History Main / SmashTheSymbol

* As the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName alt-right]]'s influence in the Republican Party of the United States has increased and the Republican Party has grown [[EvilReactionary increasingly unhinged]], a growing counter-movement, identifying lingering idealization of the Confederate States as a root cause, has pushed for the destruction of monuments of the Confederate States of America in order to establish that the Confederacy was evil and should not be revered.

** When Nami reaches her RageBreakingPoint in the Arlong arc, she angrily stabs the Arlong Pirate tattoo on her shoulder repeatedly. Luffy has to stop her before she can mutilate herself further.

* Following World War II, the occupation forces in Germany engaged in a thorough process of de-Nazification. [[SigilSpam Swastikas and other symbols of the Nazi regime]] were destroyed and erased from buildings, roads and parks renamed, monuments destroyed or defaced, and flags and banners gathered up and burned. Not everything escaped destruction, though; for example, many thousands of postage stamps bearing Adolf Hitler's face were used, because an efficient postal service was considered so important to the administration and reconstruction of the country that they couldn't wait for new ones to be printed up.

* ''Manga/OnePiece'': At the climax of Luffy's battle with Arlong, Luffy's final attack smashes through the ceiling of Arlong Park, knocking down the Arlong Pirates flag, and eventually Arlong Park itself, signifying the end of the tyrannical Fish-Man's rule of the Conomi Islands.

** In Kyiv, a poll was organized in early 2023 to replace the Soviet emblems on the shield of the Motherland statue by the Ukrainian Tryzub. 85% answered "yes", and the Soviet symbol was removed on July 31, 2023.

* This trope is actually OlderThanDirt. Sometime around 1350 BC, the Egyptian Pharaoh UsefulNotes/{{Akhenaten}} abolished Myth/EgyptianMythology and replaced it with a new monotheistic religion centered around the sun god Aten. Under Akhenaten's rule, temples and monuments dedicated to the old gods were defaced or destroyed. Once Akhenaten was dead, the old gods were restored, and a new wave of iconoclasm targeted the temples and monuments dedicated to Aten.

* The mass scale invasion of UsefulNotes/{{Ukraine}} by UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} in 2022 caused several instances of this upon some remaining Soviet era and Russian monuments:

** In Kyiv, a poll was organized in early 2023 to replace the Soviet emblems on the shield of the Motherland statue by the Ukrainian Tryzub. 85% answered "yes", and plans to proceed to this replacement are underway.

** In Kyiv, a poll was organized in early 2023 to replace the Soviet emblems on the shield of the Motherland statue by the Ukrainian Truzyb. 85% answered "yes", and plans to proceed to this replacement are underway.

** Several remaining Soviet-era memorials were destroyed in UsefulNotes/{{Poland}} and the Baltic states (in UsefulNotes/{{Lithuania}} especially) following the Russian aggression.