The evilest person who committed the most horrendous deeds, propagated the worst ideas, or was responsible for other moustache-twirling affairs.

Anyone who is currently alive does not count.

  • Guy Ingonito@reddthat.com
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    25 minutes ago

    Narratively, Julius Caesar

    From an aristocratic family that had just suffered a major defeat/humiliation

    Floated around the Mediterranean as a bottom to powerful men

    The whole, got captured by pirates, had them raise his ransom, and then returned to kill them story

    Formed a shadow council to control the world

    Genococided the gauls

    Had a love affair with Cleopatra

    Became dictator for life

    Got stabbed in the back by everyone close to him

  • WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
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    4 hours ago

    Idk if Powell is alive. Ayn Rand, but she is just a fool with a strange philosophy, she can’t be responsible for what the morons did with it.

    Idk if whoever founded Mossad is still alive, but they sure sabotaged and sent backwards the entire world.

    Whoever took advantage of Jesus delusions, and convinced him he is the messiah, leading to a religion that would be used to stop people from taking on science.

    • NateNate60@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 hours ago

      It’s not Jesus that caused people to not listen to science. Humans are just naturally superstitious. Religion has existed in every human civilisation since the beginning of history. Even if Christianity never arose, humans would just be following some other religions.

      • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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        2 hours ago

        There will always be a story we tell about anything, whether its accurate or not. In my opinion, both science and religion are a form of storytelling.

      • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        Surgeon General Shirō Ishii (Japanese: 石井 四郎, Hepburn: Ishii Shirō; [iɕiː ɕiɾoː]; 25 June 1892 – 9 October 1959) was a Japanese biological weapons specialist, microbiologist and army medical officer who served as the director of Unit 731, the largest biological warfare and chemical warfare unit of the Imperial Japanese Army.

        Ishii led the development and application of biological weapons at Unit 731 in the puppet state of Manchukuo during the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945. This included the Battle of Changde, the Kaimingjie germ weapon attack, and the planned Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night biological attack against the United States, which intended to spread a weaponized bubonic plague. Ishii and his colleagues also engaged in human experimentation, resulting in the deaths of thousands of subjects, most of them civilians or prisoners of war.

        Ishii was later granted immunity in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East by the United States government in exchange for information and research for the U.S. biological warfare program.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirō_Ishii

  • HubertManne@piefed.social
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    10 hours ago

    I sorta don’t want to go down the rabbit hole. To find the answer you would literally need to compare attrocities. Im aware of quite a few but watching the actual footage of the aftermath and such is literally sickening. I’ve heard pol pot.

  • neidu3@sh.itjust.worksM
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    9 hours ago

    While Hitler, Pol Pot, Beria, and Kissinger are all good and obvious contenders, I think these will be surpassed by someone who is alive right now.

    But who? Well, it’s most likely someone who already has significant resources at their disposal. For all their flaws, I don’t think the lizards of Amazon, Google, OpenAI, and Facebook have much of an agenda beyond growing their fortunes. But I am convinced we haven’t seen the final form of Peter Thiel.

  • DoubleDongle@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    I would like to nominate Diego de Landa, burner of the Mayan books. And a lot of Mayan people. The Mayans had books, like normal paper booms filled with Mayan writing. Histories, religion, presumably everything a society would write down. There are only four Mayan books left now. It’s all gone. It’s a tragedy that particularly boils my blood and I’m making him the final boss of a Mesoamerican-themed Pathfinder campaign I’m about to run, because I want to live out a fantasy where he gets fireballed to death or something.

  • Nycifer@piefed.social
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    11 hours ago

    Josef Mengele, Himmler and Hitler. Some of the heinous trio of history for doing numerous unspeakable acts of their time.

    Chairman Mao Zedong.

    DuPont de Nemours, Inc. or the DuPont Family rather. These guys are a huge contributing factor as to why humans could unknowingly wind up having cancers and other health-related issues directly affected by chemicals that the company has designed. They’ve had their hands in many things including wars, like napalm during Vietnam. They’ve made forever chemicals and have pumped that shit irresponsibly into hundreds of things we use everyday.

  • Drusas@fedia.io
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    10 hours ago

    I don’t think it comes down to sheer numbers; I think it’s about deliberately causing suffering and reveling in it. So, maybe the BTK killer or another serial killer who liked to torture their victims.

  • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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    18 hours ago

    Genghis Khan is up there. His conquests killed millions, I see estimates of up to 40 million, a significant percentage of the world’s population (possibly double-digits). It’s even theorized that so many people died that global temperature dropped as a result. You could go and argue that a large unified empire would prevent many future wars and thus could be a net positive even if establishing it is very bloody (see Pax Romana), and Genghis’ rule was reportedly relatively progressive compared to his contemporaries. But then, you need to make it so that the emprie doesn’t immediately break apart after its ruler dies, which he failed at.

    Though you can always argue that he wasn’t really more evil than other rulers, just more successful. Which still makes him a “great villain”, but there are more directly evil deeds than conquest, such as genocide.

      • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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        3 hours ago

        I hear Hitler treated his dog very well.

        IMO, people generally aren’t pure good or evil. But that doesn’t mean that people like Hitler or Genghis Khan aren’t giant assholes.

    • rozodru@piefed.world
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      15 hours ago

      bingo. the Mongol Empire lasted less than 90 years. A flash in the pan in terms of world history. Yeah he was great at conquering a massive amount of land mass but they sure as fuck were unable to hold it. and the 4 Khans after Genghis ruled for like a handful of years each. One of which only lasted a couple years.

    • Asofon@discuss.online
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      13 hours ago

      Yeah I’m inclined to agree with this if we define “evil” by destructive power at least (and always worth remembering that we merely have general agreements on what “evil” is, usually based on what is and isn’t considered advantageous for human well-being. Absolute good and evil are religious myths.). But GK was also kinda interesting in that his conquests etc. were “honest”. He wasn’t trying to build some ideal society, he just lived in accordance to “Might Makes Right” and surprisingly indiscriminately applied that into his domain as well. Whatever one could claim for themselves, was theirs so long as they could defend it. Regardless of gender, religion, further cultural details etc.

      I feel like he represents the logical conclusion of non-conservative right-wing ideals taken to the extreme. Individual power (however that manifests - raw strength, charisma) trumps everything else, so in a way, libertarian… but everything was of course to be absolutely subject to the Mongol Empire rule so, authoritarian.

      If we go by ideology + destructiveness as a metric of “evil”, probably Hitler.