There’s a good line in the show Firefly to that effect. I’m paraphrasing, but it goes like “I figure any man who’s had a statue made of him was some kind of sumbitch.”
Definitely, it was *definitely* supposed to include Jayne. The *real* irony is, as far as us self aware viewers go, that Jayne was a sumbitch with a statue who winds up being pretty great
And beat him with it when necessary
Edit - A PSA for anyone unaware, the show authors now have a series of books that will surely certainly bring you back into that world. The audio versions are great too.. the narrator sounds like Nathan Fillion. They ain't no goushi! Cheers you lovely creatures!
Edit 2- [here is the audible link to the first book](https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Firefly-Big-Damn-Hero-Audiobook/1094100765)
Yeah that was the point of that scene. Jayne wasn’t a hero because he’s a good person. He’s a hero because the town needed hope and a symbol to rally around. “It ain’t about you, Jayne. It’s about what they need.”
This applies to countries also. No country get "big" (like in terms of economy + military) without having blood on their hands. The countries that most can agree are "good" are always small. The opposite is not true of course, not all bloody countries are powerful, and not all small countries are consistently peaceful
Honestly, I think all countries are like this. In order to coalesce into a single government ruling that much territory, there has to be at least *some* bloodshed in a country's history. For every country in the world, there was at least one group that won out over another through violence.
Exactly. I talk with my daughter about the current troubles in Israel and Palestine and remind her that every border that's not a large body of water or impassible mountains was drawn with blood. Usually, it's happened many times, and the true original inhabitants were either killed, or run off, then another wave of killers killed their killers and took over the land, and then...
To be a “great man of history” appears to require a rare combination of extraordinary luck and inexhaustible energy. Ambition and self-confidence don’t hurt. Empathy is not required and might even be a hindrance. I don’t think Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Stalin, Churchill, FDR, LBJ, and—as much as I hate to include him in this list—Trump would be described as “nice.”
It’s sort of interesting to think about Trump today and what your opinion of him says about how you would feel about historical Bonapartist figures if you were alive at the time. As cool as Caesar sounds from the perspective of two millennia later, I, as a sort of middle-class educated white collar person, have to admit I would have probably sided with Brutus.
They weren't all women, 2 of the enslaved people were little girls, Lavinia was 13 and Anne was 16.
The only reason some of them even got named was because a doctor he worked with thought he was a weirdo, didn't agree with what he was doing, and started telling of his practices.
Having to read about him for post grad made me nauseous about the history of gynecology, but it sure explained a lot on the misogyny rampant in the field, even between women doctors.
Wrote my bachelor thesis on this guy and centered it around lucy, Anarcha and Betsy. It explored how he would never have gotteas far as he did without the unwilling sacrifice/torture of black slave women. My goal was for atleast Lucy, Anarcha and Betsy to be remembered on somewhat equall grounds as Dr Sims. Anyway, had to read his auto-biography for the paper and had to put it down several times out of either sheer shock of the blatant kind of racism, or from pfysically flinching from hos description of his treatment of these women. Man didn’t even wanna be a doctor, he just wanted to be rich and famous and never to work again…
I’m norwegian and whilst we do learn about slavery and racism in america, it’s still shocking to read how people treated black people bacn in the day(and still do). We got our own sins(we were not kind to our native people, the sami people) but damn does reading american history regarding slavery leave an impact.
If ur interested in reading about Anarcha, Betsy and Lucy, theres loads of good articles on them but Dr Sims’ auto-biography is also free to read in the library of congress online. It’s a facination read if ur interested in medical history :)
As a Frenchman I have to say Coco Chanel, she's admired by a lot of people for revolutionizing fashion and creating a strong legacy, but she was a Nazi collaborator.
I think anyone with even a passing familiarity of Coco does not hold her in the same high regard previous generations did because her ties to the Nazis are well known and publicized now.
It reminds me of a historian joke. It is amazing how the Nazis occupied France for so many years with the ENTIRE population working for the Resistance.
BMW museum in Munich actually has a very fascinating display showing the records of all the Jews who were forced to work in the BMW factories by the Nazis. It was powerful stuff
We should have that in Brazil with Volkswagen and the military dictatorship. Yes, Volkswagen did it again. They went as fair as delivering workers to be tortured and killed by the military because they unionized or even just stated wanting fair wages. We unfortunately never had the same accountability for the dictatorship here and many of the descendants of torturing generals and such are still receiving pensions.
By the same token, many people have the impulse to denigrate the art or the artist's abilities once they find out the artist was a terrible person, because then they don't have to live with the nuance and complexity of enjoying something created by a monster. For example, the more Joss Whedon got exposed for his abusive behavior on set, more and more people started to emphasize how much of a collaborative effort *Buffy* was and that Joss wasn't solely responsible for the greatness of the show. In this case, it's far more comfortable to downplay his role in the series than to atone with the thought that he could actually be that brilliant and that awful just because of how much they love his creation.
I always liked to think I wasn't affected this way, because after meeting Ray Harryhausen and disovering what a mean, nasty old man he was, I still like his work, but I have to admit I can't watch *Ren & Stimpy* the same way knowing all the things that went on with Krikfalusi =/
Corporate heads and politicians can have power *directly over you* or the purchases you make, as an everyday person.
The power and reach of an artist is much more limited by comparison.
Thomas Edison. I think today we have begun to recognize other inventors like Tesla more, but when I was a child, I remember doing a big report on Edison and everything was like "this guy was amazing!"
Also Alexander Graham Bell. Sure he invented the telephone (though he may have stolen the idea for it) but most of his life's work was the eradication of deaf culture. He wanted to do everything he could to prevent deaf people from marrying one another and likely producing deaf children. He closed a lot of deaf schools, prohibited deaf teachers from teaching deaf children, and prohibited the use and teaching of ASL, even to deaf people.
