by Dr. Roger I. Roots
I previously knew of only one communist regime in world history that had sought to execute all people wearing glasses: the government of communist-era Cambodia. However, I recently read an account by Theodore Dalrymple about his past adventures in Equatorial Guinea.
Dalrymple writes that:
I was thrilled to be told in Equatorial Guinea that if anybody in authority there knew that I was a writer (of sorts) I would be killed, cut up and thrown into the sea: . . . . The first president was known by the title of The Only Miracle, and certainly he had produced startling changes in the country: a third of the population had either been killed or had fled. Among other achievements, he managed to abolish the wearing of glasses, if not the reasons for doing so. He associated glasses with being an intellectual, and intellectuals with danger, having been a failed intellectual himself. The errors in his logic may explain why he failed as one.
The reason that socialists invariably seek to kill or control those with glasses is that they tend to identify glasses-wearing people with literacy, and literacy is viewed as a privilege of an aristocracy. Killing the literate is a type of redistribution of wealth.
