posted
Sure if you subscribe to that particular revisionist interpretation of history.
Since I tend to see history in conservative terms, that gets a big I dunno from me. Not that I'm dismissive of the wrongs that europeans did to native americans, but the idea that natives were noble savages in harmony with nature is patently ridiculous.
If you don't believe me where are the sabretooth tigers, wooly mammoths, and old north american horses? Though agrarian/industrial European civilization no doubt accelerated America's great mass extinction, the process began long ago with the native hunter-Gatherers.
From: Canada | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
There are a great many villains in history. Many historical "heroes" can now be seen as villains. Different time and different age. Before political correctness.
"Atilla you cannot behead the entire village because that is racist." Just didn't make much sense back then. doh!
Anyways my choice? Man there are just so many. I wanna say Caligula. Genghis Khan and Mahmud of Ghazni (India) have been mentioned as committing genocide on a historical level.
I'll go with Genghis Khan. Cool scary name.
From: Tampa | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I was considering saying Genghis Khan, but I didn't want to include a conqueror with Hitler and Nero. Sure, he killed a lot of people, but, nasty as it was, he was getting something for it - he was gaining land and expanding his empire. We frown upon expansionalist national policy now, of course, but in the old days, that was the way things worked...it was a fact of life. You either defended your turf, or it becomes the turf of the stronger guy next door.
Hitler was a conqueror, true, but most of the murders committed by his command were of no strategic value (i.e., the death camps and concentration camps). Nero's crime was of indifference to his own people's suffering, not of killings committed against his people's enemies.
That said, I have to agree that Dracula doesn't fit. He was brutal and sadistic, but he defended his people. Bin Laden or Saddam are nice choices, but I was thinking of someone who might have been used in the original story in Dillinger's place, which means that someone writing in 1963 should have thought of them. That also excludes Pol Pot. Joe Stalin makes a pretty good candidate, though the extent of his crimes probably wasn't well-known back then. So, I'll say...
Tomas Torquemada.
-------------------- Chaim Mattis Keller ckeller@nyc.rr.com Legion-Reference-File Lad
From: New York, NY, USA | Registered: Nov 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Chaim Mattis Keller: but I was thinking of someone who might have been used in the original story in Dillinger's place, which means that someone writing in 1963 should have thought of them.
So I guess that rules out my suggestion of Paris Hilton.
-------------------- Five billion years from now the Sun will go nova and obliterate the Earth. Don't sweat the small stuff!
From: Boston | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Tamper Lad: Sure if you subscribe to that particular revisionist interpretation of history.
Since I tend to see history in conservative terms, that gets a big I dunno from me. Not that I'm dismissive of the wrongs that europeans did to native americans, but the idea that natives were noble savages in harmony with nature is patently ridiculous.
If you don't believe me where are the sabretooth tigers, wooly mammoths, and old north american horses? Though agrarian/industrial European civilization no doubt accelerated America's great mass extinction, the process began long ago with the native hunter-Gatherers.
True. But this is not about revisionist history. It's about seeing things from an unbias slant and examining things from no set point of view. Examine the facts from both sides, not just one.
From: Texas | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I will repeat the quote I was commenting on?
"Columbus killed more people than most of the people on our list put together"
Did Columbus personally order the conquistadors to come over? Did he purposefully trade smallpox contaminated goods to weaken native resolve. Did he fence natives in on reserves all over the new world?
Do you honestly believe that if I was in a Spanish Port in 1492 and I ran Columbus through the heart with a sabre that there wouldn't have been a another man that sailed in his place in 1492 or 93 or 94. Do you think that it would have turned out differently if I could do this?
Um no, Columbus didn't kill the natives of the new world. He wasn't even essential to the "voyage of discovery". In 1492 there were massive forces in Europe (the final expulsion of the Moors from Europe, the unification of Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, the fall of Constantinople to the Turks) that would have forced the voyage within a generation.
The truth is that European greed and racism doomed American natives, not the scapegoat that people want to make out of Columbus who was neither a hero nor villain, just another interchangeable cog in the history of Europe.
From: Canada | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, let's not downplay Columbus's bravery in willing to risk sailing into the unknown in the conviction that he's eventually hit the Indies. The late fifteenth century was the beginning of the Age of Discovery, but until Columbus dared guess there was land beyond the Atlantic, all the explorers were sticking securely (if not safely) to the African coastline to find a way around the Cape of Good Hope.
No doubt someone else would have come along and figured it out or dared to brave it if Columbus hadn't, but that's akin to saying someone would have figured out gravity if Newton hadn't. Give Columbus some personal credit for being the guy who actually did.
-------------------- Chaim Mattis Keller ckeller@nyc.rr.com Legion-Reference-File Lad
From: New York, NY, USA | Registered: Nov 2003
| IP: Logged |
From what I understand Genghis Khan was no cup cake. Infact probably most of the ancient guys were just as bad a Hitler or worse.
Genghis Khan still causes fear in people methinks. Ok maybe he just scares me. lol
From: Tampa | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
So... did we agree upon Paris Hilton?
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged |
Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
posted
More recent stuff about Genghis Khan suggests that he was more of an administrator than a warrior. He organized a group of people who had spent the last couple thousand years wandering around killing the hell out of each other, and united them to kill the hell out of everyone else instead.
I'd use Stalin, Pol Pot, Vlad the Impaler or Torquemada for that third name.
Heck, I'd even take Nero off of the list for any of those. Rome had way worse Emperors than Nero. Just look at the Year of the Five Emperors & the Severan dynasty (nine emperors in a row, eight of which were murdered by each other, the army, or executed on orders of the Senate!)
Paris Hilton doesn't belong on that list. She's not mere human evil, she's something elemental.
Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
-------------------- The only character in all of literature who has been described as "badnass" while using the phrase "vile miscreant."
From: The Pyngwyn Colonies of Planet Hyustyn | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
-------------------- The Semi-Great Gildersleeve - writing, super-heroes, and this 'n' that
From: The Stasis Zone | Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged |
Hyperpath: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic | Subscribe To Topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
