"While I was gone, they set the world on fire. It wasn't a war anymore; it was a remaking. Some losses are inevitable. Some... unthinkable. Now they've built a new world. Armies of steel and thunder. They're rewriting history."
— William "B.J." Blazkowicz, announcement trailer for Wolfenstein: The New Order
Genocide is, by definition, the deliberate destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. This is typically done by killing every single member. However, there are other ways of destroying groups like this. For example, by destroying their identity.
Cultural erasure is the destruction of everything that makes a certain group unique: their traditions, values, languages, everything that has significance to them. This is typically done following the conquest by a hostile power that forces this group to abandon their old ways and accept the way of life this power introduces. Native languages may be outlawed, books burned, and religions banned. Sites and monuments that hold cultural significance may be demolished as well.
Reasons for cultural erasure vary. Following the conquest of a people, the new leaders may try to enforce the notion of Cultural Posturing and that the new group of people, who are a valuable resource, should be fully integrated as part of the new society. Typically involves a Propaganda Machine, Culture Police and State Sec working hard to achieve that goal. Children from the targeted group may be forcibly taken from their families to be raised in an Assimilation Academy or in a family from the dominant culture, and taught "Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?" (often enforced through horrific abuse; there's a reason this phenomenon is referred to in Real Life as cultural genocide
).note A Foreign Ruling Class could try to enforce it to the people it rules and a Noble Tongue could be enforced to the larger population. Alternatively, it could be a form of humiliation and dehumanization toward the conquered and take away some cultural landmarks that made them unique. Or it could just be done to hurt them.
This erasure has happened all throughout history in Real Life, dating back to the early man and ritual practices or outright land resources and advantages depending on location. As such, much of what is known about lost cultures is from the conquerors, if not by what little evidence remains in old construction sites and artwork buried in the earth or abandoned in forests and deserts. Evidence of cultures to have existed is through the language, many having words whose etymological origin indicates a long forgotten past. For these reasons, and more, this article is one that asks for No Real Life Examples, Please! — an instance where Wikipedia is far more suitable to document the subject matter in areas that TVTropes couldn't.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Code Geass: Every nation the Holy Brittanian Empire conquered is stripped of its freedom, rights, culture, and even names. Despite this happening to Japan (Area 11), the series is pretty heavy on Japanese culture, even featuring everyone (including Nina who hates Japan) in kimonos in a video game.
- Golden Kamuy is about a deadly search for the legendary gold that seven Ainu gathered to fight against the Japanese government for banning such practices of their culture as hunting deer and tattoos.
- One Piece: The tyrannical World Government has spent the better part of a millennium doing everything it can to wipe out all knowledge, culture and teachings of its founding enemy, the Ancient Kingdom, all so any opposing ideals don't resurface. The WG has gone so far as to make it illegal to study the entire century that preceded its formation, leaving it void in history books. Anyone found doing so anyway is eliminated with extreme prejudice, up to destroying whole islands and their populations just to make sure. The Ancient Kingdom knew their enemies would do this so prepared indestructible stone blocks, the Ponegylphs, to hold their most important writings and scattered them to allied nations who usually hid them as well. On a similar note, the World Government has also destroyed any language other than its official one, which is why everyone speaks the same language in the modern day, no matter where in the world they are from.
Comic Books
- Great Ten: Accomplished Perfect Physician got his powers and title as a punishment when he unwittingly participated in the genocide in Tibet and killed a monk who was supposed to become the next Physician. In the present, the Great Ten tries to wipe out the Li Qigong sect, which backfires when the worshipers actually manage to summon China's classical gods.
Fan Works
- The Conversion Bureau: As the barrier expands and overtakes Earth, and more and more humans are turned into ponies, Equestria is basically destroying countless Earth cultures, people, and even cities as the barrier sweeps over Earth.
- The Negotiations-verse story, Fallen has the chapter "Angry Apple", In it Fluttershy outright lampshades this to Applejack when she speaks with her.
Fluttershy: "What we're doing is killing them, AJ. Even if they live on as ponies, you take away their culture, history, and very beings that make them who they are. That's killing them one form or another."
