Most EVIL Dictators EVER Ranked (2025 Tier List)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Camp Gagnon – "Most EVIL Dictators EVER Ranked (2025 Tier List)"

Introduction to the Discussion on Dictators

In the April 1, 2025 episode of Camp Gagnon, host Mark Gagnon delves into a chilling yet riveting topic: ranking the most evil dictators in history. Joined by guests Derek Poston and Hassan Ahmad from Austin, Texas, the trio embarks on a deep exploration of infamous autocrats, evaluating their atrocities and impact based on the number of deaths and the severity of their actions.

Defining a Dictator

Mark opens the conversation by attempting to define what constitutes a dictator, sparking a lively debate among the hosts. He states:

[00:00] Mark Gagnon: "Dictators, Some of the most evil people to ever walk the face of the earth. These are tyrannical autocrats that seize power either through a military coup or through their own cunning and take over control of a country..."

The discussion highlights the nuances in the term "dictator," distinguishing between traditional monarchs and modern autocrats, emphasizing the consolidation of power without relinquishment.

Vlad the Impaler: The Origin of Dracula

The first dictator examined is Vlad the Impaler, often cited as the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. Mark provides a vivid account of Vlad's reign:

[07:05] Mark Gagnon: "He creates the most insane fence where people are coming into the gates as the Ottomans are approaching. He has 20 to 30,000 impaled corpses lining the Danube River."

Derek adds humorously:

[07:02] Derek Poston: "Is this the guy Dracula's based on?"

This section underscores Vlad's notorious brutality, including his method of impaling enemies to deter invasions, and touches on his posthumous status as a folk hero in Romania.

Joseph Stalin: The Man of Steel

Moving forward, the hosts discuss the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, whose reign from 1922 to 1953 is marked by extreme paranoia and mass atrocities. Mark details Stalin's major campaigns:

[24:37] Mark Gagnon: "He would do these like, fake trials. He had this approach to eliminating perceived threats where officials would confess to impossible crimes..."

Hassan emphasizes the sheer scale of Stalin's terror:

[25:54] Hassan Ahmad: "We can put him under here. He knew his heart, bro."

The conversation highlights Stalin’s Great Purge, the Holodomor famine, and the establishment of the Gulag system, collectively responsible for the deaths of approximately 20 million Soviet citizens. The hosts debate Stalin's ranking, ultimately placing him above other dictators due to the massive loss of life under his rule.

Adolf Hitler: Architect of Genocide

Next, the discussion turns to Adolf Hitler, whose actions during World War II led to unparalleled destruction. Mark contrasts Hitler's concentration camps with Stalin's Gulags:

[52:32] Mark Gagnon: "The concentration camps were just like, yeah, we're gonna literally these are death camps. People just go here and die..."

Derek points out the distinction between Hitler's external aggression versus Stalin's internal repression:

[53:05] Derek Poston: "He did most of his killing during the war, which kind of gives him a cover of like, well, this is war..."

This segment underscores Hitler's role in orchestrating the Holocaust, leading to the systematic extermination of six million Jews, alongside millions of other victims.

Mao Zedong: The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution

Mao Zedong’s leadership in China is scrutinized next, with Mark outlining his catastrophic policies:

[56:57] Mark Gagnon: "He presided over one of the most tumultuous and deadly periods in modern history... the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution resulted in the deaths of 30 to 50 million people."

The hosts discuss the forced collectivization of agriculture, resulting in widespread famine, and the Cultural Revolution, which targeted intellectuals and enforced Mao’s ideological purity, further contributing to mass casualties and societal chaos.

Pol Pot: The Khmer Rouge’s Reign of Terror

Pol Pot's rule in Cambodia is highlighted for its extreme brutality:

[70:30] Mark Gagnon: "He killed 2 million Cambodians through starvation, forced labor, and executions, which was about 25% of the population."

The conversation delves into Pol Pot's vision of an agrarian utopia, leading to the forced evacuation of cities, the establishment of the Killing Fields, and the systematic eradication of intellectuals and perceived enemies.

Muammar Gaddafi: Libya’s Eccentric Dictator

Muammar Gaddafi’s tenure in Libya is explored with a mix of horror and dark humor:

[89:03] Mark Gagnon: "He had 15 female bodyguards who were all trained in weaponry, had to wear makeup and high heels, and were all reportedly virgins."

The hosts discuss Gaddafi’s extravagant lifestyle, his brutal suppression of dissent, and his eventual downfall during the 2011 Libyan Civil War, which resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.

Idi Amin: Uganda’s Merciless Leader

Idi Amin’s dictatorship in Uganda is examined for its notorious cruelty:

[94:10] Mark Gagnon: "He killed an estimated 100,000 to 500,000 people, targeting political opponents, soldiers, intellectuals, and professionals."

The discussion highlights Amin’s erratic behavior, including forcing white males to carry him in elaborate thrones, and his mass expulsions of South Asians from Uganda, leading to significant economic and social turmoil.

Leopold II: The Exploiter of the Congo

Leopold II of Belgium is discussed as one of history's most heinous figures due to his exploitation of the Congo:

[102:37] Mark Gagnon: "He would use hands as currency, forcing everyone to work or have their hands chopped off."

The hosts reflect on Leopold’s brutal economic exploitation, resulting in millions of Congolese deaths and the widespread suffering endured under his regime.

Concluding Reflections: The Nature of Dictatorship and Paranoia

As the episode wraps up, the hosts ponder the psychological toll of absolute power, noting:

[78:34] Derek Poston: "Once you're at the top of anything, kind of like... you get paranoid."

They discuss the inherent paranoia among dictators, often leading to further repression and isolation, as exemplified by Stalin’s relentless distrust even of his closest advisors.

Closing Thoughts and Future Speculations

Mark concludes the episode by emphasizing the perpetuating nature of dictatorship:

[103:16] Mark Gagnon: "There’s going to be more... different countries are going to pop up. There’re going to be different dictators that take over other countries."

The conversation veers into speculative territory, contemplating the future of global governance and the potential emergence of new authoritarian leaders in our increasingly interconnected world.

Notable Quotes:

• [00:00] Mark Gagnon: "Dictators, Some of the most evil people to ever walk the face of the earth."
• [07:05] Mark Gagnon: "He creates the most insane fence where people are coming into the gates as the Ottomans are approaching. He has 20 to 30,000 impaled corpses lining the Danube River."
• [24:37] Mark Gagnon: "He would do these like, fake trials..."
• [56:57] Mark Gagnon: "He presided over one of the most tumultuous and deadly periods in modern history..."
• [70:30] Mark Gagnon: "He killed 2 million Cambodians through starvation, forced labor, and executions..."
• [89:03] Mark Gagnon: "He had 15 female bodyguards who were all trained in weaponry, had to wear makeup and high heels, and were all reportedly virgins."
• [102:37] Mark Gagnon: "He would use hands as currency, forcing everyone to work or have their hands chopped off."

Conclusion

This episode of Camp Gagnon serves as a grim reminder of humanity's capacity for cruelty under authoritarian rule. Through engaging dialogue and detailed historical accounts, Mark, Derek, and Hassan provide listeners with a comprehensive understanding of some of history's most notorious dictators, urging reflection on the factors that facilitate such extreme abuses of power.

Transcript

[Mark Gagnon]

Dictators, Some of the most evil people to ever walk the face of the earth. These are tyrannical autocrats that seize power either through a military coup or through their own cunning and take over control of a country, and no one can say a thing about it. And today we're ranking all the most evil dictators. That's right. All the people and the names you've heard in history books but never really knew who they were. Everyone from Hitler, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Vlad the Impaler. And we're going to rank the atrocities that they did, the most evil things that they did to their own people, and where they fall on the of the most evil dictator of all time, who do you think it'll be? Because probably not that person. But today, don't worry, we're breaking it all down. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. What's up, people? And welcome back to camp. I'm not here in my beautiful tent, unfortunately, but I am in Austin, Texas, and I'm here with the good citizens of Austin, here today with Derek Poston and Hassan Ahmad. Yeah, what's up, guys?

[Derek Poston]

Let's go.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Camp, finally.

[Derek Poston]

Let's go.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, this is just, this isn't a regular episode of camp. Sometimes with camp, I'm talking to experts. I'm talking to really smart people. I'm talking to geniuses. I'm talking to good, moral, ethical human beings. But today we're not doing that. Today is tent talks. All right. But normally we're in a tent. It kind of makes more sense, but now it just kind of sounds like a weird rhyme. But with 10 talks. That's the show where I explain the most interesting, fascinating and controversial topics from around the world to my dumbest friends.

[Derek Poston]

Huh?

[Mark Gagnon]

And that's why you guys are here.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Well, I'm excited.

[Derek Poston]

Such a great energy.

[Mark Gagnon]

Perfect. Right? Yeah. I, I, we talked about this topic. I think it's a great one. Ranking the worst dictators of all time or the best dictate. It's Again, the framing of this is gonna.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

How?

[Hassan Ahmad]

Because that's a great question.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

If we're gonna rank them by worst or bad, is it like most efficient best or like worst? Like, oh, that's the most evil person.

[Mark Gagnon]

So let's figure this out together. Okay. I think the framing should be the, the top is the most evil, and then the bottom is, is less evil, but still evil.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, still, still evil. If you on the list, if you.

[Mark Gagnon]

Got the dick in the name, you're evil. Right. I think that's we can accept that, right?

[Derek Poston]

Y number of people killed is going to play a very big role.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, my goodness. We're back in the argument we had yesterday.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Wait, you guys know what does dick. What does the word dictator mean? Like, and where was it originated? Do you know?

[Mark Gagnon]

I have no idea, actually. That's a great question. Let's find out.

[Hassan Ahmad]

You know what made me think that yesterday when Brian was. Were y'all in the room when Brian Simpson was talking about the word decimate? No, he said it was invented by the Romans. Because what they would do. I thought this was genius. What they would do is if a man. If a soldier, like, abandoned, you know, deserted. What they would do is they would take that squadron and kill every 10th person randomly death 10.

[Mark Gagnon]

Wow.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That's a mate. So that's how that word was originated.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, that's crazy.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I thought that was so cool. Yeah, you should have Brian on this podcast.

[Derek Poston]

Listening to you guys talk yesterday. I'd be like, oh, okay. Maybe it should be just them.

[Mark Gagnon]

I know. We need you guys to figure out the dictators. Okay. So. All right, this. I'm pretty sure the etymology is just from Latin dictator. And I don't know what dictator means.

[Derek Poston]

Some guy who talks a lot. That's what it sounds like.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

If you was the word dict.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, that's interesting. That's. Dude, that's exactly right.

[Derek Poston]

Is that exactly right?

[Mark Gagnon]

It comes from dictator, meaning to say repeatedly assert or to order.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Who's the idiot now, Mark?

[Mark Gagnon]

I didn't expect to get curveball questions on that policy. Okay. I thought we're going to go through the details. All right. But yeah, and so basically, that's what a dictator. Some of these people are going to be dictators, you know, adjacent, you know, like some of the people we're going to be talking about, they're not necessarily what you would consider a dictator, but they are funny. So I think it's worth mentioning. Okay. You know, exactly.

[Derek Poston]

Okay.

[Mark Gagnon]

Because what it. What is a dictator? Right? Like, I was looking it up. It's like, basically like a person that comes in either through, like, a military coup or as an elected official and just never vacates.

[Derek Poston]

Right.

[Mark Gagnon]

Different than a monarch who gets passed down over time. Even though sometimes monarchies can become dictatorships.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Really?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. So sometimes, like, it's Game of Thrones. Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

I mean, can monarchies become dictatorships or just. Can you just have a evil monarch?

[Hassan Ahmad]

That's what. But it. Wouldn't that be considered a dictator? Or he's still just a monarch.

[Derek Poston]

No, because I Think at the end of the day, the dictator is someone who, like, kind of took it in a way, whether it be the. The. The elected or through a couple. Like, when you're a monarch, you're just. Like you said, you're sort of giving it.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. The monarch would become a dictator under the definition if the monarch is now no longer listening to, like, the. The board, like, the ruling family that controls. So, like, the king is obviously the late lead monarch, but they would have, like, a court that they would consult with, whereas dictators typically have no other consult. They might have generals and things that they. They talk to, but typically it's much more autocratic. I didn't realize.

[Derek Poston]

Okay, that. I get that. That makes sense then.

[Mark Gagnon]

What's up, camp family? What's up, campers? Two big announcements. Don't skip this. Two massive announcements. The merch store is back open. That's right. Camp Goods is back in stock. We got these hats that I'm wearing right now. I've been rocking them both on here on flagrant. I've been wearing them on stage. We got a bunch more hats like the ones behind me. You can see them all here on the website. We also got some shirts. Oh, man. What is this one right here? Come on, now. Come on now. Camp gear for all terrain. We got some other ones. What is this one right here? Oh, this one's beautiful. This one might be one of my favorites. The colors. The colors are absolutely crazy. This is Camp Gagnon vintage wisdom across the globe. Come on now. We got all that and more on the store. We also got these sick mugs right here. You might have seen me maybe sipping from one of these in some of the recent episodes. These are sick. They are all available on the website campgoods. Co. Check it out. Link is in the description. And by supporting the merchandise, you are obviously supporting the show. You're supporting me, and you're obviously, you know, supporting all the amazing people that make the show happen, like Christos, who is currently throwing me T shirts from underneath this desk here. So please check that out. Additionally, I'm on the road. That's right. I'm doing my one hour of standup comedy, some of some of the greatest jokes ever written. Okay, that's not true, but they are my jokes, and I wrote them. And I'll be in Portland, Maine on April 27th. And that one I'm doing with Joey Avery. You know, Joey Avery, a friend of the show. He sat across from me many times, and I'm explaining some things to him, and he Might be my dumb friend, but he is a brilliant stand up comedian and we will be there in Portland, Maine. If you are in these areas, please come out. And we're adding a ton of dates all through the summer, so check out my website, themarkgagnon.com for all tour dates and updated info. Come hang out with me. I talk to every single person after the show. If you want to kick it with me, maybe have a drink, I'll be there and I will see you guys on the road. Let's get back to the show. So let's just start with a fun one, shall we?

[Derek Poston]

Okay.

[Mark Gagnon]

Vlad the Impaler. You ever heard of this guy?

[Derek Poston]

Is this the guy Dracula's based on?

[Mark Gagnon]

Exactly.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Damn.

[Mark Gagnon]

He be knowing Bram Stoker.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Can we pull a picture of Vlad the Impaler? This guy is an absolute beast. Basically, he. It was like just this evil, evil dude. All right. Back in 1456-1462. Okay. If we get a picture of him, he looks. He looks handsome, to be honest with you. People love him, apparently. Romania. So, like, that's where like he like, became like a folk hero, like after his death. But he did all sorts of crazy things. So basically this guy, Ottoman invaders start approaching this guy. This place, Wallachia, is like, basically where he's like the ruler of. And he creates the most insane, like, fence where people are coming into the gates as the Ottomans are approaching. He has 20 to 30,000 impaled corpses lining the Danube River. And that is how he scared away invaders and people coming to like, take his shit. Damn giant, like lines of just impaled corpses.

