Nicolae Ceausescu: once revered throughout Romania and the West, he stole power by cunning and ruled by oppression. Ceausescu’s tainted genius and his wife Elena’s influence were finally extinguished by a hasty execution. History’s Most Hated s1e2: Ceausescu
Ceausescu’s criminal activities often took him to jail. ibid.
‘He was a Machiavellian genius.’ ibid. historian
Ceausescu was proclaimed First Secretary of the Communist Party and the country’s leader. ibid.
‘It is the first visit of a president of the United States to Romania.’ ibid. Nixon
Ceausescu was a cheat. He was a passionate game hunter and a terrible shot … He had begun to live in an unreal world where he couldn’t bear to lose at anything. ibid.
Ceausescu’s bouts of paranoia meant that he increasingly relied on his wife … Her influence was a malign one. ibid.
130,509. It is the dawn of the 13th century over Asia. A fierce storm reaches deep within the heart of the continent. Growing to a tempest, it spills over into China devastating one of the most ancient cultures on Earth. Then, gathering momentum, its violent fury vents westward laying waste Afghanistan and Persia. Riding this bitter winds are unstoppable hoards mercilessly carving out an empire that will know no equal in all of human history. History’s Most Hated s1e3: Genghis Khan: Terror & Conquest
Known by many terms: madman and genius, bloodthirsty warrior and brilliant politician, architect of nation and destroyer of civilisations, he was all of these. His name: Genghis Khan. ibid.
He was born somewhere in the Steppes in about the year 1165. ibid.
In the heart of Berlin children play innocently over what was once Adolf Hitler’s death tomb. It was here in the Fuhrer-bunker on April 30th 1945 that Hitler made the final preparation for his suicide. Outside in a devastating final assault on the heart of the Third Reich, the Russian army closed in on the Fuhrer. Hitler’s death brought to an end his dream of a thousand-year Reich: it lasted only twelve years but changed the world. History’s Most Hated s1e4: Hitler & Stalin
They were both mass murderers. Hitler was responsible for nearly ten million deaths in The Holocaust … Stalin murdered more than twenty million of his own people. ibid.
Both Hitler and Stalin suffered from inferiority complexes. ibid.
Adolf sold his paintings on the streets. It is interesting that he only painted landscapes, never people. Two years in a row, Hitler applied to and was rejected from the prestigious Academy of Fine Arts … The Academy told him he had no aptitude for painting. ibid.
The same cruelty and sadism of Stalin’s political life dominated his family life, especially his relations with his second wife Nadia. ibid.
Hitler’s relationships with women were equally troubled. ibid.
For a brief period of time Napoleon seemed to be all things to all people. Perhaps the greatest military commander ever. Was also a pre-eminent head of state. History’s Most Hated s1e5: Napoleon Bonaparte
Now 15 years old Napoleon next moved to Paris in 1784. He continued his education here at one of France’s foremost military academies, the prestigious Ecole Militarie. Almost from the beginning people commented on his enormous ambition. ibid.
He met an astonishing woman who would change his life for ever: Josephine … Back in Paris, Josephine was having numerous affairs. ibid.
He seized control of the government in a bloodless coup on November 9th 1799, becoming the First Consul of France. ibid.
At his coronation Napoleon took the crown himself. ibid.
Of the 600,000 men he had come with [to Russia], 500,000 died, deserted or were captured. Back in Europe he met with more disaster. ibid.
In Paris, Louis was stunned to hear that Bonaparte had returned. ibid.
Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, ruler of a vast land steeped in tradition. Tradition he was determined to shatter as quickly as possible … He married a commoner and made her his empress … But there was a dark side to this Tsar. The complexities and contradictions of Peter’s character and the sheer scope and adventure of his life have fascinated generation after generation for nearly 300 years. History’s Most Hated s1e6: Peter the Great
An army that would eventually allow the adult Peter to wage aggressive wars of expansion. ibid.
‘Building St Petersburg meant more casualties, more deaths, more dead, than any battle.’ ibid. historian
In the early 1970s a single-minded revolutionary lay concealed in the Cambodian jungle. As American bombs exploded around him, he remained obsessed with his secret plan to destroy his own culture in the name of utopia. Paranoid, he sought enemies everywhere. He turned Cambodia into a hell on Earth, and the name Pol Pot became synonymous with mass murder. In building his perfect society, his regime wreaked chaos. Two million people died: nearly one in every four Cambodians. History’s Most Hated s1e7: Pol Pot
Pol Pot returned to the jungle inspired by Mao’s revolution but convinced he could do even better. He began planning the most extreme social experiment of the twentieth century: to restore Cambodia’s greatness he felt he needed to eliminate all traces of the modern world; he regarded cities as evil and vowed to force the residents into the countryside to build an agrarian society. ibid.
Anyone with an education posed a threat, so Pol Pot began rounding up monks, artists and intellectuals … buried in mass graves. ibid.
Pol Pot became increasingly paranoid. ibid.
The Renaissance had reached its greatest glory … Yet in a land known as Moscovy the dark ages lingered and a nation struggled daily to avoid economic and political collapse. The force that would save it was embodied in a man, a volatile mixture of piety and ruthless intrigue, whose cunning and cruelty would one day control the largest nation on Earth … Tsar Ivan the Terrible. History’s Most Hated s1e8: Ivan the Terrible
A tumultuous nearly bankrupt country Ivan had inherited: compared to Europe, Russia was primitive. It was a nation with no banks, no form of road or essential infrastructure. ibid.
Terrible was meant as a term of respect for a leader who possessed awesome power … The irony would not be apparent for years. ibid.
The Tsar was a man teetering on sanity’s edge. ibid.
The result is that many old certainties appear far less certain, and history shows that in troubled times people often turn to someone who promises they can fix all the problems if only they’re granted supreme power. And that is the appeal of the dictator. David Olusoga, A Timewatch Guide: Dictators & Despots, BBC 2019
The rise and fall of the most recent dictators followed by television cameras in ever closer detail. So why are dictators such an object of fascination? And does our fascination feed their power? ibid.
Caesar was notoriously vain about his appearance … Even without TV, Julius Caesar hit upon a way of spreading his image throughout the known world. ibid.
Mussolini was the first to exploit brand new mass media. ibid.
Mussolini’s showmanship impressed one person in particular, and with terrible consequences. ibid.
Was there something about their era that made fascism inevitable? ibid.
They loved the camera and the camera loved them. ibid.
The democratic charade that exists, the political theatre that has replaced our democratic process. And is just one more step towards this corporate totalitarianism which no-one seems willing or able to stop within the ruling elite. Chris Hedges, lecture Seattle University 2018, Corporate Totalitarianism: The End Game *****
The diseases of despair that have plagued American society, the pathologies that rise out of a decaying culture. ibid.
At the end of empire as you begin decay they engage – historians call it micro-militarism – they carry out suicidal military fiascos. ibid.
We’re going to tax them at 91% like we used to … [and] destroy the military machine in this country which is the greatest enemy of democracy. ibid.
We lost control of our government, we lost control of our economy, and this isn’t unique to the United States. ibid.
Everything becomes tribal, truth no longer matters, the rights of the citizenry no longer matter. ibid.
The liberal class functions as a kind of safety valve in moment of distress … They never critique the system. ibid.
We have enough cumulative evidence to say that it was stolen from him [Bernie Saunders]. ibid.
We going to have to walk out into the wilderness for a long time. ibid.
So we saw that period in the ’70s when corporations organised. ibid.
The system only wants people who will perpetuate it. ibid.
What they are doing is extracting from us. ibid.