Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’ll be discussing individuals noted for their contributions to history, who also either espoused horrible beliefs or committed horrible actions.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Do you call coercion and threats by a nation with a far more powerful army fair and square?
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we'll be discussing individuals noted for their
00:09contributions to history, who either espoused horrible beliefs or committed horrible actions.
00:15You don't know. You don't want to.
00:17No, of course I want to.
00:20Child Abandonment, Steve Jobs
00:23There's no denying the impact Steve Jobs has had upon the technological industry.
00:27His personal life, however, was an entirely different matter.
00:30I'm just thinking of a couple of things where your mom was on the phone,
00:32you were just a little girl, and she was begging your dad for money. Like, sobbing and begging.
00:38And you, as a little girl, walk up and take the phone from her and said,
00:41just give him, just give her some money, okay? And like, hang up the phone.
00:45Jobs engaged in an on-again, off-again relationship with a woman named Chrisann Brennan.
00:49This romance eventually led to a contentious pregnancy and paternity battle,
00:53one that Jobs fought for years against this former lover.
00:56You knew going into this, the paternity test could prove that you were the father.
01:01There are 24 million people in California that test as a 5%
01:04margin of error. That's 1.2 million people that could be the father of that child. And it's not
01:10me.
01:10Jobs maligned the personal integrity of Brennan with regard to the fatherhood of the child,
01:15and refused to financially support the pair, even when it was revealed that Brennan was on welfare.
01:20The Apple co-founder did eventually offer financial assistance to his daughter, Lisa,
01:25but she didn't see a significant amount until after a 1982 Time magazine interview with Brennan
01:31that revealed the details of their affair.
01:33As reported by Time magazine, I've slept with 28% of the men in America.
01:37No.
01:38All of them, exactly nine months before Lisa was born.
01:40Abuse allegations. Alfred Hitchcock.
01:43When you have an obsession over someone, it is a terrible thing to be the object of that obsession.
01:51It was often a dream of old-school Hollywood actors to work under Alfred Hitchcock.
01:55This was despite the director's very specific ideas about what he wanted on screen,
01:59and how far he would go to achieve these goals.
02:02Walt Disney had the right idea. If he didn't like the actors, he tore them up.
02:08Tippi Hedren was just one of the prototypically icy and distant
02:11Hitchcock blondes that was seen frequently as a trademark of the director's films.
02:15Yet Hedren also claimed that Hitchcock deliberately sabotaged her career
02:20after she refused his sexual advances.
02:22He said, I'll ruin your career.
02:25Wow.
02:26I said, do what you have to do, and out the door I went.
02:29And did he ruin your career?
02:30Yes, he did.
02:31Hedren also claimed that Hitchcock utilized
02:33real birds during an attack sequence in 1963's The Birds, instead of fake mechanical substitutes.
02:40This was despite the director knowing full well about Hedren's real-life fear of the creatures.
02:45Adultery and mistreatment.
02:47Martin Luther King Jr.
02:48Among the claims detailed, Martin Luther King Jr. was involved
02:52in extramarital affairs and other sexual activities
02:55that, if true and real publicly, would have been devastating to Dr. King and his movement.
03:00The civil rights work of Martin Luther King Jr. is rightfully
03:03lauded today for its utopian ideals concerning racial coexistence.
03:07That said, King's failures as a husband were brought to light
03:11via covert government surveillance efforts from both the FBI and the CIA.
03:15The COINTELPRO bugged Martin Luther King Jr.
03:18They bugged his house, they bugged his hotel rooms, they bugged his office.
03:20They had people working in the SCLC who were working for the FBI.
03:25So they were on Martin Luther King hard.
03:28Federal wiretaps revealed that King engaged in several extramarital affairs
03:32during his marriage to Coretta Scott King.
03:34This was despite the leader's own expectations within their marriage for his wife,
03:39namely that she step down from her activism in order to focus on motherhood.
03:43Further allegations assert that King allegedly bore witness to a sexual assault by an acquaintance,
03:49Pastor Logan Kearse, and rather than stepping in to stop it,
03:52quote, looked on, laughed, and offered advice.
03:56Many of the source documents will not be available until the year 2027 based on a judge's order.
04:03When 2027 comes around, a lot of people will be interested
04:07in listening to those tapes and reading those transcripts.
04:10Spying and sex trafficking. Chuck Berry.
04:13There was a lot of backdoor slimy stuff going on.
04:19The history books will always credit Chuck Berry as one of the fathers of rock and roll music.
