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 1999, 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 … and buried [them] 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.
Genocide, mass murder, crimes against humanity – I’m always trying to figure out why do people participate in acts that are hateful, evil, destructive, that are monstrous. How did human beings arrive at that place, and at the same time, how do some people manage to resist the evil: to push back the darkness? Why We Hate s1e5: Crimes Against Humanity, Patrician Viseur Sellers, criminal lawyer
The heart of genocide how do you destroy a group? ibid.
Through lynching the individuals, you terrorise the entire population. ibid.
As a member of the clergy so eloquently said – As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore. Barbara Lee, speech dissenting from invasion of Iraq, Congress 2001
People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction. Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery
Was the British empire evil like it was in Star Wars? Cunk on Britain s1e3, Cunk to Professor Ashley Jenkins, BBC 2018
No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline. Seneca
All things are corrupt when men are prone to evil. Ovid
We were under an obligation to end evil. Oliver Tambo
Do you think it’s possible for a child to be born evil? Omen IV: The Awakening 1991 starring Faye Grant & Michael Woods & Michael Lerner & Madison Mason & Ann Hearn & Jim Byrnes & Asia Vieira & Brianne Harrett & Rebecca Cynader & Shelby Adams & Don S Davis & Megan Leitch & Joy Coghill et al, directors Jorge Montesi & Dominique Othenin-Girard, Mother to nun
An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes. Sun Tzu
I don’t know what word in the English language – I can’t find one – that applies to people who are willing to sacrifice the literal existence of organized human life so they can put a few more dollars into highly overstuffed pockets. The word evil doesn’t begin to approach it. Noam Chomsky