What would you say are the most equivalent parallels from history?

I don't see this ending well, but I can't think of anything to compare it to. The canonical answer for an anti-scientific society would be the 16th century Catholic Church, and it actually didn't turn out too badly for them. The USSR invested in a lot of bad science, but they also did a lot of good work; they were often just wrong instead of having a specific grievance against scientists as a class.