Who's the most underrated brutal dictator?

[Rules for me, but not for thee]

Is Chairman Mao underrated? I think he's forgotten a lot by hard socialists/commies.

Could go with Hirohito and the Nanjing Massacre.

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

Pol Pot killed like a quarter of his country's population in less than a decade.

Not just that, but Pol Pot went beyond thuggery and torture and inflicted a level of psychological abuse on his people that is downright chilling.

He was virtually never seen in public and most Cambodians didn't even know what he looked like. He was a sinister, reclusive figure whose enforcement apparatus was simply known as Angkar ("The Organization") - depersonalized and Orwellian.

People were obliged to dress in black and prepare for their death - which was to be seen as a form of liberation and renewal. The so-called "New People" who were condemned to die in forced labor agrarian collectives were bombarded with the refrain of nihilism and futility, "To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss." It almost makes "Arbeit Macht Frei" seem cuddly.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Francisco Solano López has to be up there, given his disastrous war ended up with over 60% of the population meeting their deaths.

Add to that Papa and Baby Doc, Stroessner, Suharto, Islam Karimov, Hoxha etc.

López, brutal? Stupid, sure, but I wouldn’t call him genocidal in the same way others in this thread could be said to be.

[Politician]

Leopold II for sure, and also most of the African/South American military dictators.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

The most underrated brutal dictators are often the monarchs during the medieval ages, because they're almost never considered as dictators while they often were. I've seen the name of Lenin pop up here in this thread. But it's crazy that the names of the last Tsars are never named in such a list. Tsar Nicholas II and Tsar Alexander III were brutal tsars, and they are to be blamed for the creation of the USSR (which wasn't ready for communism at that time, as the country had never experieced a stable democracy and thus didn't had a democratic tradition. Even in 2018, Russia is still not a full democracy, as Putin is increasingly shifting it back to authoritarianism. And let's not forget that the USSR modernized Russia. A country in which more than half the population was illiterate before teh revolution ended up sending the first man into space? They ended up modernizing their military enough that during the Russo-Japanese war they couldn't win from a country that wasn't westernized half a century before, by holding the Axis back despite the purges of Stalin. And aside of Stalin, the fight between the USSR and America was not a fight with a morally good side and a morally evil side, but one of two blocks fighting for power and hegemony, one that America eventually did win. And if the last thirty years proved us one thing, it is that the world need a balance between powers, so hopefully China will soon be able to ascend to such a position and restore the balance again (and let's hope they democratize their country).