- With This Ring: Discussed. The Renegade is actually disappointed that the Gordanians haven't tried to assimilate Tamaran into their own culture and society. Not that he would have particularly liked the results if they had, but the fact that the Gordanians have done almost nothing with Tamaran convinces him that they're a complete waste of space.
Renegade: They have brutalised you but they have not conquered you. They have not even tried. They have made no attempt to integrate you into their society at all. They have not even attempted to exterminate you and settle your world for themselves. All the resources you possess and they take... Paltry amounts of money? All the things you could productively do for them and all they can think to do is keep you too weak to do any of them. Pathetic, barbaric stupidity.
Film — Animation
- The Mystical Laws: The Godom Empire is a militaristic superpower whose supreme ruler and founder, Tathagata Killer, established to purge the world from religion, stripping the countries they conquer of their culture and rights in the process, shown when they take over Japan in a matter of minutes; while it's declared an autonomous territory, the Japanese citizens are barred from dissenting under threats of disappearance, families are executed if even one member is found with a religious text or article, and enacting an three-year deadline to ban the Japanese language.
Film — Live-Action
- The Monuments Men: Granger motivates the Monuments Men's mission to save the artistic treasures of Europe from destruction by the retreating Nazis as preventing the erasure of the conquered peoples' cultures:
Granger: You can wipe out an entire generation, you can burn their homes to the ground, and somehow they'll still find a way back. But if you destroy their history, if you destroy their achievements, it's as if they never existed."
- The Mexican movie La otra conquista (The Other Conquest) takes place within a few years of the Spanish toppling the Aztec Empire and revolves around the bastard son of the last Aztec emperor. At the beginning of the film, he's forced to see a codex that he illustrated, recording the aftermath of a battle, being burned when the Spanish didn't find the treasure they wanted. Years later he's forced to become a Catholic monk so as to "civilize him."
- Rabbit-Proof Fence: Three half-Aborigine girls flee from a government camp where they were taken away from their mothers to isolate them from their culture and educate them to be servants.
Literature
- Look to the West: The Societist Combine does this to all the countries it takes over, including (at least in theory) the one that founded it. Societists believe that differences between societies was what caused war and conflict, so the way to end them was to create a Universal Society and reject all cultural signifiers. (Although, while they try to include the former United Provinces of South America in this, the background of the leaders naturally leads to huge invisible assumptions as to what the Universal Society looks like — for instance, the "universal language" is a version of Latin, which probably makes more sense to someone who previously spoke Spanish than Swahili.) Diversitarians call this the Great Coma, believing that one day the true cultures of the UPSA and the other former nations of the Combine will awaken once more.
- The Masquerade: The Imperial Republic of Falcrest, a proponent of the "civilizing mission", enforces a policy of assimilation in its provinces. This especially involves the eradication of "unhygienic" customs. This is accomplished through a variety of means, ranging from simply outlawing their practice, to establishing boarding schools, to eugenics programs, to prioritizing inoculations to their loyalists when (suspiciously timed) epidemics of plague arise. However, as Falcresti imperialism is ultimately profit-driven, they happily leave the cultures of smaller, poorer nations like the Sydani and the Kyprananoki untouched since they wouldn't get a return from the cost of assimilating them.
- Mistborn: The Original Trilogy: The Lord Ruler dissolved the Terris nation, enslaved its people, and controlled its population with mass forced sterilizations and breeding programs. It's discovered that he did it because his tremendous tremendous power came from compounding the magical art of Allomancy with the Terrismen's art of Feruchemy, and he wanted to ensure that nobody else inherited both lines of Superpowerful Genetics.
- The Saga of the Borderlands: In the book series by Liliana Bodoc, Misaianes, The Son of Death, did this after conquering the continent of The Ancient Lands, erasing much of the history and traditions of its various kingdoms—or leaving only their most warlike and negative aspects—and creating an empire built on the backs of millions of slaves, who don't even have the right to a name. Now he seeks to do the same in The Fertile Lands; his sideresian soldiers have enslaved the desert shepherds, erasing their semi-nomadic pastoral way of life, and are burning the codices and parchment scrolls that the Zitzahay and the Lords of the Sun use as books, among other things.
