So, considering this is Lemmy I’ll clarify. I’m not talking about your neighbor who voted for Trump or your uncle who’s always been a dick. I’m talking about coming in contact with a deep down evil scary human. I’ve only met one that I can think of. When I was 12 or 13 I spent a ton of time at my best friends house. He lived on a big beautiful rural property with his dad, a few brothers and always one or two random dudes. His dad was a good electrician and a biker. So, he always had friends/associates hanging around. So one day I was staying over for a long weekend and we met a new guy his dad was housing for a week or two. Dude was a real full fledged nazi. Had a swastika under his eye and tats all over most of his body. He was from California I guess. He was “working” with my buddies dad for awhile. Anyway, the main interaction I had with him was when he pulled my friend and I in for a sermon. We were going to go hunt squirrels and do rural kid shit. He stopped us outside and had us sit on the porch. Spent about 20 minutes explaining all the things youd imagine a nazi explains. Moslty about catholics, jews and blacks. My friends dad came out after awhile and told him we didn’t need to hear that shit. He sent us away, but, I never forgot the look this dude had in his eyes. It was like the look of complete bordem mixed with extreme anger all the time.
I guess I could tell a story about the worst person I ever met. I don’t know exactly what criteria elevate someone to the level of “evil” versus just being an awful, horrid person, so I’ll let readers make that judgement.
It was 2010. I was 20 years old and needed a job. Through family networking, I was able to land a brief stint working with a distant cousin of mine who I’d never met before. Let’s call him “James”. I’m scheduled to work with him for about a week, traveling out of state to a small town in Virginia to do some maintenance on pools and such. Seems like a simple enough gig.
He pulls up to my house in his pickup truck to pick me up. Keep in mind I’ve never met this guy before in my life. We’re not 10 minutes down the road when he starts dropping every racial slur you can think of talking about Obama and minorities and such. Guy was like a thesaurus of epithets.
Fast forward 5 or 6 hours that we’ve been driving. During this brief window of time I have heard this guy scream at his girlfriend over the phone about how she “better not be at the bar” or “hanging out with her friends”. He has road raged at every inconsequential inconvenience, making multiple reckless, dangerous maneuvers to save virtually zero transit time. He has pinned every misfortune in his life on black people, immigrants, gays. Anyone but himself.
After this harrowing trip, we’re finally at our destination and we can get to work. To say this guy was an abusive boss would not do it justice. His preferred method of communication was yelling. He’d light up a joint and smoke it very brazenly when there were children not particularly far away from us (one of the pools we worked on was at a community center where lots of kids would play). I don’t have any problem with weed, but c’mon.
Each day when we were done with work, we’d pick out some place to eat. During this week-long stay in this small town, I witnessed multiple random acts of kindness by strangers. James had nothing but angry, hateful things to say about every single one. I saw a guy let some veterans cut in front of him in line at a Bojangles. “What a kiss-ass,” James says. One day at a KFC, an elderly woman gives me and James a big bucket of chicken and biscuits because they got her order wrong and told her to keep it. “Old bitch,” says James after she walks away.
Every night after dinner he’d be at the bar getting hammered. Picking fights with other patrons and generally being a miserable pile of shit. One evening James gets up from the bar to go take a piss. A big biker guy James has been fucking with comes up to me and says, “Your friend’s got a big mouth.”
“Not my friend,” I reply. “He’s my boss, unfortunately. But if you and your biker buddies wanna drag him out back and beat the piss out of him, you ain’t gonna hear me complain.” Biker guy gives a big laugh and pats me on the back in an understanding way.
On the last day of the job, we’ve begun the drive back home. He sees a hotel with a pool that we’re about to pass and unilaterally decides we’re gonna try to fleece some hotel owner by doing some “maintenance” on the pool. He convinces this old man that the pool needs inspecting and the guy agrees to purchase our services. James fucks around for an hour doing virtually nothing to this pool and then charges the guy several hundred dollars. Brow beating and bullying him the entire time.
And to wrap it all up, he didn’t pay me what we’d negotiated. Unfortunately I wasn’t good at advocating for myself at this time in my life, so I just put up with it.
The silver lining to all this is I haven’t seen or heard from him since then. He drove away and has never darkened my doorway in the 15 years since that dismal week. Good riddance.
