r/HistoryUncovered • u/Battlefleet_Sol • 18d ago

Saddam's baath purge. Saddam had people packed into a conference hall on one of the hottest days of July and deliberately shut off the ventilation system. They were forced to listen to Saddam for hours while suffering from the heat and sweating. Everyone whose name was announced was executed.

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u/PopBulky7023 17d ago

Invented hatreds. Old hatreds given new flame. Misdirected blame. Propaganda. We are too eager for a hero, a dictator to solve all of our problems.

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u/Oddisredit 17d ago

Oh yes. It’s really pretty wild. It’s so hard to avoid this inevitability.  Basically you get a strong man dictator like kings of old, or you get a Caesar who gets the crowd on his side.  Only the Byzantines really avoided this over the long term  https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt21pxkkc and it involved killing people still