- Star Wars: In the Legends continuity the Bothans have Ar'krai, which is a state of total, genocidal war against an enemy that threatened the Bothan race with extinction and the Bothans figured they needed to repay the enemy in kind. It meant that all Bothans were required to assist in wiping out a species to the last individual and wiping their name from history. Prior to the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, Ar'krai had only been declared twice before. After Borsk Fey'lya died in a last stand on Coruscant, the Bothans declared Ar'krai against the Yuuzhan Vong. After the war many Bothans refused to end their Ar'krai against the Yuuzhan Vong, which led to Admiral Traest Kre'frey being forced to resign as the head of the Galactic Alliance military.
Admiral Traest Kre'frey: It means that we will declare total war against our enemy, and not cease until he has been completely destroyed.
- Tigana: The sorcerer-king Brandin who conquered half of the Peninsula of the Palm isn't really evil. When his beloved son and heir is killed fighting in the peninsular country of Tigana, he stops short of actual genocide in response and instead casts a curse to wipe out the memory of the country and its people and culture. Only people actually born in Tigana before its conquest can even see, hear, or speak its former ''name'. To add insult to injury, he renames the country Lower Corte after a neighboring country much despised by Tiganans.
Live-Action TV
- Andor: The Empire do this to the Aldhani, setting up rest stations along the travel points of a holy pilgrimage that many Aldhani undergo to witness the Eye of Aldhani celestial event. When the Empire first set up a dam base, many Aldhani came and went, but after the waystations were put up, fewer and fewer came, until by the time we see one such pilgrimage caravan, only a handful of them are left clinging to their ways. It is heavily implied the Empire are doing this everywhere through more tailored means toward other races and cultures.
- Babylon 5: While never overtly stated, it's made quite clear that the Centauri Republic practices this during their expansionist periods. Indeed, the Narn had both this and the kill-them-all form of genocide inflicted upon them by the Centauri twice. It's also all but stated that the Centauri planned to absorb Earth and the human race into their empire upon meeting them, but the humans were a bit too wise to such things to be taken in by the Centauri's empty promises and were able to deal with them as equals.
- Galavant: King Richard's occupation of the Kingdom of Valencia included a bunch of Stupid Evil actions that harmed Valencia's culture, like cutting down a sacred tree for toothpicks and burning all of the crops to starve the religiously-vegetarian Valencians.
- The Last Ship: In the third season, a newly-emboldened China seeks to take advantage of the disarray in Asia to expand their territory. They also seek to annihilate any traces of Japanese culture, going so far as to attack Japan's cultural sites.
- Outlander: After the failed Jacobite Rebellion, Clan tartans and weapons of any kind are forbidden, Highland Gaelic is branded low-class and undesirable, and the Highland warriors who were not killed in the battle or the immediate aftermath are shipped to prisons in England and the Colonies, forbidden to return to Scotland or communicate with their families. The bans would eventually be lifted decades later, but Highlander Clan culture is never shown to return to its former season 1 and 2 strength and glory.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Cardassians subjected Bajor to this during their occupation. The Bajoran religious orders were targeted specifically by the Cardassians and the occupational government looted many religious artifacts.
Tabletop Games
- BattleTech: This happens from time to time in the setting.
- The Rasalhague Military District chaffed under House Kurita for centuries because of their fierce resistance to the Draconis Combine's attempts to stamp out Rasalhague's unique Swedish/Japanese fusion culture and bring them in line with the rest of the Combine. After the Fourth Succession War, the District jumped at the chance to declare its independence from the Draconis Combine and become the Free Rasalhague Republic, an independent buffer state on the border between the Combine and the Lyran Commonwealth.
- One of the main reasons the Clans met such fierce civilian resistance in their occupation zones during the Clan Invasion was because they all attempted to force everyone on the planets they conquered to assimilate into the Clan Fantastic Caste System, erasing everyone's surnames and taking all the wealth and property everyone owned for the Clans.