The one comfort to take out of people like this: They will never ever be happy. The anger they constantly feed, will consume them wholly. It’s just a shame about the people they hurt around them.
I laughed out loud at that biker remark 😄
Someone called me evil in their suicide note once, and ever since then I’ve been wondering if they were right.
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Nah evil people don’t worry about that. They were probably just really sick, it’s not your fault.
Why did you say “not your neighbor who voted for Trump” and then provide an example who absolutely [would have] voted for Trump?
Idiots and people with lead poisoning aren’t inherently evil. They’re just fucking stupid.
Malicious ignornace is malicious. Hell, ignorance implies access to information and refusal to engage with it. Ignorance is malicious.
Not sure why people try to justify shitty people, just accept that theyre shitty and move on, no need for labels. Do you really need to know the difference between hitler and your local catholic priest, or do you need to know theyre both dangers to society and should be treated as such?
Well, I get along well with my catholic priest. In fact the church is the reason we had heating oil two winters growing up and the food bank kept us from missing meals.
Well, I get along with my local catholic priest
My condolences
if thats how you feel about catholic priests helping someone not starve or freeze id hate to hear your opinions on muslims or jews. good lord
Aight, thats on me i suppose. I figured my tone combined with the absurd reductionism of his statement wouldve indicated joking sarcasm, but I may have made an error in judgement. Ill add a /jk
It doesnt seem like it needs to be said that charity is good. But for one, the implication I was making was referring to child molestation, which is well documented amongst the group i refered to. Hence why I made a reductionist joke about the phrasing of their words.
For two, it would seem to me that the important thing there would be the charity, not specifically that it came from a catholic priest. Would that same charity from a local charity, organization, or individual not carry the same weight? Hence it seems quite pointless to bring up that priests do charity. So do a lot of other people. Its not their entire job either. The distinction lies in the fact that other charity groups arent known to engage in child molestation, nor have a systemic issues with covering up and protecting child molestors.
I’ll just make some statements and I’d bet we find common ground.
Catholic priests who molest children should be castrated then killed, as with any pedophile. Full stop.
The catholic church is the largest charitable organization in the world and has done a tremendous amount of good. They operate thousands of schools, hospitals and care facilities without incident.
Anyone who assisted in silencing victims or maneuvering offenders should lose whatever position they have and potentially be castrated and killed depending on circumstance.
Instances of horrific abuse (not strictly molestation) happen in MOST institutions at some point, especially ones that involve all ages. These should never be ignored.
I’ve never met a Catholic or general person who agreed with how the greater organization handled cases of abuse. It’s a horrible stain on an already stained institution and I hate that for everyone.
hold on now, let’s not conflate “ignorance” with “willful ignorance”
having access to information and refusing to use it is clearly terrible and a clear sign of some unhealthy mindset, but being ignorant about something doesn’t automatically mean that ignorance was sought out or valued
for example, I would say I am ignorant about more things than not by sheer quantity of information in the world, but I would be glad to learn if presented the opportunity, that doesn’t make me any less ignorant
there’s nothing wrong with being ignorant, only with trying to stay ignorant
Voting for Trump is not adequately explained by stupidity.
OP is saying voting for Trump is insufficient to qualify as an example. However, it’s not disqualifying.
Well, all my uncles are dead. I figured having a dickhead uncle would resonate with some people.
I see American and Canadian politicians on TV news every day (I’m Canadian by the way)
The epitome of evil to me is in watching a group of wealthy affluent, influential people doing their absolute best day in and day out to keep their money and the money of those with way too much away from those who need it just to have a little bit of a life. They work to make us all miserable in order for them to keep having everything and to take even more from everyone else who have little or nothing.
Watching TV and sitting across from someone are two very different things.
I have sat and met with some mid level regional politicians and provincial politicians in the past. They’re all the same. There is something pathological with wanting to achieve a high office and then regardless of your political affiliation (I socially left and I always vote and support the New Democratic Party, left of the top Liberal left party in Canada) they all act in the best interests or influence of money and monied interests. I know they have to survive politically to do anything but at the same time, they’ll support monied interests even if it means the suffering of hundreds or thousands of people.
There is something fundamentally wrong with our modern mentality and social conditioning if our world is entirely based on the accumulation of wealth against everything including human comfort or even the right to life.
