Who Is The Most Reviled Person in Your Country's History?

[ulmont]

Took the question to the Spanish Paradox Forum and Fernando VII seems to be winning in a landslide. That's a more educated audience than your average Spaniard, though.

Also if Spanish Paradox is anything like the rest of Paradox, a skewed political sample.

[viper37]

Prompted by the Benedict Arnold thread.  Answer either for yourself or for the country as a whole.

For the US: Lee Harvey Oswald?  Nixon?  Bull Connor? Tokyo Rose? The Koch brothers?  The creator of Family Circus?

in Quebec: James Wolfe, John George Lambton (1st Earl of Durham), Pierre-Elliot Trudeau.
In Canada: René Lévesque.

[Berkut]

Oddly enough, I don't even think Benedict Arnold is all that reviled in the US.

I mean, nobody really cares. He was some guy who betrayed the country, and...ok.

There isn't really any emotion attached to him, I don't think. It is just something that everyone learns in 3rd grade history.

[garbon]

Oddly enough, I don't even think Benedict Arnold is all that reviled in the US.

I mean, nobody really cares. He was some guy who betrayed the country, and...ok.

There isn't really any emotion attached to him, I don't think. It is just something that everyone learns in 3rd grade history.

[HVC]

in Quebec: James Wolfe, John George Lambton (1st Earl of Durham), Pierre-Elliot Trudeau.
In Canada: René Lévesque.

Both you and Oex mentioned levesque, and I don't know if it's just my age, but no one I know would echo that sentiment.

[viper37]

How do Canadians consider rebellion leaders like Louis Riel or the Quebec rebels?  Romanticized? 


But Drakken is right; definitely the Ken and Barbie Murders.  Or Tie Domi.

Louis Riel is a simple criminal to them, while any Quebec seperatist is considered a demon.

[celedhring]

Took the question to the Spanish Paradox Forum and Fernando VII seems to be winning in a landslide. That's a more educated audience than your average Spaniard, though.

Also if Spanish Paradox is anything like the rest of Paradox, a skewed political sample.

It's - fortunately - pretty different to Paradox OT, but it is indeed hilariously skewed compared to mainstream Spain.

[viper37]

in Quebec: James Wolfe, John George Lambton (1st Earl of Durham), Pierre-Elliot Trudeau.
In Canada: René Lévesque.

Both you and Oex mentioned levesque, and I don't know if it's just my age, but no one I know would echo that sentiment.

He's been mentionned a few times in conversation with anglos, on Paradox, and in real-life.  Parizeau and Bouchard were both compared to Hitler by the English Canadian press.

[Malthus]

in Quebec: James Wolfe, John George Lambton (1st Earl of Durham), Pierre-Elliot Trudeau.
In Canada: René Lévesque.

Both you and Oex mentioned levesque, and I don't know if it's just my age, but no one I know would echo that sentiment.

It isn't your age. It is pure fantasy on their part (though apparently widely believed by certain people in Quebec).

Similarly, Riel is considered a complex figure, but basically a tragic hero put down by a self-interested establishment: the subject of movies and plays, written by English Canadians for an English Canadian audience. I even saw one, and it was pretty good.

http://www.videocab.com/sp_confedriel.html

[HVC]

in Quebec: James Wolfe, John George Lambton (1st Earl of Durham), Pierre-Elliot Trudeau.
In Canada: René Lévesque.

Both you and Oex mentioned levesque, and I don't know if it's just my age, but no one I know would echo that sentiment.

He's been mentionned a few times in conversation with anglos, on Paradox, and in real-life.  Parizeau and Bouchard were both compared to Hitler by the English Canadian press.

Hitler?  either this is your normal hyperbol or we watch much different news channels.

@ Malthus: Viper is easily triggered but I don't know much about Oex's views so I want sure.

[Malthus]

in Quebec: James Wolfe, John George Lambton (1st Earl of Durham), Pierre-Elliot Trudeau.
In Canada: René Lévesque.

Both you and Oex mentioned levesque, and I don't know if it's just my age, but no one I know would echo that sentiment.