[Derek Poston]

I also think it's pronounced the Danube.

[Mark Gagnon]

Is it? Is that how it's pronounced?

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, pretty sure.

[Mark Gagnon]

What is the. What is the Danube?

[Derek Poston]

It's a river. It's. I know, it's. A lot of big battles have been there. Like Napoleon fought around the Danube a lot.

[Mark Gagnon]

What. What is up with that?

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, there's just some sort of like rivers, I think are easy to fight around because they're like a natural. So it's like. It's a natural sort of barrier. So a lot of like. And it's water. So you sort of plan a lot around these sort of battles. Ancient battles are kind of weird where like they just sort of met up in a place.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Almost like school fight. Kind of romantic or 3:00.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, even I'm pretty. That was the weirdest part of like the Art of War is like. So like half the book is like, how to conquer your Enemies. And the other half is like, when fighting in a river, get out of the river. Like, that's like most of the book is about river. River warfare.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

The Danube. Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

The dad, like, rivers are like really big in ancient battles. It's like Caesar was a big deal because he crossed the Rubicon and that's a river.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah, whatever.

[Derek Poston]

Like, rivers are just important.

[Mark Gagnon]

Washington.

[Derek Poston]

Yes.

[Mark Gagnon]

Delaware. Delaware, all that. Damn, that's a good ass point.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. Rivers are like super important until we have aircraft, pretty much.

[Mark Gagnon]

Probably trade route. Probably also you get like men and. And it's like, hey, let's just meet on the river.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, it's. It's like if you like, if you like burn the bridges on a river, then all of a sudden the opponents, your opposing army, it's like they have to either rebuild or they're trapped. It's like crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Derek Poston]

They can't get supply lines through. It's like super important.

[Mark Gagnon]

And if there's 20,000 corpses impaled on the side of one, you're going to be scared. You're going to be a little bit intimidated.

[Hassan Ahmad]

You're already worried about the river.

[Derek Poston]

Yes.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. The river's in the back of your mind.

[Hassan Ahmad]

They have another problem.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, exactly. Oh, 20 to 30,000 of them. He called it the Forest of the Impaled. And it basically worked better than any wall. This guy, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed ii, the same guy that conquered Constantinople, he walked up to it and basically was like, I'm good. Literally, he was going to invade and like, take over. This guy's like, whole kingdom was like, nah, I'm okay. And he just dipped this guy. His signature technique was inserting wooden stakes through the rectum and hoisting the victims high up on poles where everyone could see him. So, like, prisoners of war, the enemies, like, even within his own court that would go against him, Are they alive.

[Hassan Ahmad]

When he's doing this?

[Mark Gagnon]

No. Sometimes. But not always insane. And. And he would want them to oftentimes, like, die slowly where people could see him. And that was like his whole thing, putting them just in front of the castle. Impaled.

[Derek Poston]

Oh, my God. So, like, some. The idea being that, like, oh, maybe if someone's walking up on this, you can still hear some of them moaning.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Brutal.

[Mark Gagnon]

And then apparently this is a theory, this is apocryphal. Okay. This is where Bram Stoker gets the idea of Dracula, is that apparently this guy would dine with the impaled victims. And that he's. He's alleged to have dipped his bread into their blood and ate their blood. Which is where you get the idea of Dracula being like. Or this guy being a vampire. So this, like, count that lives in, like, a castle and drinks people's blood for power is based off of Vlad the Impaler. Crazy. Seems like.

[Derek Poston]

I think he did it.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Do I think he did it a lot? No, I think he probably did it, like, one time, but one was enough.

[Mark Gagnon]

It seems like white boy. Where like, you just be like, yo, look how crazy I am.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Ozzy Osborne.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like, did he eat a bat? Yes.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yes.

[Mark Gagnon]

Does he eat bats all the time? No.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Also, one was enough.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, one's enough. One's enough. You have the right person to see you dip the. Dip the bread in the blood and be like, tell people.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Oh, you have that one. He's just like, oh, my God.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

So other legends that go around this, he allegedly. He killed his older brother by burying him alive. He captured him, buried him alive to, like, get rid of, like, his. You know, try to get his claim to the throne.

[Derek Poston]

That's a crazy time in life where you're like, you have to kind of kill your brother if you want to. You. You know, I say that like, it's like, far away. Like, Kim Jong Un didn't just do that, like, 10 years ago.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He killed his brother.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Kim Jong Un killed his brother.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Are we gonna get to him later or am I ruining it? Am I spoiling things?

[Mark Gagnon]

No, we're gonna get to all of them. I mean, by all of them, we're gonna get to, like, three more.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I don't want to talk about that because that's. I did not. He killed his brother.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Was it confirmed or was it kind something.

[Derek Poston]

It was confirmed. You can see. You can see. No, in like, 2010 or something like that.

[Hassan Ahmad]

No, he didn't. There's.

[Derek Poston]

There's video online. You can watch.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, this is the one with the girls.

[Derek Poston]

The girls, yeah. So basically, he had these girls story.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yes.

[Derek Poston]

Pretended it's a reality show and, like, slipped in poison.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah. And he was going to be the next dictator of.

[Derek Poston]

So originally he was supposed to be the original 2017. So. In the airport. Yeah. So originally he was supposed to be. I believe he was supposed to be the guy.

[Mark Gagnon]

He looks very funny.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. Kim Jong. They all look familiar.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That's a director. That guy makes great movies.

[Derek Poston]

Parasite.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

But yeah, he. He was supposed to be the guy. And then he got caught going to Disneyland in Japan, I believe. And so he got knocked down for Kim Jong Un, but he's the oldest son, so there's like a legitimate claim to, like, the throne, quote, unquote. So to get rid of his claim.

[Hassan Ahmad]

They killed him also, I'm assuming, going to Disney World. They're like, this isn't the kind of guy we want in charge.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, you're supposed to.

[Hassan Ahmad]

They got Mickey Mouse. Follow him.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, the.

[Derek Poston]

The thing about the Kims is that they love Western stuff. They love Western stuff, apparently, but they don't show it publicly. But they love us. That's why Kim Jong is friends with Dennis Rodman.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

You can become friends with Dennis Rodman if you don't love the West. Dennis Rodman is the West.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Derek Poston]

He rebounds, has weird hair, wears wedding dresses. What's more, of the West.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Osama bin Laden also, like, loved, like, just, just chilling, watching cars. That's like, on his computer that they confiscated out of the caves in Pakistan was Cars one and two. Like, he was like, he was just.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Wait, quit playing. I thought you meant Cars. Like, he like, like I. Rogan likes cars.

[Mark Gagnon]

No, he likes car. The Queen, you know, I mean, like, he was like, in the caves, like his computer had all these crazy files.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, he was just like watching just like Western media. Just like, yo, this is fire.

[Derek Poston]

That's a good. That's a good look. The Osama bin Laden hard drives. There's a lot of interesting stuff on there.

[Mark Gagnon]

All right.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, but it's stuff like that. A lot of porn games.

[Mark Gagnon]

A lot of stuff like that was there porn games?

[Derek Poston]

Porn games like, like puzzles that if you complete it, you got to see a naked picture.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, try not to bust. Yeah, I've seen those ads. I didn't know anyone actually clicked that.

[Derek Poston]

Well, when you're. When you're like, when you're stuck in Pakistan with everyone looking for you, there's only so much you can do.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, that's crazy. Well, based off this limited information we have on Vlad the Impaler, where do we want to put them?

[Derek Poston]

I mean, what, what's the. What's the. What's the tier list again? What's the rankings?

[Hassan Ahmad]

Are we doing ultimate based?

[Mark Gagnon]

That was the one we were doing. I'm going to change it afterwards, but we'll just do most evil to least evil. Some people suggest that he killed like 80,000 people. I think that's like, like his rough death toll, but might be higher.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I'm going to go. I'm going to go mega base, maybe megabase.

[Derek Poston]

The second one.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah. How do you feel he is. I feel like. I mean, bro, the impaling thing is cool. The dip in the blood thing. And we're still talking about it now it's 20, 24. 5. Prove my point. More.

[Mark Gagnon]

Slightly more.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, so. But also, you gotta. That's impressive. But we still talk about you and what you did in. What was he, 1400s?

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, I would say he's mega based. I would say he's the top one. I mean, he create like.

[Hassan Ahmad]

No, because you're going too early. But listen to me. So many other dictators who did some cool.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, but how many other dictators created Dracula? And like a whole genre of evil. Like, that's the first vampire.

[Hassan Ahmad]

But you putting them up there with Hitler.

[Derek Poston]

I would say so.

[Mark Gagnon]

In terms of. In terms of, like, I didn't know.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Who he was until just now. We're gonna put him under here.

[Mark Gagnon]

But you knew his story. You knew the vibe.

[Derek Poston]

You know Dracula.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Dracula ain't this nigga.

[Mark Gagnon]

You knew his heart, bro. He knew his heart.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He is helsing.

[Derek Poston]

He is that guy, though. He is who Dracula is based on, bro.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He. No, hold on here. I think we're getting ahead of ourselves because he dipped the thing in the blood. It's cool. I was a fan of it, too, when we brought it up a second ago, remember? I was campaigning for that.

[Derek Poston]

Right.

[Hassan Ahmad]

But to act like that's the same level as killing 6 million Jews, mind you. Hardest people to kill.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Very crafty.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Very crafty. And they don't like it.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, they hate getting killed.

[Hassan Ahmad]

They don't want to die. So, bruh, he did like you. And we all know there's not a person on this earth who don't know who Hitler is, other than the people who live in, like, tribes and shit. But not a person in a modern society. Nobody knows Vlad the Impaler.

[Mark Gagnon]

Bro, this guy is so evil. You want a couple more evil things that he did? This might influence your decision making. One of the most crazy stories is that he invited the sick and poor of the kingdom over to the castle for a feast and then lock them into a hall and then burned the whole thing down. The story appears in some historical accounts and chronicles, including German pamphlets written shortly after Vlad's reign. According to the sources, he invited beggars in the sick for a feast under the pretense of generosity, but then burned the building down, claiming that he was trying to relieve them of their misery. I mean, dude. I mean, he did relieve him. I mean, it's like. All right, you see his point? You're like, okay, because he did.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He did just do the sick and the poor.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

If there have been wealthy people in there, that's not cool.

[Mark Gagnon]

They're not miserable. They're having a great time.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I get that. He's like, man, bro, these niggas. If we can just get rid of these complaining. Just get rid of a lot of these complaints, how sweet would everything be, right?

[Mark Gagnon]

No more beggars on the street.

[Hassan Ahmad]

No more, bro. No more sick people. Imagine how good you would just feel knowing that nobody's sick.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, it's kind of crazy. He's cured all sickness.

[Hassan Ahmad]

You. You, bro, it's. And also think about you are just kind of leaving like strong people left in the community.

[Derek Poston]

Right.

[Hassan Ahmad]

You're building a race of like a eugenics program. Well, where is he from? Like, where he's from. Where would it be now?

[Derek Poston]

Romania.

[Mark Gagnon]

Romania.

[Hassan Ahmad]

So it's be Romanian now.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

And it was Romania then.

[Mark Gagnon]

Transylvania.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That's a real place.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. This is Dracula. Is this guy like. It's not like they're like, he heard. No, he was like, this is Vlad the Impaler. How do I make him into a character? And it became Dracula. And then you spot like, this is. This is the spawn of vampires. That's.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That's why evil. They were that scared of him, bro.

[Derek Poston]

Yes, that's.

[Mark Gagnon]

He lived in a castle. He was drinking blood.

[Derek Poston]

That's why I'm saying it's. It's. It's mega based. Just because, like, bro, like, yes, there's dictators that killed more people, but I don't know if there's any of the dictators that spawned a genre of villain and a genre of villain that's so used today. It's gone so far in the villain. They became good guys in Twilight. You know how? I mean?

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, it's, it's crazy.

[Derek Poston]

Crazy, dude. Vampires are so part of every part of like any sort of like mythical monster villain. They appear in everything.

[Hassan Ahmad]

You won me over.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Ultimate based.

[Derek Poston]

I. I think if he didn't spawn the vampire, there's a. There's a. There's an argument to be made for lower for sure. But like, that to me is what takes him over the edge.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Because you. But ultimate base means he up there with the big boys, though.

[Derek Poston]

I think he's. I think he's up there with the big boys.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Okay. You won me the Twilight thing. Swung me.

[Derek Poston]

I know how to work.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I know. I've seen.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah. Team Edward all the ways.

[Mark Gagnon]

Let's talk about Joseph Stalin, the Man of Steel. Leader of the Soviet Union, 1922 to 1953. But do you know about Stall?

[Hassan Ahmad]

1922 to 1953?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He died when he was like 30 something.

[Mark Gagnon]

No, that was just his reign.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Oh.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I was more impressed. Like, damn, he knocked that out. Yeah, Damn.

[Mark Gagnon]

I. I look up a picture of him when he was young. If you look at him when he was young.

[Derek Poston]

Oh, there's young, there's young. Second. Second line.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. He's remarkably handsome.

[Hassan Ahmad]

And this makes sense.

[Mark Gagnon]

This is after he got smallpox and was like, all pimpled out. Like, apparently, like got very sick as a kid. So this guy basically takes over the Bolsheviks and tries to take Russia from this backward agricultural society to an industrial powerhouse. And he did it through a very efficient and simple way. Just killed everyone that disagreed with him. Anyone that looked suspicious, anyone that, you know, was nearby when he was angry, he was just killing. And he was down for the cause. Early on, when he was taking over, like, the whole Bolshevik Party, he was robbing banks to, like, raise money for the party.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Robin Hood.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Like, he was like, literally stealing from.

[Derek Poston]

The rich for the poor. Like, literally.

[Mark Gagnon]

And they were like the. The Communist Party. Like, hey, we're going to take care of all the people, we're going to do the right and we're going to steal money from the banks and we're going to run the whole thing up. And he was going in robbing banks. I'm pretty sure.

[Hassan Ahmad]

With the gun.

[Mark Gagnon]

I'm pretty sure these mug shots were from when he was bank robbing. Kind of crazy. So he basically is able to take over. Okay. He was.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He born in the highest. Like a high family.

[Mark Gagnon]

No, Poor family in Georgia.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He got it out the mud.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. From Atlanta. Grew up in Atlanta. And then he became the leader of the Red Army. Isn't that crazy?

[Hassan Ahmad]

Oh, my God.

[Mark Gagnon]

You got hit with the rico, bro. Isn't that.

[Hassan Ahmad]

But, but I feel like most dictators. You don't. Or am I wrong? Do most dictators come from poor?

[Mark Gagnon]

It's an interesting question, actually. I don't know. My. My feeling would be most of them kind of come from, like, middle to porish.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. Because. Yeah, to. To rise up and be a populist person. It feels like it's tough to be born rich.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Because I can get you. Like you said, if this. I'm getting behind this guy. There's a guy stealing. And right now in America, if a motherfucker started stealing from the banks.

