History Main / KillThePoor

* The Creator/MarquisDeSade had some of his characters muse on doing this, including possibly the first modern proposal of bioterrorism, since one says they should deliberately spread plague in poor areas. Others propose burning poorhouses and charity hospitals, along with using the poor in lethal medical experimentation. At least [[https://www.academia.edu/37697403/An_Unblinking_Gaze_On_the_Philosophy_of_the_Marquis_de_Sade_PhD_thesis_in_philosophy_ one author]] has seen a parallel with the later acts and philosophy of the Nazis, as his characters justify this in similar ways (although there were differences as well). The people whom they abduct, rape, torture, and then kill are also usually poor ([[WouldHurtAChild often children]]) because [[PragmaticVillainy that they're more vulnerable]].

->''"The sun beams down on a brand new day,''\\
''No more welfare tax to pay,''\\
''Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light.''\\
''Jobless millions whisked away,''\\
''At last we have more room to play,''\\
''All systems go to kill the poor tonight."''

* In ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'', one of the Megamorphs books begins in an alternate universe where the homeless "are rounded up and shot."
* In G.K. Chesterton's ''The Ball And The Cross'', the Devil (who is in disguise at the time) incorporates this into one of his false portrayals of Heaven. This serves as the GlamourFailure that tips off the atheist Turnbull to the true nature of his host.
* Although he doesn't advocate outright killing the poor, in Creator/CharlesDickens' ''Literature/AChristmasCarol'' Ebenezer Scrooge ''does'' advocate the poor offing ''themselves'', which [[IronicEcho later comes back to bite him]] during the Christmas Present sequence. This is a TakeThat towards Thomas Malthus, who notoriously predicted that [[OverpopulationCrisis population would soon outstrip resources]] and advocated letting the poor starve to help solve this problem.

* ''Literature/FuturetrackFive'' by Creator/RobertWestall turns out to be about this. It's what [[spoiler: Scott-Astbury]] was really up to--deliberately trying to wipe out the working class and replace them with a selectively bred version who would be more respectful to their "rightful masters".

* [[Creator/StephenKing Richard Bachman]]'s ''Literature/TheRunningMan''. Well, it sure ain't rich people trying out for ''Swim the Crocodiles'' or ''Treadmill to Bucks.'' It's poor and desperate people like Ben Richards. And the Games themselves serve to distract the lower class from the fact that they're dying of emphysema and lung cancer as a result of air pollution, while the upper class gets fancy nose filters as protection from it.

** Slaughtering homeless people on large scales happens so frequently that the culprits [[NicknamingTheEnemy have their own nickname]]: "house cleaners."

** Another serial killer-of-the-week was a former firefighter who was also a germaphobe. When saving some homeless people from a fire got him infected with HIV because of blood spatter, he concluded that all of them were nothing more than walking diseases and had to die, so he began hunting homeless people one by one and drowning them in bleach before setting them on fire.
* One segment on ''Series/TheDayToday'' focuses on how London police are clamping down on homelessness... LITERALLY--with car wheel clamps. Any homeless person found asleep or motionless after 9 PM is clamped and forced to stay where they are upon waking up. They are later prosecuted and punished.

* Creator/MarquisDeSade had some of his characters muse on doing this, including possibly the first modern proposal of bioterrorism, since one says they should deliberately spread plague in poor areas. Others propose burning poorhouses and charity hospitals, along with using the poor in lethal medical experimentation. At least [[https://www.academia.edu/37697403/An_Unblinking_Gaze_On_the_Philosophy_of_the_Marquis_de_Sade_PhD_thesis_in_philosophy_ one author]] has seen a parallel with the later acts and philosophy of the Nazis, as his characters justify this in similar ways (although there were differences as well). The people whom they abduct, rape, torture, and then kill are also usually poor ([[WouldHurtAChild often children]]) because [[PragmaticVillainy that they're more vulnerable]].

* A flashback in ''Manga/OnePiece'' shows Luffy's home island is [[UrbanSegregation half palaces of the rich]], [[DownInTheDumps half dumping ground where everyone else lives]]. In an effort to "clean things up" before a visit of the [[AristocratsAreEvil World Nobles]], the local rich set the other half on fire.

* In the episode "The Masquerade" of ''[[WebVideo/DreamSMP Tales From the SMP]]'', even among a CastFullOfRichPeople, a majority of whom [[SlobsVersusSnobs hold disdain towards the poor]], [[AristocratsAreEvil Sir Billiam]] takes the cake by inviting his guests to a masquerade party in order to [[spoiler:feed them to [[BotanicalAbomination The Egg]]]], and justifies the attendees' deaths by calling them only "upper middle class", implying that he believes that death is an effective way to deal with the poor. [[spoiler:He then orders Karl's death, explaining that January means Karl's revenue as a Minecraft streamer is very low, despite previously allowing his attendance because he considered streaming a profitable career.]]

* The titular event in ''Film/ThePurge'' is explicitly encouraged as a means of killing off homeless people and other "leeches of society" types. In the sequels, [[spoiler:it turns out the poors aren't being killed quickly enough for the New Founding Fathers' liking, so they send out ''death squads'' to speed the process along, and put a hit on the Presidential candidate running on a platform to stop it]].

In either case, this trope is usually rife with sociopolitical and socioeconomic {{Satire}} and [[RuleOfSymbolism Symbolism]], exaggerating how {{Upper Class Twit}}s and other wealthy elites both ''want'' to view the lower classes and, more cynically, how they may ''actually'' view such groups. In this fashion, the concept could be used as a form of BlackComedy. To other extents, this could involve a character crossing the MoralEventHorizon and establishing themself as a PoliticallyIncorrectVillain. It might also lead to a HighClassCannibal.

* In the episode "The Masquerade" of ''[[LetsPlay/DreamSMP Tales From the SMP]]'', even among a CastFullOfRichPeople, a majority of whom [[SlobsVersusSnobs hold disdain towards the poor]], [[AristocratsAreEvil Sir Billiam]] takes the cake by inviting his guests to a masquerade party in order to [[spoiler:feed them to [[BotanicalAbomination The Egg]]]], and justifies the attendees' deaths by calling them only "upper middle class", implying that he believes that death is an effective way to deal with the poor. [[spoiler:He then orders Karl's death, explaining that January means Karl's revenue as a Minecraft streamer is very low, despite previously allowing his attendance because he considered streaming a profitable career.]]

* Reno in ''Film/TheDrillerKiller'' originally targeted homeless people because they made him feel disgusted.
* ''Hell of the Living Dead'': Towards the end of this Italian ZombieApocalypse BMovie (a collaboration between Bruno Mattei andClaudio Fragasso), the sole female survivor asserts that the zombies are the product of a cruel experiment by a secret cabal of the elite to cull the population of the third world by releasing chemicals that will cause the impoverished to eat each other alive. This comes out of nowhere and with no foreshadowing.

* In ''Manga/ThePromisedNeverland'', this was the solution that Queen Negravalima and the other demon nobility agreed upon when it was discovered [[spoiler:there wasn't enough food to feed every citizen of the demon kingdom--the idea being to just let the commoners starve, knowing they would kill each other for resources before that, an idea that fellow nobleman [[TokenGoodTeammate Geelen]] vehemently opposed, advocating instead to share their excess premium food with the commoners. In response, [[AristocratsAreEvil the Queen and the other noble families collectively framed Geelen and exiled him and his family]] so there wouldn't be anyone who had the political power who would stop them.]]

* In ''Film/AmericanPsycho'', sadistic SerialKiller Patrick Bateman feels nothing but ill will and contempt for the lower classes. After he sends many mixed signals to one homeless man he meets -- from pulling out his wallet and flipping through the money he has to berating him to get a job -- Patrick stabs the homeless man to death after he praised Patrick for being "so kind." In his confession to his lawyer over the phone, Bateman claims to have killed "maybe five or ten" homeless people altogether. [[spoiler: Though by the end of the film, it's unclear if he's actually killed ''anyone'']].

* ''Literature/NightHuntress'': In the first book in the series, the ManBehindTheMan is having vampires eliminate poor people to bolster his approval rating as governor, and plans to get himself elected president and expand nationwide.

