Vlad was simply ruthless in a ruthless place during a ruthless time.
King Leopold and Stalin were bad, but I feel I at least understand what made them tick, even if they never listen to that spark of humanity.
LeMay…please.
I’ve never understood Saloth Sar, and I believe that is what true evil would look like.
John Nevil Maskelyne-the inventor of the pay toilet.
Emperor Palpatine
HOW many threads do you have open now? :dubious:
Wait, wasn’t Frankenstein himself Jewish? The whole golem thing, and all.
The Straightdope poster or the general ?
Declan
That is simply chilling.
Surprised that no one has mentioned Gilles de Rais or the Countess Bathory.
Obama. That damned Kenyan is involved in a plot to overthrow America from the inside and turn us into a socialistic nightmare. Which makes him the most evil person ever for daring to attack the greatest country that ever existed! Glenn Beck told me so.
To answer somewhat honestly. Stalin. Never before or since have so many been killed for no other reason than a raw naked consolidation of power. With Hitler, Pol Pot, etc. there were other reasons. I’m not saying they were good reasons, but it was at least somewhat more than just “I want to be leader, go kill millions of people to keep me leader”.
I would say that someone needs to actually take pleasure in other peoples’ pain to be evil. How many of the people in this thread really fit that? Even most of the Nazis thought they were just bureaucratic tenders of Germany’s racial purity and tried to kill Jews as efficiently and quickly as possible; not all of them were true sadists. Did Stalin love seeing tortured men scream and writhe in pain? Would he even have been able to personally kill someone with his own hands? Stalin sat behind a desk and killed millions with the stroke of a pen. But only the people who actually delighted in personally torturing and murdering people can really claim the prize of “most evil.”
My two examples certainly qualify… Both not only killed hundreds of children, but reveled in their deeds.
I’m a consequentialist, so I would emphasize body count. Those who promote the most suffering are the most evil.
Sadists take pleasure in other’s pain, but that isn’t evil if it is consensual. Just thought I’d mention that. Nonconsensual sadism is of course evil.
IIRC he supposedly once just for fun wrapped a woman’s fingers in paper and set them on fire. While giggling. She was too terrified to try to put them out. But then Stalin was the sort of fellow who attracts accusations of things like that.
It’s a mistake to interpret “most evil” as “highest body count.” I know plenty of war veterans who have personally killed more people than Charles Manson and Jack the Ripper combined, and strike me as far less evil than either.
I’d say Mao was a bit of a cunt.
– George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)
Oh yeah? Once George Washington held an opponent’s wife’s hand in acid. (some NSFW language)
I first read this as “the whole goyem thing” and thought, ‘But if Frankenstein’s one of the goyem, he’s non-Jewish.’
As for my nomination for most evil: Jesus Christ… just because the OP ain’t the boss of me.
I’d find this a very difficult question to answer, especially without a clear definition of “evil.”
Ruthlessness, bloodlust, and mental illness are different things and none of them exactly meets my definition of “evil.”
Body count seems like a very poor indicator, unless you want to classify Winston Churchill (“We will never surrender”) and Abe Lincoln as evil.
And opportunity matters. Josef Stalin had the opportunity to kill 20 million, did so, and would certainly seem to qualify as “evil,” but might there not be many others who would do the same with the same opportunity and motive?
Jesus Christ. Yeah, guy, we get it, you suffered. There’s no reason we should have to hear about it every fuckin’ Sunday.
Emperor Trajan destroyed an entire culture, scattered the people, killed most of the men, to the point where we know nothing about a philosophical figure once considered equal to Jesus or Buddha.
To the Dacians… who we only know by the name the Romans gave them.