K
kittens
Unconfirmed Member
Most historical figures are white supremacists and misogynists. So, like, almost all of them.
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Famous Historical Figures With Dark Sides
- Thread starter Bombadil
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I think that was just the places that opposed him. Lots of city-states saw the direction of the wind, and accepted his first proposals. Also keep in mind that Chengis was the Asian bogeyman of the West, so I have to wonder how much of that is myth. I've read of him being a fair leader but brutal enemy.
Amazing that Nixon comes across as LESS of a homophobe than the current Republican politicians.
That's some achievement when you're more of an asshole than Nixon.
benjipwns
Banned
Well in general if you take more of Nixon than his bastardy into account. He worked in creating the EPA, OSHA and CPSC, signed an extensive Clean Air Act expansion (and vetoed another), instituted wage and price controls, went to China, started SALT, got out of Vietnam through diplomacy, advocated for increased government health care involvement including a mandate, etc. The current Democratic Party expends a lot of words in defense or support of many of these programs/ideas.
Honestly, if Nixon hadn't been outed, he probably would be remembered as one of the better presidents (and then brought up as an asshole in one of these sorts of threads).
Rocket Scientist
Member
I hate this type of information =( It always seems like pretty much everyone I ever looked up to and admired was pretty much a dick aka human I guess.
Edit: holy shit the Nixon quote has me rolling what the hell is that? And is he somewhat implying that he has had homosexual feelings?
Edit: holy shit the Nixon quote has me rolling what the hell is that? And is he somewhat implying that he has had homosexual feelings?
Devolution
Member
Wanted the hippy vote. Actually did what he promised.
Doesn't seem like it, it just seems like he's all Some Of My Best Friends Are.
He was a weird paranoid and hated everyone, though, so it's not as if that group was being singled out. If the homosexual vote would keep him in office, he'd be all "I declare this Gay Day" on tv.
Monocle
Member
Apparently the conditions in her homes for the dying were deplorable. Unclean conditions, people denied proper medical care and such. Her orphanages were allegedly bastions of abuse. Mother Teresa once said that the world was "much helped by the suffering of the poor people." So yeah. Also, she hobnobbed with seriously shady characters and took stolen money from people like Charles Keating.
Devolution
Member
She followed the school of "suffering brings you closer to god" for her patients. Yet she was touted as a living saint. Makes me sick.
To be clear, when he penned "All men are created equal" he was primarily concerned with tearing down royalty and nobility to his level rather than lifting others below him up. Modern interpretation had to improve upon this.
Granted, no bed of roses, but better than total annihilation.
Monocle
Member
benjipwns
Banned
Plus there was internment.
And the NIRA/NRA.
And setting prices based on lucky numbers.
viciouskillersquirrel
Member
So you think that the belief that blacks and whites are so incompatible that they must live separately is commendable? Rather than invite the freedmen to become full participants in the body politic, and indeed the nation, the attitude was to just give up and send them off to some foreign continent.
That is, in effect, segregationism taken to its full conclusion - separatism.
Even if his private opinions were all about full equality for all, he couldn't come out and just say it because of political expediency. Remember how Obama and half the Republican Party were against gay marriage not that long ago? It's because until recently, it would have been political suicide.
Lincoln was a great man who achieved so much under incredibly dire circumstances. Heck, my wife and I were *this* close to naming our son after him, but let's not pretend that his opinions, at least his public ones, weren't a product of his times. His racist, racist times.
Klendathu Club Owner
Member
Yeah, this. Life's not a movie with good and bad people. They're just people. Also the zeitgeist and moral standards change over the course of time and thus what's defined as a "dark side" today might've been totally acceptable in their time.
Yes, it is easy to look back at history with today's perspective and say how bad everybody was. But you have to look at these people in the context of their times. Slavery in one form or another has been the norm form most of human history. What is amazing is that it was actually done away with for the most part. Racism? It's tribalism at its root, and for most of human civilization people lived is small groups and distrusted "the outsider". The easiest way to identify your group was how you looked.... Woman's rights? Even in the US, they got the vote after black men. In much of the world women still have virtually no rights at all, but who knows how things we be in 100 years....
What was totally radical 200-300 years ago were things like even the statement "all men are created equal". Christianity gets a bad rep here in GAF, but almost all of the early anti-slavery movements in the west were driven by Christians, first in England, and later in the US.
teruterubozu
Member
But Christianity's track record w/women is deplorable. Thus "all men are created equal" (and let's face it, they were talking about white men). In fact, the abolitionist movement in the US was largely pushed by women (like Harriet Beacher Stowe), because the notion of equal rights resonated with them strongly.
Mother Teresa easily. She was basically a militant Catholic and did not give others top of the line medical care while she herself used it. A huge portion of her charity money did not go to help the needy at all either. I think I read it was something ridiculous like 7% was actually used to help people.
gutter_trash
Banned
all ''great'' navigators have big dark sides when you get down to the details, the tons of atrocities committed oh my.
In history class, the gloss over those guys really quickly and see how GREAT they were but to be great, they had to commit war crimes, slavery, extermination, pillage ect.
