I’m really at kind of a loss here. The only people I can think of seem like pretty week tea or penny ante villains – Putin, Joseph Kony, Justin Bieber, etc.
Help me out. Because as one of the ongoing competitions between between saving drowning mice and men, I wanna put up the worst against … I dunno, a hamster, Lassie, head lice, something …
No way. Plenty of Conservatives still use the “miss me yet?” poster. Plenty of people like him.
I almost want to say Westboro Baptist. Even other nuts like Jack Chick don’t like them (albeit these kinds of nuts usually hate each other because they believe different nutty things). I don’t think there exist many people that aren’t already part of the tiny church that like them. However, that’s kind of marred by the fact that I’d wager over 90% of the world doesn’t even know who they are.
He’s responsible for the deaths of, what, 20,000 or 30,000 people in the last two years? And the revilement seems pretty universal for him at this point. Maybe Robert Mugabe, then? Alexander Lukashenko seems pretty loathsome but I’m not sure how much death and destruction he’s caused, and Kim Jong-Un may not have been in power long enough to be a contender in this discussion.
Fred Phelps and family of the Westboro Baptist Church comes to mind; widely hated, widely known, and essentially no allies. Guys like Assad or Putin have plenty of enemies, but also plenty of followers; Phelps doesn’t. And while there’s plenty of homophobic bigots in the world, most aren’t professional media trolls who embarrass their own ideological fellow travelers by going after dead military veterans.
In online discussions at least I see plenty of people support him, because the rebels are supposedly fundamentalist Muslims and thus the Ultimate Evil.
The problem with people like the Kims is that they have entire nations that are pretty much brainwashed into liking them (or “like” them insofar as their regime furthers their own need for power such as the members of their inner circle). That ruins the “universally” thing because there’s a non-trivial number of people who think they’re pretty cool dudes.
IIRC he’s made an international spectacle of himself a few times. More to the point, he’s in the running for “most universally agreed upon scumbag” because among the people who know who he is, that agreement appears to be indeed universal.
In the US. Outside the US he is universally abhorred. Let’s say half the population in the US think George W. Bush is ok, that leaves 6850000000 people in the world who probably think he is the world’s biggest scumbag.
Assad does bad things in Syria, to Syrian people. Kony does bad things in Uganda. Bush did bad things all over the world, and we’re still fighting his stupid wars. Everyone knows him. I’m not convinced that Joseph Kony got much coverage in Azerbaijan, but Bush did. In some countries (incl. Russia) people are probably told that Assad is a kind-hearted teddy bear dictator whose naughty population are being horrid to him. Bush will be reviled there, as he is everywhere.
I vote Bush for biggest universally agreed upon scumbag on Planet Earth. He may not objectively be as bad a person as the other nominees, but if we need to universally agree he is it.
ETA Fred Phelps is only for people who watch documentaries on television, ie a few people. My Granny in the UK doesn’t even know who he is.
I have as well.
I don’t think Bashar Al Assad is that disliked outside the West and in Syria and in Turkey. I am pretty sure that in many in Israel’s security establishment hope he survives, better the devil you know.
Anyway, Dick Cheney? Rumsfeld?