Underrated POS Dictators of the 20th Century

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

3 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Lulz.

This should be chiseled on his tombstone: "He was the most useless fascist of the Axis."

In retrospect he played WWII well.  However, I seriously doubt he had much to contribute to either side since he just destroyed his own country. 

[phdhorn 6224]

On 2/12/2019 at 7:42 PM, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Interesting story but there is much dispute over the casualty numbers and who was ultimately responsible.

Found this ominous and topical assessment:

The American political scientist Lawrence Ziring observes that,

Yahya Khan has been widely portrayed as a ruthless uncompromising insensitive and grossly inept leader ... While Yahya cannot escape responsibility for these tragic events, it is also on record that he did not act alone ... All the major actors of the period were creatures of a historic legacy and a psycho-political milieu which did not lend itself to accommodation and compromise, to bargaining and a reasonable settlement. Nurtured on conspiracy theories, they were all conditioned to act in a manner that neglected agreeable solutions and promoted violent judgments.^[22]

Yahya Khan attempted to solve Pakistan's constitutional and inter-provincial/regional rivalry problems once he took over power from Ayub Khan in March 1969. The tragedy of the whole affair was the fact that all actions that Yahya took, although correct in principle, were too late in timing, and served only to further intensify the political polarisation between the East and West wings.

Your link doesn't go anywhere, just a dead-end Wiki page.  You're of course referring to Ziring's 1980 book, Pakistan: The Enigma of Political Development. on the Wiki page where the quote sits.  It doesn't seem like you know much about that situation, quoting something then simply assuming it's the key explanation for anything.  That dictators "are creatures of a historic legacy and a psycho-political milieu which did not lend itself to accommodation and compromise, to bargaining and a reasonable settlement" is a no-duh, that's what a dictator is.

Anyway, no, Khan was a ruthless son of a bitch.  People try to cite his "reforms" but they went nowhere.  And he authorized the Pakistani military to essentially go and wipe out East Pakistan, killing over 3 million there alone.  He inherited a lot of problems but was so inept and ruthless that he enforced marshal law, stymied Ayub's more reasonable attempts to unify the East and West blocs, and dissolved Pakistan's constitution.  His miserably-planned Searchlight initiative did nothing but piss of the East more, and so as a result, he went in swinging - forcing military.  He also went back on his word to not start anything vs. India, and when he did, India invaded and that resulted in even more carnage.  When his shitty plans went awry he tried to force change through dictatorial murderousness, and of course the fact that he was from his ouster in 1971 until his death in 1980 a house prisoner in disgrace tells you a lot about how Pakistanis felt about the guy.  He was inept but also murderous.

Here, read this for comparison (and much more in the sentiment of what this guy wrought:

 

Quote

By March 1971, Yahya Khan was no more a symbol of hope. He had mutated into a macabre image of death and destruction. His soldiers killed Bengalis, raped Bengali women and burned Bengali villages and towns. He was now in the mood for war, for bloodletting in the interest of his ambitions and his country's survival. He put Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on trial, and went ahead with sham by-elections in occupied Bangladesh. Mujib, for him, was a traitor who deserved to die. Indira Gandhi was 'that woman' who needed to be taught a lesson. Ten million Bengalis crossed over into India, but Yahya said such reports were false. By late November, he had Mujib sentenced to death even as he looked for excuses to expand the conflict in Bangladesh to a larger war, with India. Early in December, in the tradition of Jinnah in 1948 and Ayub in 1965, he launched a military strike against India. His army had been killing Bengalis for nine months. Now, ironically, it was about to be mauled by the Mukti Bahini and the Indian army. It would be comeuppance.

http://www.observerbd.com/2016/03/15/141568.php

Casualties are difficult to pinpoint in third world bungholes, but 3 million is the absolute low that can be reasonably identified,  but estimates are up to 12 million and certainly possible.  Khan himself uttered his famous "let them eat cake" on steroids:  Kill three million of them, and the rest will eat out of our hands."

No need whasoever to justify this guy, period, vs. the others.  He's up there in the catbird seat.  If anyone believes otherwise, they're just simply illustrating how they don't know shit about this genocide other than that cool George Harrison album from the live concert.

He was a murderous tyrant, period, end of story.

[InkaUtexas 26192]

2 hours ago, bolverk said:

This question probably takes us down a rabbit hole that this thread wasn't intended for. But since Franco has been the primary subject for the last several posts, I'd like a chance at a "dumb amnesty" one that's bugged me for a while.

Why didn't Franco, who was a fascist and received military aid from the Nazis during the Spanish Civil War, involve Spain as an active belligerent party during World War II?

Without going to Hugo's great post, I think it is quite simple. Spain was blooded and he could give no more. He had enough forces to ensure the Brits never left the rock and was not invaded via Africa, but outside the Blue Division, who were butt fucked by the Russian winter, he had noting to give. The Germans controlled industry and mining already. 

He was more spent than the average aggy after fucking a goat. 

 

Was he worse than Tito? Somehow that dude has not been discussed on the thread yet. 

Edited February 14, 2019 by InkaUtexas

[F250 28829]

36 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

He was more spent than the average aggy after fucking a goat. 

This. For those that remember having football practices on practice grass fields during a week of heavy rains, remember what the field looked like by the weekend? That was Spain by the time WWII rolled around while the Germans, Italians and Soviets left to the stadium for game night.

The Spanish Civil War was truly a complete cluster fuck. The Germans and Italians used it as a testing ground and the Soviets used it as an opportunity to gut Trotskyists and kill of anti-Stalin socialists. Spain was fucked no matter which side won that war, totalitarianism was happening either way.