* ''VideoGame/AmnesiaAMachineForPigs'' combines this trope with IndustrializedEvil. [[spoiler:Mandus]] has used the Machine to [[spoiler:slaughter the homeless and orphans, and process their meat.]] Eventually, however, [[spoiler:he comes to [[EatTheRich do the same to the rich]]]].

* This turns out to essentially be [[spoiler:Ultor's big plan to improve Stilwater]] in ''VideoGame/SaintsRow2''. Only that [[spoiler:the Saints beat them to it by actually [[MoralEventHorizon killing them]].]] Mind you, the Saints are the [[VillainProtagonist player]] controlled gang.

* In ''WebVideo/DoctorHorriblesSingAlongBlog'', when Captain Hammer speaks on the opening of a new homeless shelter, he says that he hates the homeless[[CueCardPause ...ness problem]]. Once he launches into his song "Everyone's a Hero", it becomes abundantly clear that he does, in fact, hate the homeless and anyone else not as [[MilesGloriosus "heroic"]] as himself.

** In the "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS18E4TreehouseOfHorrorXVII Treehouse of Horror XVII]]" short "Married To The Blob," Mayor Quimby and the town of Springfield reach a compromise with Homer, who has gained an insatiable appetite after becoming The Blob: they keep Homer inside a new "homeless shelter," and any vagrants who enter are eaten by him. In a very twisted way, this is supposed to kill two birds with one stone.

** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS6E5SideshowBobRoberts Sideshow Bob Roberts]]", a Creator/RushLimbaugh parody mocks the political left for not wanting to arrest the homeless.

--> "My dad is the smartest guy in the whole wide world. He has taught me that all poor people are actually things called clods. I wanna live in a world of only gods, so my idea to make America better is put all the poor people into camps. If we get rid of them, there will be nothing but rich people. And there won't be any hunger, poverty, or homeless people. 'Cause they'll all be dead. The end."

* In ''[[http://www.ansible.co.uk/books/3mill.html The Third Millennium]]'' (a fictional history book supposedly written in the early 3000's), the "Age of Crisis" ended in 2180 with the death of "The Lost Billion," over 1 billion missing persons between 2000 and 2180 that were never found; most were poor. Disturbingly, the authors imply that their deaths ended up saving the world, not because they were poor but because they lacked either the will or the ability to give up their old ways of life and find new ones, and thus were the last remaining force holding humanity back from the world of the future.

* In ''Misspent Youth'' by Robert Bohl, the Authority (the group-created villain) frequently victimizes the poor.

->''"The Sun beams down on a brand new day,''\\

Instead of seeking to [[NoPoverty eliminate poverty]] by educating and supporting the impoverished so they can attain a greater quality of life and income, some believe it would be easier to eliminate them through mass execution.

On the plus side, this approach would have [[MetaphoricallyTrue a whopping 100% success rate]]. On the other hand, it's extremely unethical, and also counter-productive to having a more prosperous economy (If you kill workers holding low-paying jobs, now nobody is doing their job, which hurts the economy; similarly, targeting the unemployed wouldn't benefit the economy, either).

Less lethal alternatives may involve poverty being made illegal and poor people being treated as criminals; this may involve forcing them into slave labor or a similar venture so that they can be "put to better use." This has some historical precedence with things like the workhouse system in 1800s Britain, but fiction will usually take it to even more horrifying extents.

In either case, such positions are usually rife with sociopolitical and socioeconomic {{Satire}} and [[RuleOfSymbolism Symbolism]], exaggerating how {{Upper Class Twit}}s and other wealthy elites both ''want'' to view the lower classes and, more cynically, how they may ''actually'' view such groups. In this fashion, the concept could be used as a form of BlackComedy. To other extents, this could involve a character crossing the MoralEventHorizon and establishing themself as a PoliticallyIncorrectVillain. In hyperbolic, satirical cases, it might lead to a HighClassCannibal.

A SubTrope of [[TheSocialDarwinist Social Darwinism]] and SlobsVersusSnobs.

* ''Manga/GalaxyExpress999'' takes place in a CrapsackWorld where rich nobles who have swapped their bodies for mechanized bodies are free to hunt poor humans for sport. (This was how the main character Tetsuro's mother died. She was even stuffed and mounted on a wall.)

