The thing about actual Roman damnationes memoriarum is that they didn't really obliterate all memory of a bad emperor. None of our sources are afraid to talk about these figures. It wasn't truly about forgetting the guy, but about abolishing his (positive) public commemoration.

When authoritarian regimes collapse, their leaders experience symbolic deaths, largely through the destruction & removal of monuments that they've built to glorify themselves and affirm their power. Sometimes called "iconoclasm," who gets a statue or monument is always a symbolic struggle for power.