- Some Clans, notably the Ghost Bears, eventually gave up and let the civilians on their conquered worlds retain more of their original cultures and identities, while more authoritarian Clans kept pushing for full assimilation and faced continued civilian uprisings. The Jade Falcons were the most successful of the latternote — by the early 3150s fourth-generation inhabitants of worlds conquered during REVIVAL are loyal members of Clan civilization (if not to some Clan Khans or the warrior caste in general).
- The nascent Clans and their Founder, Nicholas Kerensky, did the same thing when they first conquered their fellow exiles in the Pentagon worlds. All vestiges of the Star League member states' culture and languages other than Clan English were suppressed or discouraged from passing to new generations.
- Zig-zagged in the Escorpion Imperio. Clan Goliath Scorpion succeeded in imposing the caste system upon Nueva Castile but had to accommodate local views, such as allowing native soldiers to earn a place in their warrior caste, creating two new castes, and allowing Spanish and Arabic to continue being used in everyday life.
- Traveller: The Imperial Interstellar Scout Service did this to the Guy-Troy, or "The Controlled" as they're currently known in the Imperium, as their native culture was extremely warlike and they used to have pheromone glands that could control human emotions.
Video Games
- Bravely Default: The city of Florem was once a central location for Crystalism worship. That made it a target of the Duchy of Eternia, which wanted to weaken the influence of the Crystal Orthodoxy, and thus sent Fiore DeRosa and his Bloodrose Legion to convert the city. Fiore did so, but by slowly turning it into his personal playground centered around vanity and materialism. Where there were monuments to the Crystal and nature, opulent shopping and pleasure districts now stood. The annual Sacred Flower Festival that chose a girl for her purity became a shameless beauty contest. Combined with the Bloodrose Legion hunting down the more devoted adherents to Crystalism, Florem was barely recognizable to Anges Oblige, the Wind Vestal of the Crystal Orthodoxy, when she and the heroes made their way to the city.
- Crusader Kings II: A common strategy, as counties ruled by foreigners will get an increased revolt risk and foreign vassals will get an opinion malus towards their lord. AI rulers will also engage in this, as they only generate vassals of their own culture. As opposed to most other examples of this trope, this process is mostly peaceful, as it is described as the locals mixing with the foreigners. As such, it can take multiple decades to convert a large realm.
- Dragon Age:
- This is how the Qunari society operates: upon conquering a region, all inhabitants are forcefully converted to their own religion/philosophy Qun, resorting to magical Mind Rape if necessary. All symbols of old culture are then systematically replaced with uniform Qun culture until the region looks just like every other part of the Qunari dominion.
- The Alienages were a failed attempt to erase the elven culture by the victorious human kingdoms after the Exalted March of the Dales had destroyed the last sovereign elven kingdom. The plan was to resettle captive elves in human cities and to gradually have them become culturally human, but it failed because a considerable chunk of the elven remnant escaped to lead a nomadic "Dalish" lifestyle, preserving their ancient religion and values. And even though Alienage elves have not managed to retain nearly as much of their original culture, they cling to it all the more ferociously in the time frame of the games.
- Europa Universalis series has this as gameplay mechanic
- Any colonies and low-population areas can be taken from original holder and then the colonisation effort can be continued. Whoever plants the final colonist or simply nurtures the colony into a proper province, will mark it as part of their culture, even if the real ratio of new colonist is a laughable minority to original group. And whatever culture the native population of that area held will be also converted.
- From 3rd game onward (prior, only pre-scripted events could handle it) any country has a list of cultures it sees as accepted and dominant, with every other culture being seen as foreign. But it's possible to forcefully convert given culture into your own - in EU3 explicitly by deliberate re-settlement policies, colonist migration and administrative persecution across decades, generating diplomatic infamy and making revolts far more likely. Do it with enough provinces of specific culture, and you can erase it entirely. EU4 made the process far, far more abstract, with no direct negative cosequences of doing it. In fact, it infamously encouraging culturally homogenous countries due to how easy and profitable it was to, say, turn all of the Balkans into the Turkish culture (and do so within couple of years per province, rather than across generations).
