Are these “History's Nine Most Insane Rulers”?

As a result of highly reasonable criticism of the PIGs’ views on race and on American politics – and their tendency to follow what the Republican Party does – I have not been so interested in them. During the COVID-19 crisis, I have turned quite a bit to their political opposite, the Trotskyists whom I read intensely during April, at times falling prey to the anger that is of course the aim of websites like the World Socialist Web Site.

As I searched my huge backlog of emails, I found that Regnery – the publisher of the PIGs whose founder Henry Regnery was a Nazi sympathiser – had published a book that responds to criticism of Donald Trump by arguing that there were many rulers much more insane than Trump has ever been. Titled History’s 9 Most Insane Rulers (with a number in the title rather than spelled out) it looks at the following historical figures (lifespan in brackets):

1. Emperor Caligula of Rome (A.D. 12 to A.D. 41)
2. Charles VI of France (1368 to 1422)
3. Ivan IV Vasilyevich of Russia (1530 to 1584)
4. Sultan Ibrahim I of Ottoman (1615 to 1648)
5. George III of England (1738 to 1820)
6. Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845 to 1886)
7. Idi Amin (1925 to 2003)
8. Saparmurat Niyazov (Saparmyrat Ataýewiç Nyýazow; 1940 to 2006)
9. Kim Jong-il (1942 to 2011)

The first thing a reader will not about these leaders is the absence of the most infamous tyrants of history like Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Saddam Hussein and Pol Pot – not to mention others. There are no nonhereditary theocratic monarchs in the list, and most are hereditary monarchs from earlier civilisations. Of these, a couple are quite familiar (Ivan IV “The Terrible” and Ludwig II) but most are not. The details of two of the three post-monarchical leaders – Sapamurat Niyazov or “Türkmenbaşy” and Idi Amin – are well-known but in the limited audio I watched tonight on YouTube they stood out in a manner that more infamous dictators did not for their eccentric behaviour.

The video itself was of some interest for revealing surprising side-effects of these rulers’ insanity and mad behaviour.