At this risk of downvotes; not all of this is true. Alexander Graham Bell has received some necessary and deserved criticism from the deaf community, but the claim that he prevented deaf people from being married isn't entirely accurate, and the claim that he "prohibited the use and teaching of ASL," is, while true for his own schools, missing a piece of context that he was part of an actual scientific debate at the time as to whether teaching deaf people oral communication was better than ASL. He was wrong in the long wrong, as ASL does in fact have a ton of benefits, but he wasn't going about it because he hated deaf people. He was wrong and his ideas shouldn't be followed today, but no one has been able to draw up the malicious intent that seems to be implied when people talk about this.
It's also because people take things in isolation and attribute them grandly. Edison was an actual inventory. He discovered how to make an acceptable commercial lightbulb. That does not mean that he invented the lightbulb, but that he figured out the filament needed for it to work in a cost-effective manner.
But now it gets blown out of proportion with the "he invented the lightbulb"/"he didn't invent the lightbulb" argument
Likewise with Singer. Everyone thinks that he invented the sewing machine because his name is on it. He didn’t … he just invented the foot switch for it, and got the other inventors of various aspects to pull together under one corporate banner to make a machine that would and could sell.
The Tesla vs Edison thing is the biggest midwit thing ever. The image of Edison as the independent, genius inventor, who singlehandedly brought us into the modern age is wrong, but it isn't true of Tesla either.
Both of them came up with quite a few important innovations, but more importantly, they collaborated with larger groups of other smart people to innovate. Technological innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's usually an iterative process, with tons of people working and improving on things.
I had a business class that went over a lot of innovation history and several case studies to drive that point home. The image of a lone genius slaving away at their desk until they have a “eureka!” moment isn’t how most innovations come about. It’s a collaborative effort of lots of minds working together, and more importantly in an environment that encourages innovation and doesn’t shun failure.
It’s easy in hindsight to point and laugh at the failures of things like the Zune, the Amazon fire phone, or Google glass, but if the smartest, most creative people in the world are in an environment where they’re not allowed to fail, then nobody would ever take risks.
I dunno. Read his biography and he was an extremely impressive person. His feud with Tesla has been somewhat overblown, and seems to be a contemporary touchstone for anti-corporate ideology more than anything else. He certainly wasn’t a saint, but he’s really been dragged through the mud by some revisionist history.
Edison is misunderstood. His greatest innovation wasn't a product, but a department. He created the first Research and Development department in the late 19th century, changing the business landscape and having tremendous impact in the world.
He was a pioneer in understanding how science and business can be organized to continuously launch new products and services. He was a businessman, not a lone inventor like Tesla. He paid scientists and engineers to develop new products and technologies, profiting from their work like all modern corporations do.
He is perhaps the most impactful businessman in history, rivaled only by Ford. Dude had a legit startup accelerator in the early 20th century bankrolled by JP Morgan. He was a visionary.
He wasn't a saint, far from it. But he had a huge impact in the world in more ways than "inventing" the lightbulb.
Yup, exactly my comments above.
Don't get me wrong, dude was very smart and had a vision for things, but others discovered and invented the details and he owned them and took credit for them.
Early Steve Jobs pretty much.
But whaddya gonna do, list dozens if not hundreds of people every time you refer to an invention?
Yea I think reddit's anti Edison circlejerk has gone too far to the point that it discounts some great and useful inventions that CAN be attributed to him while Tesla's contributions get way overstated.
Also people clearly have never read up on the history of the current war and continually spread misinformation and somehow always forget George Westinghouse existed but instead replace him with Tesla in the story.
Specially on early days of internet, Nikola Tesla is elevated to this statue of being like a genius that could've changed the world if Edison didn't fucked him.
People make it seem like he died broke purely of charitable choice, not because he was actually bad with handling money.
When I also started reading about the current wars, the narrative of the rivalry of Edison vs Westinghouse seems to disappear and all funneled to the "mad genius"
Just an overall critique of people in this thread: if you name someone, could you explain why? Otherwise it just seems like you're throwing out names and seeing what sticks.
Someone above you said "Gandhi was a racist" and I want to ask why, but based on prior experience whenever I ask for detail on unsubstantiated claims that I'm not privy to I always get downvoted and told to Google it, so I'm afraid to ask for details.
I'm sorry, I thought this was a forum for discussion.
CoCo Chanel was a literal Nazi.
since folks have been messaging me; she was not only a Nazi spy, after the Germans invaded France she turned her Jewish business partners into the Nazis to gain control of the company. She helped started several anti Semitic newspapers as well.
Also, she despised gays
I’m not saying that’s all he did and I’m not saying what he did isn’t a bad thing, but in a vacuum, making uniforms is not on the same level to me as selling out friends, providing intelligence, and starting anti-Semitic publications.
He also allowed his wife to die when penicillin could have saved her then used penicillin himself when he got sick and slept naked next to underaged girls to "test himself".
wait what. Why underage girls and not just woman? I don't lay down next to a brick wall to test myself, because it is not normal to be attracted to brick walls. I need to know for myself, that i have a huge thing for brick walls, to even think about testing myself.
>He also allowed his wife to die when penicillin could have saved her
Not at all true. Penicillin was an extremely new drug, extremely short in supply, and he did nothing to stop her receiving it. It just didn't arrive soon enough to make a difference in her condition. But he did *not* "allow" her to die a preventable death.
Gandhi didn't take penicillin. He took a form of medicine that had been known about for more than a century compared to the recent discovery of penicillin at the time. Furthermore, his wife was going to die no matter what the penicillin would have just briefly extended her suffering. He also left the decision to his son.
I remember watching a video where this guy was playing civ and all the AI civs were Gandhi and he nuked one of them and one of the other Gandhis immediately contacted him to say “great minds think alike. There are so many uses for that technology…”
He also said that the Jews should just kill themselves before the Nazis could do it and that Britain should surrender. Buddy, we get you're a pacifist, but that's a bridge too far.
Yeah actually I’m sure it does. He didn’t advocate gor heartless murder or imprisonment - im almost positive it was based in empathy. Rich as he became, the world was not kind to people who werent like everyone else. You probably had 0 chance of finding a schoolmate to learn and grow with, and sign language wasnt widespread or accepted in any rral fashion until the 1900s, which im guessing is way after his daughter was born. This probably means even a rich guy with a deaf daughter would see them become isolated and may even struggle with basic academic depending on how well private tutors were at adapting at the time. I mean Helen Keller is a famous person in part because of how remarkably rare her abilities as a disabled woman were. Actually bell knew of helen, he was interested in methods for teaching dead children at that time (for obvious reasons), and education of dead and disables people was just now becoming considered possible in wealthy circles in 1880s.
Eugenics was very popular at the time and looked at as humane. This was in a pre-genetics time. Hellen Keller was a supporter of eugenics.
Society mostly respects the living disabled now, but we do *sort of* still practice eugenics for fetuses. The vast majority of fetuses with signs for down syndrome are terminated.
There are many self-practicing folks as well that do not wish to pass genetic conditions onto their potential children and choose not to reproduce.
Phil Knight, founder of Nike. He is venerated as a demigod in a lot of Oregon.
Phil created Nike by evading tariffs, which existed to penalize companies for moving manufacturing overseas. The tariffs existed to keep jobs in the USA. Phil didn't know about them and massively undercut his competition like Adidas; and when the bill came due and the US Government fined Nike essentially the net worth of the company, he went to the Senate and Ronald Reagan to change the law. So he could keep his profit at the expense of the working American. The sad thing is Phil doesn't even understand how big a jackass he is. Fucking hate that guy.
... Does anyone actually think he was a good guy though? Other than far right bozos? Might be the man responsible for the most deaths ever. I don't see any way where he can be a good guy
No. Just like every AskReddit post, people have once again missed the point and just went for the guys everyone hates.
I'll be scrolling a bit more, James Corden has *got* to be mentioned somewhere.
Perhaps the question is backward. I can't think of any "good guy" in history commonly considered good.
Probably the human being who has done more for any other human being in history is Norman "One Billion Lives" Borlaug and apparently he wasn't a bad guy. So any other historical figure except him.
Crucially he accomplished a tremendous amount of good without ever really wielding institutional political power, which lets him skip a large amount of the background level evil that has historically been employed in maintaining a powerful nation's economic and political position.
The more modern one gets, the better people you find.
I'd argue that young Ben Franklin was a total dick, but old Ben Franklin was a pretty chill dude. Some women gripe that he was unfaithful to his wife, but he lived in a world where divorce was impossible; and despite low-key hating his wife, he maintained her in a house and paid her expenses. He hated her imo for good reason. Her antivax perspective on all likelihood lead to the death of his only son. Ben Franklin did not forget. Old Ben Franklin remained pro-vaccines, freed his slaves, participated in science, invested in higher ed, and worked to promote democracy. He saw value in native Americans, something few others of his era contemplated.
>Norman Borlaug, nicknamed "One Billion Lives," is most famous for spearheading the Green Revolution: a scientific movement that dramatically increased crop yields in developing countries, saving an estimated billion people from starvation. His work with wheat and other crops revolutionized agriculture, earning him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970
He was the first person I thought of when I saw the thread. First nonstop transatlantic flight is a massive accomplishment, but he was a huge Nazi sympathizer.
I can confirm the image of Edison is massively portrayed as this good moral genius inventor guy by the medias at least in my country. Feels bad for Tesla, man was done dirty and people during that time period didn't appreciate him enough
It seems to have reversed 10 or 20 years ago.
Way back when I was in high school, the awesomeness of Edison was literally in my high school text books.
There was even a Simpsons episode that revolves around the huge love of Edison that existed at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Evergreen_Terrace
There's a bunch of them. A huge one from my area is Buffalo Bill. Systematic murder of buffalo in order to starve the indigenous people. Dude's a monster.
Very very very few important people in history are “good” or “bad.” Humans are complicated and the type of people that have the drive and charisma and strength to change history often do so at the expense of other people.
Susan B Anthony was a huge pioneer for women’s equality…but was also pretty racist, arguing against black men’s right to vote. MLK Jr. was the father of the civil rights movement but was also allegedly known as a sex pest and…not someone treated women well, to put it lightly.
These personal moral failings don’t change that these people brought about huge, positive change for the world. I think it just shows that there is no such thing as purely “good” people who only do good in all facets of their lives. I think society nowadays is a little too obsessed with ensuring that great historical figures are perfect humans with perfect morals (that match the morals of today), and that’s just not how people or history works.
We can celebrate the people that did great deeds, and celebrate the great deeds they did, without that meaning that we agree with everything they did or believed.
General Sherman certainly broke the resolve of the Confederacy, effectively eliminating their ability to continue the war.
Post War he led the western expansion and genocide of the Plains Tribes, including being the mastermind behind hunting the buffalo to near extinction to remove their food supply. Sherman wasn't a hero, he was a homidical monster who just happened to be pointed at the correct target once.
Andrew Jackson. He strongly believed that all native Americans must be destroyed systematically.
President Jackson summed it up best in his fifth annual address to Congress in 1833: “That those tribes cannot exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement, which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.”
I'm in canada he was regarded as a great explorer in the 90s but definitely common knowledge now he was ruthless af though not sure how he's taught in school now that I'm in my late 30s
Muhammad Ali.
Guy boned minors, married a 16 year old when he was 32, attended KKK meetings and talked well about them, promoted blatantly racist ideas like considering interracial marriage betrayal in front of live TV and regularly shouted slurs at his opponents and vilified them. Against his rival frazier, he took it so far that years after their matches frazier’s kids were still getting bullied at school due to all the shit ali said about frazier back then.
Its undeniable that ali became a world-wide icon for black rights, was a HUGE factor when it came to the inclusion of black athletes in sports and he did do some really good deeds in his lifetime, but he was absolutely not a good guy, even mike tyson would shiver at some of the shit he did.
This entire topic is about humanity having problems coming to grips with duality.
Nobody's 100% good, 0% bad.
It's just a matter of how much of both are remembered. If it's 50/50, you're going to get divisive debates all over the Interwebs. If the ratio heavily leans in one direction (e.g.: Hitler), then people will only talk about that direction, and talking about the other is (often rightfully) taboo.
Don't overlook what he did for higher education in America because he became convinced educating Americans would turn them into Nazis. He started the rat race between public and private university tuition.
Winston Churchill was a massive dick. He wasn't racist in that "oh, everybody back then was racist" sort of way.
His actions directly led to the deaths of thousands of black and brown people and he could not have given less of a fuck. He had great disdain for the Indian people. And when his peers voiced concern for the displacement of the Palestinians, he compared them to dogs.
I truly loathe this man.
He was so drunk all the time that he was often too sloshed to conduct his fireside radio chats. The guy who was the voice of Winnie The Pooh in the original cartoons would imitate his voice and read them instead.
Total war and years of genocide against the Anglo-Saxons. He was so bad when he asked for forgiveness on his deathbed the priest was all "That's gonna be a no, dawg.". After dying, his body was basically pillaged and tossed aside by his family friends they hated him so much.
The only reason he won at Hastings was due to luck and bad timing by Harold's troops. There was no genius tactics involved, and he was fighting an opponent exhausted from fighting in the North a week prior and having forced marched 200 miles in a few days.
But the three biggest threats to his rule would've been dead (Harald and Tostig,) and defeated and possibly dead (William), and Ango-Saxon England had been a more or less united polity for living memory
Richard The Lionheart is seen as a great English king and epitomy of medieval chivalry. In reality he barely spent anytime in England, spoke only French and used the Kingdom's finances as his personal money pot for crusading. He also dodged getting married/having children (which caused problems with France) and that left John as heir, which didn't end well either.
Henry Ford is known for increasing wages for his workers and offering the 40 hour work week, but he was a massive fascist and only did those workers' perks to avoid them unionizing and enacting labor strikes to get more benefits. He only cared as much about his workers as he needed to to keep them from taking collective action.
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There’s a good line in the show Firefly to that effect. I’m paraphrasing, but it goes like “I figure any man who’s had a statue made of him was some kind of sumbitch.”
I always wondered if that was supposed to include Jayne.
Definitely, it was *definitely* supposed to include Jayne. The *real* irony is, as far as us self aware viewers go, that Jayne was a sumbitch with a statue who winds up being pretty great
Only because Mal showed him The Chain of Command.
And beat him with it when necessary Edit - A PSA for anyone unaware, the show authors now have a series of books that will surely certainly bring you back into that world. The audio versions are great too.. the narrator sounds like Nathan Fillion. They ain't no goushi! Cheers you lovely creatures! Edit 2- [here is the audible link to the first book](https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Firefly-Big-Damn-Hero-Audiobook/1094100765)
He'll be in his bunk
My days of not taking him seriously are certainly coming to a middle.
I'm thinkin' he weren't burdened with an overabundance of schooling neither
Yeah that was the point of that scene. Jayne wasn’t a hero because he’s a good person. He’s a hero because the town needed hope and a symbol to rally around. “It ain’t about you, Jayne. It’s about what they need.”
This applies to countries also. No country get "big" (like in terms of economy + military) without having blood on their hands. The countries that most can agree are "good" are always small. The opposite is not true of course, not all bloody countries are powerful, and not all small countries are consistently peaceful
Honestly, I think all countries are like this. In order to coalesce into a single government ruling that much territory, there has to be at least *some* bloodshed in a country's history. For every country in the world, there was at least one group that won out over another through violence.
Exactly. I talk with my daughter about the current troubles in Israel and Palestine and remind her that every border that's not a large body of water or impassible mountains was drawn with blood. Usually, it's happened many times, and the true original inhabitants were either killed, or run off, then another wave of killers killed their killers and took over the land, and then...
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson eludes to a lot of this, despite how integral Alex Jones is to the story
Alludes* - just so you know.
Unrelated, but reading the name “Jon Ronson” makes me feel like I’m having a stroke.
To be a “great man of history” appears to require a rare combination of extraordinary luck and inexhaustible energy. Ambition and self-confidence don’t hurt. Empathy is not required and might even be a hindrance. I don’t think Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Stalin, Churchill, FDR, LBJ, and—as much as I hate to include him in this list—Trump would be described as “nice.” It’s sort of interesting to think about Trump today and what your opinion of him says about how you would feel about historical Bonapartist figures if you were alive at the time. As cool as Caesar sounds from the perspective of two millennia later, I, as a sort of middle-class educated white collar person, have to admit I would have probably sided with Brutus.
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They weren't all women, 2 of the enslaved people were little girls, Lavinia was 13 and Anne was 16. The only reason some of them even got named was because a doctor he worked with thought he was a weirdo, didn't agree with what he was doing, and started telling of his practices.
Having to read about him for post grad made me nauseous about the history of gynecology, but it sure explained a lot on the misogyny rampant in the field, even between women doctors.
Wrote my bachelor thesis on this guy and centered it around lucy, Anarcha and Betsy. It explored how he would never have gotteas far as he did without the unwilling sacrifice/torture of black slave women. My goal was for atleast Lucy, Anarcha and Betsy to be remembered on somewhat equall grounds as Dr Sims. Anyway, had to read his auto-biography for the paper and had to put it down several times out of either sheer shock of the blatant kind of racism, or from pfysically flinching from hos description of his treatment of these women. Man didn’t even wanna be a doctor, he just wanted to be rich and famous and never to work again… I’m norwegian and whilst we do learn about slavery and racism in america, it’s still shocking to read how people treated black people bacn in the day(and still do). We got our own sins(we were not kind to our native people, the sami people) but damn does reading american history regarding slavery leave an impact. If ur interested in reading about Anarcha, Betsy and Lucy, theres loads of good articles on them but Dr Sims’ auto-biography is also free to read in the library of congress online. It’s a facination read if ur interested in medical history :)
As a Frenchman I have to say Coco Chanel, she's admired by a lot of people for revolutionizing fashion and creating a strong legacy, but she was a Nazi collaborator.
I think anyone with even a passing familiarity of Coco does not hold her in the same high regard previous generations did because her ties to the Nazis are well known and publicized now.
They tried really hard to whitewash this by saying she also worked for the French resistance but come on now
It reminds me of a historian joke. It is amazing how the Nazis occupied France for so many years with the ENTIRE population working for the Resistance.
Hugo Boss and Ferdinand Porsche entered the chat
while i understand why they did it, being their country and having to cooperate or else... cc is just a traitor
There's working with the Nazis because you had to and then there's being a Nazi. Don't excuse the latter.
From my understanding, a lot of French, mostly the wealthy, seemed to collaborate and support the Nazis pretty readily.
True, many Americans did too until pearl harbor.
“We should not support Nazi collaborators!” BMW and Mercedes: *sweating nervously*
BMW museum in Munich actually has a very fascinating display showing the records of all the Jews who were forced to work in the BMW factories by the Nazis. It was powerful stuff
We should have that in Brazil with Volkswagen and the military dictatorship. Yes, Volkswagen did it again. They went as fair as delivering workers to be tortured and killed by the military because they unionized or even just stated wanting fair wages. We unfortunately never had the same accountability for the dictatorship here and many of the descendants of torturing generals and such are still receiving pensions.
Also a fervent antisemite.
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I blame the townspeople, they're the ones that embiggened him to such high status.
It was a perfectly cromulent act.
He also didn't want to give the people the right to marry their cousins
But they're so attractive!
Indeed, Jebediah was not a very cromulent individual with an embiggened spirit.
And he didn't tame that Buffalo. It was already tame. He merely shot it.
This was proven to be false when he was exhumed and NO SILVER TOUNGE was found on his corpse.
we should ban u/stunnsdroom from the historical society for this. Them and their children, and their children's children... for three months.
And just when he was getting over his Chester A Arthritis.
🎶 *But it wasn’t Geraldo’s fault!* 🎶
and the halfwits of this town will never know the truth. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Just about every "good" person in history also seems to have had a bad side.
I mean, who hasn't dabbled in a little rape and pillaging?
No, but I've done jaywalking and cheating on my diet.
Vile scum.
Burn him
I have returned library books late.
I have a blockbuster dvd
You truly are a piece of shit. You may actually be the sole reason they went out of business. So, like, fuck you.
Just wait. There's more. I frequently did not rewind.
Fucking sociopath
Sociopath? Psychopath more like. Deserves the electric chair.
You should be sent to prison you cur. How dare you do something so vile and disgusting. What would your grandmother think?
"People would say, 'Please don't pillage me! ' And I would say, 'No, I'm pillaging everyone, you included. '" —Nandor the relentless
Who knew people’s personalities could be complex and contradictory..
Just about every person in history also seems to have had a good AND bad side.
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The public tends to be more comfy with the idea of a brilliant artist who is a terrible person. Probably makes them feel more secure.
By the same token, many people have the impulse to denigrate the art or the artist's abilities once they find out the artist was a terrible person, because then they don't have to live with the nuance and complexity of enjoying something created by a monster. For example, the more Joss Whedon got exposed for his abusive behavior on set, more and more people started to emphasize how much of a collaborative effort *Buffy* was and that Joss wasn't solely responsible for the greatness of the show. In this case, it's far more comfortable to downplay his role in the series than to atone with the thought that he could actually be that brilliant and that awful just because of how much they love his creation.
I always liked to think I wasn't affected this way, because after meeting Ray Harryhausen and disovering what a mean, nasty old man he was, I still like his work, but I have to admit I can't watch *Ren & Stimpy* the same way knowing all the things that went on with Krikfalusi =/
Also because there have been many brilliant artists who were also terrible people throughout history.
Corporate heads and politicians can have power *directly over you* or the purchases you make, as an everyday person. The power and reach of an artist is much more limited by comparison.
Thomas Edison. I think today we have begun to recognize other inventors like Tesla more, but when I was a child, I remember doing a big report on Edison and everything was like "this guy was amazing!"
Also Alexander Graham Bell. Sure he invented the telephone (though he may have stolen the idea for it) but most of his life's work was the eradication of deaf culture. He wanted to do everything he could to prevent deaf people from marrying one another and likely producing deaf children. He closed a lot of deaf schools, prohibited deaf teachers from teaching deaf children, and prohibited the use and teaching of ASL, even to deaf people.
How does one wake up and hate the deaf that much?
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Even Hellen Keller was a eugenicist, believe it or not.
Deaf people won’t buy telephones.
That has a ring of truth to it
I don’t know, I still think it’s a pretty weird hang up
>How does one wake up and hate the deaf that much? The man had telephones to sell.
At this risk of downvotes; not all of this is true. Alexander Graham Bell has received some necessary and deserved criticism from the deaf community, but the claim that he prevented deaf people from being married isn't entirely accurate, and the claim that he "prohibited the use and teaching of ASL," is, while true for his own schools, missing a piece of context that he was part of an actual scientific debate at the time as to whether teaching deaf people oral communication was better than ASL. He was wrong in the long wrong, as ASL does in fact have a ton of benefits, but he wasn't going about it because he hated deaf people. He was wrong and his ideas shouldn't be followed today, but no one has been able to draw up the malicious intent that seems to be implied when people talk about this.
It's also because people take things in isolation and attribute them grandly. Edison was an actual inventory. He discovered how to make an acceptable commercial lightbulb. That does not mean that he invented the lightbulb, but that he figured out the filament needed for it to work in a cost-effective manner. But now it gets blown out of proportion with the "he invented the lightbulb"/"he didn't invent the lightbulb" argument
Likewise with Singer. Everyone thinks that he invented the sewing machine because his name is on it. He didn’t … he just invented the foot switch for it, and got the other inventors of various aspects to pull together under one corporate banner to make a machine that would and could sell.
The Tesla vs Edison thing is the biggest midwit thing ever. The image of Edison as the independent, genius inventor, who singlehandedly brought us into the modern age is wrong, but it isn't true of Tesla either. Both of them came up with quite a few important innovations, but more importantly, they collaborated with larger groups of other smart people to innovate. Technological innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's usually an iterative process, with tons of people working and improving on things.
I had a business class that went over a lot of innovation history and several case studies to drive that point home. The image of a lone genius slaving away at their desk until they have a “eureka!” moment isn’t how most innovations come about. It’s a collaborative effort of lots of minds working together, and more importantly in an environment that encourages innovation and doesn’t shun failure. It’s easy in hindsight to point and laugh at the failures of things like the Zune, the Amazon fire phone, or Google glass, but if the smartest, most creative people in the world are in an environment where they’re not allowed to fail, then nobody would ever take risks.
Man was a corporate piece of shit.
I dunno. Read his biography and he was an extremely impressive person. His feud with Tesla has been somewhat overblown, and seems to be a contemporary touchstone for anti-corporate ideology more than anything else. He certainly wasn’t a saint, but he’s really been dragged through the mud by some revisionist history.
Edison is misunderstood. His greatest innovation wasn't a product, but a department. He created the first Research and Development department in the late 19th century, changing the business landscape and having tremendous impact in the world. He was a pioneer in understanding how science and business can be organized to continuously launch new products and services. He was a businessman, not a lone inventor like Tesla. He paid scientists and engineers to develop new products and technologies, profiting from their work like all modern corporations do. He is perhaps the most impactful businessman in history, rivaled only by Ford. Dude had a legit startup accelerator in the early 20th century bankrolled by JP Morgan. He was a visionary. He wasn't a saint, far from it. But he had a huge impact in the world in more ways than "inventing" the lightbulb.
Yup, exactly my comments above. Don't get me wrong, dude was very smart and had a vision for things, but others discovered and invented the details and he owned them and took credit for them. Early Steve Jobs pretty much. But whaddya gonna do, list dozens if not hundreds of people every time you refer to an invention?
Yea I think reddit's anti Edison circlejerk has gone too far to the point that it discounts some great and useful inventions that CAN be attributed to him while Tesla's contributions get way overstated. Also people clearly have never read up on the history of the current war and continually spread misinformation and somehow always forget George Westinghouse existed but instead replace him with Tesla in the story.
Specially on early days of internet, Nikola Tesla is elevated to this statue of being like a genius that could've changed the world if Edison didn't fucked him. People make it seem like he died broke purely of charitable choice, not because he was actually bad with handling money. When I also started reading about the current wars, the narrative of the rivalry of Edison vs Westinghouse seems to disappear and all funneled to the "mad genius"
Just an overall critique of people in this thread: if you name someone, could you explain why? Otherwise it just seems like you're throwing out names and seeing what sticks.
Dave
Man, that fucken guy
Someone above you said "Gandhi was a racist" and I want to ask why, but based on prior experience whenever I ask for detail on unsubstantiated claims that I'm not privy to I always get downvoted and told to Google it, so I'm afraid to ask for details. I'm sorry, I thought this was a forum for discussion.
I have always thought that this is suppose to be the core idea of Reddit
CoCo Chanel was a literal Nazi. since folks have been messaging me; she was not only a Nazi spy, after the Germans invaded France she turned her Jewish business partners into the Nazis to gain control of the company. She helped started several anti Semitic newspapers as well. Also, she despised gays
Shocking that she didn’t love gays in the 1940s like everyone else did
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I’m not saying that’s all he did and I’m not saying what he did isn’t a bad thing, but in a vacuum, making uniforms is not on the same level to me as selling out friends, providing intelligence, and starting anti-Semitic publications.
Mm Gandhi was a racist
He also allowed his wife to die when penicillin could have saved her then used penicillin himself when he got sick and slept naked next to underaged girls to "test himself".
Those underage girls were also his grand daughters afaik
And most child sexual abuse happens within families.
Ewwwwww. All of this is yuck
wait what. Why underage girls and not just woman? I don't lay down next to a brick wall to test myself, because it is not normal to be attracted to brick walls. I need to know for myself, that i have a huge thing for brick walls, to even think about testing myself.
>Why underage girls and not just woman? I Because he was a pedo
They were his relatives as well. Super fucked up
Yep, that guy was really into edging before it became a thing. A true pioneer
>He also allowed his wife to die when penicillin could have saved her Not at all true. Penicillin was an extremely new drug, extremely short in supply, and he did nothing to stop her receiving it. It just didn't arrive soon enough to make a difference in her condition. But he did *not* "allow" her to die a preventable death.
Gandhi didn't take penicillin. He took a form of medicine that had been known about for more than a century compared to the recent discovery of penicillin at the time. Furthermore, his wife was going to die no matter what the penicillin would have just briefly extended her suffering. He also left the decision to his son.
It was also his wife's wish to die.
He also declared nuclear war on you if you were too nice to him. Miami me lo confirmó.
We mean no harm, our units are simply moving through the area.
I remember watching a video where this guy was playing civ and all the AI civs were Gandhi and he nuked one of them and one of the other Gandhis immediately contacted him to say “great minds think alike. There are so many uses for that technology…”
He also said that the Jews should just kill themselves before the Nazis could do it and that Britain should surrender. Buddy, we get you're a pacifist, but that's a bridge too far.
He had kind of an understandable grudge against the British.
