Who is your least favourite historical figure and why?

Discussion in 'History' started by jennyRater, Jan 24, 2005.

  1. jennyRater Luck B me 2nite Registered Senior Member

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    The title says it all: there have been some great villains in history, so which do you most despise?

    Oh - and please lets leave out Hitler, because he is too obvious and puts others in the shade..

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    My anti-favourite would be either King John of England or Tamarlane the Terrible.

    The first, because he led his country to financial ruin, had the whole people placed under interdict by the pope (no church services of any kind), starved or executed probably hundreds of thousands, reversed the powerful reputation his brother Richard had won, and took revenge on his nobles for their revolt by hiring an army of foreign mercenaries to kill and ruin as much as possible - in his own nation.

    The second, because of the sheer number of people he had slaughtered. Being on the losing side in a war against him was certain death, even for the sick and elderly.
     
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  3. Victor E Registered Senior Member

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    Jesus

    yeah, let's say I'm not very christian, and I don't want to insult everyone who is. So I won't write down my motivation.
     
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  5. Beryl WWAD What Would Athelwulf Do? Registered Senior Member

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    Oh, hmm. So many to pick from, but I think Julius Caesar would have to be my least favorite. Although I'm semi-inclined to agree with Victor E...
     
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  7. duendy Registered Senior Member

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    Plato.......cause, he is one of the major instigators of our sense of dualism between Nature/body and spirit/consciousness. he's been called the father of modern philosophy, and his presence is STILL with us

    what i friggin hypocrites he was...saying about how philosopher-kings should be running things, and on about utopias yet lookin down his nose at common people and seeing nothin wrong with slavery

    There is also evidence he was a self-denying Queer, and thus one of the reasons he championed sexless 'platonic love'

    he looked down his precious snotter at Nature. so he is at the top of my list of arseholes of history
     
  8. jennyRater Luck B me 2nite Registered Senior Member

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    I know a lot of wrong's been done because of christianity, but is Jesus any worse than Mohamed or Budda in that way?

    Pretty evil, sure, but back then slavery and snobbery must have seemd natural to humans. Perhaps Plato's upbringing simply didnt describe slavery as nasty at all...
    Platonic love, though - I rather have a problem with that too.
     
  9. Dr Lou Natic Unnecessary Surgeon Registered Senior Member

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    Struggling to decide between caesar and jesus seems odd to me, seeing as how they couldn't be more different.

    I say jesus, because he represents an anti-roman jewish movement which put an end to the bettering of mankind and the harmony of the earth in favour of being unnaturally peacefull towards our own kind.
    The repurcussions have been astronomical.
    Overpopulation, disease, pollution, the mass extinction, the destruction of cultures and so on and so on, the sorry state of the planet can be attributed to jesus' movement.
    It is anti-earth and unprecedented wrecklessness having humongously disastrous consequences in a scarily short time period.
    And most obnoxiously, it is guised in good intentions and false righteousness.
    Jesus' only redeeming quality is he got exactly what he deserved.
    I wish he would rise from the dead just so he could get a little more.
     
  10. Beryl WWAD What Would Athelwulf Do? Registered Senior Member

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    It isn't just the two of them I was struggling to decide between, there are others I dislike as well. Besides, I don't think they're all that different in terms of what effect they had on the world.
     
  11. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

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    Pope Innocent III -> Sent his measely knights to Baltics.
     
  12. jennyRater Luck B me 2nite Registered Senior Member

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  13. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Joseph Stalin

    Death toll
    About one million people were shot during the periods 1935-38, 1942 and 1945-50 and millions of people were transported to Gulag labour camps. In Georgia about 80,000 people were shot during 1921, 1923-24, 1935-38, 1942 and 1945-50, and more than 100,000 people were transported to Gulag camps.

    On March 5, 1940, Stalin himself and other Soviet leaders signed the order to execute 25,700 Polish intelligentsia including 14,700 Polish POWs. It became known as Katyn massacre. Some other infamous massacres: massacre of prisoners 30,000-40,000 people.

    It is generally agreed by historians that if famines, prison and labour camp mortality, and state terrorism (deportations and political purges) are taken into account, Stalin and his colleagues were directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions. How many millions died under Stalin is greatly disputed. Although no official figures have been released by the Soviet or Russian governments, most estimates put the figure between 8 and 20 million. Comparison of the 1926-39 census results suggests 5-10 million deaths in excess of what would be normal in the period, mostly through famine in 1931-34. The 1926 census shows the population of the Soviet Union at 147 million while the 1939 census at 162 million. (Another census from 1937 is known as the "wrecker's census"; its figures were suppressed.) The highest death estimates are 50 million from the 1920s to 1950s, but they are probably greatly exaggerated.

    A quote popularly attributed to Stalin is "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." (possibly said in response to Churchill at the Potsdam Conference in 1945).

    http://history1900s.about.com/cs/josephstalin/
     
  14. fo3 acdcrocks Registered Senior Member

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    I am, at least. And even though the pope started the more than 700-year long occupation of the Baltic countries, by various countries, which all used the local villagers as slaves, I must say that our coutries were at that time so technologically undeveloped, that the occupation would have happened one way or another. Now the enslaving of the local population is another thing. I don't know, if the enslaving would have happened if the people had accepted the christianity peacefully, but still.

    I wouldn't call Pope Innocent evil, still. By the standards of that time he was probably a loyal servant of god, and fought with the infidels, to spread the only right religion. We can't judge people with our time's sense of justice.
     
  15. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, but I still don't like him. And not neccesseraly (technologically undeveloped), because Lithuania together with Poland had an empire that reached as far as the Black Sea. It was more about local politics and local tribes too pissed off against each other to unite against the germans.
    p.s. I'm from Latvia.
     
  16. geodesic "The truth shall make ye fret" Registered Senior Member

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    How about Torquemada and Isabella? Or, more recently, Pohl Pot?
    However, my choice goes to L'Olonnais, a French pirate in the Caribbean in the 17th century. By all accounts, he was both intelligent, and exceptionally cruel and brutal - not a good combination.
    When a Spanish ship sent to hunt him down surrendered, he killed the entire 90 man crew, save one who he sent to the Spanish authorities to tell them that in future he will kill all the men they sent after him.
     
  17. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

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    Wow, that pirate could be my hero!

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  18. jennyRater Luck B me 2nite Registered Senior Member

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    There's someone I didnt think of.. strange, cause his reign of fear wasnt long before my time. Isnt he still suposed to be alive somewhere?
     
  19. Spyke Registered Senior Member

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    Maximillian Robespierre, maybe the most influential figure in the French Revolution. As the leading spokesman for the Jacobins, he was instrumental in creating the new constitution. He at first supported a constitutional monarchy by when the king, pretty much in house arrest, attempted to slip across the border to Austria, Robespeirre decided he needed to be executed. Later he supported the guillotining of those loyalists who were perceived as threats to the new republic. All not to bad at that point, but it seems at some point Robespeirre began losing touch with reality, attempting to introduce a new religion in France, The Cult Of The Supreme Being, in whcih he actually appeared dressed in some toga-type outfit standing on top of a manmade mountain in the streets of Paris. He began his final descent after ordering wholesale slaughter of 'enemies of the state' that led to the Reign of Terror'. Any body you owed money to, or had a grudge against, or looked at you wrong, you reported them as a loyalist and it was off with their head. Fittingly, as even many of Robespierre's fellow Jacobins began to get nervous about their own heads, they accused him of his own brand of tyranny and it was off with his head.
     
  20. River Ape Valued Senior Member

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    A fair enough choice, cosmictraveler, but you then go on to refer to
    and herein lies the problem, I think. You very rightly feel the need to couple Stalin's name with "others". Because Chairman Stalin was the visible face of Soviet Communism, we too readily tend to think of him as the instigator of all that was evil therein. It may be that he was chosen as a figurehead by more powerful forces behind the scenes. He was a good-looking fellow, and his Georgian origins did not create a problem. Most of the original Bolsheviks were Jews, but were at pains to disguise the extent of Jewish hegemony at the centre of Soviet power. So much of what went on in the Soviet Union was kept secret or deliberately misrepresented by its agencies of propaganda that it is difficult to discern what was the actual state of affairs – especially in regard to the power structure. It is not fanciful to suppose that greater power lay with the Secret Police (OGPU, later NKVD) than rested in the official organs of state.

    The forced collectivisation of the Ukraine, estimated to have cost 6 to 7 million lives, was spearheaded by Lazar Kaganovich and assisted by Genrikh Yogoda, head of the Secret Police. Either of these two might also be candidates for Least Favourite Historical Figure. Or was this Jewish-inspired holocaust against the Ukrainians justified revenge for pogroms in earlier generations?

    The expression “Stalin’s henchman” is often attached to Kaganovich, but was this Georgian amid so many Jews really the controlling power? Who or what was Kaganovich really working for? It may well be that Stalin’s power outgrew that of those who originally controlled him. From figurehead he became father-figure, iconic leader and thence all-powerful dictator . . . or did his power always rest on a knife-edge? History has still to reveal a convincing answer to so many questions about the Soviet Union.
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2005
  21. jennyRater Luck B me 2nite Registered Senior Member

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    Ooo, theres a tasty controversey for the holocaust survivors..!

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    The idea that Jews might have CAUSED a bigger campain of mass murders than they suffred from - its something you dont see in history tv channells.

    Then again, werent a lot of the victims of communist genocide also jewish?

    I never heard of such an thing, but Hitlers invasion of Russia takes on new color if the "jews as enemys" card was being playd by him at the time, to motivate his troops pushin east..
     
  22. spuriousmonkey Banned Banned

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    Sir Isaac Newton.

    Ever since he invented gravity people and things have been falling causing great harm to society.
     
  23. jennyRater Luck B me 2nite Registered Senior Member

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    Werent apples (+ coconuts, which hurt more) falling on peoples heads even before Newton?
     

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