Racist oppression invades the lives of Black people on an infinite variety of levels. Blacks are imprisoned in a world where our labor and toil hardly allow us to eke out a decent existence, if we are able to find jobs at all. When the economy begins to falter, we are forever the first victims, always the most deeply wounded. When the economy is on its feet, we continue to live in a depressed state. Unemployment is generally twice as high in the ghettos as it is in the country as a whole and even higher among Black women and youth. The unemployment rate among Black youth has presently skyrocketed to 30 per cent. If one-third of America’s white youth were without a means of livelihood, we would either be in the thick of revolution or else under the iron rule of fascism. Substandard schools, medical care hardly fit for animals, overpriced, dilapidated housing, a welfare system based on a policy of skimpy concessions, designed to degrade and divide (and even this may soon be cancelled) — this is only the beginning of the list of props in the overall scenery of oppression which, for the mass of Blacks, is the universe. Angela Davis, If They Come in the Morning, 1971
In 1969 homosexual acts were illegal in every state except Illinois. That summer New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village. Few photographs of the raid and riots that followed exist. American Experience: Stonewall Uprising, PBS 2019
Something snapped – what? This is not right. ibid. dude
That’s what it was – it was a war. ibid. dude #2
The whole house of cards that was the system of oppression of gay people began to crumble. ibid. dude #3
Every Saturday we go to demonstrate in Paris. Georgia Pouliquen, Alternative View 10 lecture, ‘The 21st Century French Yellow Vest Revolution, Youtube 1.11.49
I want to provide a testimony from France to the world about massive domestic oppression in my country France and violence of our government. ibid. Georgia’s video testimony
Yellow Vests are a humanist movement, a beautiful movement, and now we suffer massive domestic oppression … This is about freedom, and government commits violence of fundamental human rights here in France. ibid.
That’s not crowd control: that’s massive and bloody repression, and French government try to hide the truth. ibid.
Macron passed a law to prevent us to demonstrate in the streets: now it’s an offence … We don’t have freedom of assembly any more. ibid.
A lot of young people lost an eye. ibid.
We have no choice: that’s a survival movement. ibid.
Nicolae Ceausescu: once revered throughout Romania and the West, he stole power by cunning and ruled by oppression. Ceausescu’s tainted genius and his wife Elena’s influence were finally extinguished by a hasty execution. History’s Most Hated s1e2: Ceausescu, 2017
Ceausescu’s criminal activities often took him to jail. ibid.
‘He was a Machiavellian genius.’ ibid. historian
Ceausescu was proclaimed First Secretary of the Communist Party and the country’s leader. ibid.
‘It is the first visit of a President of the United States to Romania.’ ibid. Nixon
Ceausescu was a cheat. He was a passionate game hunter and a terrible shot … He had begun to live in an unreal world where he couldn’t bear to lose at anything. ibid.
Ceausescu’s bouts of paranoia meant that he increasingly relied on his wife … Her influence was a malign one. ibid.
It is the dawn of the 13th century over Asia. A fierce storm reaches deep within the heart of the continent. Growing to a tempest, it spills over into China devastating one of the most ancient cultures on Earth. Then, gathering momentum, its violent fury vents westward laying waste Afghanistan and Persia. Riding this bitter winds are unstoppable hordes mercilessly carving out an empire that will know no equal in all of human history. History’s Most Hated s1e3: Genghis Khan: Terror & Conquest
Known by many terms: madman and genius, bloodthirsty warrior and brilliant politician, architect of nation and destroyer of civilisations, he was all of these. His name: Genghis Khan. ibid.
He was born somewhere in the Steppes in about the year 1165. ibid.
In the heart of Berlin children play innocently over what was once Adolf Hitler’s death tomb. It was here in the Fuhrer-bunker on April 30th 1945 that Hitler made the final preparation for his suicide. Outside in a devastating final assault on the heart of the Third Reich, the Russian army closed in on the Fuhrer. Hitler’s death brought to an end his dream of a thousand-year Reich: it lasted only twelve years but changed the world. History’s Most Hated s1e4: Hitler & Stalin
They were both mass murderers. Hitler was responsible for nearly ten million deaths in The Holocaust … Stalin murdered more than twenty million of his own people. ibid.
