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.

  • neidu3@sh.itjust.worksM
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    24 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.

      • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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        17 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

          • Denjin@feddit.uk
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            10 hours ago

            Commander of Unit 731, the Imperial Japanese Army’s biological and chemical weapons “research” unit.

            If you don’t know the details of their crimes, I strongly urge you not to do any research into them. Suffice to say they committed the most brutal and callous forms of torture imaginable on many thousands of people, including babies.

  • DoubleDongle@lemmy.world
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    1 day 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.

  • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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    1 day 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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        18 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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      1 day 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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      1 day 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.

  • HubertManne@piefed.social
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    24 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.

  • WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
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    18 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.

    • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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      12 hours ago

      I don’t think it’s fair to make Jesus responsible for the modern pick-and-chose followers of his religion, and I doubt modern Christianity would even be recognizable to him - the late Roman state religion is pretty different from his reformed Judaism. Plus IIRC early Christendom had some doomsday cult elements.

    • Teppa@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      Couldn’t the same be said of Marx?

      Look at the great leap forward, that killed millions of people due to idiotic central planning.

    • NateNate60@lemmy.worldOP
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      17 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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        16 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.

  • AnchoriteMagus@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Thomas Midgley, Jr

    Invented CFCs like Freon, which caused the hole in the ozone layer, and then later went on to pioneer the use of lead in gasoline, which is estimated to have resulted in the cumulative loss of millions of IQ points from humanity during its use, not to mention lead-derived cancers and other illnesses.

    Possibly the single greatest negative contribution to the environment and humanity.

    • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      I consider this man to be the worst individual in all of human history. Maybe the single worst human to ever live on the face of the planet.

      What makes him this bad? He knew. He knew what leaded gasoline was doing and what freon would do and he did it anyway to help cooperations make a little more money.

      There are some pretty bad people under the post. But this guy… Man.

    • WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
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      18 hours ago

      He might have lead to Boomers being such psychopaths, including the later greatest villians.

      He DID do it on purpose too!

    • withabeard@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Did the most damage… But I’m not sure he’s villainous. Just competently dangerous. Happy to be corrected but I thought tmjr was trying to improve the world. He just got massively unlucky… Multiple times.

      • Denjin@feddit.uk
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        22 hours ago

        The effects of lead poisoning were already very well known, 8 people died of lead poisoning at DuPont during the development and Midgely himself suffered the effects of lead poisoning after “proving” his compound was safe in a public demonstration.

        He absolutely knew there would have been widescale negative health effects if they continued to push the product on the market. He also knew about widely available alternative “anti-knocking” agents they could have used but they were unable to be patented and so there was no profit.

        He is absolutely a case of someone who simply did not care about the consequences of his work beyond what profit could be extracted.

        CFCs are a slightly different issue because no one could have reasonably anticipate their effects on the atmosphere and he was long dead before those effects were starting to be felt.

        I don’t believe he would have stopped developing them even if he did know however.

        The universe got the last laugh however after he became entangled in self made contraption to help him after he developed polio, suffocating him.

      • Klear@quokk.au
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        1 day ago

        Yeah, I’m pretty sure he invented freon use in refrigeration because he knew he fucked up with the lead in gasoline and wanted to do something good to outweight that.

    • Brave Little Hitachi Wand@feddit.uk
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      1 day ago

      He was just a feckless chemist, better to blame the DuPonts, GM, and other moneyed interests who have depended on such useful idiots and the corruptability of the US government since its earliest days.

      • AnchoriteMagus@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        To address both you and the person below you: he deliberately gave himself lead poisoning on national television by inhaling the concentrated vapor of leaded gasoline for over a minute. He did this not because he was ignorant of the health dangers of lead (he had already had lead poisoning TWICE BEFORE), but because he was purposefully misleading the public.

        • Brave Little Hitachi Wand@feddit.uk
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          1 day ago

          I didn’t mean to say he was innocent of anything. His crimes are well known; but they were done in service of moneyed interests who were the real decision-makers behind it all.