04:24Berry was convicted in 1962 for violating the Mann Act,
04:28a federal law whose design is to prosecute those who transport
04:32persons across state lines with intent for sex or prostitution.
04:36They had met, I think, in Arizona or New Mexico.
04:39He brought her back to work in his club.
04:42He had taken an underage girl across a state line.
04:47The guitarist was also arrested for assaulting a woman in 1987
04:51while staying at New York's Gramercy Park Hotel.
04:54Additionally, hidden cameras were found in the women's restroom of a restaurant owned by Berry,
05:00a case that Berry settled out of court.
05:03Fire, fire, I say fire, fire.
05:08Anti-Japanese sentiment. Theodore Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss.
05:13Warfare can be fought on many fronts, with one particularly important weapon being propaganda.
05:19Theodore Seuss Geisel, otherwise known as children's author Dr. Seuss,
05:23served in the United States Army's Animation Department in 1943.
05:28Sounds harmless enough. Innocent stuff. But let's take a look in and find out what's cooking.
05:35He wrote propaganda and training films for the Army during this time,
05:38while continuing to draw political cartoons and posters.
05:41Much of Seuss' animation during this time was critical of the Japanese and often
05:46disparagingly depicting the people.
05:48We were allowed to use certain words that we couldn't use on the screen then and maybe not even now.
05:53The otherwise beloved author was just one of many Americans who were swept away
05:58in a wave of anti-Japanese sentiment during the Second World War.
06:02It doesn't excuse Seuss' actions or the content of his early books,
06:06but it also speaks to a larger cultural sentiment of the era.
06:16Abuse and abandonment. John Lennon.
06:18Imagine there's no heaven.
06:25It's easy if you try.
06:28Music is a very powerful thing, and we as fans often tend to martyr our favorite artists.
06:33Yet perhaps we shouldn't, because behind every musician is a human being with failures and faults.
06:39John Lennon, by all accounts, failed as a father and husband,
06:42at least when it comes to his first wife, Cynthia Powell, and their son Julian.
06:46To a degree, I was abandoned as a kid, you know, twice, if not three times in many respects.
06:53Lennon's contradictory life included physical violence against Powell during a time when
06:57much of the Beatles' music espoused peace and love. The songwriter's split from Powell was
07:02acrimonious as well, with the pair engaging in lawsuits over his infidelity with Yoko Ono,
07:08as well as Lennon's emotional abandonment of their son.
07:11There was a great deal of anger there, but there's also, you know, I've grown up a lot,
07:14and there's been forgiveness since then. But it was tough, yeah. It was very tough growing up,
07:20that's for sure.
07:21Advocating euthanasia and eugenics, Helen Keller.
07:25Every day she slips further away.
07:32I don't know how to call it back.
07:33The deafblind activist Helen Keller wasn't the only politically-minded individual of her time
07:39to advocate for euthanasia and eugenics. It just surprised many that a person who
07:43overcame so many physical challenges in her own life would espouse the destruction of another,
07:48without giving it a similar fighting chance.
07:51She did write about eugenics, and she was concerned that children with disabilities,
07:56who with severe disabilities, would not be able to function in society. I think it was
08:00part of that zeitgeist at the time.
08:02Keller's opinion specifically reflected a 1915 case when a baby's life was allowed to expire
08:08after a doctor refused to operate. Keller charged those who advocated for the baby's
08:13life as containing, quote,
08:15"...cowardly sentimentalism."
08:17And she actively distanced herself from the disabled community throughout her adult life.
08:35Overseeing COINTELPRO, J. Edgar Hoover.
08:38Remember always that the spy and the saboteur or the destroyer carries no badge.
08:45He hides behind a hundred fronts. He pretends innocence. He likes to rub elbows with patriotic men.
08:54The figure of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is one that looms large over the agency's power
08:59and influence. One aspect of Hoover's controversial legacy includes operations that were conducted
09:04under the umbrella of COINTELPRO. These weren't just mere smear campaigns, but instead coordinated
09:10unrelenting attacks upon groups that the FBI considered undesirable.
09:15We knew the FBI was systematically trying to squash dissent, and dissent is the lifeblood
09:20of democracy.
09:21The activities and lives of the Black Panthers, anti-Vietnam activists, and even movie stars
09:26like Gene Seberg were monitored by FBI agents. Phones were tapped, conversations were recorded,
09:33and assassinations were approved under COINTELPRO, as the FBI manipulated the media and committed
09:39psychological warfare against United States citizens.
09:42The surveillance was so enormous that it led various people, rather sedate people in editorial
09:49offices and in Congress, to compare it to the Stasi, the dreaded secret police of East Germany.
09:56Accusations of anti-Semitism, Ruald Dahl. It often comes down to the consumer to decide whether or
10:02not we're able to separate the art from the artist.
10:05And I agree with you, it is difficult. Very, very difficult.
10:08Ruald Dahl is responsible for a writing score of certified children's classics, including
10:13Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda. However, this English veteran of World War II
10:19has also been accused of harboring sentiments that could be perceived as anti-Semitic.
10:23I thought he was great at first, but then he didn't turn out so nice.
10:27Dahl, in his defense, was quoted as saying,
10:29I am not anti-Semitic, I am anti-Israel.
10:32The author's friends often labeled him as a provocateur and subject to saying things on a whim.
10:37Yet, this does nothing to hide the fact that some of Dahl's early work, such as
10:41Sometime Never and Madame Rosette, contains defamatory language concerning Jewish people.
10:47One of those kind of horror stories which you have specialized in.
10:50Tikla.
10:51Yeah.
10:51Assault, Roman Polanski.
10:53Here you come to a concrete case for which I have been behind the bars,
11:01and that's what you want to talk about.
11:03Some turn away at the accusations leveled against filmmaker Roman Polanski,
11:07due primarily to his genre-defining work with Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown.
11:12The writer and director even received the Academy Award for Best Director for 2002's The Pianist,
11:17which was released decades after Polanski's infamous run-ins with the law.
11:21He was very powerful, very well-known.
11:24I think when you're wealthy or powerful or well-known, people don't say no to you,
11:29and you have like this different view of life where you're accustomed to getting what you want,
11:34because you get what you want.
11:35The history of Polanski's alleged sexual crimes dates back to 1977,
11:40when he was arrested for drugging and assaulting a teenager in his native France.
11:44Polanski would inconceivably be arrested for this crime again that same year,
11:49this time with an underage model named Samantha Gailey.
11:53Serious jail time loomed for the director, who was informed of this incoming justice,
11:58and Polanski decided to escape from the U.S. prior to his sentencing.
12:02Authorities here in Los Angeles have been unable to arrest Polanski before now.
12:06They say they've tried six times over the years,
12:08yet when they learned he was going to be in Zurich this past weekend,
12:11they asked the Swiss to help catch him.
12:13Advocating colonialism, Rudyard Kipling.
12:16My dear boy, I'm a British officer.
12:18My job is to keep the law.
12:20You keep not the jungle law.
12:22Look here, I don't know about any jungle law, but I do keep man's law.
12:30It doesn't seem unfair to say that many viewers of a certain age
12:33were first exposed to the work of English author Rudyard Kipling's literary work
12:37with the animated Disney adaptation of The Jungle Book.
12:40Kipling was born in British India,
12:42and it was living under these circumstances that provided a huge influence on his art.
12:46Including his Jungle Book duology, as well as a poem titled The White Man's Burden.
12:51Boy, now look at that.
12:53The color and majesty of India.
12:55The exquisite manners and food of England.
12:58All the bare necessities of life.
13:01This poem's narrative offers a cautious yet encouraging advocacy
13:05of American colonialist efforts in the Philippine Islands.
13:08While The Jungle Book, yes, even the Disney version,
13:11presents imagery that mirrors Britain's own colonialist approach to Indian rule.
13:16That's the way I earned my commission in the Maharaja's Fifth Pachyderm Brigade.
13:22Back in 88 it was, or was it?
13:26Here it comes.
13:27The Victoria Cross bit again.
13:29Forced conversion and misappropriation of funds.
13:32Mother Teresa.
13:33She probably make good work for church,
13:38but actually the care and the way she treated the sick people
13:44seems not to be what the media told.
13:46The career and life of Mary Teresa Boyajiu, aka Mother Teresa,
13:51did contribute to providing health care to the poor, needy, and sick.
13:54People who had nowhere else to turn.
13:56However, it's also been alleged that the quality of this care varied,
14:00and often came under the proviso of a forced conversion to Catholicism.
14:04These could be in the form of baptisms of children against their parents' wishes,
14:08or deathbed conversions.
14:10I have videos of a telling congregation in Scripps Clinic in 1992,
14:16that she was surreptitiously converting more and more people who were not able to give consent.
14:21Mother Teresa also contributed to hiding the actions of priests
14:25that were accused of behaving inappropriately with children,
14:27and also came under fire for misappropriating funds for her own medical care
14:32against those designated for her mission.
14:34India's Home Ministry refused to renew the Missionaries of Charity's license
14:38to receive funds from abroad, citing what it called adverse inputs,
14:43without giving more detail.