- Fallout: New Vegas:
- Caesar enforces this as a policy for enemy tribes that are conquered by the Legion. Anything that might tie them to their old identities is destroyed, they are made to take on Latin-sounding names and dress in Legion armor and indoctrinated with the belief that Caesar is a God-Emperor and the Legion exists to subjugate all people under his will.
Caesar: [Pax Romana] means a nationalist, imperialist, totalitarian, homogeneous culture that obliterates the identity of every group it conquers. Long-term stability at all costs. The individual has no value beyond his utility to the state, whether as an instrument of war or production.
- Ulysses was a member of the Twisted Hairs, a tribe that used to braid their hair as a form of communication as part of their culture. Caesar's Legion approached the Twisted Hairs and assisted them by wiping out their enemies, but they betrayed the Twisted Hairs and gave its members a choice to either join the Legion or be executed. Ulysses became a frumentarii for The Legion and was eventually sent to New Caanan and was told to manipulate the White Legs by promising to have them join Caesar's Legion. Ulysses militarised the White Legs and was horrified to learn that White Legs started braiding their hair into the same style as Ulysses's in an attempt to flatter and honor him, not knowing that Ulysses was honoring his old tribe through his unique hairstyle and the braids worn by the White Legs were now just meaningless gibberish. This made Ulysses realize that his tribe was completely erased and this act made Ulysses leave The Legion.
- Caesar enforces this as a policy for enemy tribes that are conquered by the Legion. Anything that might tie them to their old identities is destroyed, they are made to take on Latin-sounding names and dress in Legion armor and indoctrinated with the belief that Caesar is a God-Emperor and the Legion exists to subjugate all people under his will.
- Final Fantasy XIV: The M.O. of the Garlean Empire is to slowly but surely stamp out all other cultures other than its own under the rationale that true peace can only be achieved when all are united under one banner and one ideology. Landmarks like the Velodyna Bridge and the Gates of the Moon are covered in cermet and magitek, rendering them almost unrecognizable. Extensive efforts are also made to indoctrinate youth to parrot the Empire's rhetoric. Due to its staunch position against the summoning of eikons, the Empire is particularly keen on destroying all forms of worship, forbidding any and all religious practices, no matter how innocuous they are. This is most obvious in Gyr Abania, where many statues of Ala Mhigo's patron god Rhalgr have been defaced if not reduced to rubble. Even funeral services and practices are outlawed under Garlean rule.
- GreedFall: The core of the game revolves around the ethics of colonization and cultural erasure. Thélème, especially the Ordo Luminis, are open with their goal to not only convert the entire island native population to the religion of the Enlightened, but also actively destroy any writings, rituals, and customs the Yecht Fradí have. This includes burning one of their guardians at the stake. While the other nations are not openly trying like Thélème, the Yecht Fradí still point out how the colonizers are not understanding of their culture or beliefs and treat them like lost children.
- Horizon Zero Dawn: Done on an unimaginable scale. With humanity being wiped out, measures were taken to allow those who would come after to learn about the past, providing history and culture through a subsystem called Apollo. Ted Faro erased it all, calling it a disease. Although it is more likely he just didn't want those who came after to know that he was responsible for the mass extinction of all life on Earth.
- Nimdok's scenario in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream has a golem created by the Nazis. As explained by Dr. Mengele, part of the plan is to strip the Jewish people of everything, even their folklore.
- Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords has the Exile caught up in the Onderon Civil War midway in the game, between Queen Talia serving for the Republic and General Vaklu leading an insurgency to overthrow her. If you go the Light Side route and defeat Vaklu, Darth Traya will reveal that Onderon will lose its cultural identity and traditions over time as it remains a member of the Republic.
- Mass Effect:
- In Mass Effect 3, Javik the last Prothean reveals that he is how the Prothean empire operated in their own cycle. The reason why the current cycle's sentients never found evidence of any Precursor culture other than the Prothean was because the Protheans, as the dominant species, either completely replaced other species' cultures with their own or destroyed them outright.
