Good old Genghis – he did have his troops slaughter some million people, but then that was the way you did business on the steppes at the time.
Otherwise, basically he was a nobody who became ruler by his own efforts*, a superb general, an able statesman, always willing to learn and use what he had learned, who respected his opponents, who took a bunch of backward tribes and made them the first power of its time.
Incidentally, inverting every one of the above gives a good enough definition of the current US president.
So…where’s a Genghis Khan when you need one ?
* He did have a serious claim by blood to the leadership of his tribe, but considering how low his faily had sunk it wasn’t easy to enforce it
Conan the Barbarian (in John Milius’s film) is basically a nordic Genghis Khan. From slave to world conqueror on the virtue of simply being a total badass.
Note also how his Asian sidekick is named “Subutai”.
I actually agree with Corey Robin at Brooklyn College that Trump is going to lose precisely because he’s no Genghis Khan. Trump is a fascist but he’s weak. You can be a weak liberal. You can’t be a weak fascist. As soon as you lose your aura of invincibility your followers abandon you.
“As he smashed the feudal system of aristocratic privilege and birth, he built a new and unique system based on individual merit, loyalty and achievement. He took the disjointed and languorous trading towns along the Silk Route and organized them into history’s largest free trading zone. He lowered taxes for everyone, and abolished the altogether for doctors, teachers and priests and educational institutions. He established a regular census and created the world’s first international postal system. His was not an empire that hoarded wealth and treasure; instead he widely distributed the good acquired…He insisted on laws holding rulers as equally accountable as the lowest herder. He granted religious freedom within his realms.”
Genghis Khan; Jack Weatherford
Yup, sure sounds like a bad guy. Excepting the standard set by the USA.
Yes. My ancestor the Great Khan is a very misunderstood figure. Sure his methods could be rough at times but it was the Middle Ages. Even a minor Frankish Chieftain like Charlemagne massacred 5000 pagan Goths on one day for not converting to Christianity.
Writers Without Money 
Good old Genghis – he did have his troops slaughter some million people, but then that was the way you did business on the steppes at the time.
Otherwise, basically he was a nobody who became ruler by his own efforts*, a superb general, an able statesman, always willing to learn and use what he had learned, who respected his opponents, who took a bunch of backward tribes and made them the first power of its time.
Incidentally, inverting every one of the above gives a good enough definition of the current US president.
So…where’s a Genghis Khan when you need one ?
* He did have a serious claim by blood to the leadership of his tribe, but considering how low his faily had sunk it wasn’t easy to enforce it
Conan the Barbarian (in John Milius’s film) is basically a nordic Genghis Khan. From slave to world conqueror on the virtue of simply being a total badass.
Note also how his Asian sidekick is named “Subutai”.
I actually agree with Corey Robin at Brooklyn College that Trump is going to lose precisely because he’s no Genghis Khan. Trump is a fascist but he’s weak. You can be a weak liberal. You can’t be a weak fascist. As soon as you lose your aura of invincibility your followers abandon you.
“As he smashed the feudal system of aristocratic privilege and birth, he built a new and unique system based on individual merit, loyalty and achievement. He took the disjointed and languorous trading towns along the Silk Route and organized them into history’s largest free trading zone. He lowered taxes for everyone, and abolished the altogether for doctors, teachers and priests and educational institutions. He established a regular census and created the world’s first international postal system. His was not an empire that hoarded wealth and treasure; instead he widely distributed the good acquired…He insisted on laws holding rulers as equally accountable as the lowest herder. He granted religious freedom within his realms.”
Genghis Khan; Jack Weatherford
Yup, sure sounds like a bad guy. Excepting the standard set by the USA.
Yes. My ancestor the Great Khan is a very misunderstood figure. Sure his methods could be rough at times but it was the Middle Ages. Even a minor Frankish Chieftain like Charlemagne massacred 5000 pagan Goths on one day for not converting to Christianity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Verden