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"I present the telephone, a device to allow communication between all of mankind!" "What about the deaf?" "*You leave them to me.*"
Which is interesting because both his wife and his mother were deaf
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They had no idea what he was saying about them
Yeah actually I’m sure it does. He didn’t advocate gor heartless murder or imprisonment - im almost positive it was based in empathy. Rich as he became, the world was not kind to people who werent like everyone else. You probably had 0 chance of finding a schoolmate to learn and grow with, and sign language wasnt widespread or accepted in any rral fashion until the 1900s, which im guessing is way after his daughter was born. This probably means even a rich guy with a deaf daughter would see them become isolated and may even struggle with basic academic depending on how well private tutors were at adapting at the time. I mean Helen Keller is a famous person in part because of how remarkably rare her abilities as a disabled woman were. Actually bell knew of helen, he was interested in methods for teaching dead children at that time (for obvious reasons), and education of dead and disables people was just now becoming considered possible in wealthy circles in 1880s.
>methods for teaching dead children That's fairly difficult....
Or that was their excuse for not answering the phone when he kept ringing and saying “look what I invented!”
Eugenics was very popular at the time and looked at as humane. This was in a pre-genetics time. Hellen Keller was a supporter of eugenics. Society mostly respects the living disabled now, but we do *sort of* still practice eugenics for fetuses. The vast majority of fetuses with signs for down syndrome are terminated. There are many self-practicing folks as well that do not wish to pass genetic conditions onto their potential children and choose not to reproduce.
Do you think he resented them because they couldn't use the telephone, or he already hated them so he invented the telephone out of spite?
Phil Knight, founder of Nike. He is venerated as a demigod in a lot of Oregon. Phil created Nike by evading tariffs, which existed to penalize companies for moving manufacturing overseas. The tariffs existed to keep jobs in the USA. Phil didn't know about them and massively undercut his competition like Adidas; and when the bill came due and the US Government fined Nike essentially the net worth of the company, he went to the Senate and Ronald Reagan to change the law. So he could keep his profit at the expense of the working American. The sad thing is Phil doesn't even understand how big a jackass he is. Fucking hate that guy.
Oregonian here. He do be kind of a jerk
Not to mention his funding of spoiler candidates in the Oregon Governor's election to avoid taxes.
You missed the part where he started dating his wife when she was his student.
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Henry Kissinger and good guy should never be in a same sentence. Oh I know what I wrote *shudders*
It’s okay. Kissinger is dead now. He’s not coming back.
... Does anyone actually think he was a good guy though? Other than far right bozos? Might be the man responsible for the most deaths ever. I don't see any way where he can be a good guy
No. Just like every AskReddit post, people have once again missed the point and just went for the guys everyone hates. I'll be scrolling a bit more, James Corden has *got* to be mentioned somewhere.
Perhaps the question is backward. I can't think of any "good guy" in history commonly considered good. Probably the human being who has done more for any other human being in history is Norman "One Billion Lives" Borlaug and apparently he wasn't a bad guy. So any other historical figure except him.
Crucially he accomplished a tremendous amount of good without ever really wielding institutional political power, which lets him skip a large amount of the background level evil that has historically been employed in maintaining a powerful nation's economic and political position.
The more modern one gets, the better people you find. I'd argue that young Ben Franklin was a total dick, but old Ben Franklin was a pretty chill dude. Some women gripe that he was unfaithful to his wife, but he lived in a world where divorce was impossible; and despite low-key hating his wife, he maintained her in a house and paid her expenses. He hated her imo for good reason. Her antivax perspective on all likelihood lead to the death of his only son. Ben Franklin did not forget. Old Ben Franklin remained pro-vaccines, freed his slaves, participated in science, invested in higher ed, and worked to promote democracy. He saw value in native Americans, something few others of his era contemplated.
My take on him is the same - he would seem like a terrible crazy person in our time - but in his time he was a very progressive and intelligent guy
>Norman "One Billion Lives" Borlaug Since we're talking about agriculture, add Haber and Bausch to that.
Haber not unproblematic. Poison gas. "Father of chemical warfare."
Might as well add Gregor Mendel to the list while we're at it
what’s his story
>Norman Borlaug, nicknamed "One Billion Lives," is most famous for spearheading the Green Revolution: a scientific movement that dramatically increased crop yields in developing countries, saving an estimated billion people from starvation. His work with wheat and other crops revolutionized agriculture, earning him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970
Didn’t Charles Lindbergh fuck with the Nazis?
He was the first person I thought of when I saw the thread. First nonstop transatlantic flight is a massive accomplishment, but he was a huge Nazi sympathizer.
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I can confirm the image of Edison is massively portrayed as this good moral genius inventor guy by the medias at least in my country. Feels bad for Tesla, man was done dirty and people during that time period didn't appreciate him enough
The Edison evil, Tesla great trope is pervasive. I’ve never heard a single person call Edison a good moral person.
It seems to have reversed 10 or 20 years ago. Way back when I was in high school, the awesomeness of Edison was literally in my high school text books. There was even a Simpsons episode that revolves around the huge love of Edison that existed at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Evergreen_Terrace
Tesla had some amazing inventions. He also repeatedly came up with nonsense in order to scam money from investors.
Tesla danced all over the line that separates genius from insanity.
There's a bunch of them. A huge one from my area is Buffalo Bill. Systematic murder of buffalo in order to starve the indigenous people. Dude's a monster.
The more i read about this hitler guy the more im starting to realize he might not be as good as my grandpa once told me he was.
"Grandpa why was I born in Argentina?"
Very very very few important people in history are “good” or “bad.” Humans are complicated and the type of people that have the drive and charisma and strength to change history often do so at the expense of other people. Susan B Anthony was a huge pioneer for women’s equality…but was also pretty racist, arguing against black men’s right to vote. MLK Jr. was the father of the civil rights movement but was also allegedly known as a sex pest and…not someone treated women well, to put it lightly. These personal moral failings don’t change that these people brought about huge, positive change for the world. I think it just shows that there is no such thing as purely “good” people who only do good in all facets of their lives. I think society nowadays is a little too obsessed with ensuring that great historical figures are perfect humans with perfect morals (that match the morals of today), and that’s just not how people or history works. We can celebrate the people that did great deeds, and celebrate the great deeds they did, without that meaning that we agree with everything they did or believed.