- Mass Effect: Andromeda: The Kett are a race of Scary Dogmatic Aliens that go to war against the various species they come across and take whatever they deem useful from the culture or technology of that species while destroying everything else. Including their genes, as the Kett reproduce by converting other races into Kett. The Resistance formed by the alien race they've been at war with for decades, the angara, consider it just as important to preserve as many relics, traditions, and other signs of angara culture as possible because a strategic victory that destroys what makes the angara unique would be a pyrrhic one.
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: A large part of the game deals with how tragedy strips people of everything, but revenge; one example of this is Skull Face, a former Hungarian who lost his face, his language, and his people due to the various conquests of Hungary that took place around World War II. He plans to invoke his own loss on America, through his "weapon to surpass Metal Gear:" parasites which spread and kill their victim based on what language they speak.
- Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord has in it's backstory Palaic culture, representing a fictional take on non-Latin cultures of the Italian Peninsula absorbed by the growing Roman Republic (corresponding with in-game Empire). Palaic people have been culturally assimilated centuries ago and so hard, even the name of the culture is the one given to them by the Imperials and no records of their own name remains. But the identity itself persists and becomes a motivation to further weaken the falling apart Empire if one sides with a man self-identifying as a descendant of Palaic people.
- Stellaris:
- Players will usually engage in this when conquering alien planets, as the locals usually have a different ethos than your empire. To do this, players have a variety of tools, ranging from reeducation campaigns to empire-wide censorship. Authoritarians and spiritualists will get additional tools, but the most impressive one is a giant mind-control laser that orbits the planet and quickly changes the ethos of all its inhabitants to the empire's ethos. Of course, if none of this works xenophobes can also engage in normal genocide as well.
- With the "Utopia" DLC any empire that isn't a Hive Mind can engage in indoctrination missions on pre-FTL planets, shifting the natives' ethics more in line with the indoctrinating empire prior to enlightenment or invasion.
- Wolfenstein: The New Order: One trailer shows the Nazis blowing up Mt. Rushmore. In-game newspapers describe their global campaign to ensure conquered nations are "rebuilt according to the superior cultural standards of the new regime." In Britain, they've started exchanging fish and chips for sauerkraut and sausage.
Web Animation
- RWBY: Eighty years before the start of the series, there was a massive Culture War between all four kingdoms. They fought over trade, borders, and as Professor Ozpin puts it, "the destruction of all forms of art and self-expression." The series' Colorful Theme Naming began as a form of rebellion against this practice.
Ozpin: "It was their way to demonstrate that not only would they refuse to tolerate this oppression, but neither would the generations to come."
Web Original
- The Anglo/American – Nazi War has a truly horrific example. Once the Allies start pushing the Nazis out of France, acting Fuhrer Heinrich Himmler has no delusions that the situation is winnable and gives the retreating forces the order to flee across the Rhine and destroy everything in their way. This includes Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Palace of Versailles, and pretty much every other bit of infrastructure in Paris. All of which is broadcast live to the UK. Then they poison the ruins and the surrounding land with every chemical and biological weapon they have at their disposal.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Fire Nation attempts to do this, at least with regards to the other bending arts. They have all but wiped out the waterbenders of the Southern Water Tribe, and they have a policy to imprison and break any earthbenders they find in territories conquered from the Earth Kingdom. Hama in "The Puppetmaster" even accuses them of trying to destroy the Water Tribe's whole culture. Shockingly, they've even done this to their own bending before the series began, with Sozin helping to exterminate the original firebending masters (the dragons) and subverting the more positive aspects of the Sun Warrior civilization with the present rage-fueled bending style. Even beyond bending, other parts of their culture (such as traditional Fire Nation dances) have been forgotten by the modern Fire Nation in favor of pure focus on military.
- Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023): The series is set in the vibrant, multicultural New York neighborhood of the Lower East Side. One episode sees Lunella tricked into endorsing a scientist couple who proceeds to "improve" the LES by suppressing its distinctive music, food, and street art.
- The Owl House: After taking over as emperor of the Boiling Isles, Belos makes a concerted effort to suppress the old ways of Wild Magic to bring the witches into his tightly-controlled coven system. He even goes as far as rewriting the island's history to portray the time of Wild Magic as a dark era when it was really a time of peace and tranquility.