Year Zero (Khmer: ឆ្នាំសូន្យ, chhnam saun) is the idea, put into practice by Pol Pot in Democratic Kampuchea, 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. John Pilger, Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia (1979)