Show of Hands

Evil is evil. The amount of evil is inconsequential as it’s simply opportunity and resources available to carry out their actions as opposed to the desire to.

Well if you think logically, there’s kind of a max evil that you hit after certain point. I mean why should somebody be considered more evil because they were more successful? Emotion wise I would consider someone who killed more people more evil because of how it makes me feel but that doesn’t mean that in their heart they were a worse person. As a matter of fact, someone who kills one person can be more evil than Hitler depending on the circumstances. If someone just to cause people pain kills one person who is a single parent and a veteran who helps their whole community with something and they dismember that person, I would argue that person is even worse than Hitler. Hitler thought in some twisted way he was trying to save the world. Some people just want to cause pain.

Well .... this is an excellent question.

Hitler and Dylan both acted in evil. Hitler, however, had more power to spread his evil throughout many years and many countries, affecting millions of people.

So, I would say the evil is the same but the greater use of his evil, the greater effect of his evil makes Hitler’s life more evil than Dylan Roof’s. (I mean to, in NO WAY, say that either’s actions were not evil)

Their ideology, religion, and methods .

I judge evil by motive and ideology. If a terrorist dies wishing he could have killed ALL Jews or Christians or Americans or whites, etc., he was greatly evil.

Good question. I was thinking about it in response to leftlibertarian's recent poll. I wanted to say Hitler, but I thought that was too obvious.

IMO, the most evil not only has his own evil actions and motivations, but convinces others to follow him in his evil. From people like Charles Manson, up to Hitler, Mao, Stalin, et al.

I take a lot of things into account, like if they act alone (and if they don’t do they inspire people to do evil or conspire with those already doing bad), their motives, the sincerity of intent, and also the rate of damage based on how much damage they could do over the raw damage itself. This leads me, for example, to think of Pol Pot as particularly vile relative to other dictators, even those that may have caused more destruction overall. Personally if I had to put an individual down as the most evil, I’d probably go for King Leopold II from Belgium whose rule over the Congo lead to millions of deaths while millions of others were enslaved. However if I were to go after a group as the most evil I’d probably go for the Nazi regime.

I would say the number.

The degree of lack of remorse capable of being shown.

Their motivation.

Their attitude more than their actions but a monumental death toll is what tips the scales for me among equally evil people.

A truly evil person gets pleasure, not only from killing,, but from torturing as well. Pol Pot ordered babies to be torn from limb to limb in front of their parents. Idi Amin was fond of broadcasting on tv, his men killing people with sledgehammers.
These are truly evil people.

I just told @Nkarta that I believe evilness is measured by intentions and not results.

It's not only how many people you killed but also: who, how and why.

That is a huge topic, too big for here. You would have to define and then rank characteristics or acts of evil, then rank each of the evil people according to which evil characteristics they exhibit and how many acts of evil they have done.

Evil comes in all forms..

A total disregard for life. I thought Michael Vick was Evil because of his horrid treatment of dogs. Or Sadam and his family.

I define it as why someone chooses to murder people

For instance.....is Jim Jones more evil than Lenin? Is Bundy less evil than Pichushkin or more? Is Roof more evil than today’s church shooter?
Can true evil be quantified?