[Mark Gagnon]

Luigi. Imagine Luigi, bro.

[Derek Poston]

And it looks like Luigi.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah. And making healthcare do shit. And all that. And it was just this guy who. And he found out he was from Decatur. He was just from Atlanta. Then you would be like, damn, bro. Like, even right now, we would. With that guy.

[Derek Poston]

Right?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Right. Like, because think about rich populists. Like, Donald Trump is a rich populist, and he's super divisive.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

I think that. I think that kind of, in a way, plays a part.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. If. If he came from the mud.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Mud.

[Derek Poston]

I think more people would be like, yeah, that's crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's a good point.

[Derek Poston]

The fact that he came from New York. Billionaires makes people, I think, also is a deep down. Makes people go like, let's go. What's going on here?

[Hassan Ahmad]

Washington came out the mud, right, George?

[Mark Gagnon]

I think so.

[Derek Poston]

He also wasn't a dictator, though. He wasn't like a politician.

[Hassan Ahmad]

No, but I meant, like, I'm talking about a guy rising up and the way people revere him.

[Derek Poston]

I don't know. He had slaves, so makes me think he's rich.

[Hassan Ahmad]

But then everybody has slaves.

[Derek Poston]

No, poor people did not have slaves. Slaves are expensive.

[Mark Gagnon]

Very expensive. We looked into it.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Very expensive. I'm pretty sure Washington, when he left office, he was like the. To this day, I think, like, the third richest president ever. Like, he was extreme. Like, part of the reason, allegedly, that he was, like, very pro revolutionary war was because if they won the war, he would become one of the wealthiest men in the world because of his land speculations and holdings within the United States. So he had a ton to gain personally from overthrowing the British monarch.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. And if you're. If you're doing land speculation, that implies some money already. No. Poor people. They're not gonna allow poor people to be like, I own this land.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

You know what, though? I respect that because that's great. You're like, damn, he had a lot to gain from it. But he was the one out there fighting this shit.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Like, risking his neck. So it's like, yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Why with slave teeth the whole time.

[Hassan Ahmad]

With slave teeth.

[Mark Gagnon]

Grills the original. Is that racist? No.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He could. Yeah. And then he also knew to give the power away. So it's like. I mean, poor or not, isn't that's impressive?

[Mark Gagnon]

Back to stone. So let's just go through some of the evil. Okay. Because again, all these people, you could do. There's millions of books on each person. So let's just kind of go through the bullet points. One of the. The craziest acts that he did when he first took over power, the great Purge. This lasted from 1936 to 1938. And it's a time when Stalin's paranoia reached a tipping point, leading to the execution and imprisonment of over a million people accused of being enemies of the revolution. During his speeches, people would continuously clap as if they had just as if he had performed a miracle. It wasn't just enthusiasm, it was fear. Everyone knew that the person to stop clapping might be the next on the execution list. And the atmosphere of terror that gripped the Soviet Union during the Great Purge. So the whole time he was talking, everyone was just clapping, just non stop, because you didn't want to be the guy that looked like a hater. And so the whole crowd. It kind of sounds nice, honestly, as a comic, like you kind of hear that and you're like, sounds actually pretty chill. But the whole time imagine the. The dude's just speaking. Everyone's just like, greatest ever. Love him.

[Derek Poston]

Crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

Insane. He would do these like, fake trials. He had this approach to eliminating perceived threats where officials would confess to impossible crimes. They might claim to be spies from multiple countries simultaneously. Japan, Germany, Britain, America. These confessions were often extracted through torture or threats. And they were all public for everyone to see what was happening. If you went against Stalin.

[Derek Poston]

Crazy, crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

And then there's the holodomor. Have you, have you heard of this?

[Derek Poston]

I've heard of this. I don't remember.

[Mark Gagnon]

This is basically agricultural reform that occurred in Ukraine. And this was a forced collectivization program. This was a five year plan that basically boiled down to like, okay, everyone's going to die so they can seize the farms. It's a man made famine that occurred in the Soviet Union from 1932 to 1933. The death tolls vary, but most scholars place it around 3.5 to 7 million people in five years. From famine. The demographic studies estimate 3.9 million direct losses, meaning that they died specifically from Stalin's regiment, whereas 3 million or do or so died from the repercussions from disease and malnutrition. So they had these grain quotas, they had food confiscations, they had travel restrictions and literally just like killed an entire country of people in five years. I think that would put him out there with pretty evil.

[Derek Poston]

I think. I think he's killed more people in his country than Hitler did.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Apparently he did. They said they teach you that in school.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, it's actually, it's an interesting thing though, because you got to look at overall numbers versus proportion. So I think proportionally Hitler killed like 20%, whereas Stalin killed like 15 but he killed more people, Right?

[Derek Poston]

Okay.

[Hassan Ahmad]

It's more people.

[Mark Gagnon]

Which I don't know if God cares.

[Hassan Ahmad]

You know, God's doing the numbers.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like if you're trying to go to heaven. If God's like, you did kill more people, but it's technically less.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, but per capita, how much?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, exactly.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah, that's.

[Mark Gagnon]

I think that. I think God would factor that in a little bit.

[Derek Poston]

Probably. Probably not. I don't know. Actually, I think one is. What? One is enough for God to be like, what's going on here?

[Mark Gagnon]

That is crazy. If you think about it, killing one guy. Like, if you met someone that killed one guy, you'd be like, whoa, this guy killed 7 million.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Oh my God.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, it's an insane number.

[Derek Poston]

It's like so much. At a certain point, it's like you lose track of.

[Mark Gagnon]

Think about how much stand up you've done, how many people you perform in front of. I don't know if you performed in front of 7 million people.

[Derek Poston]

I don't know if we perform in front of 1 million people.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right.

[Hassan Ahmad]

How many people. How many comics have performed in front of 7 million people?

[Derek Poston]

I don't think, like, you'd have to. Because to get to million about that number. Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Think about every person.

[Derek Poston]

A million's kind of crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

Every person you've ever seen at a show, and that's barely a million.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Maybe Kevin Hart.

[Derek Poston]

Maybe. All right, I'm gonna do this right now.

[Hassan Ahmad]

You'd have to be an arena act for so long.

[Derek Poston]

All right, so let's see. Let me just see. So fat man is 250 people, right? So 7 million divided by 250 equals. That means you'd have to perform on fat man 28,000 times.

[Mark Gagnon]

Wow.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Like 365 days in a year, bro.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah. That's what I mean.

[Hassan Ahmad]

What, two or three?

[Derek Poston]

Okay.

[Hassan Ahmad]

If you're lucky.

[Derek Poston]

Let's say I just did Atlantic City with Tony and that was 4000. 4000 people. So you'd have to do that 1700 times. So that's what I'm saying. I don't think like, Bit like Schultz and Shane probably performed for seven years.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That's why I said Kevin Hart. It has to be somebody.

[Derek Poston]

It has to be someone who does stadiums.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He's been doing it the long. I'm saying as far as a stadium act, he's the longest one we've heard of. Kevin Hart, he's got to be the closest. And I don't know if he's at 7 million.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah. And he didn't he didn't kill any of them. Kevin Hart did not. Like, he didn't kills on stage.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

He does kill. He didn't murder them. I guess that's awesome for him to do that.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, for Stalin to go kill all of them.

[Derek Poston]

This is. This is my favorite sort of story about Stalin. You see that picture? It's the second row, third from the right. That one. So this is how. This is how. This is how paranoid he got. So those are, like, two of his trusted advisors. He killed both of them and would red doctor the image so the other two would, like. He killed everyone in that picture. And every time he killed one, he would take one out of the picture.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, that's.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Wait, like, take them out or just replace their face?

[Derek Poston]

No, take them out.

[Mark Gagnon]

It was like OG Photoshop.

[Derek Poston]

Yes.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Wait, so there was more people originally in this picture?

[Derek Poston]

No, that. I think that's the full picture. And one by one, they all disappeared.

[Mark Gagnon]

He got super, super paranoid. Yeah, it was very weird. Like, I don't know what it was. I don't know if it was, like, killed 17 people.

[Hassan Ahmad]

You're like, but this has got to come back at something.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. There's a karmic justice in some way.

[Hassan Ahmad]

At a certain point. Seven million people, bro. You murdering everybody you meet.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Until 1953. I don't think he really got that justice. It's not like he got like. Like, Hitler went to Hitler. Well, Hitler killed himself and, like.

[Hassan Ahmad]

But he was paranoid.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Think about it.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Apparently, he died of. What was this? Just, like, illness.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, he made it. He did it.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. It was crazy. Like, God eventually just had to take him out. But he became so private. He once gave an order that no one can enter his bedroom chamber. And on one occasion, he faked being injured, causing guards to come into his room to assist him. But then he had those guards executed for disobeying his orders. Crazy. What level of paranoia are you where you're, like, tricking the people that are there to protect you? Think about any time you've ever had, like, a bouncer, like, escort you somewhere, you're, like, so grateful for that guy taking care of you. And then this guy's murdering those people by tricking them like impractical jokers. Like, he's like. Like, he's, like, doing.

[Derek Poston]

That's so funny. It's just solve volcano in the other room. Like, pretend you're sick.

[Mark Gagnon]

He's like, bro, I can't do it. I don't want to kill him. That's crazy. It's insane.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Oh, my God. Being that guard sounds awful, man.

[Mark Gagnon]

So then two weeks later, one night, while he's in his bedroom, he suffers a seizure. Fearing that the guards would be executed, they delayed entering his room for hours. The next day, despite hearing no signs of their leader, by then, the damage had been done. Stalin was found in a puddle of stale urine on the floor and died three days later.

[Derek Poston]

Well, he deserved that.

[Mark Gagnon]

What a dumbass.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. Fucking idiot. What do you think was going to happen?

[Hassan Ahmad]

You want to play games?

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

She want to play games.

[Derek Poston]

You're old. You spend all your time in this room.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

And then you execute. People are coming in. Yeah. Of course, when there's a real emergency, they're not going to come in.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. You cried wolf.

[Derek Poston]

Cried wolf.

[Mark Gagnon]

Literally cried wolf. He created the gulags, forced labor camps. Enemies of state. And, yeah, he was. He was an insane person. He sent every artist and academic that hadn't fled the USSR to the gulags. So we would have been thrown in there.

[Hassan Ahmad]

What are the gulags?

[Mark Gagnon]

Basically, these giant work camps, prison camps. So anyone that, like, wasn't, like, producing their fair share of work within the USSR if they. If they were not meeting quotas, if they weren't, like, the model worker citizen, they were sent to gulags to basically do, like, forced prison labor. So they'd be pushed out to, like, Siberia or some. In just the cold. Just, like, breaking rock.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, doing nothing. It's insane. And millions of people die in these gulags. It was like an insane. What. Like, why do all this? All these. All these dictators. I'm like, just chill out, bro.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That is crazy, bro.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's, like, what he did for fun. That was like his. That was his free time. All these dictators are just killing people just for the. Just for shits.

[Derek Poston]

Well, it's because you get so paranoid when you're up top. And you. You got up top by killing people. So you're like, well, people are going to try to be killing me. Val's hands raised. What's up, Val? I have a question. Yes? I've never really thought about this, but have these dictators who kill a lot of people ever killed someone with their hand?

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, that's a good question. Let's find out.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That's.

[Derek Poston]

I know Hitler. Hitler fought in World War I, so he probably killed.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I think she's saying, like.

[Derek Poston]

Like, after you've become that guy.

[Hassan Ahmad]

And now I'm. Actually, I'm. I'm killing you myself, bro. I'm letting you know what time it is.

[Mark Gagnon]

This is an interesting question. We got. We got an answer right here. This one says potentially as a bank robbery, but as like a young revolutionary. But it's never. It's never like, confirmed that he, like, killed political opponents directly during his time.

[Derek Poston]

Because if. If I was a dictator, I wouldn't kill political opponents directly. I would try to get as many different people to kill all the people so they feel a part of it. And the blood's also on their hands. It's a level of control also.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I got something on you.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, I got something.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I got some on everybody.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, you want to act like you're this moral? Well, you killed this person.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I've seen them as gulag.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Damn, bro.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, dude. These. The gulag system was insane. It's like literally enslaved millions of people. They were doing gold mining in negative 40 degree temperatures. 16 hour work days. And one of the most notorious projects was the construction of the White Sea Baltic Canal between 31 and 33. They use these primitive tools like pickaxes and their bare hands to dig out a canal. That was their job. Every day, wake up, dig in the dirt, go home.

[Derek Poston]

I just want to point out Val spelled gulag wrong and we should make fun of her for that. I still don't know how to spell it. G U L A G, Dude.

[Mark Gagnon]

And then sometimes people would get out of the gulags. They would be. They would. They would make it out. And the release survivors often found their families disowning them in order to avoid persecution. So even if you made it out, you got to see your family, Your family be like, we can't fuck with you because you were a prisoner. So we're out. The craziest thing is this canal, despite the massive human cost, was ineffective because it was too shallow and ships couldn't even pass through it. So they built this whole canal. Millions of people die, and they can't even use it. It's insane.

[Derek Poston]

That's so crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. So he was. He was a pretty evil dude. I think that's reasonable to say, right?

[Derek Poston]

I think that's. Yeah, I think that. I don't think anyone's going to challenge us on that.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, even his. Oh, this is. This is crazy. His own son was even punished. So he had the son Yakov. Okay. He's captured by German forces in 1941. During World War II, Hitler offered a prisoner exchange for Yakov. And Stalin reportedly refused, stating, I do not trade field marshals for lieutenants.

[Derek Poston]

Damn Crazy, Crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

His own son is captured and he goes, no, we're not going to do it. And Yakov Stalin's son dies in a concentration camp and Stalin didn't even bail him out.

[Derek Poston]

Damn.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Are you fucking kidding me?

[Derek Poston]

Damn.

[Mark Gagnon]

Crazy. Like Trump would get Baron out.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, Trump would get Baron out for sure.

[Mark Gagnon]

I would get Baron. I mean like I'd be like, dude, look at this guy.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Let Baron out.

[Mark Gagnon]

Barry could get himself out. I think he would just climb over whatever, whatever.

[Derek Poston]

Eight foot fence, spider crawl.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Damn. But I don't trade lieutenants for field.

[Mark Gagnon]

Field marshals for his son.

[Derek Poston]

His son.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Oh, that's man.

[Mark Gagnon]

So by the time he died, estimated 20 million Soviet citizens had been killed through execution, forced labor or famine. And when he eventually died in 53, Soviet citizens openly wept in public, mostly from genuine relief, but they were afraid to show it. That was in 53. Think about how close that was.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, 53. 53.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That people are alive from then.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah. My dad, my dad was born a year later.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, that's. And your dad's like like a young dude. Like, you know, I mean, like we could go biking with your dad. Yeah, that's crazy. And he was alive at the time that millions of people were getting just killed.

[Derek Poston]

Murdered.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, dude. So where do we put this guy in terms of evilness?

