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For Vandalism on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Dealing with vandalism
Vandalism is an act motivated by hostility to the arts and literature of a culture, or willful destruction or defacement of its built environment, construed to be in the spirit of the Germanic Vandals in their attacks on buildings of the Roman Empire. For the historical Vandals themselves, see the entry Vandals.
The first time the term was used was probably January 10, 1794 during the French Revolution, by Henri Grégoire, constitutional bishop of Blois, in his report directed to the Republican Convention, where he used word Vandalisme to describe some aspects of the behaviour of the republican army.
However, the term Vandal (English) or Vandale (French) with pejorative meaning was in use in English at least since the 17th century.
Throughout history, the ritual destruction of monuments of a previous government or power has been one of the greatest symbols showing the attempt at transition of power (illustration, below left). In Rome damnatio memoriae ("damnation of his memory") was normally expressed by erasing the name of a hated individual from inscriptions and removing or replacing statues or replacing just their heads after their death and subsequent disgrace. Damnation memoriae was effected after their death by the rivals and heirs of Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Commodus and Elagabulus. After the Emperor Caracalla had his co-Emperor Geta assassinated, all depictions or references to Geta were systematically destroyed as part of a damnatio memoriae. Faces and genitals of surviving Greek and Roman sculpture often show how they have been systematically attacked. In palimpsests, text has been washed off parchment that have been overwritten with new text; the existence of effaced manuscripts that were not subsequently overwritten reveals an element of vandalism in this process.
in Egypt, the return of the priests of Amun to power after the religious innovations of Akhenaten was accompanied by descration of the pharaoh's tomb and the ritual obliteration of his image from temple reliefs and inscriptions. This is official vandalism.
Abu Simbel: an official portrait sculpture ritually effaced Recent cases of vandalism in this vein include the toppling and destruction of Soviet monuments after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Taliban destruction of Buddhist statuary in Afghanistan, and the well-known toppling of a Saddam Hussein statue by the multinational force in Iraq. In a country with an unpopular dictator, vandalism of the leader's portraits and other elements of his personality cult can be a common form of dissent.
Vandalism of Jewish properties and Jewish-owned businesses was part of the Nazi program, surfacing in the widespread, coordinated vandalism of Kristallnacht the night of November 9 – 10, 1938, when shopwindows were smashed all over Nazi Germany.
 Kristallnacht vandalism, November 10, 1938 More generally, vandalism (uncapitalised) is willful wanton and malicious destruction of the property of others or the commons. The term is usually generalized to include non-destructive but unauthorized modification of property, that is, defacement; for example, graffiti. Vandalism is often committed by alienated youth.
With the rise and development of the World Wide Web came unauthorized and undesired modification of webpages through cracking, another form of vandalism.
Some vandalism qualifies as culture jamming or sniggling — artistic statements in their own right that are illegal and destructive from the point of view of the legal system, but are done with a creative and artistic impulse. Graffiti art qualifies in some cases at least, also billboard liberation and crop circles. The situationist Asger Jorn founded the Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism.
See also
Compare
- Iconoclasm : as justified vandalism, cultural hatred that is deemed "righteous"
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