In history, politics and religion, a purge is a removal from a job or powerful position of people who are considered undesirable or dangerous by those in power from a government, another organization, their team leaders, or society as a whole. A group undertaking such an action is labeled as purging itself. Purging is a form of persecution.
Purges can be either nonviolent or violent; the nonviolent purges are often done by the simple removal of people from their jobs or a powerful position, and the violent purges are often done by the imprisonment, exile, or murder (either through execution through a show trial or through extrajudicial killing without a trial) of those who have been purged.
- Reign of Terror
- Night of the Long Knives
- Great Purge
- McCarthyism
- Cultural Revolution
- 2016 Turkish purges
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