[Hassan Ahmad]

Above. Above, homeboy.

[Derek Poston]

Above Vlad.

[Hassan Ahmad]

So if there's ultimate base, there's got to be ultra, ultra Doltra. Ultra base, dude.

[Derek Poston]

Well, you know, okay, because. Because usually when I see Tearless. Because it's not based. It's like a tier, B tier, C tier.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, that's how we're going to do it.

[Derek Poston]

And the top is S tier.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Derek Poston]

I think if we. There should be an SS tier and. Well.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I can't put him with Vlad, bro.

[Derek Poston]

And Vlad is S tier. And then this would be like an.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Ss, which goes back to my original point. Vlad is mega based and Stalin is ultimate.

[Derek Poston]

I. I get what you're saying, cuz.

[Hassan Ahmad]

You got it. You had to leave some wiggle room for that, right? That was crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I put him at the most evil. More evil than Vlad for sure. Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

It's just so many more people.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Well, I guess what hurts him in terms of overall rate is that he wasn't the most famous evil dictator during that time.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

I don't know who his publicist was, but like, I feel like he didn't get nearly.

[Derek Poston]

He didn't.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Maybe it was on purpose though. Was this a Dick Cheney situation where it's like oh, let Hitler be all on the thing. And I'm gonna kind of.

[Derek Poston]

I think the big difference is Stalin killed his own people, whereas Hitler went in to places that he weren't his and then killed people there.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's an interesting point.

[Derek Poston]

I think that's a little bit of a difference. It's like, because the world, the world outside of Russia kind of hates Russia. Even its allies don't like Russia. They killed Russians. That's kind of the vibe that like the west gives him. He killed Russians.

[Mark Gagnon]

Well, that's tricky though, because he did. He killed Ukrainians that were Russians at the time also.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. And so at that point, Ukrainians are. If you ask the average. If you ask Derek in 1940, are Ukrainians Russians? He'd be like, what are Ukrainians?

[Mark Gagnon]

If you asked Eric in 2024 today.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

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[Derek Poston]

Ok. Back to back.

[Hassan Ahmad]

This is the back to back.

[Derek Poston]

This is what the SST is made.

[Mark Gagnon]

For, which is crazy that these guys were doing shit at the same time, you know what I mean? Like Stalin and Hitler, some of the most evil guys ever were. They had a pact at one point during World War II. They like made an agreement like, yo, we're going to be chill with each other.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, we'll be friends.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Have they ever met? Are they in pictures of them together?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah, I feel like they must have at some point, at least behind closed doors. And I feel like at this point a lot of us know more or less why Hitler was evil. Right. Concentration camps and you know, invading the.

[Derek Poston]

Never met or even spoke.

[Mark Gagnon]

They loathe each other on political grounds. But then they, they work together in some capacity I guess to, to form a pact. During World War II. That pact was eventually broken obviously and the Russians came in and you know, basically killed him. Hitler killed himself. But like the Russians were, they were, they were encroaching, which, that's another thing I never realized. I was always like, oh yeah, the Americans, those are the guys that forced Hitler to kill himself. It was the Russians that had invaded from the east.

[Derek Poston]

Well, they were, they're both coming. Yeah, right, they're both coming. And like there was a race to get there because they didn't want like, they didn't want all, like each side didn't want all of Berlin to be on the other person's side.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Because even though we're allies with them, we're also like, well, we're jockeying for this post war who's going to be the best. So we have to get to Berlin before the other guys. And they like got there at the same time, basically.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah, But I'm pretty sure it was like the Red army that was on top of the bunker that eventually Hiller killed himself.

[Derek Poston]

That's crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

Very, very gay. Hitler was doing all this talk and all this and then at the very end took the easy way out.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Gay, real evil person.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I'm not giving it to you.

[Derek Poston]

No, come up. I leave out what I perceive to be on top.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah. And apparently Hitler's skull is still in possession of the Soviets.

[Derek Poston]

Really?

[Mark Gagnon]

That, that this is disputed. Apparently they did do some type of like postmortem analysis of the skull and they concluded that it was the skull of like a 32 year old woman. And then they never did investigation on it again.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, and then the Soviets are like, no, look. And they painted like a little mustache. Yeah, look, look again, this is clearly, this is clearly Hitler.

[Mark Gagnon]

They're like That's. That's oil. You're like, no, no, that's his. That's where his mustache grew, you idiot. But some people are like, yo, do the. So get hitty out of there and free him. That's. This is the conspiracy. But that's neither here nor there.

[Derek Poston]

Okay, I can see why. What would they gain from Hitler?

[Mark Gagnon]

Who knows? Maybe some military secrets, maybe some. Some science, some tech.

[Derek Poston]

But we were openly taking their scientists and.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Well, military people.

[Mark Gagnon]

Anyway, we gave all them passes, you know, in Operation Paperclip. NASA.

[Derek Poston]

My dad. That's where he works. So. Thank you. Thank you, Nazis. Thank you Nazis for my dad's job.

[Hassan Ahmad]

It was called Operation Paperclip. Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

That was like, the. The American sort of, like, pardons that they were giving two Nazi scientists. Varna von Braun being, like, the most infamous.

[Derek Poston]

Yes. And then he came over here and started NASA.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

So they met in Berlin, and they're, like, next to the moon. Was that, like, literally how that happened? No, no. Like, they. So, like, they. Because you know how Germany was split? There was a. The Berlin Wall. Like, they was. They were just trying to take as much territory as possible. They weren't like, now that we're there, get to the moon. But they were like, basically, the moon came from, like, oh, they took scientists, we took scientists. We're better. So now we have this race.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

To the moon. And then now it's like, did we even go there?

[Mark Gagnon]

But let's go through some of the unknown facts about Hitler that some. Not everyone. Not everyone knows. Apparently, he had extreme gastrointestinal issues, and as a result, led to perpetual flatulence. Apparently, he was ripping ass all the time. Hitler was like, no. Like, according to, like, close men around him. They were like, yeah, he was constantly just, like, just ripping ass. Like, he had, like, terrible stomach pain. Like, his GI track was just, like, a. Like, a mess, which I didn't know. He's just gassing everyone. That's, like, apparently a part of the lore. Like, no one was safe from. From the Hitler gas. That's this one. My buddy Zach put this in. I don't even know if this is true. Apparently, he would inject himself with bull semen to increase his libido, and he also thought it had, like, some healing effects.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Ooh, T. Use testosterone.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, exactly.

[Derek Poston]

That kind of makes sense. I get how we get there.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, right. You kind of hear it.

[Derek Poston]

You're like, you're already on so much meth.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

It seems like a good idea.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, yeah, yeah. He was. He Was absolutely drugged out. All the Nazis. Not all of them, but a lot of them were just like pumping just drugs non stop.

[Derek Poston]

Right.

[Mark Gagnon]

There's a book called Blitz that like talks about like the drugs that they were using in the Third Reich. They basically like all these tank operators were using meth when they were going in. They called it Panzer Chocolat, literally tank chocolate. And they were like, yeah, pop some tank chocolate, get feeling good. These like 18 year old kids in tanks just like driving over, mowing people down in tanks. It's insane. Drugs are like a big part of apparently the Third Reich. I didn't even know this.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, that makes sense to buy in all the way. Yeah, that makes sense.

[Mark Gagnon]

A couple other little, little silly facts. He was a big fan of comedies and he's not all that bad. He's a fan of the British comedic actor.

[Derek Poston]

A fan of comedies and kill Jewish people. That seems like very crazy, right? Yeah, that seems very, like counterproductive.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Why is everything less funny now?

[Mark Gagnon]

Halfway through, he must have been like, ah, damn it, I really goofed it on this one. And then apparently, yeah, he liked Charlie Chaplin. And then when Chaplin made fun of Adolf in the film the Great Dictator, Adolf allegedly wasn't that mad and he was kind of flattered.

[Derek Poston]

I was like, oh, it's like South Park. It's like, oh, he made fun of me.

[Mark Gagnon]

I made it. Yeah. There were 43 assassination attempts on his life. He survived all of them.

[Derek Poston]

That's pretty badass. And then kind of 43.

[Mark Gagnon]

Well, dude, you know who had the most? Fidel Castro. We can get to him in a second. But Fidel's like assassination record is like insane. Everyone was trying to assassinate. It's crazy. But yeah, some people believe that he had one testicle.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, I've heard that.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, that's like, like a lot of historians agree that he had this thing called a cryptocorridism and that basically he like lost a testicle as like a boy.

[Derek Poston]

Damn.

[Mark Gagnon]

So he was just, just one nutting, just walking around.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. Kind of would explain the chip on.

[Mark Gagnon]

The shoulder, the bullseye and the bull fever.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

I was thinking about bull semen. Do you think that is considered vegan?

[Derek Poston]

No, it came from an animal.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, it can't come from an animal.

[Mark Gagnon]

But vegans can't consume animal products that come from animal suffering.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Bull semen is not from suffering. That's his point.

[Mark Gagnon]

It's actually the best part of a bull's life. It's like, it's like the sickest part.

[Derek Poston]

Possibly but most animals don't come. Like, don' so if you're making a bull come. I guess if you like, if it was fucking a cow and then you sort of got it on the pullout. That is vegan. But if you're making. If you're making them, it's probably like a little bit uncomfortable. It's like, this is not what I'm about.

[Mark Gagnon]

Do you. Should we. Have you ever. Have you ever seen. Can you get a video of how they. How they extract horse semen? Have you ever seen this?

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, it's fucking crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

They have a flashlight.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, I see. It's the thing.

[Mark Gagnon]

You did, the dune sound. It is like, it's literally the fleshlight. They just pop it in there and then it's so much. It's an insane amount.

[Derek Poston]

Oh, this starts with this lady at.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Home just telling you about what she's gonna do.

[Mark Gagnon]

It's a get ready with me. So today I'm gonna go extract semen from a bowl.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Look at that. Oh, oh, she's getting in there.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, you're telling me he's not enjoying that.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah. Come on, Hasan.

[Derek Poston]

Okay, I'll give you that.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He spent my boy trying to grip. Look at him.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, but here's the thing. He's not getting the grip he wants. He keeps on trying to. He's like, why is this not working?

[Mark Gagnon]

Is that what I look like? That's crazy.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Like, yo, it's a full bag.

[Mark Gagnon]

Look at bro. And that cup right there is probably worth like $10 million.

[Hassan Ahmad]

No.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. If it's like a purebred, like. Yeah, like a Kentucky Derby winning racehorse. Yeah, that's some expensive come.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, so Hitler was getting some of that. That was apparently part of the whole thing. Apparently there's a theory that in an attempt to prevent the spread of syphilis in his soldiers, he came up with what was considered the first blow up $. And that he was like, hey, just start banging these blow up dolls and not, you know, each other and the other women and stuff. Stop the syphilis spread. And there's another weird thing that despite his genocidal anti Semitism news, he didn't like Jews. He protected his Jewish family, Dr. Eduard Bloch, who treated his mother, declaring him, quote, a noble Jew. He even said, if all Jews were like him, there would be no Jewish question.

[Derek Poston]

That's so. That's so very much like, that's so racism. Just to be like, no, the one I know is good, but the rest are bad. It's like, you can't. You can't make it past the fact that, like. Oh, maybe they're just people. You just can't make it, though. No, the one around me is cool. Everyone else sucks.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, what? Yeah, I would hope that this guy, like, put in a word. He was like, hey, maybe.

[Derek Poston]

No, that guy was like, dude, don't rock the boat. Don't rock the boat.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Don't rock the boat.

[Derek Poston]

Don't rock the boat. That dude was like, oh, I. We have to survive this.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. So obviously a pretty evil dude, right?

[Derek Poston]

That's top tier. Yeah, that's top tier. I mean, that's the most for sure.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Going blow for blow, back to back. Stalin is better.

[Derek Poston]

Stalin's more dictatory.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Stalin is, bro. Everything you were saying about Stalin, because this was all bad and scary, but it was some kind of, like, aspects. I was like, oh, it's kind of. He kind of. Stalin made it. He wasn't. No, Stalin made it. He died on his own. He was such a dictator. He died because of it.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, he died on his own.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That's what I'm saying.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. He didn't get killed by nobody else.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, he killed himself, basically on accent. Dictator.

[Hassan Ahmad]

So hard. He dictated himself.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Whereas Hitler took the way out.

[Hassan Ahmad]

And you just hear some of the. It's like, no, I think Stalin was more him.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. So some of some of Hitler's Most evil achievements. 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war died in German custody, making them the second largest group of victims after the Jews, Roma and Cinti people. Hundreds of thousands of them died. Disabled individuals. Nazis had this thing called T4 euthanasia programs that murdered 250,000 people with disabilities. And then gay people. Thousands of gay men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. And, yeah, he built these death camps. He employed mobile killing units to, you know, basically follow armies into conquered territories. And, yeah, it was all around pretty. Pretty bad guy. The concentration camps were pretty, like, specifically evil. The gulags at least had this, like, cover of, like, oh, yeah, we're going to.

[Derek Poston]

Right.

[Mark Gagnon]

Do work. Whereas the concentration camps were just like, yeah, we're gonna literally. These are death camps. People just go here and die, and we die. And that was the whole thing. So that. That. That is a little more evil. I think, on top of that, starting the. The biggest war.

[Derek Poston]

Right, but in terms of, like, he did start this.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Derek Poston]

In terms of, like, if we're gonna regular get Stalin, I think what makes him a little less. What makes Stall a little more crazy is that Stalin killed that mil. That millions of people during peacetime.

[Mark Gagnon]

What do you mean peacetime?

[Derek Poston]

Like, in terms of, like. Like, a lot of that stuff, like the halal de. More and all that stuff was either in between the world wars or after the world war. Yeah. I mean, Hitler did most of his killing during the war, which kind of gives you a cover of like, well, this is war and the war is crazy, and this is what we do during war. Stal was like, we're not at war and I'm fucking killing everybody.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Wow, that is a good point.

[Derek Poston]

It's in terms of, like, if we're trying to rank on who is more evil, there is a sort of, well, all's fair in love and war type thing. You can apply to Hitler, where you, like, Stalin was like, damn, bro, you were just doing this.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, it was like civil war, basically.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. That's an interesting point. Which apparently the Germans. This is how fucking crazy they are. Vladimir Lenin, the guy that was basically the starter of the Bolsheviks, that was like, kicking off all that stuff, the thing that Stalin eventually took over. He was not even in Russia when all that stuff was kicking off. He was basically like a. Like a political exile. So he left Russia, and I think he was in, like, Scandinavia.

[Derek Poston]

Wasn't he in Austria? Was it? Weren't him and Hitler in the same place?

[Mark Gagnon]

I don't know. They might have been, but the Germans escorted him and gave him free cover to go into Russia to then cause civil war in Russia.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

So the Germans were like, hey, this whole Russia thing is really causing us a lot of issues on that Eastern front. So let's put one of their political dissidents back in power in Russia and then cause a massive civil war that then they'll just take care of themselves.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

And they'll be out of World War I. Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Crazy. The Germans were very, very savvy, evil people.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Also the. The whole Aryan thing is always very funny to me.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. Because he doesn't fit the description of.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

What an Aryan looks like.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, the. The classic, like, blonde hair, blue eyes. Like, he believes that. He's like, oh, I'm of Aryan blood. You know what I mean?

