Top 10 Dictators of All Time

Cracked.com can go eat a dick. If you are the kind of person who is amused by their easily digestible list-formatted articles then you probably have the attention span of a small rodent. Anyone with a high-school education is capable of devising such lists. It is also a socialist haven for angsty teens to churn out shit like this . It requires a miniscule amount of writing talent to list a bunch of arbitrary items and write facetious remarks about them. Most of the articles deal with trivial nonsense anyway like “ten ways your anal beads will give you more than you bargained for”.

Anyways, the following is a list of the top ten dictators of all time. They are chosen based on how they have led their respective nations to glorious triumph. I do not intent to include Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, or Mao Zedong. That would be too cliché and obvious. In case you haven’t been able to tell, this entire post is a work of satire, so if you are offended by the things I have written, you can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.

10. Augusto Pinochet

What do you get when you mix Francisco Franco, Milton Friedman, and George Lopez into one? Motherfucking Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet is an odd exception to the history books. There are many who consider him to be a ruthless dictator who plunged the nation of Chile into poverty, while others praise him for saving the nation from communists. Although he was undoubtedly a ruthless dictator, his economic policies lifted the nation of Chile out of a terrible recession and brought relative prosperity to the country. He was a member of the coup d’état which ousted the socialist government of Salvador Allende in 1973. Augusto was greatly influenced by free-market capitalist philosophy. Once he took power, he sought to implement his capitalist philosophy in the best way he thought possible—by slaughtering everyone who disagreed with him.

In 1975, Pinochet’s government conducted Operation Condor. Its main objective was to purge South America of all the socialist and communism scum. Over 60,000 deaths occurred as a result of Pinochet’s government and Operation Condor. Evidently, murdering communists can get a bit tiring after a while, so in 1990, Pinochet peacefully stepped down from office. The British government saw this as an opportunity to charge Pinochet for all those shenanigans he thought he could get away with. The British Government, in all their stoic arrogance were not aware of the fact that nobody fucks with Augusto Pinochet. So, in 2000 he moved back to Chile and lounged around on the beach with his amassed fortune of 29 million dollars until he died in 2006 at the petrified old age of 91.

9. Suharto

Pinochet’s communist body count is absolutely dwarfed when held up to the reign of Suharto. You really have to stand in awe at the carnage that occurred under his regime. Much like Cher, Madonna, or God, Suharto was obviously way too cool to have a second name. Cool, he definitely was. A Suharto by any other name would not sound nearly as sweet.

He wrestled power from the socialist government of Sukarno to become president of Indonesia in 1967. Suharto was likely pissed off because Sukarno’s name was too similar to his. Anyway, following his rise to power, Suharto and his government purged the entire country of all socialists and communists, dragging political party members out of their houses and shooting them in the street. No due process for those motherfuckers. The purges resulted in the deaths of over half a million communists, thus laying the groundwork for Suharto’s thirty-two year presidency.

The killings didn’t stop there however. Next on his sights was the defenceless speck of an island called East Timor. Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1974 and didn’t get tired and go back home until twenty years later. The invasion was marked with such violence and death that it could best be described as genocide. What is interesting about the East Timor genocide was its lack of publicity in American media. Despite the outright slaughter of the Timorese people, the American psyche is almost devoid of the whole incident or the aforementioned communist purges of 1967. They were probably all too busy watching the new season of Night Rider.

8. Muammar Gaddafi

His time in office may not be marked with the brutal violence of the two aforementioned dictators on this list, but what he lacks in bloodshed, Gaddafi makes up for it with pure batshit insanity. Have you ever been lounging around your harem; smoking your hookah and praising Allah when you get the sudden urge to kick all the Italians out of your nation? Well Gaddafi sure the fuck did. The Libyan dictator of over forty years was unfortunately murdered last year by savage barbarians; obviously ungrateful for the favour he had done his people.

