The evilest person who committed the most horrendous deeds, propagated the worst ideas, or was responsible for other moustache-twirling affairs.
Anyone who is currently alive does not count.
Billionaires.
Pol pot killed about 25% of Cambodias population and deserve a nomination.
Invented CFCs like Freon, which caused the hole in the ozone layer, and then later went on to pioneer the use of lead in gasoline, which is estimated to have resulted in the cumulative loss of millions of IQ points from humanity during its use, not to mention lead-derived cancers and other illnesses.
Possibly the single greatest negative contribution to the environment and humanity.
I consider this man to be the worst individual in all of human history. Maybe the single worst human to ever live on the face of the planet.
What makes him this bad? He knew. He knew what leaded gasoline was doing and what freon would do and he did it anyway to help cooperations make a little more money.
There are some pretty bad people under the post. But this guy… Man.
Did the most damage… But I’m not sure he’s villainous. Just competently dangerous. Happy to be corrected but I thought tmjr was trying to improve the world. He just got massively unlucky… Multiple times.
This is definitely a moustache twirling villainous affair.
While Hitler, Pol Pot, Beria, and Kissinger are all good and obvious contenders, I think these will be surpassed by someone who is alive right now.
But who? Well, it’s most likely someone who already has significant resources at their disposal. For all their flaws, I don’t think the lizards of Amazon, Google, OpenAI, and Facebook have much of an agenda beyond growing their fortunes. But I am convinced we haven’t seen the final form of Peter Thiel.
I would like to nominate Diego de Landa, burner of the Mayan books. And a lot of Mayan people. The Mayans had books, like normal paper booms filled with Mayan writing. Histories, religion, presumably everything a society would write down. There are only four Mayan books left now. It’s all gone. It’s a tragedy that particularly boils my blood and I’m making him the final boss of a Mesoamerican-themed Pathfinder campaign I’m about to run, because I want to live out a fantasy where he gets fireballed to death or something.
Ronald Reagan
Great choice
Belgian Congo/Jewish Holocaust is right up there. I wouldn’t say a specific person but innumerable people involved.
King Leopold and Hitler were THE authority, so ultimately they signed off on the death and suffering of millions of Congolese and Jews (and other minorities) respectively.
For the Congo: imagine a father staring at the severed hand and foot of his five year old daughter. That’s a photograph searchable online, and needs to be seen to understand the violence and dehumanism of colonialism.
For the holocaust: we have all seen at least one picture. But imagine a baby being smashed against a wall because it wouldn’t stop crying. Pretty women (maybe even underage girls) being raped. To say just a small part of the atrocities of the holocaust.
Well, I haven’t even included Unit 731. General Shiro Ishii.
Now, what to say about today in 2026? Who’s to say these atrocities are not being repeated?
Hitler and king Leopold are great answers. The things they perpetrated are very difficult to stomach. I consider myself someone who is fairly desensitized, especially growing up during the wild west of the internet. Unit 731, though? I can’t. Absolutely the most vile humans to have walked the face of the earth. Humans aren’t born good or evil, but rather have potential for either. The fucking shitstains of unit 731 found a way to maximize the human capacity for evil. Naming anyone in that group is the correct answer.
Trump and Netanyahu
Laventiy Beria was the head of Stalin’s NKVD. He may not be the greatest villain, but more people need to know about this motherfucker.
Stalin introduced him as “My Himmler”. Despite all the spying and torture you’d expect from the secret police, Beria found time to be a prolific rapist as a side hustle.
I think you’re underselling just how evil he was…
They found lots of bones from women and girls when excavating the torture chamber beneath his former mansion, and Stalin distrusted him so much that he dropped everything when he learnt his daughter was alone with Beria.
Most people in this thread were either evil in their career, or in their personal lives, but Beria managed to excel separately in both.
My favourite scene in The Death of Stalin is when the rest of the Poliboro decided that they’ve had enough of Beria’s shit and have him shot after a ten-second “trial”.
God, and probably even dont exists, that makes it more impresive.
Cain singlehandedly killed 25% of world’s human population.
Hitler is a pretty obvious answer
In terms of raw numbers he is probably behind pol pot, gengis,etc…
Mao was not so great.
Carl Panzram was a (mostly) one man wrecking ball of unbridled badness. A lot of people would say he lived an evil life.
I’m seeing that people aren’t having a good objective framework for judging evil, so here’s my dimensions-of-evil, including the stuff in DarkTriad & DarkTetrad:
- narcissism
- machiavellianism
- sociopathy/psychopathy ( to this point is DarkTriad )
- sadism ( to this point is DarkTetrad )
- nihilism
- displacing objectivity
- displacing correct-reasoning
- displacing evolution/growing from a life, or from lives
- displacing autonomy with puppetry/authority
The more dimensions of evil, the worse.
The stronger on any dimension, the worse.
More-dimensions is more worse than stronger-in-a-single-dimension, though.
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