Top Twelve Most Hate-able People in History

When people talk about the hated people in history, people always talk about mass-murderers, dictators, or people like that. But actually, why don’t we consider other people who did other forms of damage, such as those CEOs who fatten their own wallets while destroying the jobs and livelihoods of millions, MPs who squander public money during an economic crisis, and to re-interpret those mass-murderers for what they did, by bringing their verdict to a new level beyond just “they killed a lot of people.”

So here’s my own list, in response to De Maitre’s list of hated figures. Some names overlap, goes to show how hated they are, but there are also some new people, who are not very likeable either. And of course, the list differs for each individual, so this is just my own take on the most ”hate-able” (meaning you’ll have reasons to hate them) people.


12. Bernard Madoff - Criminal Executive Officer

Here I quote from the Time website:
“Next to Bernie Madoff, the rest of the sticky-fingered CEOs on this list seem like dime-store shoplifters. Madoff's decades-long, $65 billion Ponzi scheme, which came to a screeching halt with his Dec. 11, 2008 arrest, is perhaps history's biggest financial swindle, and his trademark thin-lipped smile became the defining image of the avarice that last fall nearly brought the global financial system to its knees.”

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1903155_1903156_1903160,00.html

Those CEOs who live opulent lives while many others lose their homes to foreclosures or their jobs due to the recession are hardly likeable.


11. George W Bush – President of the US (2001 – 2008)

He’s hate-able for reasons we are all too familiar with: Iraq. Iraq was illegitimate, it was poorly planned, and the post-war crisis and the torture incident proved to be an embarrassment at best and a scandal at worst. The US’s relations with the world were at an all-time low, not to mention a whole host of other problems, international and domestic. North Korea, hurricane Katrina, etc. People would probably remember him as the most incompetent president in US history.


10. Mao Zedong – Leader of the Peoples' Republic of China (1949 – 1976)

Whose Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution more than just killed and ruined lives, it almost destroyed a civilisation. The Chinese are still suffering from its effects today.


09. Zhu Yuan Zhang – Founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644)

Scholars hate him. They hate him for his literary inquisitions. Hundreds of scholars died under him for writing poems that left him feeling offended. You see, in Chinese, there are different characters that sound the same. So the emperor hated the use of words like sounded like “monk”, “beggar”, because that’s what he was before becoming emperor. But surely he’s a little too paranoid? But more importantly, the impact on Chinese literature and culture? Honestly, as a member of the modern literati, I hate him too.


08. Tomás de Torquemada - High Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition

Actually, not just him, but all the inquisitors before and after. It’s one thing to kill, but to kill and then say “it’s for your own good” is just so hypocritical, not to mention being so religiously intolerant. This is the problem with some religious people like him: they believe in something so strongly that they simply don’t care about the human costs while trying to realise that goal. His actions and those of many other inquisitors remind us of the inhumanity and bigotry of religious intolerance.

Rather than say: “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” we should say: “Nobody desires the Spanish Inquisition!”


07. Dick Cheney – Vice President of the US (2001 – 2008)

You might wonder, why is the vice-president above the president in this list? That’s simply because he’s more responsible than Bush for the US’s predicament. Arguably one of the most powerful VPs in US history and the defining figure amongst the neo-conservatives, he’s the real architect behind US policy in Iraq, and in North Korea. The trouble is, he has such a narrow world-view that his foreign policy becomes more than just conservative, it becomes very unrealistic. Proof? Still defending Guatanamo when it has become a source of international anger and symbol of US double standards. And in a way, the thousands of American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, the countless civilians in both countries, the messy situation in the Korean peninsula were pretty much his doing.


06. Kim Jong Il – leader of The Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea, otherwise known as North Korea.

People hate him, not just because he has done so little for the poor North Korean people, who starve as I write this post, but because he continues his opulent, decadent way of life as it happens. Haven’t you noticed he’s the only fat person in North Korea? All the fine food, prepared by chefs from all over the world he recruited, plus the fine wine, plus the collection of Hollywood movies, and how he kidnapped a director and actress to build his own movie industry.

And of course, there the nuclear weapons, missile tests, detained journalists… you get the drift. North Korea is a state run not by politicians and statesmen, but by criminals.


05. Jim Jones – leader of the Peoples’ Temple

He’s not the ordinary murderer. He’s a mass murderer. Another one of those who would kill for the sake of a utopia. The story goes like this. He founded this cult called the Peoples’ Temple, and took his followers to the jungles of Guyana to set up a utopian community called Jonestown, with himself as the spiritual and nominal leader of the community. All was fine until some wanted to leave. Jones wouldn’t let that happen, so he orchestrated a mass suicide, which was actually mass murder, because the victims were fed the cyanide. How many people did he kill?

900 people, including himself.


04. Osama bin Laden – Leader of the Al Qaeda terror network

Well, I don’t have to tell you what he did. But what I want to say here is what his actions meant for the world. He sparked the greatest conflict since World War 2, in which many countries now face the threat of terrorism, religious extremism, and religious conflict. His act inspired many other groups to follow, and resulted in terrorism becoming the most serious international problem of the 21st century.


03. Adolf Hitler -Fuehrer of Nazi Germany (1933 – 1945)

He’s too-talked-about. So I’m not going into detail. I’ll just address the issue: why third place? In my opinion, he’s like Torque and Alexander the Great combined. Religious and racial hatred mixed with a thirst for world domination. That’s him. But true mass murderers have this special quality, which is a sheer sense of inhumanity. That’s for the top two places. Besides, even if we take the game of numbers, the top two would have killed more than he did (unless we take the total casualties for the European and North African theatres of World War 2, then he’s unmatched.)


02. Pol Pot – leader of the Khmer Rouge regime of Cambodia

Why him? Two reasons. First, because he’s another one who killed remorselessly in his attempt to create a utopia. When the Khmer Rouge gained power in Cambodia, everyone from the cities was “evacuated” to the countryside to start collectives. They were so determined to create that new society; they called that year, Year Zero. But dissent and resistance was ruthlessly crushed. People were tortured and killed for the slightest dissent. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, then millions, died in the hands of the regime. Schools became prisons and torture centres, and the people lived in five long years of fear and inhumanity.

Second, it was his own people he killed. Many mass murders killed the “other”, but he targeted his own Khmer people. That goes to show his sheer inhumanity.


01. Josef Stalin – Leader of the Soviet Union (1924 – 1953)

Like Hitler, he’s too talked-about. I’ll just use one line. He killed, he killed by the millions, and he kills at a rate of hundreds a day. He signs death warrants every night, and decides who not to kill (yet) at a whim. No one was safe in Soviet Russia.