People who had the potential to be reviled in history

Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Osama Bin Laden, Joseph Stalin. These people are reviled throughout history for their evil deeds-murdering millions, starting wars, plunging their people into poverty, etc.

But everyone is capable of evil, just like everyone is capable of good. History is filled with people who had the potential to be reviled in history, but at the same time, history didn't give them the opportunity to become reviled in history.

So, who do you think had the potential to be reviled in history, but didn't quite make it?

Just to make it clear, while most of the people I have listed above were dictators, you can be reviled in history for many reasons. Some major, some minor. Go nuts.
 
Probably a minor example, but I'd submit Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the futurist poet. If he somehow (almost asb I know) took power in Italy he could lead a very totalitarian regime, with rampant anticlericalism (bound to cause rivers of blood ti be spilled in a very Catholic country like Italy) and especially an utter cultural genocide (things like paving over Venice's canals etc).
 
This is before 1900, but "had the President been defeated in 1864, he would be written off as one of the great failures of the American political system—the man who let his country drift into civil war, presided aimlessly over a graft-ridden administration, conducted an incompetent and ineffectual attempt to subjugate the Southern states, and after four years was returned by the people to the obscurity that he so richly deserved..." https://books.google.com/books?id=OjJ3wDRI5AUC&pg=PA60
 
-Yukio Mishimia if you take the interpretation he wanted to seize power
-Any leader of a fringe Fascist group(if they were reviled as collaborators, this is if they were in a position to seize more power)
-This isn't an example of a dictator that would do a lot of damage, but I think some of the more hardline dixiecrats if they take power and roll back civil rights.
-Antonio Tejero

I would suggest people refrain from nominating people involved in atrocities of the 20th century that are already reviled or seen in a wholly negative light but could cause even more damage with more power(ie: Beria, Himmler, Heydrich, Gang of Four), moreso focus on unknown or fringe figures.
 
Abraham stern leader of the extreme wing of the Irgun Jewish national movement. He wanted to make a deal with the devil and create a volkish Jewish theocratic state allied with Mussolini and even Hitler.
 
Churchill definitely.

Assuming a second world war somehow didn't happen and Europe experiences peace for the rest of the 20th century(then he would be remembered for Gallipoli and it would be a permanent black mark against him) or he somehow becomes the leader of a nazi or Japan stand in assuming German victory leads to far right ascendant in Britain and France or a Ludendorff figure to a younger more radical politician.
 
Morgenthau if his plan got adopted and Germany starved to death.

Ungern-Sternberg if he had been more successful.
 
Growing up in Germany in the 1980's, I remember Ronald Reagan being generally seen as a end-time-religion obsessed warmonger, a law-and-order type of the shoot-first-ask-later mentality with the potential to nuke us all to smithereens just so the Soviets couldn't nuke us first. And of course hie main credentials were that he was a tough gunslinger on the silver screen. And then there was of course the Iran-Contra scandal, the war on drugs with its mass incarcerations and his love for trickle-down economy. And the worst part: it actually worked.

Though what if it didn't? he could have easily been vilified as... well, see above.
 
... and of course, if Reagan's politics would fail, Margaret Thatcher in the UK would be considered twice that big a villain.
 
Sanjay Gandhi does not die in the OTL planecrash in 1980. His mother dies as scheduled in 1984, and Sanjay takes over (as Indira originally intended). When things look bad for him and it appears he might lose the next elections, Sanjay becomes increasingly dictatorial, and with the backing of some flunky generals in the Indian Army, declares Martial Law. In OTL, Sanjay's more liberal brother Rajiv stepped down when he lost the 1989 elections, in this Sanjay led ATL, India is a grim, brutal dictatorship for decades.

Not totally implaussible. In OTL, Sanjay was the one of the chief advisors who told his mother to declare the Emergency Rule in 1975. And apparently, he was against Indira ending the Emergency in 1977 and calling elections. He wanted to see the Emergency continue for decades if necessary.
 
Robert E. Lee would have gone down as a complete idiot if he had lost at Chancellorsville (admittedly not post 1900 though). If Joseph Hooker hadn't been stunned at a critical moment by a cannon ball he might very well have.

The only reason splitting his army like that looked like a good idea is because it worked.
 

Deleted member 94680

Churchill definitely.

Beat me to it.

Assuming a second world war somehow didn't happen and Europe experiences peace for the rest of the 20th century (then he would be remembered for Gallipoli and it would be a permanent black mark against him) or he somehow becomes the leader of a Nazi or Japan stand in assuming German victory leads to far right ascendant in Britain and France or a Ludendorff figure to a younger more radical politician.

No need for even that, given how unlikely a Fascist Britain is (IMHO). If the Siege of Sidney Street had gone differently, or his stint as Colonial Secretary or Chancellor of the Exchequer was his last post in front-line politics there's every chance he would be remembered as a failure. Couple that with his outspoken advocacy of continued British control in India he would have an entirely different legacy.
 
I think Soekarno, had he not lost the power struggle against Soeharto and continued on as President, had the potential to be reviled. He had an economy that was going through hyperinflation (594% in 1965, 650% in 1966) and the only thing he could do was distract the populace with Konfrontasi with Malaysia and coming up with new Revolutionary slogans. I'm not sure how bad things would have gotten economically for Indonesia had Soekarno managed to survive Soeharto's challenge.

I'm probably going to get accused for being a Soehartoite for that.
 
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