Pol pot killed about 25% of Cambodias population and deserve a nomination.

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?

Ea-nāṣir, merrily flogging low quality copper to unsuspecting punters. The rotter.

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

Henry Kissinger is up there as quite a villain of modern times. Puppet master of most of the fucked up modern world order.

Thomas Midgley, Jr

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.

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.

Cain singlehandedly killed 25% of world's human population.

I sorta don't want to go down the rabbit hole. To find the answer you would literally need to compare attrocities. Im aware of quite a few but watching the actual footage of the aftermath and such is literally sickening. I've heard pol pot.

Shirō Ishii

Trump (yes, hoping he's dead)

Idk if this counts because he didn't realise how bad it was but Thomas Midgley Jr put CFCs in fridges and put lead in petrol

Hitler is a pretty obvious answer

Billionaires.

I think that where we are today, it's more important than ever to really recognise that there is absolutely no "evilest" person. And moreso, almost all of them genuinely believed they were being a force for good.

The main reason for there being no "evilest" is because there are not just tens, or hundreds, but thousands of people who have committed horrific atrocities which even as individual acts would be in contention for the evilest.

Just within the Holocaust, you have so many individuals perpetrating such evil. The croatian fascist groups always stick out in my memory for the raw personal brutality.

However, there are so many comparable situations throughout history that we know very little about. Sacking of cities, mass rapes, Jeffrey fucking epstein, what's been happening in Sudan, what happened in Ethiopia a few years ago, the Holocaust, the Mongols, the ottomans, the British empire, south American dictators, the Japanese empire, the russian empire, the soviet union, al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, the IRA, the Vikings, and on, and on, and on.

Yes, arguments can be made about how much more evil things are when they are organised etc. However, in my mind, organisation is just a tool that we have improved. We need to be hyper vigilant that anyone, at any time can end up being so radicalised that they are willing to perpetrate evil. Including ourselves. We are not really different from these evil humans.

God, and probably even dont exists, that makes it more impresive.

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.

Stalin of course.

But I fully expect this totally verifiably factual post to be violently downmodded in 3, 2, 1... 🙂

Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex

I don't think it comes down to sheer numbers; I think it's about deliberately causing suffering and reveling in it. So, maybe the BTK killer or another serial killer who liked to torture their victims.

moustache-twirling affairs

That’s the thing, his moustache couldn’t be twirled

Paul the Apostle or Abraham.

Idk if Powell is alive. Ayn Rand, but she is just a fool with a strange philosophy, she can't be responsible for what the morons did with it.

Idk if whoever founded Mossad is still alive, but they sure sabotaged and sent backwards the entire world.

Whoever took advantage of Jesus delusions, and convinced him he is the messiah, leading to a religion that would be used to stop people from taking on science.

Trump. Even Jeffrey Epstein said Trump was beyond evil. Those files are still censored for a reason.

Trump and Netanyahu

I'm gonna bet that is someone alive today. Some billionaire whose only ideals are personal gain.

There's a lot of competition, but right now Trump is vying for a gold medal as hard as he can, which might actually explain a few things. He wants to be the best at being the worst.

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.

_ /\ _

Narratively, Julius Caesar

From an aristocratic family that had just suffered a major defeat/humiliation

Floated around the Mediterranean as a bottom to powerful men

The whole, got captured by pirates, had them raise his ransom, and then returned to kill them story

Formed a shadow council to control the world

Genococided the gauls

Had a love affair with Cleopatra

Became dictator for life

Got stabbed in the back by everyone close to him

Well that last qualification ends my answer

Robert Moses, responsible for fucking up public transportation and paving over minority communities with shitty highways

At this point, putin.

Ancel Keys, the perpetuator of the diet heart hypothesis.