Up until his violent ousting in 2011, Gaddafi claimed that the rebels had been hypnotized by potions given to them by foreigners. Like many great dictators whose greatness in misunderstood by the world around them, Gaddafi was prone to paranoid behaviour and idiosyncrasies. The former Libyan flag was a solid green field, He thought that Israel was responsible for the JFK assassination, and he travels with an entourage of female virgin bodyguards (although many such bodyguards have later claimed to have been sexually abused by the dictator). The list of nonsense goes on. However for dictator standards, Gaddafi was generally well liked.  Even after he had been murdered, Gaddafi still had a considerably loyal following and was known to travel through the streets of Tripoli in an open limousine. The Pope could sure learn a thing or two from the man.

7. Maximilien Robespierre

Apart from looking like a gremlin, Maximilien Robespierre was arguably one of the most psychopathic despots of the eighteenth century. Robespierre, although not technically a dictator in the traditional sense, was one of the lead figures in the French revolution in 1789 and thereby held an extraordinary amount of political influence. 

The aim of the revolution was to overthrow the current French monarchy, by which the French peasants felt they were being oppressed. It was influenced by many of the Enlightenment thinkers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, who advocated liberty and basic human rights.  After the monarchy was overthrown in 1789 in a bloody revolution, Robespierre sought to implement these philosophical ideologies in the most appropriate manner possible—terrorism. I never read anything by Rousseau that advocated the political use of terror or gruesomely beheading your enemies, but apparently Robespierre had read The Social Contract a little more thoroughly than I had.

In 1793, Robespierre and the other members of the Revolution funded the Committee for Public Safety (which is not much different than the Department of Public Safety today). Its main objective was to gather up enemies of the Revolution and slice off their heads with the guillotine. It is estimated that over 40,000 people were executed by Robespierre’s orders simply because they didn’t hate the Monarchy enough. Hell, even Georges Danton, who was a member of the committee himself was guillotined because he had the audacity to propose that maybe they shouldn’t kill so many innocent people. Goddamn pacifists. After guillotining everyone he possibly could, it is rumoured that Robespierre even guillotined the executioner himself.

Evidently, the old saying is true: “what goes around comes around”. In 1794, the people had enough of Robespierre’s shit and he was guillotined himself. It never does pay to be a douchebag.

6. Sappurmurat Niyazov

Niyazov was one of those few dictators who was crazier than he was evil. He was the President of Turkmenistan from 1990 to 2006. After declaring independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, Mr. Niyazov promptly threw modesty to the dogs and established himself as Turkmenbashi: President for Life. Like all dictatorships run by illiterate, narcissistic fatsos, Turkmenistan was in for a wacky and hilarious sixteen years of totalitarian rule. Probably compensating for an astronomically microscopic penis, Niyazov developed a personality cult around himself that would make Stalin and Gaddafi look like the epitome of self-restraint. Giant golden statues of Sappurmurat line the streets of Ashgabat, Turkmenistan’s capital. One of them was even designed to always face the sun. 

The trademarks of Niyazov’s rule however, are his arbitrary edicts on banning things. He has gloriously declared that the following things are to be purged from his nation: gold crowns on teeth, makeup on women, dogs, chewing tobacco, and AIDS. Who knew that the spread of a deadly disease could be halted by the demand of a dictator who looked like an anthropomorphic lima bean?

Apparently Niyazov believed himself to be a great philosopher as well, writing a book called Ruhnama. During his reign, he forced all his subjects to read and memorize it. Nobody could obtain a driver’s license in Turkmenistan until they did. Although I’ve never had the privilege of reading it myself, I couldn’t imagine the self-praise of an illiterate man could really classify as profound philosophy. Niyazov unfortunately perished in 2006, leaving the world with a howling vacuum of comedic antics.

5. Idi Amin

Whether or not Idi Amin was a human or simply a shaven wookie is still being determined by modern scientists. What we do know is that After Uganda declared independence from Britain in 1970, Idi Amin was declared president of the nation. He retained this position for the eight years between 1971 and 1979. During these eight years, he somehow executed up to 500,000 political dissidents. Ambition sure goes a long way.

