Culture thread day 4 (Most important military/government leader) historical

[Am_I_Anonymous]

Vote for your Top 3


Discussion/Debate welcome

[Himu]

1. Genghis for his completely ruthless  and innovative warfare tactics
2. HITLER
3. Alexander The Great

[Human Snorenado]

1. Genghis for his completely ruthless  and innovative warfare tactics
2. HITLER
3. Alexander The Great

What she said

[Am_I_Anonymous]

Nice pics guys, I'll go through mine

1) Julius Caesar: One of the most critical members of the greatest nation on earth. Military genius.
2) George Washington: The Founding Father of the modern version of the Roman Empire. Defeated the greatest army in the world at the time.
3) Attila the Hun: Had on of the largest empires outside of Rome in his period. Known as a ruthless general but also fostered many smaller nations and created one of the the only standing armies that Rome ever feared.

[Joe Molotov]

Caligula, because he made incest and buttsecks cool.

[Am_I_Anonymous]

Caligula, because he made incest and buttsecks cool.

The rare triple U. Good work.

[Great Rumbler]

Hitler
Stalin
Mao

[Phoenix Dark]

Genghis Khan, Alexander The Great, Julius Caesar. If I were to only include contemporary figures: Mao and Stalin. Gotta throw Hitler in the bushes for his major blunders, especially the Russian invasion. EDIT FOR FUTURE EMPLOYERS: and because he killed 6 million Jews.

Side note: I hope the rumors about HBO nearing agreement to remake I, Claudius are true. Roman drama, when done right, is always awesome. I don't think it's possible to surpass the original from an acting perspective - the show has one of the greatest casts of all time - but with a nice budget and good writing it could certainly be one of the best shows on television. I just hope they don't go the GoT route and just dump sex into it to keep viewers entertained. Fuck that. If you're confident in your project, act like it.

[jakefromstatefarm]

Gavrilo Princip?

[Madrun Badrun]

You have Cleopatra but not Augustus?  Option failure. 

Also FDR was way more important than Eisenhower

[benjipwns]

No Muhammed?

[Am_I_Anonymous]

Already had 16 or so choices...muhammed nope...nobody knows what he really did. I might as well put Jesus on there then.

FDR/DDE  tough one.

[Madrun Badrun]

Which cities did Jesus conquer again?  Dude just hung out with hookers and washed bum's feet. 

[Am_I_Anonymous]

Which cities did Jesus conquer again?  Dude just hung out with hookers and washed bum's feet.

Stupid reply. For a while he "conquered" the entire world back in the days when the "church" took over many states in his name.

[benjipwns]

[Am_I_Anonymous]

Now compare that to the influence of Christianity...thanks for playing.

[Madrun Badrun]

Also missing Cromwell and Charlemagne

[Madrun Badrun]

I guess given the options that were forced upon us.

Hitler: meth head
Napoleon: short and fat like me. Clearly number 3 here.
Gengis Khan:  2
Alexander the Great: Made for a bad movie
Julius Caesar:  1
Xerxes:  stopped by a bunch of homos
George Washington:  meh, could have been anyone to do this job
Abraham Lincoln:  Would have been 3 had I not had an affinity with Napolean
Cleopatra:  basically a slut that bet on the wrong horse.  I suspect she was only added out of some kind of show of gender equality.
Timur/Tamerlane:  the cripple.  Cripples don't count
Hannibal Barka: Kind of important but only because of what rome did in light of him
Attila the Hun:  More important for the migrations he caused than anything else
Hari Singh Nalwa:  There are a lot of people named singh now
Joseph Stalin: mostly important for 5 year plans and stopping hitler, and taking half of earope for more than 5 years ...ya I guess was important
Mao Zedong:  most important modern leader
Sun Wu: Has a cool name
Dwight D. Eisenhower:  FDR's bitch

[Human Snorenado]

I would have picked Augustus over Hitler, but Julius was just a catalyst and a good general. Dude is generally historically famous due to romantic reasons. Augustus did all the heavy lifting.

[Brehvolution]

The accumulated body count of these people

[Madrun Badrun]

Gandhi is also missing but the list is going to go all civ leaders if he was on it. 

[Human Snorenado]

Georgy Zhukov had more to do with the Soviets winning WWII than Stalin did, but of course Stalin is by far the more important historical figure.

Another write-in nomination I'd put forward is Ulysses S. Grant. If the South had held out long enough to force an armistice, the world would look very different today.

Sherman tho

[Madrun Badrun]

You're cock crazy for Zhukov, Walrus

[Madrun Badrun]

Georgy Zhukov had more to do with the Soviets winning WWII than Stalin did, but of course Stalin is by far the more important historical figure.

Another write-in nomination I'd put forward is Ulysses S. Grant. If the South had held out long enough to force an armistice, the world would look very different today.

Sherman tho

I think we can all agree that the civil was was a bit of a team effort.

[jakefromstatefarm]

hey guys how's this thread do-

oh, it's Awesome-O waxing poetic about the Third Reich again

[jakefromstatefarm]

I would have picked Augustus over Hitler, but Julius was just a catalyst and a good general. Dude is generally historically famous due to romantic reasons. Augustus did all the heavy lifting.

yeah, the guy was a larger than life magnanimous boss with some unprecedented accomplishments/consolidation of power for a Roman politician, but he's very much a product of the anemic state the republic had been in for the past ~100 years. You look at those accomplishments: Pontifex Maximus, multiple triumphs (one of which was abdicated so he could stand for election), 4 consulships (one legit), Annexed Gaul in one (really long) campaign, administrated single-handedly as Dictator for about 3 years and then got got.

