I was going to present my next pick in the form of a song from Dr. Demento, but upon listening I think it’s a little racist. So if you want to hear a song about this guy, Google his name and Dr. Demento.
Anyway, for my next pick Team LFS selects the Butcher of Uganda, Idi Amin.
Commander of the Ugandan Army since 1965, in 1971 Amin seized power over the country in a military coup when he learned he was soon to be arrested for corruption.
After seizing power, Amin liberally relied on extra-judicial killings to purge his opponents. He killed his rival’s supporters, members of his ethnic group, journalists, religious leaders, intellectuals, judges, lawyers, students, and generally anybody he remotely considered a threat. The upper estimate of the number of people he killed is 500,000.
In 1976, he allowed an Air France flight from Tel Aviv that had been hijacked by PLO operatives to land in Uganda, resulting in an attempted rescue by Israeli commandos. In retaliation for Kenya’s assistance in the raid, Amin also ordered the killing of hundreds of Kenyans living in Uganda.
He was fond of bestowing titles upon himself, with his title ultimately becoming: His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, CBE (Conqueror of the British Empire), Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular. He also claimed to be the King of Scotland (resulting in the title of the film in which he was portrayed by Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland.
Amin reportedly once ordered 4,000 disabled people to be thrown into the Nile to be torn apart by crocodiles. He also confessed to practicing cannibalism, saying “I have eaten human meat,” he said in 1976. “It is very salty, even more salty than leopard meat.”
Team LFS so far: Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin