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Who is/was the worst dictator in history? (The REAL poll/question)

Who is/was the worst dictator in history?


  • Total voters
    51
Hitler. Even though Stalin and Mao killed numerically more people, most of those deaths were either the byproduct of a shortsighted economic plan or were punishment for dissent. The Nazis killed because people were born into the wrong race. From my point of view, there is a sort of rational limitation to the atrocities of Stalin and Mao in that, if you were loyal or at least indifferent to their regimes, you'd generally be left alone. There was nothing that a Jew could possibly do in order to avoid death other than somehow cheat the system. Hitler was also ultimately unsuccessful in his plan: if he had managed to conquer the Soviet Union and beat back the British and Americans, not only virtually all Jews (upwards of six million) but also tens of millions of Slavs would have been killed in an orgy of violence that would make Stalin's purges, Mao's Cultural Revolution and potentially even the famines the two communist rulers caused look tame in comparison.

Baghdadi follows close behind since ISIS' ideology is equally genocidal, although its emphasis is religious rather than racial, so its victims - primarily the Shia, but other unprotected religions as well - would at least have some possibility of saving themselves by converting. Pol Pot would also be a close second, because although his genocidal ideology was racial, it was at least contained within the borders of Cambodia rather than implemented on a continental scale.

The test for Stalin was not whether you were loyal but whether you were a potential rival. Stalin murdered many who were 100% loyal but becoming just a little bit popular within the hierachy.
 
I got to go with Hitler. I can understand the argument for Stalin. But Hitler and the Nazis industrialized the killing. They were brutally efficient. At the time, Germany was arguably the most civilized country in the world (arts, sciences, Einstein, history of great composers, etc.), but because of Hitler they went insane for 12 years. 1,000's of Germans walking innocent women and children into gas chambers by the millions, then burning their bodies. That's a special kind of insanity, The Germans had to be mesmerized by Hitler to do such an evil, inhumane thing on such massive scale.

Also the war Hitler started killed people on every continent(except Antarctica).
 
I got to go with Hitler. I can understand the argument for Stalin. But Hitler and the Nazis industrialized the killing. They were brutally efficient. At the time, Germany was arguably the most civilized country in the world (arts, sciences, Einstein, history of great composers, etc.), but because of Hitler they went insane for 12 years. 1,000's of Germans walking innocent women and children into gas chambers by the millions, then burning their bodies. That's a special kind of insanity, The Germans had to be mesmerized by Hitler to do such an evil, inhumane thing on such massive scale.

Also the war Hitler started killed people on every continent(except Antarctica).
To me, the quickness of Hitler's gas chambers was almost merciful in comparison to Stalin's slow agonizing Holomodor.
 
That's an interesting point. But was there something about him that inherently made him so horrible by historical standards, or was it by chance that his ideology caught on that he happened to become so horrible in hindsight? Can we so easily declare that Mohammad the human was so much worse intrinsically than, say, Jim Jones the human? One resulted in more suffering than the other, but are we talking consequence or the nature and actions of the one individual?

It becomes apparent the criteria for "worst" desperately need to be defined for this thread. If it's purely # of deaths attributable, Zedong has the disadvantage because there are roughly 5.2 quintillion Chinese people. Or should it be % of own population killed, in which case Stalin and Pol Pot and others not named in the poll are to be compared?

When I responded, I thought of what dictator I would least like to be brought in front of:

Hitler: "Are you a gay Gypsy Jew?" No. "Ok cool."
Pol Pot: "Go work on this farm or I'll kill you." Ok fine.
Zedong: "No food for you." Ok fine.
Stalin: "If you're a deserter I'll shoot you right now!" I'm not. "Ok cool. Will you sacrifice your life for my glory?" Sure. "Ok cool."

And then there's Vlad: "My men are going to hold your eyelids open as a kill your children in front of you and your wife and then force-feed their flesh to her, and then I will cut off her breasts and force-feed the tissue to you, and then I will impale you through your rectum on a greased spike."

So I guess that's why I chose Vlad the Impaler. Clearly the most sadistic and psychotic example of a human being in all of history as far as we know. It's not about number of lives ended attributable to a person indirectly. Hell if someone mercifully ended a billion suffering people's lives painlessly she or he would be one of the greatest saints in history. It's not about death. It's about the degree of psychotic antisocial sadism going on in the mind of the person. For that all evidence points to Vlad. Truly sad that our species ever produced such a thing.

Who is slaughtering innocents in Stalin's name today, as we speak? Who is slaughtering innocents in Mao's name today? Who is slaughtering innocents in Hitler's name today? Who is slaughtering innocents in Vlad's name today? Who is slaughtering innocents in Pol Pot's name today?
Who is slaughtering innocents, today as I type this message to you?.....You got it, Muslims, specifically ISIS for the moment. Mohammad's
life and his ideology (an invented religion didn't work for him, so he added political ideology and never looked back) is still after 1400 years having an impact on geopolitics in the world TODAY. Not one of the dictators mentioned in the poll will be remembered in 1400 years, but, if Islam still exists, Muslims will still be slaughtering in Mohammad's and Allah's name on a daily basis.
 
Who is slaughtering innocents in Stalin's name today, as we speak? Who is slaughtering innocents in Mao's name today? Who is slaughtering innocents in Hitler's name today? Who is slaughtering innocents in Vlad's name today? Who is slaughtering innocents in Pol Pot's name today?

Who is slaughtering innocents, today as I type this message to you?.....You got it, Muslims, specifically ISIS for the moment. Mohammad's
life and his ideology (an invented religion didn't work for him, so he added political ideology and never looked back) is still after 1400 years having an impact on geopolitics in the world TODAY. Not one of the dictators mentioned in the poll will be remembered in 1400 years, but, if Islam still exists, Muslims will still be slaughtering in Mohammad's and Allah's name on a daily basis.

If the question were framed as which individual had the most negative effect on human life in history, you'd have a probably winning argument. Or if the question was "what is the worst ideology," same thing. But those weren't the question.

If I light a match and start what becomes the world's largest forest fire, that doesn't mean I personally saw to it that every tree in the forest was burned down? I just lit a match. The consequences were horrible but that shouldn't make me the world's most ruthless arsonist.

What do we know about the life of Muhammad the human that wins him the title of "worst dictator" among all the others? A guy that's been dead for centuries can't be described as a current dictator so whatever the zealots overseas are doing out of a belief that a centuries-dead person would have wanted them to do can't really contribute to the "badness" of the person.

If I say sarcastically or even seriously on this forum that we should exterminate ourselves, embrace VHEMT with a violent twist, and then legions of people take my words and act on it and make it happen over the next 50 years, and I continue to sit here on my ass shooting **** with you all on this forum, do those other people's crazy actions make me "the worst dictator?" I just spouted off and then legions of gullible people took it and ran with it. The later actions of people based on my words don't make me a dictator.

It's a loaded question. I interpreted it in a way that left no doubt in my mind that Vlad was "the worst."
 
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But, of course, he had a bigger population to work with than Pol Pot. Or consider Hitler, who industrialized the chosen method of elimination. And do remember that it was all quite legal in most of the named countries at the time of the activities.
I was thinking about this just this morning, and this is a very valid point. Maybe largeness of scale is overrated. Maybe "efficiency" in relation to percentage of the population would be a better measure.
 
I was thinking about this just this morning, and this is a very valid point. Maybe largeness of scale is overrated. Maybe "efficiency" in relation to percentage of the population would be a better measure.

Exactly. But it is most important to install checks and balances on power of large nations, because they can swing the largest head count.
 
Pol Pot is the winner, hands down, by sheer genocidal efficiency.

But he is a fruit, not the root. Lenin and Trotsky deserve a hotter spot in Hell - right next to Robespierre.
 
I did not see Donald Trump's name on that list.

Just over the last few days I counted at least 17 " just like Hitler " references.

After all, one of his supporters punched someone in the face. That surely would place him in the top ten most evil people in the whole world.

OR....

Could it be our perception of evil people has wandered off the tracks over the last several decades?
 
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