If you consider the way shit went down between all of the various factions and infighting on the Republican side and the rise of the fascists, Hitler usurping the socialist title while appeasing the existing German polity and tying it up in a fascist package was fairly slick. He cut off the Communist threat, undercut any other socialist revolutionary movement, masked the class tension by redirecting it to the Jews, and kept the elite satisfied all under the banner of Nazism.

 

 

[GopherRock 1770]

 

[Shady Ray 1633]

Ante Pavelić is the poster boy of underrated POS dictators.

Even his Nazi allies thought he and his Ustaše in Croatia were gratuitously violent.

Now THAT is saying something.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

2 hours ago, Shady Ray said:

Ante Pavelić is the poster boy of underrated POS dictators

Great call.  His story is fascinating and it was remarkable he managed to stay alive for so long.

How he ended:

Pavelić died on 28 December 1959 at the Hospital Alemán in Madrid at the age of 70 from the wounds he sustained from the assassination attempt by Jovović.^[144] He was buried in San Isidro Cemetery, Madrid's oldest private burial ground.

[Shady Ray 1633]

On 2/15/2019 at 2:01 PM, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Great call.  His story is fascinating and it was remarkable he managed to stay alive for so long.

How he ended:

Pavelić died on 28 December 1959 at the Hospital Alemán in Madrid at the age of 70 from the wounds he sustained from the assassination attempt by Jovović.^[144] He was buried in San Isidro Cemetery, Madrid's oldest private burial ground.

Yeah, it always surprises me how that whole "Ustaše situation" gets brushed under the rug. I don't know if was the unsavory involvement of the Vatican in the whole thing, or maybe just Tito's dedication to moving forward without large-scale tribunals involving those behind it, but those were some sick fucks.

[RDCanecutter 26484]

Since I haven't defended Francisco Franco yet in this lifetime, I guess I'll get it out of the way now. For everything he did, he also came up with a pretty bad-ass silver coin, the 100 pesetas in the 60s:

This is the cool medieval side. The other side has Franco's bovine expression.

Each one is almost a 1/2 oz of silver, and you can buy them at near-melt by the handfuls. Won't dissolve your face like German swastika money, fewer destroyed cultures than Andrew Jackson's Twenty.

If you're already collecting coins with genocidal kings and emperors on them, this could be a continuation of the theme.

[RDCanecutter 26484]

On 2/13/2019 at 9:14 PM, bolverk said:

Lulz.

This should be chiseled on his tombstone: "He was the most useless fascist of the Axis."

Or "Only semi-Axis dictator to survive WW2". Dude knew what he was doing. Hitler and Mussolini could have learned a trick or two from Franco. Stop the clock at 1938, just be nasty to people inside your own countries, don't invade other European countries, and maybe you live long enough to listen to ABBA.

Edited February 17, 2019 by RDCanecutter

[qwertyu1234 496]

Since he hasn't been mentioned, Papa Doc, the dictator of Haiti. 

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876967,00.html

[bolverk 29738]

5 minutes ago, qwertyu1234 said:

Since he hasn't been mentioned, Papa Doc, the dictator of Haiti. 

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876967,00.html

I LOVED ANGEL HEART!

Yeah, the movie wasn't about him and it wasn't set in Haiti, but it had a bunch of voodoo and hot sexy scenes with Lisa Bonet. And when I think voodoo, I think Papa Doc.

[RDCanecutter 26484]

Trujillo, Dominican Republic.

Edited February 17, 2019 by RDCanecutter
speelling is harrd

[TwiceHorn 31624]

1 hour ago, Shady Ray said:

Yeah, it always surprises me how that whole "Ustaše situation" gets brushed under the rug. I don't know if was the unsavory involvement of the Vatican in the whole thing, or maybe just Tito's dedication to moving forward without large-scale tribunals involving those behind it, but those were some sick fucks.

Those Balkans are something else.  A veritable powder keg.  The weirdest thing about Ustase was that it was pro-Catholic and pro-Muslim, which belies one potential reason for the perennial unrest in the Balkans.

[RDCanecutter 26484]

Porfirio Diaz. Hate on him all you want, you couldn't have a decent historical telenovela or Revolutionary-themed Mexican restaurant without him. Threw the country open to foreign investment, railroads, oil drilling, yeah, he was a bastard who'd spy on you and send you to die working forever on a tobacco plantation, but all those cigars getting smoked at the opera house had to come from somewhere. If you're Mexican and somebody in your family has blue eyes, it's probably because Porfirio invited in a Kraut, Brit, Frog, or Gringo with a lucrative bidness concession, then the dude lost his damn mind when bisabuelita flashed him some ankle.

Sliced grand avenues through Mexico City to make it more like Paris, probably for the same reason-- easier to gun down revolts.

 

Then there's Huerta, but I don't think Huerta did much beyond hatchet-work so he's not really underappreciated.

[RDCanecutter 26484]

5 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Those Balkans are something else.  A veritable powder keg.  The weirdest thing about Ustase was that it was pro-Catholic and pro-Muslim, which belies one potential reason for the perennial unrest in the Balkans.

Plus I think genetically they have a high proportion of the Old European hunter ancestry, as opposed to later farmers. Granddaddy stuck a spear in a Mammoth, so yeah I'll dance on top of your tank with just a molotov.

[Shady Ray 1633]

14 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Those Balkans are something else.  A veritable powder keg.

Fucking truth right here. Here in Munich I play in an "over-40" weekly basketball game.

We have essentially adopted a "you-ex-Yugoslavian-fuckers-gotta-play-on-the-same-team" rule...otherwise every game ends up somewhere between an argument and a race war.

But all of those slavs on one team ends up in an ass-kicking for the rest of us. Fuckers can straight-up ball.