Villainous Heroes And Heroic Villains?

It's fairly well known now that Christopher Columbus was one of histories greatest monsters, although some still cling to the idea of him being a noble explorer.

A brief summary of his exploits:

Discovering America: Vikings were the first Europeans to "discover" what is now America. Columbus went to his deathbed thinking that he had landed in Asia. He never traveled anywhere near what is now North America, only south America and some Caribbean Islands. The first person on his crew to sight land was cheated of the reward by Columbus who claimed to have seen land four hours earlier, but not said anything at the time.

Believing that the world was round, and sticking to that belief, despite mockery: No-one in the 1400's believed the world was flat, no-one since the ancient Greeks had thought that. They even knew the circumference of the globe. Columbus was mocked because he thought that the earth was thousands of miles smaller in circumference than it actually was (using obsolete greek data) and planned his trip accordingly. God only knows what would have happened if he hadn't discovered America. He actually thought it was shaped like a pear:

"the earth is not perfectly rownde; But that when it was created, there was a certeyne heape reysed theron, much hygher than the other partes of the same. So that (as he saith), it is not rownde after the form of an apple or a bal (as others thynke) but rather lyke a peare as it hangeth on the tree"

Not being a ****: Columbus was a **** of the very highest order. He made a great deal of money selling young children as sex slaves. He forced natives into slavery mining gold and punished those who refused by chopping off their noses and ears. If they were unable to work then it was off with their hands, tying them around their necks and letting them bleed to death. Escape meant being burned alive or torn apart and fed to dogs. In acts of deliberate genocide, he is estimated to have killed over a million people.

Anyhoo, who do you think gets more or less hate than they deserve? who is revered when they should be reviled? who's the turd in the hamper?
who's considered a monster but was actually not that bad, and vice versa?

 

you know, everything human is something of a mixed bag, so i'm kind of inclined to speculate that most likely most of them.
just i moment's pause to think about it, there's so many its hard to know where to start.
every trator someone's hero. every concoror, it goes without saying, a genocidal tyrant.
and not just military, but lots of 'saints', christian and otherwise.

was there ever one, who wasn't at least a little bit the other?

what columbus would have done if the caribian hadn't got in his way? exactly the same genocide he committed there, except in actual india if panama, which he never reached either hadn't been in the way also.

 

The more one researches into the text behind the headlines, the more that this proves to be the case:-
The courageous General Custer ambushed by those pesky redskins ..... not
The gallant Charge of the British light brigade spurred on by patriotic pride ... not
The brave King Richard (Lionheart) fighting for his faith against those darn infidels ... not
The flamboyant Francis drake sailing only for honour and the defence of the realm for good queen Bess ...not
- and don't get me started on those evil witches with their dark magic who were defeated by those ever so nice followers of God and his charitable saving of souls!

 

Definitely Charles Manson. If you're going to go down in history as a famous serial killer, then please.. you have to actually kill people.

 

Although Manson was convicted on seven counts of first-degree murder for his role in several killings, this was despite the fact that he never murdered anyone himself. During the 'family's' killing spree. he ordered his followers to murder for him. - That's control

 

and drugs, probably drugs too.

 

I have heard an argument that all the genocide committed despite being considered evil generations later can actually be considered a good thing because without us killing each other en masse overpopulation would be eve more of an issue and we very well might have slowed the decay of the earth and humankind by eradicating each other in large numbers for no reason

I am not sure I subscribe to that argument or theory but it pertained here so I thought I might share it, maybe someone can give me a better argument than, I just don't agree with that for why genocide was a good thing, or maybe someone will say something that makes it easier to explain why it doesn't sit well with me..other than the obvious, genocide cannot be a good thing

 

Interesting theory Luna, and I guess there is case going (way) back to the Homosapien outliving the Neanderthal race = "What if" indeed

 

Tbh, reading up on Manson, I have to say that it doesn't particularly come across as him being in control at all.

Couple of weeks before the murders a family member was brewing tea from a psychedelic root found in the desert, one family member who had a small dose of the brew was still experiencing flashbacks and blackouts months later. Tex Watson wandered up and mistakenly ate the entire root like a vegetable, was found completely out of his mind hours later and behaved erratically and psychotically for the months afterwards. It was he who lead the raiding parties and committed the murders and the "i am the devil and i come to do the devil's work" quote is his. almost all of the murders were committed by him, with postmortem wounds inflicted by other family members (so that they would all be in it together).

Come the trial, the image of the dirty jailbird acid freak hippy corrupting this all-American college athlete and fraternity member and using his masterful manipulation techniques to get him to murder on his behalf was just a really fucking easy narrative to sell to a jury.

I'm not saying that Manson was innocent in all this, but it really reads like the cult was spinning out of his control when the murders happened and all of his final actions were just trying to re-establish himself as leader, and get all his followers to skip town and go out to the desert where he could consolidate his position as leader. Basically, Manson's a charismatic, but he's also a complete moron.

It's important to remember also that from the time of him getting out of prison (having missed the entire hippy movement) with only the shirt on his back, to forming the cult, going on the road, to the murders and getting caught was only 13 months in all. It was a mad spiral of drugs and lunacy from the outset, the whole thing, moving so quickly that I doubt anyone was in control.

You want a cult leader with scary amounts of control, your best bet is Aum Shinrikyo, probably the only doomsday cult with the wherewithal to legitimately make doomsday happen.

 

Perhaps Napoleon would come as a canditate in this category ; heroic villain or villainous hero.

I personally see him as a tragic-comical hero who consolidated the french revolution and spread its principles all over europe, and the world , and helped bring about its modernisation and secularization.

Nietzche probably got the philosophical foundation for his 'superman' from Napoleon, hailed as the greatest general of all time by Wellington himself.

But Napoleon actually had a distaste for war , and he first created the vision of an enlightened, united Europe where any conflict between nations would be seen as a civil war and condemned. He was a great general, administrator and statesman , probably the greatest ever who fitted into all three roles superbly.

Nietzche and especially Hitler, though they idolized Napoleon, could not properly comprehend his motives and vision. Hitler, though no military genius himself, in his mad urge to emulate Napoleon and make a name for himself, ended up creating the same errors in Russia resulting in his defeat in the end.

 

If Nazi Germany attacked the USSR first Moscow would most likely have been captured.

 

anything human that has the ambition to become either one, is pretty much bound to be something of the other.

not that very many of either get there under their own power either.

circumstanced created by the tumble and chance of life.

granted some are readier to grasp those chances then others,

nor is it always the wisest thing to do, nor those who do, the wisest in other ways.

the most remembered often lived the most tormented lives,

as well as the most tormenting of those around them.

i'd rather live in a world of lazy introverted cowards,

who recognize the morality of consideration,

and stress no one out of their creative nature.

there are greater gratifications then the esteem of others,

and posthumous esteem, i mean, give me a break.

 

I remember Aum Shinrikyo and the Tokyo subway attack. Their activities back in the 1990s were over-shadowed by David Koresh and the Branch Davidians and by Marshall Applewhite and the Heaven’s Gate Cult.

It’s amazing how active Aum Shinrikyo was back in the 1990s. They actually sent out emissaries to Zaire to attain a sample of the Ebola virus and to Alaska in the hope of digging up a body encased in permafrost that was still infected by the influenza virus of 1918-1919 - crazy


Hotwater

 

I was listening to a radio program about them recently- it's fucking mental. they had a warehouse with a giant gold statue of Shiva the destroyer in there when you opened the doors, and inside a factory for creating chemical and biological weapons, recommissioning AK47's and an attack helicopter they bought off the russians.

 

Im missing the heroic part though.

 

Nope, in fact, I'd say that Shoko Asahara was the closest thing we've got to a supervillain...

Oh shit, new thread!