Prior to ruling Uganda with an iron fist, Amin was a heavyweight boxer, rugby player, and military lieutenant, neither of which are qualifying factors for the leader of a nation. He was known to be good friends with aforementioned Muammar Gaddafi, with whom he allied in his war against Tanzania. In 1977, Britain became disgruntled with Uganda’s domestic policy of slaughtering its own citizens and thus severed diplomatic ties with them. Idi Amin twisted this incident into an indication of personal success, claiming he had conquered the entire British Empire. Idi Amin was also known for his Anti-Semitism and his fanhood of the tyrannical state of Saudi Arabia.

4. Leopold II

As an employer, what do you think would be some methods which you could implement that would increase the efficiency of your employees? Giving them free coffee? Extending their break hours? Maybe a casual-dress Friday? Well, Leopold II of Belgium didn’t believe in any of that humanitarian bullshit. If you did not meet the quotas demanded by Leopold and his colonial goons, they would chop your hands off. That was sure to make you more productive!

During the colonial era of the nineteenth century, the ownership of Africa was carved up among the European nations. For instance, Britain got modern-day Uganda, South Africa, Egypt, and Zimbabwe, Italy got Libya, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, France got Algeria and Tunisia, while Belgium got the Congo. Although the country of Belgium was only a tenth of the size of the Congo, they were determined to exploit its mineral  resources to the maximum extent. The Congo (or the Congo Free State, as he renamed it) was rich in natural resources such as ivory and rubber. Just like the modern superpowers of today, King Leopold allocated much of the resources he owned to collecting these natural resources for his great nation. Adhering to the general philosophy of the time, Leopold thought that black people were inherently uncivilized and thus needed the guidance of the white man to point him in the direction of prosperity. At least, that’s what he told everyone. In reality, he ran the Congo as a brutal mercenary state and is thought to have massacred up to fifteen million Congolese. He also had a pretty cool beard.

3. Caligula

Why do all the modern dictators have to have all the fun? There is no doubt that the emperors of days past were just as psychotic and nutty as the ones we have today. Gaius “Caligula” Julius Caesar certainly stands testament to this fact. The Roman Empire saw its fair sure of inbred crazies rule the throne, especially during the so-called Pax Romana from27 BCE to 180 CE. In fact, when Rome came under the rule of Nerva in the year 96, he received the glorious title of the “first good emperor” simply for not being batshit crazy.

I believe that Caligula certainly stands head and shoulders above all the other bastards that Rome was unfortunate enough to have been ruled by. Nero, Elagabalus, and Commodus don’t even hold a candle to this guy. Caligula (whose name affectionately meant “little boots”) succeeded Tiberius to claim the throne in 37 CE. Tiberius was paranoid to the extent that Richard Nixon would seem like a Buddhist monk in comparison. When Tiberius died in 37 CE, the bar wasn’t set very high for Caligula.

From what we can tell, the first few years of Caligula’s reign were actually quite prosperous. He abolished all the random treason accusations that Tiberius had filed against people and gave out generous bonuses to the military. Everyone loved Caligula at first, for the simple fact that he was not Tiberius. However, in approximately 38, Caligula fell under the curse of some unknown illness from which he nearly died. However, he eventually recovered and subsequently plummeted Rome into a spiraling abyss of degeneration.

Caligula tried his hand at becoming a general, given his extensive military background, but all accounts of this tell he was a failure. He was known to send the military off to nonsensical campaigns, such as marching entire legions up to Germany to collect sea shells (or spoils of the sea, as he called them). There are some accounts that he had an incestuous relationship with his sister Drusilla and after her death, Caligula had her deified. He also had his horse made into a counsel and was reported to have been constantly drunk and over-sexed.

