People you consider more evil than Hitler

[CumbrianLefty]

There are probably some on a similar level, but I think he’s the worst…takes a special kind of evil to systemically murder your own citizens. People like the Khans and Huns raided, but in the pre-modern world that was more typical fare.

The likes of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane killed on an industrial scale - and there is a good case that the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258 is one of the single most catastrophic events in human history; maybe the biggest loss to our knowledge base since the library in Alexandria burnt down.

Good to see Macias Nguema in this poll btw - anybody who doesn't know about him already could do worse than to read the Wikpedia article on him, which leaves out several bizarre and/or shocking details. And if he and Amin are on this, Bokassa should be too - he had schoolkids slaughtered en masse (shot/clubbed to death) for not buying his personally designed expensive school uniforms FFS.

[CumbrianLefty]

Here's another person who rarely gets mentioned and should and thus is notable for "underrated evil": José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, President of Paraguay from 1814 until his death in 1840. His actual death toll isn't particularly large in comparison to the other people being mentioned, but he basically pioneered the modern day totalitarian state, Paraguay's secret police force established is often considered to be the first one of such a thing by modern standards and set up concentration camps for dissidents after banning all opposition parties, a cult of personality (he was commonly known as something like "El Supremo") and also made Paraguay probably the first continental isolated hermit state in history ala North Korea and Hoxhaist Albania. Many believe that 20th century fascist and communist regimes directly studied and modeled themselves after his methods.

And then there was, of course, Francisco Solano Lopez. Started what was quite literally one of *the* most insane wars in history which led to Paraguay being all but annihiliated from existence. And his final words? "I die *with* my country!". What more needs to be said??