If violence makes you squeamish, this video might be hard to watch. For this list, we’ll be looking at the wickedest men throughout recorded history. Our cou...
Even Caligula is a bit sus. He was the “mad emperor” sure, but the main target of his violence was the roman elite, as far as Roman emperors go, he was probably one of the least brutal towards Rome’s neighbours and common people. It’s just that all the accounts of him come from the same nobles who hated him, so they wanted to make him look as bad as possible. Make no mistake, he was incompetent and unfit for leadership, but considering how brutal some of the emperors could be, it’s kind of hard to say he was one of the most “evil” ones.
(And I’m surprised they put Hitler in there at all. Mainly because of youtube’s monetisation policy and tending to demonetise anything that mentions him.)
It’s been a while, but I think some of the general idea around the emperors after Augustus (the first several anyway, including Tiberius and Caligula) got their histories sort of… revised? by those who came later and wanted to demonize the former emperors to make themselves look better or whatever.
Like Claudius was written about as basically being a complete moron yet he was pretty competent as an emperor. It makes one wonder why historians at the time took all this time to say how unfit a person was or how they fucked their mom and all this shit, which may well be true, who knows, but it does seem like intentionally shitting on all of them except Augustus of course since dude lived so long be basically established himself as a demigod before he died.
You can pretty much be assured that anyone in history who ever wore a crown was a dogshit person in some capacity, but it’s worth considering the sources for bloody excess like what Caligula gets pinned with. And since the creator uncritically put Mao and Stalin and Kim Il-Sung on a list alongside Hitler, they’re probably absolutely incapable of considering sourcing.
Yeah, it’s important to understand ancient Roman culture and traditions in order to understand their primary sources. The nobility were incredibly conservative, and loved looking back on this mythologized past of Rome where Romans were real Romans and not like the wokescold cuck sjw emperors like Claudius and Nero.
There is a weird amount of overlap between the modern US and ancient Rome. I guess it makes sense, they did try to build their society to be like their idealized version of the Roman republic.
Caligula wasn’t even the worst Roman emperor, there was plenty more of them which caused much more suffering and no one of them even come close to Constantine if we consider the repercussions later in history.
They make the most bullshit top 10 lists on stuff they have 0 knowlage on with barely any research, they should just stick to the movies they know about.
Yeah, I guess they must. I would’ve thought they would’ve done the opposite and had things be as sanatised as possible to avoid it, but they do probably have some deal with youtube where they can bend the rules (or maybe their team of lawyers has something to do with it.)
Caligula is not that bad. Also vlad and sadam hussein are evil but top ten evil seems like an exageration. After all the ones with their hands up the pupets ass should be more evil than the puppet.
Also gengis khan was a very friendly guy. Most of the bad rep the mongols get is because of Amir timur he is the really blodthirsty one.
Ok, on the Mongolian thing, specifically Genghis Khan, you are correct… to a point. In comparison to other pre-gunpowder armies (probably an arbitrary point, but you gotta have some line when bullshitting about history) the Mongolians were absolutely more “tolerant” in many ways. There’s the famous “bring me a Muslim and a Christian so I can hear them debate to me” moment. He was pretty open to all religions as long as people bent the knee basically, which, all things considered, is very progressive. Especially compared to many European societies and rulers that demanded absolute adherence to a specific sect of Christianity. Just being Christian alone wasn’t even enough. So that’s all well and good.
There was, however, the whole “what if they don’t bend the knee?” question lol. And the answer to that is pretty much “nice city you have here. Be a shame if it didn’t exist.” Which, again, isn’t especially uniquely evil for the time. It was kinda routine for Romans at least 1000 years before the Mongols (obviously mostly different parts of the world before someone assumes shit off comparisons) to do the whole “surrender and we’ll work something out or resist and we’ll level your city.” A pretty effective tactic.
The Mongolians get a shitty historical framing because mostly Europeans have written the history that we read (and Chinese who had their reasons to not be kind in the history books). So of course they frame brutal warlords like Caesar (which is what he was to anyone who was not a Roman citizen) as great statesmen, adept at war and diplomacy, etc. And it’s hard to deny he wasn’t a great statesman, clearly he was since he elevated himself to something beyond what others had done and successfully held onto it (until he didn’t). But they leave out the exact details of his conquests around Europe and even in Northern Africa/Western Asian area. We hear about piles of heads and the nickname “the scourge of god” for the Khans. But Caesar’s name is associated with emperor, wealth, eventually it’s associated with god himself with Constantine and onward with the Eastern Orthodox Christians. Pretty telling setup when one side becomes “godly” and the other “the scourge of god.” Pretty early version of “the hordes of Asia” used many times later on by Europeans.
Kind of all over the place, but my only point is it’s ok to admit that Genghis Khan was a pretty not good guy. He directly led to the deaths of who knows how many people and it wasn’t for any sort of high minded liberatory goal. Just conquest. He and his people just happened to be especially good at it and he wasn’t white, so, he gets too much negative coverage compared to others.
If we were making a real evil people list I’m fairly certain at least half to 2/3 would be US presidents and statesmen cough Kissinger
I swear they put Vlad Tepes because of the whole dracula thing, thinking he was a real vampire. Turks literally did the same thing million times over for centuries in Balkan, Armenia and every place they occupied.
For everything he did, he’s literally nothing compared to average USA president or European monarch, how tf does he even make it to top 10 every time?
What if he was a real vampire? That actually would make him less evil since he has to be bloodthirsty to satisfy his nutritional requierments he has no choise in the matter.
Yeah the guy was undeniably “not good” by any moral compass, back then or now.
However, as you say, it’s not like he was doing shit all that special. Maybe he was impaling more people by percentage than his Ottoman friends to the south, but, I dunno, impaling even one guy seems to be kinda bad.
However, putting him on this list and ignoring (more likely ignorant of) that time ROMANS CRUCIFIED SLAVES ALL THE WAY FROM CAPUA TO ROME (nearly 200km according to Google maps! About 120mi for Burgers). 120 fucking miles of men and women all crucified in the horrific way Christians are very familiar with. For the crime of overthrowing, fighting back, winning for a while, but ultimately losing to those who enslaved them.
(For those only lightly aware: this is the rebellion famously commanded/led by (mostly any) Spartacus the escaped gladiator. The Roman Republic was already going through some shit, as they say, before this but this revolt and the resulting embarrassment and defeat of multiple of Rome’s best legions kinda put them on the back foot and set conditions up further for a little guy, whose name people might know, to come along and end the republic for good. An interesting nugget from history, but also a reminder that when Eastern European orc-men like Vlad “Dracula” execute people he gets tales of being a vampire for the next 600 years or whatever. When the Romans execute, in similar brutal fashion, 6000 slaves along a public road, probably the most traveled in Europe at that time and for another 1000 years to come(? Maybe exaggerating there, but, it was a big deal. The Appian way) it’s just a tragic story, filled with nuggets of facts about what was to come, mostly overlooking the barbarism of nailing (or binding with rope, however they did it) 6000 fucking humans to crosses and left to die. But we didn’t get stories of Pompey drinking the blood of slaves, so, no one cares.)
I feel like it was to have diversity in the list. I doubt it would be very interesting if they just had 5 Nazis in the top of the list.
Also Ghengis can be as friendly as he likes, but I feel like the rampant imperial conquests that saw the deaths and enslavement of millions of people kinda makes him evil. Even if it wasn’t him directly doing it.
Also there is no way that you have a large percent of the world population with some Ghengis DNA without commit some very evil acts.
If the top 5 most evil are nazis and the other 5 are american presidents, maybe that tells us something about wich cultures are more prone to evil. It certainly disproves the idiotic pinker statment tgat humanity is becomong better.
As for the mongol dna… how sure are we about those molecular clocks? For example going by them and folk ethnology people think the hazara are mongol decendants but there is mentions of them living there as far back as the selucid era. Hazara probably means people who laugh a lot in old iranian, a reference to their epicantic folds.
The genetic gengis khan is more likley to represent a milenia long difussionary proces in which steppe people moved gradually to the peripheral regions of eurasia and had more reproductive succes than the peasants because pastoralism generates more wealth per unit of labor than agriculture once you have domestic horses. It also likley includes all sorts of steppe invaders, turks, huns, manchus, japanise, avars etc. Not just mongols. And while he certainly contrubuted, gengis khan is not the sole cause of it. The genetic gengus khan Its a proxy for a very long historical demographic process.
Him being conqueror may make him evil but there are way more evil people than him. One of the reasons he was so succesful was precisly that he wss a friendly guy. If you really need a mongol to make the list because of ethnic quotas pick amir timur. By some estimates he killed 13-17 million people vs 6-13 by all other mongol conquerors. In a much smaller area.
Caligula? Sure. ✅
Kim Jung-Il? While the DPRK had problems under his rule, they of course just regurgitate CIA talking points. ❌
Saddam Hussein? Yeah, that’s what you get with a CIA puppet dictator, what did you expect? ✅
Leopold? Fuck yeah this guy was evil. ✅
Mao Zedong? sigh, of course we get the 40-80 million death number. I wonder where the source came from? ❌
Genghis Khan? Well, he was a rampaging imperial conqueror, so sure. ✅
Vlad the Impaler? Deranged monarch, again what did you expect? ✅
Pol Pot? Holy fuck this guy was the embodiment of evil. He is in the deepest pits of Hell ✅
Joseph Stalin. Lmaoooooooooooo, lol even, lmaooooooooo, even got the Holomodor in there❌
Hitler. Well… Literarily Hitler, doesn’t need much introduction. ✅
Even Caligula is a bit sus. He was the “mad emperor” sure, but the main target of his violence was the roman elite, as far as Roman emperors go, he was probably one of the least brutal towards Rome’s neighbours and common people. It’s just that all the accounts of him come from the same nobles who hated him, so they wanted to make him look as bad as possible. Make no mistake, he was incompetent and unfit for leadership, but considering how brutal some of the emperors could be, it’s kind of hard to say he was one of the most “evil” ones.
(And I’m surprised they put Hitler in there at all. Mainly because of youtube’s monetisation policy and tending to demonetise anything that mentions him.)
It’s been a while, but I think some of the general idea around the emperors after Augustus (the first several anyway, including Tiberius and Caligula) got their histories sort of… revised? by those who came later and wanted to demonize the former emperors to make themselves look better or whatever.
Like Claudius was written about as basically being a complete moron yet he was pretty competent as an emperor. It makes one wonder why historians at the time took all this time to say how unfit a person was or how they fucked their mom and all this shit, which may well be true, who knows, but it does seem like intentionally shitting on all of them except Augustus of course since dude lived so long be basically established himself as a demigod before he died.
You can pretty much be assured that anyone in history who ever wore a crown was a dogshit person in some capacity, but it’s worth considering the sources for bloody excess like what Caligula gets pinned with. And since the creator uncritically put Mao and Stalin and Kim Il-Sung on a list alongside Hitler, they’re probably absolutely incapable of considering sourcing.
Yeah, it’s important to understand ancient Roman culture and traditions in order to understand their primary sources. The nobility were incredibly conservative, and loved looking back on this mythologized past of Rome where Romans were real Romans and not like the wokescold cuck sjw emperors like Claudius and Nero.
So they’re just modern conservatives but probably less homophobic?
There is a weird amount of overlap between the modern US and ancient Rome. I guess it makes sense, they did try to build their society to be like their idealized version of the Roman republic.
Considering the army really liked him. Id say he gets a bad rep precisley because he was not that incompetent.
Caligula wasn’t even the worst Roman emperor, there was plenty more of them which caused much more suffering and no one of them even come close to Constantine if we consider the repercussions later in history.
Watch mojo is actually a fairly big channel so they can get away with some things
They make the most bullshit top 10 lists on stuff they have 0 knowlage on with barely any research, they should just stick to the movies they know about.
Yeah, I guess they must. I would’ve thought they would’ve done the opposite and had things be as sanatised as possible to avoid it, but they do probably have some deal with youtube where they can bend the rules (or maybe their team of lawyers has something to do with it.)
Caligula is not that bad. Also vlad and sadam hussein are evil but top ten evil seems like an exageration. After all the ones with their hands up the pupets ass should be more evil than the puppet.
Also gengis khan was a very friendly guy. Most of the bad rep the mongols get is because of Amir timur he is the really blodthirsty one.
Ok, on the Mongolian thing, specifically Genghis Khan, you are correct… to a point. In comparison to other pre-gunpowder armies (probably an arbitrary point, but you gotta have some line when bullshitting about history) the Mongolians were absolutely more “tolerant” in many ways. There’s the famous “bring me a Muslim and a Christian so I can hear them debate to me” moment. He was pretty open to all religions as long as people bent the knee basically, which, all things considered, is very progressive. Especially compared to many European societies and rulers that demanded absolute adherence to a specific sect of Christianity. Just being Christian alone wasn’t even enough. So that’s all well and good.
There was, however, the whole “what if they don’t bend the knee?” question lol. And the answer to that is pretty much “nice city you have here. Be a shame if it didn’t exist.” Which, again, isn’t especially uniquely evil for the time. It was kinda routine for Romans at least 1000 years before the Mongols (obviously mostly different parts of the world before someone assumes shit off comparisons) to do the whole “surrender and we’ll work something out or resist and we’ll level your city.” A pretty effective tactic.
The Mongolians get a shitty historical framing because mostly Europeans have written the history that we read (and Chinese who had their reasons to not be kind in the history books). So of course they frame brutal warlords like Caesar (which is what he was to anyone who was not a Roman citizen) as great statesmen, adept at war and diplomacy, etc. And it’s hard to deny he wasn’t a great statesman, clearly he was since he elevated himself to something beyond what others had done and successfully held onto it (until he didn’t). But they leave out the exact details of his conquests around Europe and even in Northern Africa/Western Asian area. We hear about piles of heads and the nickname “the scourge of god” for the Khans. But Caesar’s name is associated with emperor, wealth, eventually it’s associated with god himself with Constantine and onward with the Eastern Orthodox Christians. Pretty telling setup when one side becomes “godly” and the other “the scourge of god.” Pretty early version of “the hordes of Asia” used many times later on by Europeans.
