"'Year Zero' is an idea put into practice by Pol Pot in Cambodia, that all culture and traditions within a society must be completely destroyed or discarded, and a new revolutionary culture must replace it, starting from scratch."
"In this sense, all of the history of a nation or a people before Year Zero would be largely deemed irrelevant, because it would ideally be purged and replaced from the ground up."
"Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, most of whom were French-educated Communists, took inspiration from the concept of 'Year One' in the French Revolutionary Calendar, during the French Revolution after the abolition of the French monarchy on 20 September 1792."
"He declared that the nation would start again at 'Year Zero,' and everything that existed before Year Zero was to be eradicated. This was to be a complete and thorough reset of Cambodian society."
"Knowledge of anything pre-Year Zero was prohibited. To ensure that there was no recorded memory of a pre-Year Zero society, books were burned."
"So-called New People were thought to be a threat to the new regime and were therefore especially singled out and executed during the purges accompanying Year Zero."
"Year Zero was rapidly followed by a series of revolutionary de-industrialization policies which resulted in a death toll that vastly exceeded the toll that resulted from the French Reign of Terror."
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.