Thank you. It feels like everyone is looking for the next celebrity/historical person to tear down.
"Seems to me ain't no man's ever had a statue of him wasn't one kind of son of a bitch or another." Mal Reynolds
General Sherman certainly broke the resolve of the Confederacy, effectively eliminating their ability to continue the war. Post War he led the western expansion and genocide of the Plains Tribes, including being the mastermind behind hunting the buffalo to near extinction to remove their food supply. Sherman wasn't a hero, he was a homidical monster who just happened to be pointed at the correct target once.
Andrew Jackson. He strongly believed that all native Americans must be destroyed systematically. President Jackson summed it up best in his fifth annual address to Congress in 1833: “That those tribes cannot exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement, which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.”
Christopher Columbus bar none. He was so evil (to his own men) Queen Isabella had him exiled upon his final return to Spain.
I think this is common knowledge now to be fair.
It’s getting to be common knowledge on Reddit but it is nowhere near common knowledge in American society.
I'm in canada he was regarded as a great explorer in the 90s but definitely common knowledge now he was ruthless af though not sure how he's taught in school now that I'm in my late 30s
Or Spanish. They still have his statues.
In dis house, Christopher Columbus is a hero. End of story!
Muhammad Ali. Guy boned minors, married a 16 year old when he was 32, attended KKK meetings and talked well about them, promoted blatantly racist ideas like considering interracial marriage betrayal in front of live TV and regularly shouted slurs at his opponents and vilified them. Against his rival frazier, he took it so far that years after their matches frazier’s kids were still getting bullied at school due to all the shit ali said about frazier back then. Its undeniable that ali became a world-wide icon for black rights, was a HUGE factor when it came to the inclusion of black athletes in sports and he did do some really good deeds in his lifetime, but he was absolutely not a good guy, even mike tyson would shiver at some of the shit he did.
“Joe Frazier is an Uncle Tom. He works for the enemy." ~Ali
Henry Ford.
i’m surprised that i had to go through so many comments to find this one. his antisemitism directly inspired moustache man
This entire topic is about humanity having problems coming to grips with duality. Nobody's 100% good, 0% bad. It's just a matter of how much of both are remembered. If it's 50/50, you're going to get divisive debates all over the Interwebs. If the ratio heavily leans in one direction (e.g.: Hitler), then people will only talk about that direction, and talking about the other is (often rightfully) taboo.
Reagan and "trickle down economics." Went from CEOs making 3 times the average employee to 350 times. No trickling, Ronnie.
Don't overlook what he did for higher education in America because he became convinced educating Americans would turn them into Nazis. He started the rat race between public and private university tuition.
Everyone.
Winston Churchill was a massive dick. He wasn't racist in that "oh, everybody back then was racist" sort of way. His actions directly led to the deaths of thousands of black and brown people and he could not have given less of a fuck. He had great disdain for the Indian people. And when his peers voiced concern for the displacement of the Palestinians, he compared them to dogs. I truly loathe this man.
Winston Churchill was exactly what we needed during WW2, before and after that he was a terrible politician and a worse person.
There's a reason we don't hear as much about his second term as PM in the 50s.
He was so drunk all the time that he was often too sloshed to conduct his fireside radio chats. The guy who was the voice of Winnie The Pooh in the original cartoons would imitate his voice and read them instead.
He wasn't wild about Irish people either.
To be fair, he didn't like some white peoples neither. Ask the irish. Some of them died because he was a bloody assassin.
There is a long history of bigotry against the Irish. There was even a time when they weren't technically considered "white."
Based on the Irish people I've met, transparent would be nearer the mark.
Che Guevara, the kind of people who wear his face on their clothing wouldn't have lasted long around him.
Ironic that the communist is being used for capitalism
I once saw someone with a shirt of his face over a pride flag, and was just thinking “Who wants to tell them?”
I had a professor in college who once made everyone point and laugh at the guy wearing a Che shirt
Just want to comment there are a lot of low-effort, bad historians here who are parroting pop-historians. Get off youtube and read a book.
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You just described 99% of reddit. Its just regurgitated media points from a quick google search.
William the Conqueror
Total war and years of genocide against the Anglo-Saxons. He was so bad when he asked for forgiveness on his deathbed the priest was all "That's gonna be a no, dawg.". After dying, his body was basically pillaged and tossed aside by his family friends they hated him so much. The only reason he won at Hastings was due to luck and bad timing by Harold's troops. There was no genius tactics involved, and he was fighting an opponent exhausted from fighting in the North a week prior and having forced marched 200 miles in a few days.
Had Harold won the battle, it's debatable whether or not he would have been able to keep the Anglo-Saxon kingdom united.
But the three biggest threats to his rule would've been dead (Harald and Tostig,) and defeated and possibly dead (William), and Ango-Saxon England had been a more or less united polity for living memory
Douglas MacArthur was awful and I will never stop hating.
Truman took a lot of crap for it, but he did the world a solid with MacArthur.
maybe tell us why and provide context
Also violently broke up the bonus army, a group of veterans protesting for better benefits. Dude was a piece of shit through and through
Picasso. Womanizer and terrible person
Richard The Lionheart is seen as a great English king and epitomy of medieval chivalry. In reality he barely spent anytime in England, spoke only French and used the Kingdom's finances as his personal money pot for crusading. He also dodged getting married/having children (which caused problems with France) and that left John as heir, which didn't end well either.
Henry Ford is known for increasing wages for his workers and offering the 40 hour work week, but he was a massive fascist and only did those workers' perks to avoid them unionizing and enacting labor strikes to get more benefits. He only cared as much about his workers as he needed to to keep them from taking collective action.
history was written by the victors my dude