[Derek Poston]

Right.

[Mark Gagnon]

But he's like, I'm not full. I'm not full. Aaron. The Aryan thing is just so silly because they're like, all right, blonde hair, blue eyes. That's Aryan. And then the Japanese were like, can we be Aaron? And they were like, yeah, you're basically Aryan.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, they group them in for. No. Like, they're like, oh, they're like. They're Aryan adjacent. Like they're more Aryan than other people. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try. @mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months.

[Derek Poston]

Only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra.

[Mark Gagnon]

See full [e-mail] this episode is brought to you by Lifelock. It's tax season and we're all a.

[Derek Poston]

Bit tired of numbers, but here's one you need to $16.5 billion.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's how much the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud last year. Now here's a good number. 100 million.

[Derek Poston]

That's how many data points Lifelock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it.

[Mark Gagnon]

Guaranteed. Save up to 40% your first [e-mail] podcast terms apply. And then the Russians were like, hey, we're all super tall, blonde hair, blue eyes. And then Hitler was like, you're not Aaron. Made no sense. It was insane. But yeah, so that's Hitler. So what are we putting? We put him right below. Right below stall.

[Derek Poston]

I think we put him below Stalin.

[Hassan Ahmad]

With Vlad.

[Derek Poston]

Above Vlad. Like I. I think, like.

[Hassan Ahmad]

So now we're moving Vlad down to based.

[Derek Poston]

No, you can have. You can be still. No, I think Hitler and Stalin are both ultimate based.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Okay.

[Derek Poston]

And Vlad is mega based. But this is crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

Don't get caught up with the bass thing. I'm going to change this when we actually s. Is the most evil. And then we'll go down the list.

[Derek Poston]

Yes.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, but use the word base.

[Derek Poston]

I'm looking at base, dog. I don't know what to tell you. But. But like, in that ranking, I would put. In that war. In that, like, ultimate base ranking, I would put Staller in front of Hitler.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Okay, cool.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, I think that's reasonable. I think that's reasonable. And now, Mao Zedong, he killed the most.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I believe I've heard this. I've heard of this name. So who is this guy? Mal Zadon.

[Derek Poston]

Where do you think he's from?

[Hassan Ahmad]

I'm a guess. Asia, right?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Okay, that's. That's broad. Can you go a little more specific?

[Hassan Ahmad]

China.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, that's great. Hell yeah, dude.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I was like, what? Sounds like some Panda Express.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Something delicious from Panda Express.

[Mark Gagnon]

He was the founding father of the People's Republic of China and the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, presided over the one of the most tumultuous and deadly periods in modern history. His policies, often driven by revolutionary appeal, resulted in catastrophic human suffering.

[Derek Poston]

Hey, real quick, Val right now is trying to spell Mao Zedong. So I think it's very important that we all stop and watch her try to do this.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Who is this rapper, bro. Now I'm locked in. Who is this Gu.

[Derek Poston]

Sorry, go on, go ahead. I had to stop you because I know we would all like that.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Oh, it's Mao.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, that guy.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Damn, bro, this look evil. Some George Costanza looking Asian, bro. Yeah, don't play with this, man.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Never shaved his head. Like, at a certain point you got to be like, all right, buddy.

[Derek Poston]

Well, let's not knock him for that. There's a lot of things to be said about shaving your head.

[Mark Gagnon]

The look, I didn't realize how I.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Know he said it, and I'm like.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, my God, that's crazy.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, I don't think the hair is what we just need to talk about.

[Mark Gagnon]

That is not the worst thing you did.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, I would say it's the best thing he did.

[Mark Gagnon]

1958. He launches the Great Leap Forward, an ambitious campaign to industrialize China and collectivize agriculture. Farmers were forced to into communes in order to abandon traditional farming methods in favor of producing steel and backyard furnaces. The result was economic disaster, unusable steel production, combined with agricultural collapse. During the time, Mao's regime embraced pseudoscientific agricultural theories, which led to planning crops too densely and other unproductive practices. Local officials also lied about how much grain was harvested to meet high targets. As a result, too much grain was taken to export and millions of people at home starved. Some people place the death toll from the famine between 30 to 45 million people from 1958 to 1962.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, I've heard, like, something around. I think that in the middle, in the second row is a graph of how many people killed. But I think I've heard something around, like, 50 million total.

[Mark Gagnon]

For Mao, it's insane. Villagers resorted to eating tree bark, leather, and in some cases, other humans. And when informed about the famine, Mao reportedly dismissed concerns with the statement, like, it is better to let half the people die so that the other half can eat their fill. Pretty wild.

[Derek Poston]

That's pretty hard. That's a pretty hard quote.

[Mark Gagnon]

So he does this whole thing, 50 million people die, and he Goes, alright, let's just keep it going. And then they start the Cultural Revolution. And this happens. In 1966, to reassert his authority and purge political rivals, he mobilized millions of young, quote, Red Guards to attack old ideas, old culture, old habits, old customs, resulting in widespread chaos. This creates violence where the Red Guards were mobilized to attack rightists and reactionaries, leading to public beatings, torture and executions. Apparently they, they like, executed 1.5 to 2 million people. He oversaw the destruction of the, the 4 Olds. This campaign that basically took. Got rid of all the old traditional Chinese customs and artifacts and got rid of a bunch of intellectuals, people that were like teachers, scholars. They were killed during public events called struggle sessions, and many were beaten or driven to suicide. And then the Korean War. He sent over 2 million Chinese soldiers into Korea to fight against the US and South Korea. The Chinese troops suffered immense casualties. 180,000 were killed in the battle. Among those was Mao's own son during an airstrike.

[Derek Poston]

Damn, they just send their sons to die. It's crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, crazy. He also had some weird personal habits. He wasn't big on brushing his teeth. Didn't believe in it. You're just like, no, not gonna do that. He believed that he could just swish tea around and it was just as good. He also didn't really believe in baths. He like, didn't bathe, really. He also refused to treat STDs because he thought that STDs boosted virility and that from his personal doctor who put this, all this stuff in a book. He like released all of Mao's like, personal hygiene stuff that like, he was like, std ridden, not brushing his teeth. None of that.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Just a bro. Just a frat guy.

[Mark Gagnon]

Just a frat bro a little bit, right? You kind of hear that? I'm like, that's kind of what I'm doing. I'm not that far off. Yeah, he created this, this system, the, the late, the, the Lao gay system, which basically translates to reform through labor. And millions of Chinese citizens, basically anyone who raised an eyebrow at the Communist Party found themselves in these camps where the daily schedule was basically just labor starvation, torture. And 10 to 20 million people went through the system. And many, if not most, died during this, like, forced labor system that he, he had implemented. So that's like strike three for communism.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It just can't be done.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, like, so pretty evil guy, I think you could say, based off of that, where, where are we going to put him?

[Hassan Ahmad]

You think like, man, you know what's? Crazy. You know, I know he killed like 50 million people and starved his own country, but I'm like, damn, bro. He was giving hoes STDs.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yo. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He addicted. He's still.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh. Apparently he was like. Even as his health was deteriorating, he was like an absolute dog. Like, he. He decided the only way to get his youthful spirit and rigor back was to have sex with many women. He had a special bed created for doing, like, rampant, dirty sex. And it was raised on one side four inches higher than the other. No one really knows why it was raised on one side, but they put the extra 4 inches on one side that he. So he could, like, have these sex parties in his bed.

[Derek Poston]

Crazy. And if he's doing it for youth, he's definitely like kids and.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, gotta be for sure. He had all these mistresses. One that he. He loved was Zhang Yufang. When they met, he was in his late 60s and she was 16 years old.

[Derek Poston]

Okay.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

So.

[Mark Gagnon]

And Mao made her his confidential secretary in 1973. And that means that every time Mao's wife wanted to talk to her husband, she had to talk to Zhang.

[Derek Poston]

You fang his mistress first. What a fucking. That's gangster crazy. If my wife wants to talk to me, she can talk to my. She can talk to my mistress.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Also, the. The shit. The shit Zhang would do in that bedroom, dude, the shit Zhang was doing for him to be like, yo, give her a job.

[Mark Gagnon]

Give her a job.

[Hassan Ahmad]

She was doing some stuff. Boy. Yeah, he's getting whatever he wants. Wild sex stuff. Yeah, Any weird fantasy he wants. She. Bro, she was doing some.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yep. Yeah, no, she was. She was an all time. She was an all time, all time piece. Monica Lewinsky times a million.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Madonna times a million.

[Mark Gagnon]

Because Lewinsky didn't even get like a. Like a position.

[Derek Poston]

No, she got rid. Killed for it.

[Mark Gagnon]

Crazy.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Where's Marilyn Monroe Gets, like, celebrated for this.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. And. And arguably Lewinsky did more good.

[Mark Gagnon]

Wait, why?

[Derek Poston]

For every second she was on her knees, there was a kid on an island who was safe.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, that's a great point.

[Derek Poston]

You know what I mean? Every second she was serving the President, it was a 14 year old, like, thank you.

[Mark Gagnon]

She was taking a bullet, dude.

[Derek Poston]

She was taking a bullet and got rid of it.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's crazy. If she positioned it that way, people be like, oh, you're a hero.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, she's a hero.

[Mark Gagnon]

You didn't stop sex driver, but you slowed it down, you know? I mean, you did.

[Derek Poston]

You did more than me.

[Mark Gagnon]

You jammed it up.

[Derek Poston]

I've never sucked Clinton's dick.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Which also. You hear about how, like, charming Clinton was. It's like, everyone would. I can't believe there's only one woman that, like.

[Derek Poston]

It was definitely way more.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah. She just got caught. Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's crazy.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

She kept the dress, which was kind of stupid.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That's how much you love him.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. Well, that's cool. I guess if the president comes on your dress, you'd be like, well, I gotta. What, am I gonna wash this?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. I could sell this for millions of dollars.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

The champion racehorse. Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

She said, did she keep it?

[Derek Poston]

I bet you. I bet you. They took it in as evidence, Right. They should. He went to trial for this, right.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

So it was just in a.

[Derek Poston]

It's just evidence.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Evidence thing.

[Mark Gagnon]

They made her try it on in the courtroom. They said, if the dress fits. That was, like, a big part of the whole thing.

[Derek Poston]

If the dress fits. You must spit.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. But, yeah, that's basically. That's basically Mao. He wanted agricultural workers to contribute to this industry and, like, basically took over all. Everything and made it all nationalized. And as a result, millions of people died. Steel was, like, the big thing that he was, like, going for. He's like, yeah, we're making Chinese steel the best. And then it wasn't even that good. A lot of the steel, like, got rusted, didn't even work properly.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. Because, well, the. The farms and stuff he tried to retrofit for steel, like, weren't. They couldn't make steel in them. Like, he had no concept of, like, you need stuff.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

You're just like, well, just make steel. And he would just say, make it happen. Yeah, yeah. And do it like this. And then be like, all right, I guess we have to do it like that. And people just died.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Damn.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

God, these suck.

[Mark Gagnon]

They're crazy, right?

[Hassan Ahmad]

Suck.

[Mark Gagnon]

This is in the. This is in the 60s. Like, think about, like, Led Zeppelin was out. The Beatles were making music.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah. Parents were alive.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. Crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

That is crazy. How recent. This was the 60s. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. So where do we.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Wizard of Oz is an old movie at that point.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Yeah. He was like, oh, this is black and white. I'm not watching this.

[Derek Poston]

That's so. For the idea that Mao didn't make it to the colored parts of Wizard.

[Mark Gagnon]

He's very patient. He had all these people to kill and. Yeah. He basically died in 76 after a series of heart attacks.

[Derek Poston]

He made it.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

He Made it. The fact that he made it is crazy.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Nobody touched him.

[Derek Poston]

Nobody touched him.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. So where do we, where do we put him? I think he killed the most.

[Derek Poston]

Technically did kill the most. And that's got to count for something. By double. By double. Stall.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I'm putting him with Vlad.

[Derek Poston]

You're putting him with Vlad? So you don't think he's above Stalin and Hitler. And why is that?

[Hassan Ahmad]

Just because something's more doesn't mean it's better. You know what I'm saying? Something's more doesn't get better. The art in which Hitler and Stalin did what they did for the people.

[Mark Gagnon]

That don't know, that's impressive. We had probably a two hour argument yesterday. Admits he's about whether or not more is better. More is better. And now I feel like we've come full circle.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah. Because in this situation, I'm like, damn, that's what they was talking about last night.

[Mark Gagnon]

That would all make sense.

[Hassan Ahmad]

No, it all makes sense. No, because the artistry in which Stalin and Hitler did it. I gotta get some credit.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I think we just talked about how Mao did it and I kind of forgot already.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, I think I get you. What you mean. I think Hitler and Stalin sort of get the benefit of having it during World War II, which is like this crazy sort of thing. Matt, you know, sometimes it's all about timing, and Matt doesn't have the best timing.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

You know, 50s China, like we don't even. America, like we don't even start really diplomatic relationships with them until probably Mao's kind of towards the end of this anyways.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

So. And we're coming at it from a US point of view. So I, I like that. So right now our rankings are Stalin up top, Hitler 2, Mao 3, Vlad 4. Yes.

[Hassan Ahmad]

If we're going on that ranking.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If. If we're gonna just rank him in order like that. That's how I'd put them. Just because you do have to give 50 million people. You do have to give that.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I'm, I'm. I ain't gonna lie to you. I'm putting Vlad over him.

[Derek Poston]

Really?

[Hassan Ahmad]

I, I'm impressed, bro. With the vampire stuff.

[Derek Poston]

That's so fun. That's my own point. Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

The Dipped in the blood with the vampire and then that's where vampires come from. I'm gonna put that over Mao.

[Derek Poston]

I just, I just think 50 million is too hard to ignore. The fact that nothing's that close is crazy. Nothing's that close. He's like, that's like double. That's like LeBron or like Wayne Gretzky. You're, like, so far ahead of the next person. Michael Phelps. Shit. That's like. That has to count for something.

[Mark Gagnon]

Point.

[Hassan Ahmad]

It does, but I'm not putting them over.

[Derek Poston]

I want to add, too, that if you want to talk about success, China still has these labor camps. They haven't gone away. Whereas in Germany and. Well, I don't know about Russia, but, you know, Hitler's labor camps are not around. Yeah, that's true. It's. There is a sort of la. Like, I will say this. The government that Mao created, like, that's still sort of.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That's the emperor, right?

[Derek Poston]

No.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Don't they have emperors in China?

[Mark Gagnon]

No, no. GGPing is like, technically the chairman or whatever. The chairman, yeah. But I don't know if they're doing elections and like that.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, they're not. It's like, still.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I think Santa shit.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, I think it's still more. Yeah, they don't do emperors. I think that's still more like Mao's China is still more China than Stalin's Russia's Russia and, well, Stalin. Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore, and Hitler's Germany is not Germany now.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, that's a good point.