Again, completely unprecedented, but also within the framework of his society. You compare that to Augustus, who essentially codified the blueprint of western imperial rule for the next 1700+ years. I guess it's a question of legacy vs. immediate impact. The thread's asking for the latter, so I don't think it's remiss to go with Iulius. He did kill a lot of people.

[Madrun Badrun]

Ya clearly they are a team act.  Without Augustus to solidify shit, Julius would have just been another Roman dictator, which is impressive but not the foundation of two thousand years of history. 

[jakefromstatefarm]

What? I'm disparaging Hitler and praising Zhukov, who was probably the best general in WWII.

I'm just ribbing you for your WWII fetishism breh

spoiler (click to show/hide)

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[Himu]

If Augustus were on it I would have picked him instead of hitler. Hitler had a lot of fuck ups, but he's still the most hated man in the world in the 20th century. So he wins.

[jakefromstatefarm]

Julius would have just been another Roman dictator

the thing is, given the circumstances of his death, there'll always be a question of if this would have been the case or not. The only consistent theme I gleaned from his political career was self-preservation (the more things change...) and leniency towards fellow Roman politicians ("the 'clemency' and 'magnanimity' of Caesar" comes up again and again in the historiography); I think it's arguable (and fruitless) whether or not the opportunity to establish the Principate would have arisen in the absence of a true crisis like that which followed Caesar's assassination. Each period of major stress in the Republic/Empire -Grachii, Marian Reforms, Sullan Proscriptions, Civil Wars, Crisis of the Third Century, eventual hyperinflation- exposed the fault lines within Roman society that made centralizing huge amounts of resources untenable. At the risk of invoking determinism I wanna say that Caesar's role as 'just another dictator' has to be put into context within a Republic that had been through the fucking ringer within living contemporary memory.

[Madrun Badrun]

Ya I should have said stabilize instead of solidify as the major reforms were Augustus'.

[Kara]

Affected.

[Kara]

Also, Napoleon.

[thisismyusername]

1. Genghis for his completely ruthless  and innovative warfare tactics
2. HITLER
3. Alexander The Great

I agree with the first two. But I went with "the Hun" for the third because honestly, I'm not sure why. I couldn't think of a third one.

[benjipwns]

Another person notably missing: Bob Avakian.

[I'm a Puppy!]

Where's Mupepe?

[benjipwns]

Joseph Stalin is routinely portrayed as a paranoid, deceitful despot, on par with Hitler. But in fact, Stalin represented a class, the proletariat, and the system of socialism whose goal is to do away with all forms of exploitation and oppression. Stalin played a decisive role in leading in constructing and defending the world’s first socialist society. Stalin’s achievements and shortcomings as a revolutionary leader are all part of the first wave of socialist revolution in the 20th century that opened new historical possibilities for humanity.

After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin assumed leadership—and in the decade that followed, Stalin led the struggles to carry out collectivization of agriculture and to socialize the ownership of industry. The revolution created a socialist planned economy, something that had never been done before. There were important social struggles waged against Russian chauvinism and the oppression of women. Throughout Stalin’s leadership, the Soviet Union faced enormous pressures: counterrevolution, encirclement by hostile imperial powers, and invasion by the Nazis during World War 2. Stalin led people to stand up to this. But in the years leading up to World War 2, Stalin relied less and less on the conscious activism of the masses and more and more on administrative measures. It was necessary to suppress counter-revolutionary forces, but as threats to the revolution grew in the mid- and late 1930s, Stalin repressed people who were just raising disagreements and dissent.

There were serious problems in how Stalin understood the nature and goals of socialist society, and in his methods of leadership. Bob Avakian points out that if the bourgeoisie can uphold Madison and Jefferson—who played pivotal roles in the bourgeois American Revolution but who were unapologetic slave-owners—then revolutionaries can uphold Stalin while also deeply criticizing and learning from his mistakes.

Mao was dealing with the problem of a new bourgeois elite emerging and concentrated within the top levels of the Communist Party. They wanted to bring back capitalism, seizing on bourgeois aspects in society. For instance, on the eve of Cultural Revolution, many factories still had systems of one-person management and competitive bonus systems that pitted workers against each other; and educational and health resources were concentrated in the cities. Mao called on people to rise up against oppressive leaders and institutional structures. Hundreds of millions of workers and peasants were debating questions about the direction of society, criticizing out-of-touch officials, forging more participatory forms of management and administration, and entering into the realms of science and culture. The divisions between mental and manual labor and between urban and rural areas were being broken down. Middle-school enrollment in the countryside rose from 15 million to 58 million. The Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 had coherent and liberating goals: to prevent the restoration of capitalism; to revolutionize the institutions of society, including the Communist Party; and to challenge old ways of thinking—in short, to carry forward and deepen socialist revolution.

  BA crushing fascist capitalist neoliberal myths and Setting The Record Straight

[jakefromstatefarm]

Holodomor denial

[Dickie Dee]

So hard to choose. I really haven't resolved the great man theory of history vs. guys that just happened to be at the lead during huge events.

I think the biggest question would be "what if this person never lived"

Genghis Khan seems to be up there

Alexander the Great seems to personally have not just shaped but created history like few others. It also went to shit moments after he died.

I'd probably put Augustus over Julius Caesar, if only by measuring some sort of groundwork that became what we call Europe

[benjipwns]

Holodomor denial

My favorite part is that he brings up the Irish famine as if that somehow disproves the whole thing. SEE FAMINES HAPPEN IN CAPITALIST STATES IPSO FACTO A SOCIALIST STATE'S POLICIES CAN'T BE TO BLAME!

[Kara]

Holodomor denial

One does not simply kulak into Holodomor.