Kind of all over the place, but my only point is it’s ok to admit that Genghis Khan was a pretty not good guy. He directly led to the deaths of who knows how many people and it wasn’t for any sort of high minded liberatory goal. Just conquest. He and his people just happened to be especially good at it and he wasn’t white, so, he gets too much negative coverage compared to others.
If we were making a real evil people list I’m fairly certain at least half to 2/3 would be US presidents and statesmen cough Kissinger
This is a good point thank you.
I swear they put Vlad Tepes because of the whole dracula thing, thinking he was a real vampire. Turks literally did the same thing million times over for centuries in Balkan, Armenia and every place they occupied.
For everything he did, he’s literally nothing compared to average USA president or European monarch, how tf does he even make it to top 10 every time?
What if he was a real vampire? That actually would make him less evil since he has to be bloodthirsty to satisfy his nutritional requierments he has no choise in the matter.
Yeah the guy was undeniably “not good” by any moral compass, back then or now.
However, as you say, it’s not like he was doing shit all that special. Maybe he was impaling more people by percentage than his Ottoman friends to the south, but, I dunno, impaling even one guy seems to be kinda bad.
However, putting him on this list and ignoring (more likely ignorant of) that time ROMANS CRUCIFIED SLAVES ALL THE WAY FROM CAPUA TO ROME (nearly 200km according to Google maps! About 120mi for Burgers). 120 fucking miles of men and women all crucified in the horrific way Christians are very familiar with. For the crime of overthrowing, fighting back, winning for a while, but ultimately losing to those who enslaved them.
(For those only lightly aware: this is the rebellion famously commanded/led by (mostly any) Spartacus the escaped gladiator. The Roman Republic was already going through some shit, as they say, before this but this revolt and the resulting embarrassment and defeat of multiple of Rome’s best legions kinda put them on the back foot and set conditions up further for a little guy, whose name people might know, to come along and end the republic for good. An interesting nugget from history, but also a reminder that when Eastern European orc-men like Vlad “Dracula” execute people he gets tales of being a vampire for the next 600 years or whatever. When the Romans execute, in similar brutal fashion, 6000 slaves along a public road, probably the most traveled in Europe at that time and for another 1000 years to come(? Maybe exaggerating there, but, it was a big deal. The Appian way) it’s just a tragic story, filled with nuggets of facts about what was to come, mostly overlooking the barbarism of nailing (or binding with rope, however they did it) 6000 fucking humans to crosses and left to die. But we didn’t get stories of Pompey drinking the blood of slaves, so, no one cares.)
He was good by catholic moral compass. In the past he was many times lauded as defensor fidei or something like that against heathen Asiatic horde.
I feel like it was to have diversity in the list. I doubt it would be very interesting if they just had 5 Nazis in the top of the list.
Also Ghengis can be as friendly as he likes, but I feel like the rampant imperial conquests that saw the deaths and enslavement of millions of people kinda makes him evil. Even if it wasn’t him directly doing it.
Also there is no way that you have a large percent of the world population with some Ghengis DNA without commit some very evil acts.
If the top 5 most evil are nazis and the other 5 are american presidents, maybe that tells us something about wich cultures are more prone to evil. It certainly disproves the idiotic pinker statment tgat humanity is becomong better.
As for the mongol dna… how sure are we about those molecular clocks? For example going by them and folk ethnology people think the hazara are mongol decendants but there is mentions of them living there as far back as the selucid era. Hazara probably means people who laugh a lot in old iranian, a reference to their epicantic folds.
The genetic gengis khan is more likley to represent a milenia long difussionary proces in which steppe people moved gradually to the peripheral regions of eurasia and had more reproductive succes than the peasants because pastoralism generates more wealth per unit of labor than agriculture once you have domestic horses. It also likley includes all sorts of steppe invaders, turks, huns, manchus, japanise, avars etc. Not just mongols. And while he certainly contrubuted, gengis khan is not the sole cause of it. The genetic gengus khan Its a proxy for a very long historical demographic process.
Him being conqueror may make him evil but there are way more evil people than him. One of the reasons he was so succesful was precisly that he wss a friendly guy. If you really need a mongol to make the list because of ethnic quotas pick amir timur. By some estimates he killed 13-17 million people vs 6-13 by all other mongol conquerors. In a much smaller area.