Like Sappurmurat Niyazov, Caligula also had a bit of a vanity complex. He thought he was a god and ordered all the heads on the statues of gods in Rome to be replaced with his own. One of the most lavish of his endeavours however, was when he ordered over a hundred ships to be tried together across the Bay of Naples and proceeded to cross them on horseback. He allocated so many resources to this feat that he drained the Roman treasury and the population of Rome suffered a famine. I can’t really blame him for this though. Modern leaders waste just as much money on nonsense like social security and Medicare, while these things aren’t even half as awesome as what Caligula did. Apparently the Praetorian Guard didn’t quite share my enthusiasm for Caligula’s antics, so they murdered him in the year 41.

2. Nicolai Ceausescu

With a shit-eating grin like that, you just know this guy is going to be a first-rate dick. Nicolai Ceausescu was the last communist dictator of Europe. He was the president of Romania from 1965 to 1989. Despite being a Communist, he ardently opposed his fellow reds in The Soviet Union after they invaded Czechoslovakia in 1966. The declaration of independence from The USSR granted Ceausescu and Romania positive recognition on the world stage. All the praise kind of went to his head because he developed an insane personality cult around himself. Ceausescu staged daily parades and ceremonies dedicated in his own honor in which millions of people were forced to attend.

It goes without saying that the media in Romania was extremely controlled. Unless you wanted a one-way ticket to one of Communist Romania’s most prestigious rehabilitation centers (AKA: getting your dick sliced off in prison), You did not dare vocalize your dissent of the government or of Ceausescu’s glorious administration.

That wasn’t the worst of crap he inflicted upon his people though. In 1966, Ceausescu decreed that abortion and birth control were now banned, thereby rustling the jimmies of polygamists and swingers nationwide. This was to have the effect that pretty much everyone reading this would think it would. The population of Romania exploded, sending child abandonment rates skyrocketing and orphanages bursting at the seams. Many of the negative effects of this moron’s policies are still felt in Romania today. The lesson to learn here is that abortion is awesome and should be available to all.

The Romanian people were so pissed off at Ceausescu that they lynched him and his wife in a bloody coup in 1989. To this day, he is the only dictator of a former soviet country to have been killed by his own subjects.

   1.  Pol Pot

In order to fully understand the regime of Saloth Sar (or Pol Pot as he is better known), it pays to learn just how he and his fellow clowns came into power. During the end of the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon thought that it would be a good idea to bomb the hell out of Cambodia. His argument was that there were VC’s hiding out in the Cambodian jungle and the only way to snuff them out was the paint the nation with a healthy coat of napalm. However, this was to prove disastrous for those non-combatants who had nothing to do with the war. Over 150, 000 innocent Cambodians were murdered during these bombings. As it turns out, Cambodians weren’t exactly pleased with what was going on, so many of them joined the CPK (Communist Part of Kampuchea) in retaliation. It was led by none other than Pol Pot. To this day, it seems that The USA still hasn’t learned that bombing innocent people in foreign countries doesn’t exactly win you the support of their population. Just ask pretty much every country in the middle east right now.

The CPK, fueled by the hatred of the US and the Cambodian government that in part facilitated their violent barbarism, overthrew the current government in 1970 and took power. As is the trend in communist countries, Cambodia was quickly transformed into an oppressive prison state. Pol Pot first abolished money, calling it a capitalist institution of “privilege and power”. Daily executions of random people were also the norm, many innocent civilians were bludgeoned to death, and others rotted away in prisons. Pol Pot transformed what was initially a peaceful agricultural land into a genocidal playground.

Like Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot was a proponent of systematic, racial purity. He thought that only the Khmer were the master race; everyone else was subhuman. He organized mass executions of Non-Khmer Cambodians and Vietnamese alike. Despite being taught at a French University during his youth, Pol Pot also had a dislike of smart people. He purged Cambodia of everyone he considered to be intellectuals: university professors, rich folk, and just plain old people with glasses. Any display of individualism was not looked upon kindly by the CPK. It was the ultimate peasant society. It was the epitome of Communism.

Pol Pot lived to old age and died in 1998. The slippery bastard was never tried or convicted of his crimes.