What dictator would you like to Rule Ireland?

Amin or Bokassa. Some high quality dictatorshipin' there.

Bokassa was insane, as was Amin, but IIRC Bokassa's father, a chief, was killed by the French, yet he for some reason idolized the French. He also declared himself emperor, called himself Napoleon, his wife took the name Josephine and he used to eat people. Kept heads in the freezers of his now crumbling palaces.

Amin, equally as insane was an officer in the British army. The British (who were the masters of Imperialism) looked for men like Amin, Africans, big and tall, not very intelligent to become their officers because then resentment would be felt towards the African officers rather than the British officers by the African rank and file as well as the African civilians. At the suggestion of an officer he was prompted to open a bank account with £5 in it. A few hours later his account was overdrawn and he was wearing an expensive suit and driving a convertible. He converted to Islam to forge an alliance with Gaddafi. He wrote nearly unintelligible letters to the Queen offering to sort out the IRA problem. The movie gets it's title because of the reception he got when he visited Scotland and he was convinced the Scottish wanted him as their monarch.

Dictators are all mad. Ceausescu, who was an ally of the Americans because he was not friendly to Moscow used to have polystyrene fruit and vegetables distributed around Romania to make it appear that the country was fertile and abundant. It was the West (not Adam West) who allowed and even supported many of these dictators initially.

But Stalin was probably the worst of all dictators of the 20th century but there have been many many others such as Timur the Lame, Ivan the terrible who raped and tortured peoples, and the Khans who aren't as well known.

Not really a dictator so much but I'd have Napoleon if I was forced to choose

Girolamo Savonarola

^ nice chap

Scrawny71 wrote: »

Mao. Owned 900 million slaves at one point. Killed up to 70 million through starvation, overwork and violence, then dumped much of their culture while he denied himself no extravagance. Idolised by the very people he treated like chattels, and completely hoodwinked the West. Made Stalin and Hitler look like big softies. If you've got to have a dictator, you might as well go with the twentieth century's biggest backstard.

I was outside his tomb in Tiananmen Square. There was a 3 or 4 hour queue just to get into it and a huge portrait of him over the entrance to the Forbidden City. Supposedly he had quite a high vocal pitch that made him sound ridiculous.