And that’s not even talking about the political figures who are conservative, very conservative or ultra conservative … they would rather dump entire segments of society if it meant it would advance their agenda.
It’s not fully evil … but it is a lot closer to evil than anything.
Are Canadian politics dominated by money like American politics are? If they are, that could explain at least some of what you’ve noticed. In a system where money wasn’t such a huge factor needed to win elections, I think we would see a lot more people who genuinely wanted to help people run for office and win. The problem when you introduce money as such a major factor to win is that unless the candidate is already independently wealthy, they will have to kowtow to wealthy people and money interests in order to win. A system like that will select for people who are willing to compromise their principles for money, even if they deep down would genuinely like to help people.
I’ve thought about this occasionally, and feel that it’s a tragedy that there are probably many politicians who get into it for the right reasons but at some point (maybe from the start) compromise that by justifying that they can keep helping people even if in some minor fashion if they go along with this.
Which is why I look at it as a Plutocracy, a government run by money and the wealthy … rather than a democracy, a government run by the people.
It’s democratic (which is still a stretch) during an election.
But for the rest of the time, which is all the time, it’s a Plutocratic
We like to play with definitions and we easily are critical of other nations but we never want to admit what our own systems actually represent. We are so blinded by our own status that we never consider that we don’t live in a democratic system ourselves.
Well said. Plutocracy / oligarchy.
that’s like… most people though.
most people are trying to do that. they want to grow their own wealth and are adverse to other people growing theirs. because life is a competition and those who have the most money are winning.
I’d agree in America most people want to grow their own wealth. Im not sure where an adversity to others doing the same comes from though. I do pretty well for myself (always a bigger fish), I’ve never wanted anyone around me to make less though. I don’t understand what mentality would want that. I’m a power plant operator, when I hear XYZ career makes XYZ much Im always like “hell yeah get that bag”. Anyone who wants other people to do poorly is a shitty person.
I’m not talking about your neighbor who voted for Trump
explaining all the things youd imagine a nazi explains. Mostly about catholics, jews and blacks.
It was like the look of complete bordem mixed with extreme anger all the time.Why cant I group them if they have the same look and hold the same values?
You think any person who voted for Trump and a convicted felon with swastika face tats preaching racial violence to kids are the same thing? I understand where I’m posting which is why I added the initial disclaimer. I truly dont believe everyone who voted for Trump is a rage filled violent nazi with a hate crime filled rap sheet.
I’'ve never seen folks in Lemmy be this bad at nuance. I’d eat dinner with a trump supporter and even talk about politics because we would both gain perspective. I’d never do that to a truly evil person, or a Nazi as you described, that sounds way too dangerous.
Yeah, I knew where I was posting but foolishly assumed people would be reasonable.
Yeah I’m sorry that this is the side of Lemmy you got for this post.
I’ve not seen another side to lemmy lol
How about all the other comments you got here?
I don’t know what you mean.
daryl davis did that with the leader of the kkk and eventually the dude gave up racism. takes a lot of guts to do that though
All glory to that dude.
Shows how a lot of these people just need to experience some normalcy and they might look at things differently. I can only assume there’s some very desperate people among them.
Not to take away from Daryl davis, absolute madlad in the best way.
I was asking why you disagreed with grouping them if the ideals they have that you listed are the same. The base that currently supports him is 1 in 5 so yeah statistically that’s my neighbor, welcome to the south, these are my neighbors.
So, doubling down that a violent literal nazi and any trump voter have the same ideals huh? I mean, you’re not saying anything uncommon on the internet but I promise the real world doesn’t work that way. If one fifth of the country was a violent extremist like that guy, we would have a completely different country than we do. Public executions would happen by hundreds of thousands if not millions, identifying as LGBTQ would result in execution, illegal immigrants wouldn’t be brought to detention facilities they would be killed in the streets immediately, interracial relationships would be banned, non propaganda media would be banned, any non Protestant religion would be banned, following any non Protestant religion would result in execution, segregation would be reinstated for non whites that haven’t been executed, slavery would be reinstated (not just the kind that we have in the prison system now). I recognize Trump is terrible and our current administration is horrible. That doesn’t mean that all his supporters have the same ideals as a violent nazi.
You’re introducing so much more information than the original post to differentiate, so yes by this point you’ve offered a totally different description and they are drastically different for this Nazi. Remember, however, that there were also Nazis never had blood directly on their hands but only did the internal paperwork to keep the Nazi government functioning.
I did. A boomer guy, he must be in his late 70s, early 80s now. He owned a construction company that killed 20 people in the 1999 earthquakes in Turkey, including distant members of his extended family. The guy did shoddy construction work, did not use proper concrete and dressed up a damaged building to look ok. The result was 20 dead lives when the building came down on November 12, 1999. (the building was damaged in the first quake in august and collapsed in the second one in november) The name is Hamza Cebeci, and a quick internet search today shows that his family business is still in the construction business.
I met the guy almost 10 year after the earthquake (and almost 15 years ago from today) at an event where he spoke. From outside you would not guess that he has the blood of 20 people on his hands. It was the purest example of the ‘Banality of Evil’ that I have ever seen. I’m orginally from the same small town (Düzce) where all this happened and knew the story well.
News article from those days: https://postimg.cc/HctXCVFT
I have a couple of examples, but here’s one that’s close to my heart (and that, sadly, hurts my heart).
I know someone who overheard the following conversation in a workshop on global policy. In one of the tables, there was a prominent doctor and one of the richest people on Earth.
The workshop went on as normal, until at some point the discussion turned to poverty and malnutrition. The rich person asked “What do you mean, malnutrition?” and the doctor politely explained the basics of acute hunger and chronic malnutrition. At the end of the explanation, the rich person asked “How can you believe any of that?” and explained that malnutrition was made up by “envious leftists” to steal from the rich.
The doctor tried to explain that malnutrition was real, and even pulled up their phone to search for a picture of a malnourished child. When the rich person saw the picture, they said “Well, I don’t know about this, but if you’re hungry, wouldn’t you just go to a store and buy food? If someone can’t figure that out, they’re just not cut out to survive”.
At that point, the conversation was cut short because the workshop organizers required them to move on.
You might be wondering who this rich person was. Here’s what I’ll tell you: their family extracted a lot of wealth in colonial times and, since then, they have used their power and wealth to remain powerful and wealthy.
I’ve met some low level sociopaths and some obvious narcissists. And a lot of people who were simple amoral when it came to using and abusing others for their own ends.
Nobody who was skinning cats for pleasure though. I interviewed a few Nazis for school projects. I would not call them evil.
I met this disturbed user here on Lemmy a few days ago, username “blave”. He wrote a “weird” joke as a comment on a post, got called out for it, proceeded to tell everyone that interacted with him:
- they had shit for brains, in various different phrasings
- they ate shit from their ass, also in different phrasings
- they should kill themselves, and record it and send it to him.
- etc, more stuff like that, but those were the common themes
Really disturbed individual. He got banned from that community after I reported him. Hoping he’ll get banned from our instance as well.
Sounds like he was just a troll having fun. Getting him banned is the same behavior as calling the cops for a minor noise complaint.
You call the list of those offenses “fun”? If you saw what they typed to people, you would not consider that to be someone just “trolling”. That’s one hundred percent not what was going on.
They were retaliating against being called out for a bad joke. Completely and utterly unable to take calm criticism from anyone, saying we have shit for brains and eating shit and we should kill ourselves, and that he has “power” over us.
He’s just deranged. I am definitely going to keep reporting people that say to other people: “You should kill yourself and record it and send it to me.” I absolutely will do that. Doesn’t even matter that it was said to someone other than me.
You’re being weird for downplaying that offense as a “noise complaint”, let alone a “minor” one(!). That behavior has no business online. People were banned for that even on Reddit. Nah, man.
Sounds like he really bothered you and got under your skin. You let him win lmao. I asked if you’ve ever met someone truly evil. My example was a nazi Aryan brotherhood dude with multiple violent felonies. He tried converting two pre teens to his way of thinking. Your example of a truly evil person was someone shit posting on communist reddit, you’re the weird one.
You let him win lmao.
Really, dude? Why is it a bad thing that someone got under my skin? Like I explained, I found him to be a bad person. If he didn’t get under my skin, I would’ve have reacted. You’re acting like I shouldn’t have reacted. I’m allowed to react.