14:44Marrying minors. Charlie Chaplin.
14:47He was very taken with me. He had his cameraman
14:51photograph me in the position of the famous painting, The Age of Innocence.
14:56He thought that I resembled that little girl in the oil painting.
15:00The world of old Hollywood is full of dark shadows
15:02that contrast the bright lights and dazzling stars.
15:05Charlie Chaplin's work during the silent film era was massive,
15:09influencing countless artists.
15:11Yet the man's personal life was tumultuous,
15:13from his left-leaning political sympathies to alleged sexual relationships with minors.
15:19Charlie's assistant said to Charlie,
15:21this is the little girl I've been telling you about,
15:23and I went running over to meet them.
15:26And Charlie looked at me and he said, oh yes, and she's very pretty.
15:29Now would you like to be in a movie?
15:31It should be said that legal ages of consent have historically differed
15:34from both state to state and year to year,
15:36but Chaplin's first two wives were under the age of 18.
15:40His second spouse, Lita Gray, was alleged to have been a teenager
15:44at the time of their affair, during which she became pregnant.
15:47Gray would also allege that Chaplin pressured her for an abortion
15:50in order to circumvent the scandal of their secret marriage in Sonora, Mexico.
15:55I couldn't quite figure out how this was the same man seated at this
15:59table as the man I saw on the screen. It kind of scared me.
16:02Animal abuse allegations. P.T. Barnum.
16:05Figured you'd end up here feeling sorry for yourself.
16:08The modern day sideshows, carnivals, and circus attractions
16:12all owe a debt of gratitude to the showmanship of P.T. Barnum.
16:16However, the man's style of operation within the circus business
16:19has come under large scrutiny over the years,
16:22particularly in the wake of 2017's The Greatest Showman.
16:25I never liked your show, but I always thought the people did.
16:29They did. They do.
16:32Specifically, Barnum often exploited real-life physical conditions
16:36for those appearing in his various sideshows,
16:38while other exhibits leaned heavily into racist and culturally insensitive stereotypes.
16:44The animals under Barnum's watch fared little better,
16:46with many of the tools used to get them to perform their shows
16:50also doubling as instruments of pain.
17:00The Kennedy Lobotomy. Joe Kennedy Sr.
17:03Individuals historically turned to a lot of different places
17:06when it came to seeking out answers for mental illness.
17:09The surgical procedure, known as a lobotomy, was one of these places,
17:13and it wasn't only the poor that turned in this direction.
17:16By the end of the procedure, she's basically lost the ability to talk,
17:19and it's clear that this has gone terribly wrong.
17:22The Kennedy family patriarch, Joe Kennedy Sr.,
17:26subjected his daughter, Rosemary, to a lobotomy during her early 20s.
17:30This was after complications during her delivery and birth
17:33resulted in Rosemary developing some sort of learning-slash-intellectual disability.
17:38From a young age, Rosemary, the eldest Kennedy daughter, was a bit slow.
17:44She was diagnosed with learning disability at the age of about six or seven.
17:49The public perception of Joe and the Kennedy family's feelings
17:52towards Rosemary range from ignorance to shame.
17:55It's also largely believed that the lobotomy was performed to both
17:59neutralize the Kennedy daughter's mood swings
18:01and ensure the political paths for Joe's sons were made more clear.
18:05Joe was convinced Rosemary's lobotomy would somehow fix things,
18:10and then miraculously she would become a perfect Kennedy like all the other Kennedys.
18:15The Bengal Famine. Winston Churchill.
18:18It's not a matter upon which I am able to shed any clear ray of light at the present time,
18:25and if I were, I should certainly not shed it.
18:28The legacy of former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill
18:32was still being forged when this humanitarian disaster struck India back in 1943.
18:38World War II raged across the globe, yet this was also still the time of British colonialism in India.
18:44The war, specifically Japan's occupation of Burma,
18:47was devastating for India's economy during this time,
18:50with foodstuffs being diverted preferentially and strategically
18:54to military personnel rather than Indian natives.
19:07Churchill's level of blame for the Bengal Famine fluctuates depending on who you ask,
19:12with some quoting the Prime Minister's disparaging remarks towards India's people,
19:16while others claim Churchill's hands were tied and that he effectively
19:20quote did his best once alerted of the crisis.
19:24Contemporary non-official observers reported from the start that this was a man-made famine.
19:29Calcutta newspaper The Statesman wrote,
19:31The sickening catastrophe is man-made. The famine constitutes the worst
19:35and most reprehensible administrative breakdown in India.
