In history, religion and political science, a purge is a position removal or execution of people who are considered undesirable by those in power from a government, another, their team leaders, or society as a whole.
Beginning in 1966, Chairman Mao Zedong and his associates purged much of the Chinese Communist Party's leadership, including the head of state, President Liu Shaoqi and the then-Secretary-General, Deng Xiaoping, as part of what the leaders termed the Cultural Revolution.
[citation needed] The earliest use of the term dates back to the English Civil War's Pride's Purge.
While leading the USSR, Joseph Stalin carried out repeated purges which resulted in tens of thousands of people sentenced to Gulag labor camps and the outright executions of rival communists, military officers, ethnic minorities, wreckers, and citizens accused of plotting against communism.
[4] In 1934, Chancellor Adolf Hitler ordered the execution of Ernst Röhm, other leaders of the Sturmabteilung militia, and political opponents.
[5][6][7] Carried out by the Japanese government and private corporations with the aid and encouragement of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), the Red Purge resulted in tens of thousands of alleged members, supporters, or sympathizers of left-wing groups, especially those said to be affiliated with the Japanese Communist Party, removed from their jobs in government, the private sector, universities, and schools.
[11] The Red Purge reached a peak following the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950,[11] when communist China supported North Korea.
One prominent purge was carried out in 1989 when a high-ranking Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces general named Arnaldo Ochoa was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad on charges of drug trafficking.
Senator Joseph McCarthy was a major driver of efforts to purge perceived communist sympathizers through the 1940s and 1950s, which ended in his condemnation and censure in 1954.
[21] Another estimate places the number, also before 2007, at "100,000 civil servants, doctors, and teachers", who were forcibly removed from the public sector due to low-level affiliation.
[22] Members of the Kim family have each periodically purged their political rivals or perceived threats since consolidating their control over North Korea, beginning in the 1950s.
The purge ostensibly focused mainly on public servants and soldiers alleged to be part of the Gülen movement, the group the government blamed for the coup.