Ask Lemmy

Billionaires.

Pol pot killed about 25% of Cambodias population and deserve a nomination.

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, 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.

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.

Ea-nāṣir, merrily flogging low quality copper to unsuspecting punters. The rotter.

Trump (yes, hoping he's dead)

Belgian Congo/Jewish Holocaust is right up there. I wouldn't say a specific person but innumerable people involved.

King Leopold and Hitler were THE authority, so ultimately they signed off on the death and suffering of millions of Congolese and Jews (and other minorities) respectively.

For the Congo: imagine a father staring at the severed hand and foot of his five year old daughter. That's a photograph searchable online, and needs to be seen to understand the violence and dehumanism of colonialism.

For the holocaust: we have all seen at least one picture. But imagine a baby being smashed against a wall because it wouldn't stop crying. Pretty women (maybe even underage girls) being raped. To say just a small part of the atrocities of the holocaust.

Well, I haven't even included Unit 731. General Shiro Ishii.

Now, what to say about today in 2026? Who's to say these atrocities are not being repeated?

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.

While Hitler, Pol Pot, Beria, and Kissing er are all obvious and good 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.

Ronald Reagan

Laventiy Beria was the head of Stalin's NKVD. He may not be the greatest villain, but more people need to know about this motherfucker.

Stalin introduced him as "My Himmler". Despite all the spying and torture you'd expect from the secret police, Beria found time to be a prolific rapist as a side hustle.

God, and probably even dont exists, that makes it more impresive.

Henry Kissinger is up there as quite a villain of modern times. Puppet master of most of the fucked up modern world order.

I think that where we are today, it's more important than ever to really recognise that there is absolutely no "evilest" person. And moreso, almost all of them genuinely believed they were being a force for good.

The main reason for there being no "evilest" is because there are not just tens, or hundreds, but thousands of people who have committed horrific atrocities which even as individual acts would be in contention for the evilest.

Just within the Holocaust, you have so many individuals perpetrating such evil. The croatian fascist groups always stick out in my memory for the raw personal brutality.

However, there are so many comparable situations throughout history that we know very little about. Sacking of cities, mass rapes, Jeffrey fucking epstein, what's been happening in Sudan, what happened in Ethiopia a few years ago, the Holocaust, the Mongols, the ottomans, the British empire, south American dictators, the Japanese empire, the russian empire, the soviet union, al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, the IRA, the Vikings, and on, and on, and on.

Yes, arguments can be made about how much more evil things are when they are organised etc. However, in my mind, organisation is just a tool that we have improved. We need to be hyper vigilant that anyone, at any time can end up being so radicalised that they are willing to perpetrate evil. Including ourselves. We are not really different from these evil humans.

Stalin of course.

But I fully expect this totally verifiably factual post to be violently downmodded in 3, 2, 1... 🙂

Cain singlehandedly killed 25% of world's human population.

Shirō Ishii

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.

Hitler is a pretty obvious answer

Josef Mengele, Himmler and Hitler. Some of the heinous trio of history for doing numerous unspeakable acts of their time.

Chairman Mao Zedong.

DuPont de Nemours, Inc. or the DuPont Family rather. These guys are a huge contributing factor as to why humans could unknowingly wind up having cancers and other health-related issues directly affected by chemicals that the company has designed. They've had their hands in many things including wars, like napalm during Vietnam. They've made forever chemicals and have pumped that shit irresponsibly into hundreds of things we use everyday.