19:39Nazi sympathy Coco Chanel
19:41Operation Model Hat. Your codename is now Westminster.
19:45The name Coco Chanel is synonymous with the fashion industry,
19:48yet the real-life historical figure behind this brand possessed a complicated history.
19:53We're speaking of Chanel's involvement with Nazi officials during their occupation of France
19:58during World War II. Chanel had an endgame in mind with regards to her SS collaborations,
20:04specifically freeing her nephew who was being held as a POW.
20:08She decided to go to the French, you know, collaboration government
20:19and who were in touch with the Gestapo.
20:22Chanel's romantic affair with Nazi officer Hans Gunther von Dinklage succeeded in this aim,
20:27yet she continued contact with the Nazi brass after the release of her nephew.
20:32One of Chanel's political allies was the aforementioned Winston Churchill,
20:36and it was via this influence that the fashion icon was able to avoid charges
20:40of collaboration after the war. We've had many dinners together
20:44since the 20s, vacation together. So it's personal.
20:48Oh yes, Sir Winston has even taken the opportunity to crawl in my lap.
20:52Promoting segregation Woodrow Wilson
20:55He introduced Jim Crow to Washington D.C.
21:01At a time when it was just starting to loosen up,
21:04he brought it back and it became, for all intents and purposes, the law of the land.
21:10Armchair historians might like to point out how former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson
21:14probably would have wanted his 14 points or the League of Nations to be part of his lasting legacy.
21:20Instead, a recent light has since been shined upon just how reticent Wilson's presidency was
21:25to listening to voices of change and their increasing clamor for equality.
21:30The former president supported segregation at every turn,
21:33including enforcing it within the branches of the federal government.
21:36In addition to this physical separation from whites,
21:39black federal workers were appointed to menial positions or reassigned to jobs slated for
21:45elimination. Wilson worked to remove African-American politicians from their posts,
21:50and he actively opposed the women's suffrage movement.
21:53Post-Civil War reconstruction in America was not easy,
21:56but the 20th century presidency of Woodrow Wilson did a lot to help undermine a lot of that era's
22:02success. On the one hand, he's got this abstract vision of a more just world that has all of this
22:10potential and possibility in it. And then on the flip side, for all of his big ideals,
22:16he is such a narrow-hearted little man. The Siege of Drogheda, Oliver Cromwell.
22:21The mere mention of the name Oliver Cromwell is enough to elicit many passionate opinions.
22:33The legacy of this former Lord Protector is nothing if not complicated, with some sides
22:37of history praising Cromwell's military might and others condemning him for the same reasons.
22:43The Siege of Drogheda was a military conflict often used to underline Cromwell's brutality
22:48while also criticizing the man's campaign in Ireland.
23:06Sir Arthur Aston, who was in charge of defending the garrison, refused a chance to surrender to
23:12Cromwell's invading forces. As a result, nearly all of Aston's men were killed, along with an
23:17unnamed number of civilians. It's this latter fact that speaks to just how often Cromwell's
23:22opposition was slaughtered, seemingly without regard to mercy or decency.
23:47The Indian Removal Act, Andrew Jackson. His visage remains on the $20 U.S. note,
24:02but perhaps reckoning will eventually come for former American President Andrew Jackson.
24:07The man's problematic legacy has grown exponentially in recent years,
24:11thanks primarily to his enforcement of the Indian Removal Act in 1830.
24:16The Cherokees actually won a Supreme Court case over land in Georgia,
24:20but Jackson ignored the decision. The bill was signed into law by Jackson,
24:24and its enforcement was continued by the President's successor, Martin Van Buren.
24:28Under this act, over 60,000 Native Americans were forced to uproot and move west,
24:34a journey that became known as the Trail of Tears.
24:37Many were shackled in chains and forced to walk, at gunpoint, more than 1,000 miles west
24:44on a series of routes that all led to Oklahoma.
24:48Up to a third of the 15,000 Cherokee who were forced to make the journey died.
24:53The act is seen today largely as a strategic land grab movement by the United States,
24:59with Jackson's personal feelings asserting an idea that Native self-rule should only take place
25:04upon federal land west of the Mississippi River.
25:07They took everything from us. America's built on stolen lands. America is a stolen country.
25:12Did any of these revelations surprise you? Let us know in the comments.
25:17We knew that the FBI had us under constant surveillance,
25:20but I don't think anyone at the time really knew the full extent of the program, of COINTELPRO.
25:31Check out these other clips from WatchMojo,
25:33and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos.