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Yeah, I'm not sure that any person has been actually hated (as opposed to just disliked) by a greater fraction of the US population than Trump is since Osama bin Laden (which is not to say that the fractions are even close to similar, since my guess is that Trump is probably hated by something like 30% of the population and with bin Laden it was probably at least double that). Before bin Laden, maybe you'd have to go back all the way to Hitler, Tojo, and Hirohito. I dunno, possibly Ruhollah Khomeini in between, as well. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and GW Bush have also been widely hated, but I think also not to quite the same degree of Trump, although it's somewhat close.
I'd say notorious criminals like John Wayne Gacy and Timothy McVeigh were more hated than Trump within the US - you wouldn't be able to screen Trump's execution on public jumbotrons without the red tribe rioting over it. The most recent example is Jeffrey Epstein - based on which political messages work, I think normie blues hate Epstein more than they hate Trump and normie reds hate Epstein more than they love Trump. Jeffery Epstein hanged on live TV would have been a widely popular unifying moment, with only Richard "nothing wrong with a little ephebophilia" Hanania and a few soft-on-crime lefties as party poopers.
I would add Saddam Hussein around the time of GW1 to the list of foreign enemies who got the 2 minutes hate treatment before Bin Laden.
Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church was the most universally hated person in America, and I think he was pretty intensively hated as well - it just didn't make as much noise because nobody was willing to defend him. Rats are also near-universally and broadly hated, but it isn't a political issue worth discussing on the Motte. I think whether he was more hated than Trump ends up being a question about how you count.
If you ask the question globally, rather than locally, then the answer would be Trump. This is unsurprising - a huge part of Trump's rhetoric (whether or not he means it) is that it is time for the civilised world's long nightmare of peace and prosperity to come to an end as the US throws its hard power into negative sum games chasing (at best) marginal gains for red tribers. The last time a world leader who was powerful enough to be dangerous ranted about destroying the system that underwrites the security and prosperity of Westerners was Khrushchev and "we will bury you" and the last time someone did it while also acting like a crass vulgarian was the guy with the silly mustache.
Kruschev did not threaten to destroy the west, that's a mistranslation of what he actually said. Yes, 'we will bury you' is the correct literal translation, but that's a Russian idiom for 'we will be present at your funeral'. That is, he said communism was a historical inevitability(which was Soviet dogma and not something that was new) and capitalists would disappear.
Correct - but the "American Street" or at least the minority of it which cares about foreign affairs interpreted it as a threat. "It is a historical inevitability that your civilisation will collapse" is technically a prediction and not a threat, but in the mouth of someone with the technical ability to collapse your civilisation it is (and was intended to be) menacing.
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I don't think that it is the quantity of hate, but the quality. Trump's superpowers have been three - he shortcircuts his opponents brains, he doesn't give a fuck about the reality, he says things no one else dares.
The first one is important - the level of Trump hate is like hating Goldstein - two minutes at least of raw emotions daily.
It's vice versa: he shortcuts his supporters' brains with these three techniques, and in so doing drives his opponents crazy.
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Obama?
I feel like this depends on where you live. I know virtually no one in person that hates Trump. I knew a lot of people who hated Obama.
Maybe Trump hate actually is worse than Obama. Or the left is just far more tolerant of violence now than the right was under Obama. Evidence exists that it’s the latter - UNH assasination/BLM riots in the last 5 years.
To me Obama hate was real people and Trump hate are people on the internet I have zero interaction with in real life. But many here probably have a HR lady they deal with
I never knew anyone who hated Obama. Hillary, on the other hand...
I know plenty who hate Trump, though.
The Tea Party movement occurred and the 2010 wave election. It didn’t involve violence but there was certainly a lot of anger. I don’t believe people hated Biden as he was viewed as senile but at the top of a machine that was disliked.
My main point is that people saying “Trump hate is different” may be mainly due to where they live and who they interact with. I hated Obama but I guess we believed we could enact change thru the political process while the hate for Trump may be from people who thought they had won a mandate that wasn’t true and now are considering options outside of political institutions.
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Castro?
Karl Marx is almost universally hated by people. I think people have even attempted to bomb his tombstone many times.
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Don't think he ever entered direct beligerance with most people. Cuban expats sure
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