Who is the worst person in history? How does one become a candidate for this unfortunate position?
This sounds like an IMHO but anyway Ill shoot from what I have studied in history.
It should be noted that most people rationalize their ‘wrong’ acts and actually beleive they are doing right. I wouldnt be suprised if Hitler believed he was doing a good thing. In one supreme court case which might strike me as a “wrong” decision (Cherokee v Georgia) Marshall pretty much renders Indian tribes politically powerless within the government of the US. They cant sue states like states can. And OTOH Marshall expresses that the tribes are dependant on the US, and any diplomatic contacts with the Natives must go through the US or it is essentially an act of war on both the western state’s and the tribe’s part. Do I beleive marshall was evil for making this decision? Im not sure. I dont think I can make that judgement. We should be wary of judging the past by today’s standards, especially on a moral level. What we in our magnifence declare ‘right’ and ‘good’ is often not what the past, with equal belief, declares is ‘right’ and ‘good’
But Ill go ahead and commit that sin. I’d have to call a dead tie between Hitler and Stalin. I think Stalin ended up killing more, and killing more people loyal to him but the holocaust was much more grusome and calculated.
Hmm, there are 3 right at the top of my list:
Martin Luther
Stalin
Hitler
Martin Luther?
Luther’s primary claim to badness (unless you happen to think the Protestant Reformation was truly evil) was his anti-semitism. Hitler most definately took many cues from Luther, and one of the Nazis first acts upon gaining power was to declare a holiday in his honor. Luther advocated everything from deportation to enslavement/forced labor conscription, and came dangerously close to talking about extermination. However, Luther, as far as I know, didn’t actually try any of these things out, so it’s pretty ridiculous to put him on the same list as Hitler and Stalin. For the standard list to be complete, you can’t forget Pol Pot. Mao was a pretty detestable human being as well, though much more via arrogant incompetance than deliberate brutality than with Hitler or Stalin.
In terms of simple sheer evil and depravity toward innocent people (as well as Muslims, which is why he’s sort of a folk hero in Anti-Islamic circles) without even much of a cause behind it, you can’t do much worse than Vlad the Impaler. Though that lady that bathed in baths of her serf’s blood certainly is up there as well.
Two truisms come to mind…
One man’s hero is another man’s demon
The winners write the history books
Given this, I am quite sure that we have no idea who the worst person actually was. I’m not even sure what the criteria would be.
Ah yes, this lady:
http://www.whataslacker.com/backdoor/elizabeth_bathory/
If you start considering anything except absolute numbers of people murdered, there are just so many candidates that I wouldn’t know where to start 
If we knew who thought up human sacrifice, he would be right up there.
No one would ever name someone like Indira Ghandi because there were all sorts of political and cultural barriers preventing her from turning into a real Hitler or Stalin. However, Rohington Mistry’s novel “A Fine Balance,” set during the 1975 emergency she put India through, does keep her in my mind as someone who brought out the worst in what could have been the best. And yet I suppose she was an angel compared to Saddam.
I believe you’re thinking of Elizabeth Bathory, and she was, indeed, one twisted evil bitch.
And here is an article from FrontPage mag which calls upon the spirit of Vlad the Impaler to help us kick the asses of uppity Muslims. So Vlad wasn’t all bad.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1690
“Muslim Americans too should realize that the freedoms they enjoy were won by the likes of Dracula.
Where is our Dracula today? We are still waiting for him to arise.”
FrontPage mag has also just informed me that China knew about 9/11 far in advance of it happening. That makes China the worst person ever.
What about the Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. They organized the Armenian massacre that wiped out almost half of the Armenians in the world. That’s pretty evil right there.
China knew about 9/11? What the heck? Where did they get that one?
What the hell?
Read that opinion column about Vladdie. Good Lord. This is my favorite part:
Eh? The Romans made no expansive moves after Constantine?
Huh?
Whoever is responsible for the decaying, immoral, selfish, proud, conceded, clone of ancient rome… More specifically, the United States of America…
http://www.counterpunch.org/wade1.html
http://www.matriots.com/apn/234/
http://www.theglobalist.com/dbweb/storyid.aspx?storyid=2526
and my personal favorite:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/19/1032054915705.html
That’s a new one on me. But some FBI agents also knew what was up, so I wouldn’t go too hard on the Chinese. See:
Maybe if the class system stratifies and solidifies itself more, the military becomes tied to their military superiors instead of the state, senators start killing each other, we enslave the poorer folks. Look just because you have an empire does not make it the same as the Roman empire. The English empire was compared to Rome, the Spanish, the French in their heyday… Its old.
China, and “Unrestricted Warfare”
Martin Luther?
Color me surprised, but if the worst thing this guy did was be anti-semitic to the n-th degree, than this hardly qualifies him to be the worst person ever.
Besides, I think his translation of the Bible into German, and the Protestant reformation were, on the whole, good things.
As a side note, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (the ELCA) has completely renounced all of Luther’s anti-semitic teachings. (I learned this one at the Holocaust Museum, IIRC.)
My qualification for ‘evil’ is possesssing a cure to a suffering and blocking it’s access; while distributing the suffering for ones own benefit. Whoever made the decision to place SV-40 in a live polio vaccine mandatorily given to every child born in the baby boomer generation in developed nations strikes me as pretty close to that definition.
-Justhink
Sherwood Schwartz. The nation was just beginning to recover from GILLIGAN’S ISLAND when he unleashed THE BRADY BUNCH, and no sooner had they recovered from that than he fired back with THE BRADY BUNCH VARIETY HOUR and A VERY BRADY CHRISTMAS. Is it any wonder the world has gone to hell in the last 40 years? (Hey, Sherwood Schwartz is as good a hypothesis as the absence of school prayer.)
I don’t think there is any real gradation of evil beyond a certain point; it then switches less to the degree of evil than the scale. I’d posit Pol Pot, for while the 2 million or so he killed was “minor” compared to the numbers of Hitler and Stalin, when you look upon it as a percentage of the people he controlled it takes new dimensions, and he never showed a moment’s remorse.
Hypothetical question to help define evil: Imagine two soldiers (no particular army or war or era), each of whom are given the order to slaughter a group of unarmed helpless villagers.
Soldier A does it without a moment’s hesitation. He feels no remorse, never questions the order, is completely untroubled that helpless people are being murdered, he survives the war and dies of old age sleeping like a baby every night.
Soldier B knows that the order is madness or evil, he has complete compassion for the people, but ultimately, to save his own neck, he complies. He survives the war and dies an old man, plagued with nightmares and guilt for the rest of his life.
Which one do you believe is the more “evil”- the one who saw nothing wrong with what he did, or the one who understood what he did and yet did it anyway?