigious school in Korea, into his personal brothel.

** One extreme example is the massacre of academics under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge In UsefulNotes/{{Cambodia}}, who would kill people for merely ''wearing eyeglasses'' (as it suggested literacy).

* 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 jury 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/MartinFierro'' When Fierro reflects that the Judge punished him because Fierro didn't vote the last election, Fierro invokes this trope arguing that The Judge took him for one of them, when the truth was that Fierro didn't vote because he is DumbIsGood and [[ApatheticCitizens he is simply not interested in that]]

* ''{{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 alientate many Western Communist sympathizes, urged on by Maxim Gorky).

* ''Literature/TalesOfTheBountyHunters'': In "The Last Man Standing: The Tale of Boba Fett" we learn that the Empire had arrested and killed famous musicians who spoke out to protest them, along with trying to destroy all their music. Kardue'sai'Malloc, Fett's bounty at the end of the story, owns the only remaining copies of many such musicians' work. He comes quietly with Fett in return for bringing his music recordings and disseminating them. Fett agrees to his arrangement.

* ''Literature/TalesOfTheBountyHunters'': In "The Last Man Standing: The Tale of Boba Fett" we learn that the Empire had arrested and killed famous musicians who spoke out to protest them, along with trying to destroy all their music. Kardue Sai'Malloc, Fett's bounty at the end of the story, owns the only remaining copies of many such musicians' work. He comes quietly with Fett in return for bringing his music recordings and disseminating them. Fett agrees to his arrangement.

* Similarly, during the German occupation of Poland, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion intellectuals were targeted for elimination]] to prevent them leading any Polish resistance efforts. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Lw%C3%B3w_professors 25 professors in Lwów were killed along with their families]], for instance. Teachers and clergy (sometimes overlapping) were especially targeted. It didn't work, as Poland soon had the occupied countries' largest resistance movement.

* ''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...]]

* Similarly, during the German occupation of Poland, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion intellectuals were targeted for elimination]] to prevent them leading any Polish resistance efforts. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Lw%C3%B3w_professors 25 professors in Lwów were killed along with their families]], for instance. Teachers and clergy (sometimes overlapping) were especially targeted.

* The UsefulNotes/AlgerianCivilWar really came to a head with series of assassinations of university academics, intellectuals, writers, artists, journalists and medical doctors by the GIA (Armed Islamic Group in English), a renegade faction even more radical and fundamentalist than the other Islamists, who targeted intellectuals more than government officials because they were seen as "corrupting, foreign influence" due to speaking French. One infamous quote by GIA leaders are "those that fight us by the pen will die by the sword". The most well-known victims were Rai singer Cheb Hasni and secularist/poet Lounès Matoub.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/persecuted_intellectuals.png]]

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/MyGymPartnersAMonkey'', Adam convinces the school two 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.

** In "The Monkey Suit", we get one of the worst examples of TheLopsidedArmOfTheLaw in fiction (and the current page picture) when Ned Flanders forces the Springfield school system to switch to creationism. As a result Lisa gets arrested for daring to continue to read Charles Darwin's "''Theory of Evolution''" in school grounds, and this police force [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feEU2gyIjGE decides to wilfully ignore]] Snake ''[[SpreeKiller going on a killing spree]] right in front of them'' (in Wiggum's defense, [[BadCopIncompetentCop extremely feeble as it is]], he sheepishly mentions the police department only has enough budget to enforce the most recent law passed).

** In the episode "HOMR", Homer [[FlowersForAlgernonSyndrome becoming incredibly smart (or at least comparatively) for a short time]] leads to him [[IntelligenceEqualsIsolation temporarily becoming a pariah]]. In a parody of a DrunkenMontage, he even wanders past signs saying "Dum-Dum Club" and "Smart People Not Welcome".

** In "The Monkey Suit", we get one of the worst examples of TheLopsidedArmOfTheLaw in fiction (and the current page picture) when Ned Flanders forces the Springfield school system to switch to creationism. As a result Lisa gets arrested for daring to continue to read Charles Darwin's "''Theory of Evolution''" in school grounds, with a full SWATTeam barging into the room and all, and this absurdly-heavily-armed police force decides to wilfully ignore Snake ''[[SpreeKiller going on a killing spree]] right in front of them'' (in Wiggum's defense, [[badCopIncompetentCop extremely feeble as it is]], he sheepishly mentions the police department only has enough budget to enforce three laws at a time).

* Similarly, during the German occupation of Poland, intellectuals were targeted for elimination to prevent them leading Polish resistance efforts. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Lw%C3%B3w_professors 25 professors in Lwów were killed along with their families]], probably the largest mass killing to this end, though hardly the only one. Teachers and clergy (sometimes overlapping) were especially targeted.