Both Hitler and Stalin suffered from inferiority complexes. ibid.
Adolf sold his paintings on the streets. It is interesting that he only painted landscapes, never people. Two years in a row, Hitler applied to and was rejected from the prestigious Academy of Fine Arts … The Academy told him he had no aptitude for painting. ibid.
The same cruelty and sadism of Stalin’s political life dominated his family life, especially his relations with his second wife Nadia. ibid.
Hitler’s relationships with women were equally troubled. ibid.
For a brief period of time Napoleon seemed to be all things to all people. Perhaps the greatest military commander ever. Was also a pre-eminent head of state. History’s Most Hated s1e5: Napoleon Bonaparte
Now 15 years old Napoleon next moved to Paris in 1784. He continued his education here at one of France’s foremost military academies, the prestigious Ecole Militarie. Almost from the beginning people commented on his enormous ambition. ibid.
He met an astonishing woman who would change his life for ever: Josephine … Back in Paris, Josephine was having numerous affairs. ibid.
He seized control of the government in a bloodless coup on November 9th 1999, becoming the First Consul of France. ibid.
At his coronation Napoleon took the crown himself. ibid.
Of the 600,000 men he had come with [to Russia], 500,000 died, deserted or were captured. Back in Europe he met with more disaster. ibid.
In Paris, Louis was stunned to hear that Bonaparte had returned. ibid.
Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, ruler of a vast land steeped in tradition. Tradition he was determined to shatter as quickly as possible … He married a commoner and made her his empress … But there was a dark side to this Tsar. The complexities and contradictions of Peter’s character and the sheer scope and adventure of his life have fascinated generation after generation for nearly 300 years. History’s Most Hated s1e6: Peter the Great
An army that would eventually allow the adult Peter to wage aggressive wars of expansion. ibid.
‘Building St Petersburg meant more casualties, more deaths, more dead, than any battle.’ ibid. historian
In the early 1970s a single-minded revolutionary lay concealed in the Cambodian jungle. As American bombs exploded around him, he remained obsessed with his secret plan to destroy his own culture in the name of utopia. Paranoid, he sought enemies everywhere. He turned Cambodia into a hell on Earth, and the name Pol Pot became synonymous with mass murder. In building his perfect society, his regime wreaked chaos. Two million people died: nearly one in every four Cambodians. History’s Most Hated s1e7: Pol Pot
Pol Pot returned to the jungle inspired by Mao’s revolution but convinced he could do even better. He began planning the most extreme social experiment of the twentieth century: to restore Cambodia’s greatness he felt he needed to eliminate all traces of the modern world; he regarded cities as evil and vowed to force the residents into the countryside to build an agrarian society. ibid.
Anyone with an education posed a threat, so Pol Pot began rounding up monks, artists and intellectuals … and buried [them] in mass graves. ibid.
Pol Pot became increasingly paranoid. ibid.
The Renaissance had reached its greatest glory … Yet in a land known as Moscovy the dark ages lingered and a nation struggled daily to avoid economic and political collapse. The force that would save it was embodied in a man, a volatile mixture of piety and ruthless intrigue, whose cunning and cruelty would one day control the largest nation on Earth … Tsar Ivan the Terrible. History’s Most Hated s1e8: Ivan the Terrible
A tumultuous nearly bankrupt country Ivan had inherited: compared to Europe, Russia was primitive. It was a nation with no banks, no form of road or essential infrastructure. ibid.
Terrible was meant as a term of respect for a leader who possessed awesome power … The irony would not be apparent for years. ibid.
The Tsar was a man teetering on sanity’s edge. ibid.
The result is that many old certainties appear far less certain, and history shows that in troubled times people often turn to someone who promises they can fix all the problems if only they’re granted supreme power. And that is the appeal of the dictator. David Olusoga, A Timewatch Guide: Dictators & Despots, BBC 2019
The rise and fall of the most recent dictators followed by television cameras in ever closer detail. So why are dictators such an object of fascination? And does our fascination feed their power? ibid.
Caesar was notoriously vain about his appearance … Even without TV, Julius Caesar hit upon a way of spreading his image throughout the known world. ibid.
Mussolini was the first to exploit brand new mass media. ibid.
Mussolini’s showmanship impressed one person in particular, and with terrible consequences. ibid.