He's been mentionned a few times in conversation with anglos, on Paradox, and in real-life.  Parizeau and Bouchard were both compared to Hitler by the English Canadian press.

Hitler?  either this is your normal hyperbol or we watch much different news channels.

He's doing his usual trick of attributing the dumbest, most offensive things ever said by anyone in English Canada over the last 200 years, in the press or (now) on Internet chat sites, to all English Canadians everywhere. 

God help us all if we applied that standard to Quebec, though. We'd all end up judging Quebec by Grallon's postings on Muslims.   

[alfred russel]

Joe Paterno

More than 100,000 people just attended a ceremony honoring him.

Joe Paterno plus the 100,000 people that honor him.

As Cato would say, "Happy Valley delenda est"

[The Minsky Moment]

A good candidate is Gustav IV Adolf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_IV_Adolf_of_Sweden

200+ years after the fact he is still the scapegoat for why Finland was lost to the Russkies.

Lousy king but its not like anyone else would have been able to win that war.

[Barrister]

So I didn't mention any separatist, or any politician really, as I think in order to be "most reviled" the person has to be pretty well universally despised. Pierre Trudeau was universally despised in western Canada and Quebec, but many admired him in Ontario, so he really doesn't count.

The same goes for separatist leaders in Quebec.

[viper37]

in Quebec: James Wolfe, John George Lambton (1st Earl of Durham), Pierre-Elliot Trudeau.
In Canada: René Lévesque.

Both you and Oex mentioned levesque, and I don't know if it's just my age, but no one I know would echo that sentiment.

It isn't your age. It is pure fantasy on their part (though apparently widely believed by certain people in Quebec).

Similarly, Riel is considered a complex figure, but basically a tragic hero put down by a self-interested establishment: the subject of movies and plays, written by English Canadians for an English Canadian audience. I even saw one, and it was pretty good.

http://www.videocab.com/sp_confedriel.html

The first amateur English language histories hailed the triumph of civilization, represented by English-speaking Protestants, over savagery represented by the half-breed Métis who were Catholic and spoke French. Riel was portrayed as an insane traitor and an obstacle to the expansion of Canada to the West.[87][88] By the mid-20th century academic historians had dropped the theme of savagery versus civilization, deemphasized the Métis, and focused on Riel, presenting his execution as a major cause of the bitter division in Canada along ethnocultural and geographical lines of religion and language. W. L. Morton says the execution:
    gave rise to a bitter and prolonged reaction which convulsed the course of national politics for the next decade. In Ontario it had been demanded and applauded by the Orange element as the punishment of treason and a vindication of loyalty. In Quebec Riel was defended, despite his apostasy and megalomania, as the symbol, indeed as a hero of his race.

However, a leading specialist Thomas Flanagan reversed his views after editing Riel's writings:

    As I sifted the evidence this became less and less convincing to me until I concluded that the opposite was closer to the truth: that the Métis grievances were at least partly of their own making; that the government was on the verge of resolving them when the Rebellion broke out; That Riel's resort to arms could not be explained by the failure of constitutional agitation and that he received a surprisingly fair trial.[96]

So far, his conviction hasn't been overturned, despitre... what, 3, 4 bills presented to this effect?


As for Lévesque, equating him to the evilness of a man like Lord Durham demonstrate all I need to know.  But to push the point a little further:

hrough it all, Lévesque acknowledged that whatever injustices Québecers suffered inside Confederation, Canada was still a free and decent country. "Canada's federal system," he once said, "is not excessively oppressive or anything like a gulag." He was never the most ardent nationalist or separatist of his time, yet he fanned the flames of nationalist sentiment in pursuit of his aims. His insistence on wanting to break up the nation, in spite of the Canadian virtues he admired, are what made him such a perplexing — and often hated — figure in the minds of English-speaking Canadians, both inside Québec, and elsewhere.

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/rene-levesque/


But if it pleases you, I searched for "most hated man in Canada" and the most often return subject concerned "Toronto, the most hated city" or "The Maples Leafs, the most hated team".  So maybe all that Lévesque hatred has been drowned by the hatred of anything Toronto