[Derek Poston]

Like, Mao still. Mao's shit is still kind of going. The other two aren't going at all.

[Mark Gagnon]

I wonder if he's respected there. If you ask, like, a random Chinese citizen, like, yeah, what do you think of Chairman Mao? If they'd be like, oh, yeah, he's. He's cool. You know, I mean, like, I wonder if they still have, like, reverence.

[Derek Poston]

Well, I will say this. I went. My friend went to China in high school and she brought me back a Chairman Mao thing. So they sell. They sell it as merch.

[Hassan Ahmad]

All right, he's up. He got merch. He moving merch. I'm gonna move him.

[Derek Poston]

Ye. I just think he's. I could.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I'll give him three.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. I say he's above Vlad now.

[Mark Gagnon]

What about Pol Pot?

[Hassan Ahmad]

Now, I've heard This name too.

[Mark Gagnon]

1975 to 1979. Cambodia.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Not China?

[Mark Gagnon]

No. Near. Nearby? Not far. Stone's throw. I might actually be. That might be helpful. Can we get a map of where Cambodia is? But Basically, he killed 2 million Cambodians through starvation, forced labor and executions. For the record, it's not the most. That is 25% of the population.

[Derek Poston]

One out of four per capita is crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

That is the. Technically speaking, in terms of percentage, the deadliest dictator ever.

[Hassan Ahmad]

One out of four Is crazy.

[Derek Poston]

Crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's a lot.

[Hassan Ahmad]

One of us in the room. In this room. One of us.

[Derek Poston]

Well, the. The Tess would be spell Paul Pot, and then it would be over.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah. So you got China up there in the north.

[Derek Poston]

So small.

[Hassan Ahmad]

It is very small. He was wiping out everybody in his own place.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yep.

[Derek Poston]

That's pretty. Like, think about it. To be from a small area and be well known is pretty impressive. He's like. It's like Steph Curry at Davidson Nuts.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, like, who really? Cambodia was not popping before him.

[Derek Poston]

That's the only thing I know about Cambodia is Pol Pot.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's crazy. Yeah, that is a good point.

[Derek Poston]

What else. What the else do you know about Cambodia? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

So this guy was a former teacher who studied radio electronics in Paris.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Pol Pot.

[Mark Gagnon]

He was born.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, he. He was. He was in Paris a lot.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's where he learned Soloth Sar was his original name.

[Derek Poston]

He was rich. I think Paul Pot was. Came from a rich family.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, really?

[Derek Poston]

If you're studying in Paris and you're from Cambodia.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, I guess you got. You got something on.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, you got something going.

[Mark Gagnon]

And he returns back to Cambodia to create year zero. Time has started.

[Derek Poston]

That's. Dude, this guy's crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

When he shows up, he goes, this is when time starts. That is a level of like, ego narcissism. You know, I mean, you might think, you know, narcissist. And then this guy goes, hey, time not real. He just shows up and goes, it's zero.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Now it's starting now.

[Mark Gagnon]

It's socialist utopia so pure that it requires erasing cities, money, religion, family ties, and roughly 2 million human lives. April 17, 1975. The Khmer Rouge forces capture Cambodia's capital. Within hours, they begin the most radical forced migration of modern history. Pol Pot ordered the immediate evacuation of pomp of foam pen. I think that's how you pronounce that, foam pen.

[Derek Poston]

I don't know.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's. That's the capital of Cambodia. A City approximately 2 million people. Hospital patients still attached to IVs were forced to march. Women who just gave birth were carrying their babies through the streets. Elderly, disabled, people that weren't. Couldn't walk were left to die. And the entire population was told to evacuate. And it would just last three days due to a imminent American bombing. In reality, he considered urban dwellers contaminated by foreign influence and unfit for his agrarian utopia. Most evacuees would never return home. And these evacuations went. Went through basically every Cambodian city and town within days. So while he's doing these Marches. Temperatures are above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. No food or water. Those who had collapsed from exhaustion were shot. And children that were separate from parents were then abandoned. And thousands died along the way. Along the way, leaving roads filled with bodies. His utopia was basically dismantling everything. So that includes money. The national banks were blown up, so currency is worthless. Private property doesn't exist. Everything's confiscated. Religion isn't real. All the monks and temples were then converted to prisons. The monks were then killed. The families weren't safe. Like if there were children that were separated, they became like servants of the state or they were executed. And names were no longer a thing. People were just addressed as like comrades. And yeah, in 1975, history reset. So the entire population was forced.

[Hassan Ahmad]

75.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

1975. 1975.

[Hassan Ahmad]

The NBA is happening.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh yeah. Yeah. Black people are playing like, yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Kareem won his first championship already.

[Mark Gagnon]

And people are now marching through the streets and time has restarted.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, he, I didn't he kill everyone with glasses?

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, I don't know. Can we look that up?

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Glasses, yeah. Because he didn't like the intelligence.

[Hassan Ahmad]

This one is crazy.

[Derek Poston]

It's also the biggest projection of all time. This French educated Cambodian being like, there's foreign influence here.

[Mark Gagnon]

I don't know where I can feel.

[Derek Poston]

This for everywhere I go there's some four French influence.

[Mark Gagnon]

Extremely close to me. He had a French accent the whole time. Yeah, I feel like there's a European in the midst. But yeah. He basically had the entire population forced in. These collectors where they worked 12 to 16 hours a day, minimal food and no agricultural training. He expected a triple yield rice harvest to demonstrate the revolutionary success. And when the farms inevitably failed, people reported fictitious bumper crops. And again, just like what happened with Mao Zedong, people then starved to death.

[Derek Poston]

Damn crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

It turned into this vast prison farm system where people that spoke too loudly, showed emotion or failed to meet impossible work quotas meant death. Death. Picking wild berries or catching fish without permission was considered private enterprise and was punishable by execution. And this is exactly to Hasan's point. The policy was crazy because he would kill people wearing glasses. There was a war on knowledge. Despite his own education in France, he developed history's most extreme anti intellectual campaign. The Khmer Rouge slogan said, to keep you is no gain, to kill you is no loss.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Damn.

[Mark Gagnon]

The definition of intellectual expanded to absurd extremes. Wearing glasses marked you for execution because they indicated literacy. Speaking foreign languages was evidence of capitalist contamination. Soft hands meant that you weren't a Proper peasant and former teachers, doctors, lawyers and students were systematically executed. Even knowing. Knowing how to read in any capacity would be a cause for death. Which I feel like it'd be pretty easy to not know how to read. Read.

[Derek Poston]

No, it's. Once you know how to read, it's hard to fake not knowing how to read.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Because you can't. Like, you try to not read.

[Mark Gagnon]

All right, done.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Sammy's good. He might not be able to read, but.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right.

[Derek Poston]

It's like you have to be on your P's and Q's all the time. About.

[Mark Gagnon]

What are those?

[Hassan Ahmad]

Now? I get what you're saying. You have to be locked in all times.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, Locked in.

[Hassan Ahmad]

You can do it like.

[Derek Poston]

Like to the point where you're coming up on a stop sign and yet they're like, oh, I can't. Can't stop.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That's Chris Rock joke. It's a classic Chris Rock joke.

[Mark Gagnon]

Wait, what is it?

[Hassan Ahmad]

Chris Rock bit on never scared. Talks about how, like, hard it would be in a slave because you have to pretend not to read.

[Derek Poston]

Okay.

[Hassan Ahmad]

And you're riding on the buggy. Riding on the buggy, and then you see a stop sign, you know, and then that's all. That's the bit.

[Mark Gagnon]

I've never heard that.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Great joke.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's brilliant joke.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah. I feel like Chris Rock.

[Mark Gagnon]

We just stumbled into it. Damn.

[Hassan Ahmad]

So good.

[Mark Gagnon]

Too late.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

So good.

[Mark Gagnon]

But, yeah, he was. He was just killing all the intellectuals. One survivor recalled the Cameroon Rouge guards testing suspected intellectuals by asking them to repair a broken moped. Those who succeeded revealed mechanical knowledge, evidence of education, and they were killed. When the Khmer Rouge captured the capital city, they killed all the doctors and. Yeah, they even went on to, like, kill them with their own medical instruments.

[Derek Poston]

Jeez.

[Mark Gagnon]

Crazy. They're just grabbing whatever was around. And then the craziest part is the killing fields. So these killing fields were basically like just these giant, like, broad fields where they didn't have the high tech, like, execution that all these other places had, like, you know, Hitler and all that. So they would just go out and they would just murder people and with, like, farm tools to save bullets. They didn't want to waste the bullets and so just like, axes and all that. And, yeah, they, like, just had these mass graves. They would use, like, chemical substances to, like, sprinkle over the bodies to like, stop them from, you know, like, smelling and shit. And. Yeah, it was like, one of the most brutal regimes to ever exist. He was also super paranoid. That's the one thing with all these Dictators, they're all so paranoid, I think.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Because you know your subconscious know this is bad.

[Derek Poston]

I think once you're at the top of anything, sort of like. Yeah. Crazy like that, you get paranoid. There's no way you. The. The amount of shitty things you had to do to get there.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Is like. It eats on you.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, it must, right?

[Derek Poston]

Even smaller. You ever watch the Sopranos? Oh, well, it's sort of like you get to see Tony's sort of descent into paranoia and what it's like being at the top of something violent.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

No, when you watch any of those gangster movies where the guy is on top, he dies with. Always the same. He gets crazy paranoid at the end.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Because they get crazy paranoid because you just know. You feel it. Like, man, I know I'm not supposed to be doing this.

[Derek Poston]

And like, there's. There's a guy. There's always a guy. Next up, there's a guy who's trying to get to where I'm getting. And I know what I did to get to where I'm getting.

[Hassan Ahmad]

It's coming.

[Derek Poston]

So it's coming.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah. You're just freaking out.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. These guys. These guys are pretty, pretty.

[Derek Poston]

So where do we put them?

[Mark Gagnon]

Pretty bad guys.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Are we done with all his credentials?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, basically. I mean, he killed, you know, 21 to 26% of Cambodia's entire population. It wasn't a specific ethnic group. It was just a spree on his own whim. His own people, basically.

[Hassan Ahmad]

And how did he die again?

[Mark Gagnon]

He never faced justice. Vietnamese forces ousted the Cameroon Rouge in 79, and he lived freely for nearly two decades, dying under house arrest in 1998.

[Derek Poston]

Damn.

[Mark Gagnon]

His final words.

[Derek Poston]

We were alive.

[Mark Gagnon]

His final words in a 1997 interview. My conscience is clear.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I thought you were gonna say his final words in 1997. Interviewer Go Bulls.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's crazy. He was watching the NBA.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, he saw Jordan. He saw it. He heard about him. He was like, yo, there's a guy and.

[Derek Poston]

Well, he's. That 98. Yeah, he saw five of the six. At least. Maybe six of the six.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That's what I'm saying. You know, he's like, I know who Michael Jordan is.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Damn.

[Derek Poston]

He's killing it on the court.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Derek Poston]

The killing courts.

[Mark Gagnon]

So where we put him.

[Derek Poston]

So right now. So right now, our rankings, we went, Stalin, Hitler.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Well, let's just. Is he ultimate based? Because I think he's ultimate based.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, probably.

[Mark Gagnon]

I think he's the most evil.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That is the most evil, bro. This sucked.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

He. This is where it gets. This is where it's wild. Here's like, little, like, personal things. One foreign diplomat described meeting him and said it was like talking to a polite school teacher. That apparently he was, like, very, like, you know, calm and sort of unassuming.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Scarier.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. And he wasn't like this bombastic dictator with all these crazy speeches. He rarely appeared in public and gave very few speeches. He appeared. He preferred anonymity and was known to many Cambodians as brother number one.

[Derek Poston]

Damn. Yeah, damn. All right. So he's in the ultimate base. So he's in the tier with Hitler, Stalin.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I agree.

[Derek Poston]

Do you think he's below Hitler and Stalin?

[Hassan Ahmad]

I'm putting him three.

[Derek Poston]

You putting them three?

[Hassan Ahmad]

I'm putting them three.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, I'll go with that. I'll go with that.

[Hassan Ahmad]

So that's a Mal now goes to four. Vlad goes to five.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

All right. Where do we go from here? Do you guys have one that you're like, oh, we gotta get to this guy?

[Hassan Ahmad]

I'm learning right now.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. I'm. I kind of want to see who you pick.

[Mark Gagnon]

All right.

[Derek Poston]

Next to throw to us.

[Hassan Ahmad]

All right.

[Derek Poston]

We didn't need a silly guy.

[Hassan Ahmad]

We haven't done a silly Billy yet.

[Derek Poston]

It's been a while, but I would say Vlad is the silliest.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah. By far.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. And that's because it happened in the 1300s. If Vlad happened in 1942, we probably wouldn't feel as.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That was a little silly, though.

[Mark Gagnon]

He looks cute.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Mal looks cute. He was funny.

[Derek Poston]

He's silly because of his hygiene and his hairline.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, sorry.

[Derek Poston]

He's cool because of his hairline, but he's silly.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He's probably getting all that.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All I heard is that he a lot. That makes sense.

[Mark Gagnon]

Okay. We can go to this guy, Sapormarat. Niazov.

[Derek Poston]

It's so crazy because, like, Eastern European.

[Mark Gagnon]

He's a former president of Turkmenistan.

[Derek Poston]

Okay.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Turkmenistan.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. And relatively recent. His term was 1992 to 2006.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Whoa, 2000.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I think I just got to high school. 2006.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Yeah. He was. So this is the other thing is, like, I feel like most political leaders from around the world were dictators. That's the thing I'm realizing, like, you just go through, like, most countries throughout.

[Derek Poston]

History, it was just autocratic.

[Mark Gagnon]

It was just autocracy. Some evil guy being like, hey, some people gotta die.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, the idea that not everyone dies in America all the time is pretty sick.

[Hassan Ahmad]

How do we do with it. How are we number one? How do we do this? How are we number one, not doing what they doing?

[Mark Gagnon]

Democracy. Michael Jackson probably helps.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, for sure helps.

[Derek Poston]

Some sort of cultural. We like, I think this is the first one that like, like we're the first ones that like controlled the culture of like most of the actual physical world.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Like even like the big cultural powerhouses like Romans and.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

People in Africa didn't know them probably.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Everybody loved Michael Jackson.

[Derek Poston]

Everyone knows Michael Jackson. Yeah, yeah. We have. We have this sort of cultural dominance.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

That we're kind of sort of losing.

[Mark Gagnon]

And it don't matter if you're black or white. I think that one music video saved America. Like just seeing all those people, like transform into each other. We're like, oh yeah, it's all. It's fine. You know, we're good guys. But this guy, he was the.

[Derek Poston]

Well, he was the dictator of Turkmenistan.

[Mark Gagnon]

Of Turkmenistan, yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Okay.

