show trial

noun

1. (especially in a totalitarian state) the public trial of a political offender conducted chiefly for propagandistic purposes, as to suppress further dissent against the government by making an example of the accused.

show trial

noun

1. a trial conducted primarily to make a particular impression on the public or on other nations, esp one that demonstrates the power of the state over the individual

Word History and Origins

Origin of show trial¹

First recorded in 1945–50

Example Sentences

He said that survivors' "impressions of a show trial with no real outcome, with no-one being punished, was right".

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Foreign intervention, led by Austria and Prussia, fueled the descent into show trials and terror.

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There were show trials in Stalin’s Russia and other authoritarian regimes.

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Musk, whose band of roving nerd-assassins is conducting something like a large-scale Stalinist show trial of the entire federal bureaucracy, called Navarro a “moron” who was “dumber than a sack of bricks.”

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Vardanyan has been dealt with separately, but many in Armenia see all the cases as show trials.

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