* A flashback in ''Manga/OnePiece'' shows Luffy's home island is [[UrbanSegregation half palaces of the rich]], [[DownInTheDumps half dumping ground where everyone else lives]]. In an effort to "clean things up" before a visit of the [[AristocratsAreEvil World Nobles]], the local nobles set their other half on fire.

** Another serial killer-of-the-week was a decorated former firefighter who was also a germaphobe. When saving some homeless people from a fire got him infected with HIV because of blood spatter, he concluded that all of them were nothing more than walking diseases and had to die, so he began hunting homeless people one by one and drowning them in bleach before setting them on fire.

* Vlad Tepes ([-AKA-] Vlad [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast the Impaler]] -- the man who {{Dracula}} was very loosely modeled after), allegedly held a banquet for all the poor people in his land (or beggars, thieves or merchants exploiting his people, depending on the version), at which time he locked them in and set the room on fire. The reason normally given for hosting the banquet before killing them? It would be inhumane to kill them on an empty stomach...

* In ''[[http://misspentyouthgame.com/ Misspent Youth]]'' by Robert Bohl, The Authority (the group-created villain) frequently victimizes the poor.

* In the ''Waterdeep: Dragon Heist'' adventure for ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' 5th edition, the noble Cassalanter family plans to hold a magnificent feast for 100 of Waterdeep's poorest. [[spoiler:The food and drink will be laced with Midnight Tears, and the whole scheme is a plot to sacrifice 99 souls to Asmodeus so the Cassalanters won't have to sacrifice their own children.]]

** During the old ''Rogue Trader'' edition of 40K, one of the blurbs mentioned that Hive Cities often get population explosions beyond their already teeming masses so culls are done on the hivers.

'''Leela:''' ...[[TheNotSoHarmlessPunishment Out of a cannon]], [[HurlItIntoTheSun into the sun]].

** In the "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS18E4TreehouseOfHorrorXVII Treehouse of Horror XVII]]" short "Married To The Blob," Mayor Quimby and the town of Springfield reach a compromise with Homer, who has gained an insatiable appetite after becoming The Blob: they keep Homer inside a new "homeless shelter," and any vagrants who enter are eaten by him. In a very twisted way, this is effectively supposed to kill two birds with one stone.

* ''Series/ThatMitchellAndWebbLook'' had [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg a sketch all about this]] where the Prime Minister, in a meeting about Britain's economic problems, asks if his aides have done an analysis on the effects of killing all the poor. When they protest that the country would never do such a thing, he gets offended, pointing out that he'd never said they ''would'' do it, he just wanted to make sure they'd looked at all the options (the analysis shows it wouldn't help). He does want to round up all the dwarves, though...

** Judge Whitey accidentally filled up all the mental asylums (for non-robots at least) when he declared poverty a mental illness.

--->'''Nudar''': Like all rich people, we're gonna need weapons to kill poor people.\\
'''Other scammer''': In self-defense?\\
'''Nudar''': Yes, that too.

** Slaughtering homeless people on large scales happens so frequently that the culprits have their own nickname: "house cleaners."

* In ''[[http://www.ansible.co.uk/books/3mill.html The Third Millennium]]'' (a fictional history book supposedly written in the early 3000's), the "Age of Crisis" ended in 2180 with the death of "The Lost Billion," over 1 billion missing persons between 2000 and 2180 that were never found; most were poor. The authors imply that their deaths ended up saving the world, not because they were poor but because they lacked either the will or the ability to give up their old ways of life and find new ones, and thus were the last remaining force holding humanity back from the world of the future.

** The unemployment problem was "solved" in a much more humane fashion--by making it illegal to be unemployed.
--->'''Fry''': What if I refuse [to do the job]?\\
'''Leela''': Then you'll be fired...\\
'''Fry''': Fine!\\
'''Leela''': ...[[TheNotSoHarmlessPunishment Out of a cannon]], [[HurlItIntoTheSun into the sun]].
** Judge Whitey accidentally filled up all the mental asylums (for non-robots at least) when he declared poverty was a mental illness.

* ''Literature/NightHuntress'': In the first book in the series, the ManBehindTheMan is having vampires do this to bolster his approval rating as governor, and plans to get himself elected president and expand nationwide.