Most EVIL person of all time (Game nomination thread)

[BlinkingDuck]

I admit a love of these games/threads. I want to keep them going.

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As was done in the Worst military leader of all time thread:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=585694&highlight=worst+military+leader

(winner: Luigi Cadorna, followed closely by Arthur Percival and Francisco Solano López) which I joined late but was amused greatly…I would like to do a similar thing but with:

The Most Evil person of all time

I don’t care how you define evil. Whether it is body count, misery…whether the person is a bastage or was a good guy but his/her actions brought on much evil. Whatever.

In order to start the game we need a setup thread for nominations. You may nominate up to five evil bastages, describing each in just a few words. All descriptions are subject to editing for brevity, accuracy and clarity.

Nominations will close at noon CST a week from today, say Thursday May 12. After the deadline, I’ll arrange the nominees alphabetically, and we’ll vote them out much as we did in the the linked worst military leader thread.

Just to get is started and because these 2 will be nominated quickly/obviously anyway:
Adolf Hitler: Started WWII which resulted in much death and misery.
Joseph Stalin: Killed millions of his own people and terrorized the rest

[BlinkingDuck]

Above link is broken I will try to fix

[Tom_Scud]

I want some damn finalists for a change, so I’ll drop in

Pol Pot
Idi Amin

to start with.

[Mr.Excellent]

BlinkingDuck, may I offer a suggestion? You may want to limit nominations to people who died more than, say, thirty, years ago. (I’d suggest longer, but I assume we want to keep Mao in the running.) Otherwise, this thread might end up getting a bit sidetracked by modern politics.

[Sitnam]

Elizabeth Báthory
Gilles de Rais

[BlinkingDuck]

@Mr.Excellent

BlinkingDuck, may I offer a suggestion? You may want to limit nominations to people who died more than, say, thirty, years ago. (I’d suggest longer, but I assume we want to keep Mao in the running.) Otherwise, this thread might end up getting a bit sidetracked by modern politics.

That may be a good idea. I don’t know about dead for thirty years because of Mao like you suggest or others.

May I just suggest that people don’t nominate ones that will just get eliminated right way like Sherman and Grant in the worst military leader thread? I know you may think George W. Bush is the worst ever but he is minor league compared to others in history

[BlinkingDuck]

@Tom_Scud

I want some damn finalists for a change, so I’ll drop in

Pol Pot
Idi Amin

to start with.

Please give a brief description. You may not like the one I come up with

[Tom_Scud]

As requested:

Pol Pot killed 21% of his people
Idi Amin killed 100,000-500,000 countrymen in 8 years

Also, I would note that a 30-year cut-off would exclude both Pol Pot and Idi Amin.

[BlinkingDuck]

[ol]
[/ol]

@Sitnam

Elizabeth Báthory
Gilles de Rais

My attempt at a description for the above. Sitnam, let me know if you disagree:

Gilles de Rais - really really liked killing babies and children
Elizabeth Báthory - Thought bathing in virgin blood was the cat’s meow

[Sitnam]

Elizabeth Báthory - Vlad, not the only player in town
Gilles de Rais - Child murdering satanist

[willthekittensurvive]

Leopold the second of Belgium, cut out the heart of africa and left a 150 years of civil war and genocide

[BlinkingDuck]

@Sitnam

Elizabeth Báthory - Vlad, not the only player in town
Gilles de Rais - Child murdering satanist

Let that be a warning to you all…you don’t leave a brief description and I will put one on

[Tom_Scud]

John Chrysostom - influential early exponent of Christian antisemitism

[Sitnam]

Josef Mengele - for the win, good luck topping him

[willthekittensurvive]

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria :Stalin’s butcher

[astorian]

Mao Zedong- capricious, heartless megalomaniac

[gonzomax]

Vlad the Impaler.
Estimates are he killed 30 percent of his own people. He was a nasty.

[Sailboat]

Wow, some strong contenders here. We’ve skipped right over mundane serial killers.

I’m going to have to go deep to look for a competitive villain. Specifically, to 2270 BC.

Sargon of Akkade – The first imperial conqueror; established the state as an aggressor

Can I blame him for influencing all that came after? Wikipedia says this:

Sargon was regarded as a model by Mesopotamian kings for some two millennia after his death. The Assyrian and Babylonian kings who based their empires in Mesopotamia saw themselves as the heirs of Sargon’s empire. Kings such as Nabonidus (r. 556–539 BC) showed great interest in the history of the Sargonid dynasty, and even conducted excavations of Sargon’s palaces and those of his successors.[36] Indeed, such later rulers may have been inspired by the king’s conquests to embark on their own campaigns throughout the Middle East.

Sargon’s famous challenge to later kings – “Now, any king who wants to call himself my equal, wherever I went [conquered], let him go.”

[BlinkingDuck]

Here is what we have so far:

Adolf Hitler - Started WWII which resulted in much death and misery.
Joseph Stalin - Killed millions of his own people and terrorized the rest
Pol Pot - killed 21% of his people
Idi Amin - killed 100,000-500,000 countrymen in 8 years
Elizabeth Báthory - Vlad, not the only player in town
Gilles de Rais - Child murdering satanist
Leopold the second of Belgium - cut out the heart of africa and left a 150 years of civil war and genocide
John Chrysostom - influential early exponent of Christian antisemitism
Josef Mengele - for the win, good luck topping him
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria - Stalin’s butcher
Mao Zedong- capricious, heartless megalomaniac
Vlad the Impaler - Estimates are he killed 30 percent of his own people. He was a nasty.
Sargon of Akkade - The first imperial conqueror; established the state as an aggressor

[Tom_Scud]

Trofim Lysenko - Scientific crackpot used Stalin to strongarm opponents

Not a major player in this crowd; more of a diversity pick.