[Mark Gagnon]

And he had this reign which is called the. The Runama. And the. This, this was like basically the ideology. This was the book of the soul. And it was his rambling spiritual guidebook that became Turk medicine. Sacred text. So everyone had to read it. It.

[Derek Poston]

We created like a Bible. That's pretty interesting, basically.

[Mark Gagnon]

And it was mandatory reading in schools and it was required for driver's license test, university admissions and job applications. This guy claimed that by reading it three times you were guaranteed entry into heaven. It translated into 41 languages. It was given equal status to the Quran and moss.

[Derek Poston]

Damn. Can we pull up a picture of the guy?

[Mark Gagnon]

So he had this book and this book was basically like, this is. This is our Bible. Now everyone's reading it. In 2006, he installed a massive mechanical Rama monument in Ashgabat in the capital that automatically opens each evening while playing recorded passages. And citizens were required to swear oaths on the book and pledge allegiance, including rubbing it against one's forehead three times. He was pretty wild. He renamed every month and every day of the week. He specifically named April after his mother, renamed the word for bread and adolescence after his mother and redefined ages of human development, with adolescence lasting until 25 and old age beginning at 85. His craziness went beyond the calendars and the ancient texts he loved. He's basically almost like a hippie. He created this, this prominent design of the Neutrality arch, which was a massive structure with a 39 foot golden statue of him which rotated to always face the sun. His portrait was everywhere, plastered on public building, classrooms, offices, newspapers, vodka bottles and even carpets. He Renamed cities and airports and even a meteorite after him and his family members.

[Derek Poston]

This guy's. This guy's a little bit funny.

[Mark Gagnon]

His personal preferences became national policy through strange proclamations. He himself had gold teeth, but he banned them, claiming that they were unhealthy and advising citizens to chew on bones instead of strengthening their teeth. If you have long hair and a beard. He banned that. That. Video games. No video games were allowed.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Damn.

[Mark Gagnon]

And they. He said that they were too violent for Young Turkmens. He outlawed the opera, ballet, circuses, and even recorded music. Car radios, lip syncing, and public smoking were also prohibited. This just sounds like Disney World.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's like. No chewing gum.

[Derek Poston]

Can you click on the statue? It's the other one to the left here. This is the statue he was talking about.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. And it is, like, rotated and always was.

[Derek Poston]

That's pretty fire statue.

[Mark Gagnon]

This is basically. I mean, didn't Trump just post this on Instagram? He did the Gaza thing where it's just a golden statue of him.

[Derek Poston]

Oh, yeah. It's kind of based on that.

[Mark Gagnon]

And you're like, whoa, all right, we gotta look into the history of this a little bit. He shut down all the hospitals outside the capital, replacing them with a single family in Ashgabat, where doctors were allegedly required to swear an oath to him instead of the Hippocratic oath. He fired 15,000 healthcare workers, replacing them with military conscripts. Despite presiding over the country that's primarily desert with severe water sources, he did initiate environmental protections. He built enormous ice palaces in one of the world's hottest deserts, created an artificial lake in the Karakum desert, and constructed the largest fountain complex in the entire country. Banned foreign newspaper, no reading. And, yeah. Bases, like, upended the entire education system and then died of sudden heart failure in 2006.

[Derek Poston]

The gold has make it mostly. The guy was the only one that didn't make it.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Like, if you don't start a war and you just. With your own people, no one cares. No one really cares.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. And you don't have oil that we can take.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

The golden statue that rotated to face the sun was removed in 2010, and Turkmenistan remains one of the world's most isolated and repressive states. So whoever took over just basically kind of was just like, all right, this guy had a little statue. He's gonna.

[Derek Poston]

He's building his own statue right now, probably.

[Mark Gagnon]

I don't know if he killed that many people. I don't think. I don't think.

[Hassan Ahmad]

There was no video games.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Almost Worse.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That one's kind of wild, bro, because.

[Mark Gagnon]

You got to live through.

[Hassan Ahmad]

It's 2004. I can't play video games, though.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Nothing, right?

[Hassan Ahmad]

Golden eyes out.

[Derek Poston]

You don't get. You don't get Xbox Live.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

It's like. Is popping now.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I'm like, damn, bro. Yeah, that's.

[Mark Gagnon]

So where are we putting this guy?

[Derek Poston]

I mean, he's.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He's very silly. Can I see the tear base again, please?

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, can we. Can we carry a silly tear base?

[Hassan Ahmad]

Silly.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I'm gonna say this guy is so. So.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, he's like.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He's almost cringe.

[Derek Poston]

He's almost cringe. But it's so silly that it's a little bit like you not only named the month of April after your mom, but you named adolescence and one more thing after your mom. It's kind of like that dictator, the dictator movie. Everything is Saladin. Yeah, yeah. It's like. Like, that's very silly.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I'm a go. I'm a go. So. So. But I mean, he's. He is on the line of cringe.

[Derek Poston]

He is on the line of cringe.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

He is on the line of cringe for sure.

[Mark Gagnon]

All right, you want to do. This is another kind of fun one. This is like a little quick, silly one again. There's a lot on this guy, but Gaddafi, I know that name. Gaddafi was a wild dude. He was a. He was a revolutionary in Libya and He ruled from 1969 until his assassination in 2011.

[Derek Poston]

Eleven, yeah. Very famous.

[Mark Gagnon]

He came to power through this military coup and became the first revolutionary chairman of the Libyan era Republic.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He looks like Bruno Mars.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

What?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, he was a wild dude. He was insane. There's like a ton of stuff on his personal political life, but just some highlights. He had 15 female bodyguards who were all trained in weaponry, had to wear makeup and high heels, and were all reportedly virgins.

[Derek Poston]

The virgin guard, that's the most famous thing about him.

[Mark Gagnon]

I think he walked around with bad as his personal, like, security outfit.

[Hassan Ahmad]

All virgins.

[Mark Gagnon]

Allegedly. Allegedly virgins.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Why virgins?

[Mark Gagnon]

I don't know. The virgin thing is kind of fun. It's just like he wants purity, I guess. I don't know.

[Derek Poston]

It's kind of. Is he Muslim? It's also the Muslims have thing a weird thing with virgins.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. It's. He had all these women and, like, that was like, what he was known for. He was, like, walking around with, like, all these girls. Additionally, he Washed his hands in deer blood, which he thought had health benefits and was very into male beauty and plastic surgery and even got his own, like, personal surgeries in 1994.

[Derek Poston]

Damn, yo.

[Mark Gagnon]

He once gave a two hour long speech to the United nations nations during which he expressed support for Somali pirates, claimed that Israel was responsible for JFK's assassination, and referred to Barack Obama as my son.

[Derek Poston]

Very Algerian. Alex Jones. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

He apparently had like, sexual advances toward female reporters and members of his entourage. They, yeah, they called him the Amazonian Guard. His female. The, like, protection. And they would walk around with guns and just like, just cool it with him. Apparently there was a book by this French journalist that was published that he had sexual relations with women, some in their early teenage years that had been selected for him. So he had like a harem and he loved, like, gaudy, ostentatious, like, garb, so he would wear like rings and jewelry. He looks like the dude from the Jungle Book. Like the lion. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Now he looks like like a Disney villain.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He does, he does.

[Derek Poston]

He's dressed at the. He's dressed crazy in terms of. Because I brought my dad up earlier. My dad actually lived in Libya when Gaddafi was there.

[Mark Gagnon]

Really?

[Hassan Ahmad]

No way.

[Derek Poston]

But to get to America, he had to have an engineering job in Libya.

[Mark Gagnon]

How long was he there for?

[Derek Poston]

A couple years, I would say. I think like right after college. So probably like 22 to 25 in that zone.

[Hassan Ahmad]

During the Gaddafi's reign.

[Derek Poston]

During Gaddafi's reign, yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Whoa.

[Mark Gagnon]

What did he say about that?

[Derek Poston]

He said it was a very racist place. He says. Probably one of the most racist place he's ever lived.

[Mark Gagnon]

Really?

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, he'd be like. He got called Paki all the time. Like the locals would, like, throw rocks at them. Really? Yeah, they're. Yeah. There are minorities in a. In an autocratic place, so they're not exactly. Most. Most autocracies don't like immigrants.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's crazy.

[Derek Poston]

And you're only there to be an engineer for them.

[Mark Gagnon]

Wow.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. Because a lot of autocracies have a brain drain too, right? Like, like Cambodia killing all the smart people. They do that a lot. Yeah, that's part of the plan. A brain. That's what it's called.

[Mark Gagnon]

They all got to get out.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, they all got to get out. If everyone's smart, you can't control them.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

So it's not sure how many people Gaddafi killed. Like he had a couple, like, bad, bad moments here. 1200 prisoners were executed in the Abu Salam prison. Massacre in 1996. He apparently ordered assassinations of exiled dissidents worldwide. And then during the uprising in 2011, during the Libyan civil war, his forces killed thousands. The United nations estimate 10 to 25,000. And yeah, so overall probably, you know, maybe close to 20 to 50,000 people were killed under his, his regime during exiles. So what do we think? Where do we put old Gaddafi?

[Hassan Ahmad]

He's not. He's above the last dude we just did.

[Derek Poston]

I think what's above so. So mid. Is that. Was that what it's above? So. So, yeah, I would say he's mid. I would say he's mid.

[Hassan Ahmad]

No above. So is just based. I'd say he's based.

[Derek Poston]

Based. The virgin guard's pretty based.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That's what I'm saying. Virgin guard was dope. And if he's like. And you know what else is cool? If he's not having sex with those virgins. I know you said allegedly, but if he's not doing it and they truly are his virgin guard, that's some dope ass, bro. It's just cool. It's just like, damn. Because if you're one of those girls, you're like, it's a great gig. I know I'm protecting this guy and all that, but like, man, no, no one fucks me. No, no one gets to just fuck me. Thank God.

[Mark Gagnon]

And forced to wear high heels. That is the craziest part to me. Like, part of their military uniform is high heels, stilettos.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Aesthetically pleasing.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, I mean, it's very confident about.

[Derek Poston]

His height and, and yeah, yeah, you're right. And to call the US President his son.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He was talking shit.

[Derek Poston]

That's pretty crazy. That's pretty. Like, I don't know anyone who's had the balls to do that. Yeah, that's pretty ballsy. So I, I think, yeah, I think, I think he's based.

[Mark Gagnon]

Okay.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Based.

[Derek Poston]

He's based. Makes me feel like the other guy's a little more cringe than I will than.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I thought he was on the line for me, bro. You might have been cringe, bro. No video games. Get the out of here.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, this guy is also very gouty and showy.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

But he's kind of cool.

[Derek Poston]

Kind of cool about it.

[Hassan Ahmad]

He wears shades.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, he wears shades.

[Mark Gagnon]

All right, we got, we got another one. Ok. We're going to Africa.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Let's go.

[Mark Gagnon]

Black dictator. Finally, this guy Idi Amin became the third president Uganda in 71 until his overthrow in 1979. And he ruled as a Military dictator and considered one of the most brutal despots in modern history. So this guy basically takes over Uganda. Just a couple things about him. All right, These are more like personal fun facts. Former heavyweight boxing champion.

[Hassan Ahmad]

That's already scary.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

He chose four white males and forced them to carry him around in a large throne like chair during their 1975 meetings.

[Derek Poston]

Damn.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Kind of like him. He's kind of. Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. That's kind of pretty cool. You did that to white guys.

[Mark Gagnon]

He gave himself the title of His Excellency, President for life. Field Marshal Al Hajj, Dr. E.D. amin, DADA, VC, DSO, MC. Lord of all the beasts of the earth and fishes of the sea, and conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in general and Uganda in particular. That was his title.

[Derek Poston]

That's. That's a little lame. It kept going.

[Mark Gagnon]

A little porn.

[Hassan Ahmad]

It truly kept going.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. It would have been cool if it was like, the ruler of the beasts of the land.

[Mark Gagnon]

That'd be cool.

[Derek Poston]

That's cool.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Yeah. But like, Bruce Buffer can't announce this.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

It's like cards. Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

He married guys carrying him.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

For white. Those are regular looking white guys, too.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, Those are standard issue. Like, that's just like a run of the mill white. And they're carrying around. He's not even. I don't even feel like he's that dressed up. He's wearing Tommy Bahamas.

[Derek Poston]

He's the landscape right now.

[Mark Gagnon]

He's known to have married at least six women throughout his life, one of whom was found dead. And after falling pregnant to another man, he murdered her. He's also thought to have fathered as many as 43 children. One of the most crazy things that he did is that he banned all Asians and South Asians from Uganda.

[Derek Poston]

Damn.

[Mark Gagnon]

Because the daughter of an important Asian family refused to marry him.

[Derek Poston]

Damn. So, so, so an Indian girl. Damn. And that's so funny that an Indian girl said, no, when in India, they're not.

[Mark Gagnon]

They don't care about that.

[Derek Poston]

She had to go to Uganda to find somebody who took her seriously.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Damn.

[Derek Poston]

That's crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

What's also wild is that in that time, basically you had all of these, like, Indian, Pakistani, like, South Asian business people that were run, like, not running Uganda, but, like, they had all the businesses and, like, industry. It's like they, like, owned, like, the stores and they had, like, all the commerce, like, they were running. And then overnight, he basically was like, hey, you have 24 hours to get out of here. And all of them had to flee. And then Basically, after they all left the country, went to. Because they were like, we don't know how to run this shit. Like, we had all these Indians in here, like, running our thing. He claimed to have conquered the British Empire and reportedly sent many love letters to Queen Elizabeth of England. He even asked her to marry him and make him the king of Scotland.

[Derek Poston]

You think if. If anything didn't go his way, he ever went. You got to be kidding me.

[Mark Gagnon]

Probably good. I think probably a couple times.

[Derek Poston]

There's got to be people who. Who do that there. If they don't, it's a very humorless place.

[Mark Gagnon]

And then basically, if no one's done.

[Derek Poston]

That there, I don't want to go there.

[Mark Gagnon]

I wonder how many people he actually killed straight up. Like, I wonder if there was, like. Like the most evil stuff that he did.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, I want to know that, too. Like, what was the most brutal this guy was doing.

[Mark Gagnon]

So he was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 100,000 to 500,000 people even. Although the exact number is difficult to determine due to the chaotic nature of the regime. He targeted political opponents, soldiers, intellectuals, and professionals. The international commission that investigated estimated 80,000 to 300,000 were killed. A bunch of other ethnic groups were killed. Hundred thousand, they believe, from specific ethnic persecution. The Asian expulsion of South Asians, targeting and seizing their property, although not directly killed, caused a ton of economic ruin. A bunch of massacres. 2000 people in different cities were killed and. Just random massacres. And the bodies were dumped in the Nile river, sometimes washing up in neighboring countries.

[Derek Poston]

Damn him.

[Mark Gagnon]

And, yeah, he fled to Saudi Arabia in 1979 and lived in exile until his death in 2003, never facing justice for his crimes.