My example was [yadda yadda, something ]
Okay? Didn’t know there was a competition, ffs. Never mind then, I won’t reply to any more of your shit just in case I don’t measure up to your standards. Should I tell you to kill yourself for giggles as well? Wouldn’t that be “fun”?
… 🤦♂️
I’m convinced you’re one of the following, a 10-14 year old person, an AI or the most fragile adult I’ve read write something. No, its not a competition but I did have that whole bit in the beginning about your neighbor/uncle, to kind of set the expectation for contribution.
I’m with Hannah Ardent on this, true evil is banal and its ubiqutious.
I’ll buy some bullshit coffee and not donate that to MSF, I’d classify that as evil writ large, I have seen evil and its in the mirror each morning… Spend money.on Spotify or save a life ?
An example, its estimated 600,000 children have died since US Aid was cut and an estimated 22 million deaths by 2030, how many before it’s a holocaust? Think about the weight the deaths of 600,000 children (so far) should carry, vs the weight of what it actually carries. Then you need to start to question what evil actually is.
Aside from proeslitization, is the averge person that different to your swastika tattoo’d interaction ?
For example
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shake_Hands_with_the_Devil_(book)?wprov=sfla1
Im an atheist, the quote on the inside the cover of Romeo’s book … Paraphrasibg “I know god exisits, because i have looked into the eyes of the devil, sat across from him and shaken his hand”
I’ve done a fair amount of customer service jobs so heard my fair share of complaints. Like once, an alcoholic threatened to bottle me if I didn’t sell him vodka. He wasn’t evil or even a bad guy. Just a good guy having a bad day.
There was this one guy however - another completely different job - who complained the wifi wasn’t working. Instantly gave me the heeby jeebys. Shouting, threatening without actually threatening violence, dead eyed, just gave off really psychotic vibes. He was a bully but there was something else going on there.
Turns out he was a successful local businessman who was known for his psychotic behaviour and being someone you don’t cross. He’d obviously gotten to where he was because everyone was terrified of him.
Edit: another guy I encountered while he was drunk - made really creepy jokes about sexual things, one being ‘incest is the game the whole family can play’. I’m 100% sure they weren’t jokes - he meant what he was saying.
Worked with this quiet dude for a couple years. Other than an excessive amounts of tattoos all the way to his face and neck, seemed like a pretty normal machinist / mechanic working at the factory with us.
Later, someone found a local news article from about 5 or 6 years ago. The cops had gotten called to his place over a suicide attempt and when they got there they found like a treasure trove of Nazi and Aryan nation shit, guns, knives, swords, fucking bomb making materials like acetone paint thinner and gun powder, diaries and notebooks full of fantasies about killing robbing and torturing people including minorities, teddy bears he bled on, drugs and paraphernalia
I guess his dad is a state trooper and got him off the charges, go figure.
yep, a guy with a history in law enforcement, had a job where he investigated claims of misconduct of employees, he seemed to use that to serially sexually prey on the people who he ended up investigating
can’t be more specific for legal reasons unfortunately
not sure he was inherently evil per se, but what he did I would consider evil
I think that makes the cut, work real hard to be in a position of power to abuse people.
My older brother used to run around with a young man that was raised by racist bikers. The guy killed someone during a house robbery. And still I’m not sure that that person was irredeemably evil.
But I’ve also done time in prison. And was celled up with an old man that hurt a little girl. No acknowledgement, no remorse. Smiling, outgoing. But at the time I had no idea what he had done. And I had no idea that he was a sociopath until he opened up to me about cutting crow’s tongues when he was young, because he had seen a talking crow at a circus. No empathy. As ‘nice’ as he seemed.
Looking back, he had that same look in his eyes that you can see in cult leaders and other sociopaths. When I watched the Nixium documentary with my partner, it was like that. A charismatic predator.
I’ve met people who managed to announce they were shitty in the first few minutes of our encounter. I’ve also gotten to know certian really shitty people pretty well.
There’s always a story they tell themselves that makes it okay, though, and it’s always driven by some kind of weakness they have, even if it’s rank narcissism. Evil implies a level of self-awareness that’s never been there.
I can’t say they don’t exist, but they’re damn rare and I’ve never crossed paths with them. Even Nazis have been known to self-improve over time.
