The term Year Zero, applied to the takeover of Cambodia in 1975 by the Khmer Rouge, is an analogy to the Year One of the French Revolutionary Calendar. During the French Revolution, after the abolition of the French monarchy (September 20, 1792), the National Convention instituted a new calendar and declared the beginning of the Year I. The Khmer Rouge takeover of Phnom Penh was rapidly followed by a series of drastic revolutionary policies vastly exceeding those of the French Reign of Terror and culminating in the Cambodian Genocide.
The idea behind Year Zero is 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. All history of a nation or people before Year Zero is largely irrelevant, as it will (as an ideal) be purged and replaced from the ground up.
In Cambodia, teachers and intellectuals especially were singled out and executed as part of the above mentioned purge aspect of Year Zero. It is believed that a Year Zero scenario occurs in history when a culture or state becomes too extreme or radical, and that by nature dramatic changes occur like a pendulum swinging, possibly leaving a bloody situation like in Cambodia or France until the pendulum returns to its natural state.
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