Oh Mother Therasa was a fraud. She refused medical care for kids who stayed in her ''death camps'', she believed that suffering would bring you closer to God dogmaticly hardcore. Turning away medical care and letting people rot with infections and disease in her hospices = death camps
In history class, the gloss over those guys really quickly and see how GREAT they were but to be great, they had to commit war crimes, slavery, extermination, pillage ect.
Oh Mother Therasa was a fraud. She refused medical care for kids who stayed in her ''death camps'', she believed that suffering would bring you closer to God dogmaticly hardcore. Turning away medical care and letting people rot with infections and disease in her hospices = death camps
teruterubozu
Member
True. Magellan, Columbus, Cpt. Cook, etc. - they were all pretty dreadful by today's standards (and arguably even then).
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
The Daily Show episode where they ridiculed a guy that thought Mother Teresa shouldn't be celebrated on a stamp because she was a terrible person made me cringe.
They were great navigators though. They may not have been nice people but as actual navigators they did great.
teruterubozu
Member
In Western terms they were great, but what about the uncelebrated Polynesians that navigated only by stars, for thousands of miles offshore (long before Europeans had the balls to drift away from the sight of land)? Or the Vikings? Or the unknown feats of ancient Chinese explorers? "Great" is very relative.
gutter_trash
Banned
I'm Portuguese and we grow up being told that we had kick-ass navigators and had a glorious imperial past.
But they don't tell us the bad stuff that went along with it then you go ''oh shit'' that was bad stuff bro.
There are good stuff and bad stuff. The point of history is to not cherry pick only the good stuff to stroke one's nationalistic pride. History is to learn fully from it, including the bad stuff
The sort of person who might go apoplectic and talk about murdering people any time they hear of an animal being abused, perhaps?
equippedwithtowel
Member
Compared to virtually every other mongol its incredible how relatively liberal Genghis Khan was. Besides the whole divine mission to conquer the world and drown it in blood: he was religiously tolerant, a rationalist, a huge believer in meritocracy, lived an aesthetic life and saw what douchebags his sons would become.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
I read a book on the Civil Rights movement in college called I've Got the Light of Freedom or something. Don't have it with me to look for the quotes but some people interviewed for the book indicated that MLK was pretty sexist.
Well, I do think he hated Göhring for his celebration of hunting, being Reichsjägermeister and what not. he didn't kill him though.
ambientmystic
Member
FBI's J. Edgar Hoover.
Used the FBI to practically blackmail the ruling political elite, plant infiltrators in civil rights movements and other horrible things. Even Presidents were wary of crossing him during the height of his reign in the FBI, that was how powerful he was.
Used the FBI to practically blackmail the ruling political elite, plant infiltrators in civil rights movements and other horrible things. Even Presidents were wary of crossing him during the height of his reign in the FBI, that was how powerful he was.
ThisWreckage
Banned
Lincoln is one of the most interesting characters in history, I feel. He's probably the biggest self loather the world has ever seen as far as people that wield power goes.
Yeah but everybody knows he was evil. He probably had part in killing JFK.
The Librarian
Banned
lol at some of those. I'll just quote myself in response to a poster who was saying similar things:
I don't think the OP wants people to just post names. Any explanation, context, story?
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
I don't think he invented most of the stuff that is attributed to him. He had workers making stuff and taking credit for it. He was also apparently a huge asshole.
Inventors were ruthless back in the day, before every tidbit of news and information was widely and readily available. One of my classes at university focused on the history of film and the main thing I took from it was that almost every piece of technology or technique in cinema was actually invented by someone other than who is now credited for doing do. Edison certainly ripped off others. I think it was he who often took advantage of inventors' inability to pay for patents by stealing the idea and patenting it himself.
Napoleonthechimp
Member
Your relatives are most definitely not impartial. Supposedly Cromwell was slandered after death by the people he fucked over. So much so that his body was exhumed and his head stuck on a spike.
"To Connacht or to Hell" is not the statement of a nice man. Fuck him.
I don't think he had a bunch of them, but he did end up with his mistress (and not his wife, Eleanor) on his deathbed, so there's that.
In any case, I think it pales in comparison to the interment camps.
Damn straight.
ElectricBlue187
Member
his flying machines sucked
Not really a "dark side" thing, but a potential secret about Michaelangelo that Gaf probably already knew about.
Michaelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" painting depicts God resting in front of what looks like a red cape (I think). But the shape of this cape is so very much like a brain.
This led people to believe that Michaelangelo had hidden a secret message inside the painting, that implied that God was a figment of the imagination. It was not something he could have said explicitly during his time because he would have been ostracized or worse.
Edit: Another interpretation of the painting is that Michaelangelo was implying that God was the source of creativity and intelligence, so it goes either way.
Michaelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" painting depicts God resting in front of what looks like a red cape (I think). But the shape of this cape is so very much like a brain.
This led people to believe that Michaelangelo had hidden a secret message inside the painting, that implied that God was a figment of the imagination. It was not something he could have said explicitly during his time because he would have been ostracized or worse.
Edit: Another interpretation of the painting is that Michaelangelo was implying that God was the source of creativity and intelligence, so it goes either way.
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