[Derek Poston]

Crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

He was in Saudi Arabia and then apparently died of kidney failure. Yeah, dude. Pretty wild. Apparently people wanted Amin to have answered for his sins, and they wanted him to come back, but he never did.

[Derek Poston]

Same thing with, like, Pol Pot. It's so interesting that, like. Like, once you get to a certain level of dictator and you get ousted, there's still somewhere that'll take you. There's still somewhere that, like, yeah, you. You did it. Come live out your rest of your lives with us.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, somebody will take you in. I mean, you are such a. Such a famous, wealthy person, right, that.

[Derek Poston]

The guy's like, well, you amassed all this wealth. You can spell it in our country. Yeah, we'll make sure. Yeah, we'll try to make sure no one kills you. No. And Saudi Arabia is always going to kill you.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. It is kind of wild that all this was happening so recently.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

2003 is like, I'm pretty sure I remember when he died. I remember that being a thing.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

I remember that being in the news.

[Mark Gagnon]

And just died of old age. Just like, they got sick.

[Hassan Ahmad]

The Butcher of Uganda, bro, these are awful crazy, right?

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, what's the point? Like, just chill out.

[Derek Poston]

People got addicted to that power.

[Mark Gagnon]

I guess it's just like, bro, just like, try a video game. Like, how do we. How do we fix the dictators? Like, have you met a dictator? Like, is there any way you could just be like, hey, dude, it's not that serious.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Mushrooms.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I think mushrooms would be your best bet. Just some form of mushrooms in nature.

[Derek Poston]

Or they would feel like they are actually. God, I think there's. I think.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, you're right. Some people go the other way.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. I think there's something. If you had that in you, where you think that, hey, I can control millions of people, and I should. And I should, too. I think that's a level of psychopath that nothing can really help.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

You have to be kind of a psychopath to want to be the president. Yeah. That's an elected official.

[Hassan Ahmad]

We're not even a president, bro. Even to just be. Want to be like, governor, the mayor.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

There's a little bit. Not saying you're like. But there's a little in you that's like, oh, you, like, you're like, I could do this, but I. I would run this better.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, I deserve to run this.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, I should run this. I would do it. And it's like, the moment you start with that, it gets crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

I'm just shocked at how many straight up, like, dictators there were. Like, remember how we're talking about, like, oh, these guys in modern time were, like, listening to Western music and like that. So just as, like, a little sidebar. Imelda Marcos was the first lady of the Philippines, and Ferdinand Marcos was the, like, basically, like, the king or the dictator of the Philippines. And they were huge fans of the Beatles. So they were in the Philippines running this dictatorship in the 60s, and they invited the Beatles to play during their 1964 world tour. They declined the luncheon invitation at the presidential palace, and the first lady was so outraged that she spread the word throughout the country that the Beatles had snubbed the president and their wife. Chaos ensued, and the Beatles were threatened by an angry mob as they fled the airport. So, like, these people were, like, listening to the Beatles and then also being like, we should still be dictators.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. Yeah. They should show us reverence.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. And then all these other people, like, they thought they were gods. There's so many we didn't even touch on. On.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, they had. They have. You have to think if you want. If you want to be a dictator, you have to think you're God adjacent at the very least.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Raphael Truillo thought that he was God. Ordered all the churches to put up a sign that read, God is in heaven. Truillo is in. Is on earth. And required. Required a law that all license plates say Viva Trujillo.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. Trio was like, Dominican Republic.

[Mark Gagnon]

I think so. Yeah. There's some. I mean, Leopold the First. Leopold ii.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. That's what I was expecting to hear about Leopold. Because that. That's up there with.

[Hassan Ahmad]

With.

[Derek Poston]

That's up there with, like, one of the worst, for sure.

[Mark Gagnon]

He's arguably, like. I don't know if he killed the most, but definitely, like, the most disgusting.

[Derek Poston]

Yes.

[Mark Gagnon]

He was like, took over the Congo from Belgium. They, like, seized the whole thing in this, like, you know, run for Africa in the early 1900s. And, like, would use hands as currency. Like, literally everyone was forced to work. If you didn't work, you'd get your hand chopped off. And then the hands were literally, like, used as bargaining chips to show, like, how many people they got to work. So they were like, look at it. Look at all the work that we got going.

[Derek Poston]

One, there's a very famous photo of a man in the Congo staring at his daughter's hands that have been chopped off.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Oh, crazy.

[Derek Poston]

Chop off your kids hands. They would chop off your.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, crazy. And then one of the guys, I'm pretty sure Leopold ii, apparently, that's the big one.

[Derek Poston]

Leopold II is the big one.

[Mark Gagnon]

Leopold II was. Apparently he has a quote where he says, I mean, we don't. I mean, it's a brutal picture.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, there it is. It's the. It's in the third from the right up top. That's the. That's the famous picture.

[Mark Gagnon]

Crazy, bro.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Oh, my God.

[Mark Gagnon]

Apparently Leopold II had a quote where he was like, hey, we need the hands to work. He's like, we need these people to be doing work, so stop. You can cut off anything else except the hands and you're like, all right, maybe. All right. He saw. He saw the benefit and not being the worst.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

But then they start chopping off other stuff.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah. Yeah, they're still. They would still. Yeah, that. That was a. That was a crazy one. One.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, dude. And there's so many others. There's a countless List of the. The brutality of humankind. But I feel like countless.

[Hassan Ahmad]

List. Oh, my God. Of the monsters.

[Mark Gagnon]

And there's going to be more. There's going to be more. Different countries are going to pop up. There's going to be different dictators that take over other countries.

[Hassan Ahmad]

We'll get a world one at some point. At some point, somebody will run the. There'll be the world dictator.

[Mark Gagnon]

You think so?

[Hassan Ahmad]

Oh, bro. Everything.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Of course.

[Derek Poston]

It feels like we're heading that direction.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Everything always happens. Everything under the sun will. If everything will happen, then that will happen. Happen.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's.

[Derek Poston]

I think we're so connected already.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I think that's what makes it possible now.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Impossible, because how would you do it? But now that I. If I can get everybody through this little thing right here to lock into what I'm saying.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I got. I got the world.

[Derek Poston]

And we rely on. We all rely on each other economically now. So eventually one person will be like, I can do it.

[Hassan Ahmad]

All one currency, one everything.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Dictatorship.

[Mark Gagnon]

Who do you think? The Rock.

[Hassan Ahmad]

The Rock's grandchild, maybe.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, yeah, Whoever. Whoever. Whoever's down the line of the Kim Kardashian Kanye west line.

[Mark Gagnon]

I show Speed. It might be Speed.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I show Speed's grandson.

[Mark Gagnon]

He's so global.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, everyone around the world loves him. Like, he. Anywhere. Everywhere he goes. Like, there's throngs of people in Indonesia following around.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

I think he could take over if he wanted to.

[Derek Poston]

Oh, yeah. His son. I show control. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speed takes over the world quickly, and then control comes in and rules an iron fist.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Oh, my God. Yeah, bro. That's just because the reality is the.

[Derek Poston]

The next dictator will have, like, a twitch stream. We'll have, like, a podcast. Something that can just reach millions of people quickly.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

At once.

[Mark Gagnon]

I mean, Saddam Hussein didn't even get to him.

[Derek Poston]

Oh, that's great. My favorite. My favorite quick setup. You can see. You can watch the purge he does on YouTube. You ever seen it? So Saddam purges the people in his own party that are against him. And the way he does it is he's having this sort of meeting, and he just starts calling out names, and then the names have to go up and go outside. You can watch it on YouTube. You can. And you watch people. No, he gives half of them guns, and they have to kill the other half. But you. It's on YouTube. You don't see the assassination, but you see him calling out the names and them walking out. Forgot what it's called. Just if you look Up Saddam Hussein. Purge. And go to the videos. Yeah. Very public purge.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Domo. Saying it's very public.

[Derek Poston]

The back party purge.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Oh, my goodness.

[Derek Poston]

And you just watch it. And these people are like, pleading with their lives, and it's like, bro, it's crazy. And then some of them are just resigned and like, they know. And he's not even the leader of the bath party at this time. I think he's second in command. And this is how he sort of takes control.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I mean, whoever is in command sees this and goes off.

[Derek Poston]

He was basically saying, like, hey, I'm the guy now. Now.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

And then you got. I mean, Mobutu, this guy.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I've heard that name.

[Mark Gagnon]

Mobutu. He was the dictator of Zaire. Built a hundred million dollar palace, required his image to be shown all over the world. Killed millions of people. Or thousands. Hundreds of thou. Hundreds of thousands of people. Public execution of four ministers. He executed all of them. Tortured all these people. Pierre Mule, who was lured out of exile with false promises of amnesty. And he was executed. He siphoned off 60 of the national budget in 1970, and then spent 10 million to host a famous boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in 1974.

[Derek Poston]

Wow.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

In Africa.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yep.

[Derek Poston]

Yeah, they had that famous one. That's crazy.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Rumble in the Jungle. Holy.

[Mark Gagnon]

In Zaire. And that's Kim Jong Il. Kim Jong Un.

[Derek Poston]

The Kims.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, dude. I mean, Francois Gueme.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Oh, so we must be leaving out so many people from, like, before times. Like, Roman emperor. Like, wasn't Caesar a dictator in a way?

[Mark Gagnon]

Technically, he wasn't. He didn't. He tried to become. He was like, democratically elected and was like, I'm gonna become.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I'm addicted. He wouldn't. He wasn't going to give up power.

[Mark Gagnon]

And then they murdered him.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

But he did take power for a while.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Hassan Ahmad]

So he was on his way.

[Derek Poston]

He was an emperor. Right.

[Mark Gagnon]

Technically. I talked to this guy. He was like, he's not considered an emperor because he was democratically elected, then like, kept the reign and then was murdered. But he was also beloved, apparently.

[Derek Poston]

Right.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, people in Rome were like, dude, this guy's awesome.

[Derek Poston]

No, the. The people who. Like Brutus and all the people who murdered him didn't expect the people. They were so far removed from the people that they expected the people would like, that they killed him. And the people were like, no, we hate this.

[Mark Gagnon]

But then created the run of emperors in Rome. So many a lot of evil people out there, dude.

[Derek Poston]

Dude.

[Mark Gagnon]

So what do we make of this? What's the conclusion. What is our.

[Hassan Ahmad]

What is our ultimate based.

[Mark Gagnon]

And then, Val, would you mind even scrolling down, just showing some of the other. All these other people. Look at all these other people that we didn't even touch on. I don't even recognize half these dudes.

[Hassan Ahmad]

I don't know any of them. Oh, my God, bro. Why would they act like that?

[Derek Poston]

My parents lived through the Chavez, Venezuela. Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, you're Venezuelan. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah, it didn't even get to him. Yeah, there's a. There's a long list. There's a long, long list.

[Derek Poston]

Damn.

[Mark Gagnon]

So maybe the moral story is, if you're a dictator, it's like, just chill out.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Stop.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, just stop. Like, Like, I don't want to get too political on this show, but I just, you know, stop killing people, you know?

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah, you don't want to get too political.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. Like, I don't want to make it a whole thing.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Let's not kill all the women and children.

[Mark Gagnon]

Or.

[Derek Poston]

Or there's some psychopath watching this, being like, I think I can make ultimate based on their criteria. I think I can do it.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. If you were to become a dictator, how would you do it? What would be your strategy?

[Derek Poston]

If I were to become a dictator?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Damn. I mean, the best way to do it in America is become democratically elected.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, but America's so hard. There's all checks and balances.

[Derek Poston]

I think. I think you have to. You have to start small. You have to start at mayor. You have to work your way up instead of, like. Like, going for the presidency first. So you got to make the people around you like you and be. And then also, like, be. Like, have control.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Okay. This is what it's like with control and then work your way up.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

You sort of build at grassroots.

[Mark Gagnon]

See, I wouldn't even do. I would just go to, like. Like, I don't know, like, Vanuatu or, like, I'd pick, like, a little oceanic island and just be like, yo, I got a thousand bucks. What do you say?

[Hassan Ahmad]

And they'd be like, lord Mark.

[Mark Gagnon]

Or like, I wonder if you do it through, like, a cargo cult. You ever seen these cargo cults? Like, there are these, like. You've heard the term cargo cult. I didn't know what this was, but apparently there are these cults of people, like, after World War II. These are around, like, like, South Asia kind of vibe or like. Like, near, like, Indonesia or, like, Oceania, I guess they would put these planes down and. Yeah, the John from is, like, the most famous one. And they basically would put down these planes. They would give people, like, money and, like, trade with them in order to get, like, flight routes where they could get. Get, like, their planes to land. So they could be doing, you know, war missions around the area. And they were like, hey, we're going to come back. Don't worry. And the people, like, these basically, like, indigenous tribesmen were like, all right, they're going to come back. And they never went back. The war ended, and all that was left there was, like, basically the gifts that they gave them and some of, like, the military equipment. And so now the people have deified these soldiers that went down there to trade with them. And they basically were like, these are gods that came down and they're big, giant birds. And they recreated all this stuff.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Damn.

[Mark Gagnon]

But, yeah, dude. So anyway, those are all the dictators. I think we ranked them from the most evil.

[Derek Poston]

Yes. And most base to the least basic.

[Hassan Ahmad]

No, it's a cringe.

[Mark Gagnon]

A lot of them were cringe. I'll be honest.

[Hassan Ahmad]

A lot of them were really cringe.

[Mark Gagnon]

They were. Some are ultimate based, some are hella based. But, gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Are you kidding me?

[Mark Gagnon]

This was a fun time.

[Hassan Ahmad]

Thank you.

[Mark Gagnon]

We got to learn more about the world and all the evil within it.

[Hassan Ahmad]

And if you like me and. Or for some reason you like Hasan, we have a podcast called the Solid show and Val is on there as well.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yes.

[Hassan Ahmad]

So please listen to that if you fuck with the boys.

[Mark Gagnon]

I was just on, and it was a wonderful episode. We had a great time.

[Hassan Ahmad]

We literally just had Mark on. We got two episodes of Mark now.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Derek Poston]

Go watch the first episode. The one. The camp episode's very fun.

[Hassan Ahmad]

We have an episode about camp, and we have an episode about Mark.

[Mark Gagnon]

Thank you so much. Appreciate y'all for joining. And this has been an episode of camp. See you next time. If you've made it to the end of this episode, that's because you rock with us. And for that, we rock with you. You are sophisticated. You enjoy honest, true communication. A highbrowed type of person that understands this history is not just dates and names. It is a tapestry of human triumph and tragedy from the day Nostradamus made his first prophecy to the morning Paul Revere took his midnight ride from ancient oracles to modern revolutionaries. That is why I need you. If you have not already, please sign up for today. Today in History, Our free newsletter. Today in History brings you the stories that matter, the moments that changed everything, and the secrets hidden in time. Join thousands of history enthusiasts who get their daily journey through time. Don't let another day of history pass you by. Take the conversation to your inbox. Sign up now through the QR code or link in the description Today in history because history's stories shape tomorrow's world. Thank you for watching the episode and we'll see you next time.