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Power, wealth, and cruelty - a deadly family tradition. Join us as we count down our picks for the most tyrannical dynasties in history! These families didn't just rule countries; they crushed them under iron fists, leaving legacies of oppression, corruption, and human suffering that echo through generations.
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00:00By elevating him to such heights, Kim Jong-il hopes to one day take the reins of power himself.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at 10 infamous families that shaped history through tyranny and corruption.
00:14Never before had a dictator looked so colorful.
00:18The Fuhimori family. Alberto Fuhimori rose from outsider to president of Peru in 1990.
00:24A decade in power sealed his legacy as one of Peru's most controversial leaders, admired by some and reviled by others.
00:34At first, he promised order amidst chaos, but his reign soon descended into brutality.
00:39In 1992, he staged a self-coup, shutting down Congress and the courts, giving himself unchecked power.
00:46Under his dictatorship, various atrocities happened, like the Barrio Saltos and La Cantuta massacres
00:53and the forced sterilization of indigenous women.
01:01Though his policies rescued Peru's economy, his corruption ran deep.
01:06Embezzlement, bribery, and rigged elections became widespread.
01:10In 2009, Fuhimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison on charges of human rights abuses.
01:15His daughter, Keiko, even entered politics at 19, bowing to finish what her father started,
01:21only to face a $17 million money laundering scandal.
01:25Alberto's son, Kenji, a congressman, also came under fire for ties to the regime's legacy of fear and authoritarian betrayal.
01:34The Batista Family.
01:35From a family of sugarcane farmers, Fulgencio Batista clawed his way into power.
01:40In 1933, he led the sergeant's revolt, becoming the power broker behind Cuba's government.
01:46Fearing defeat at the Poles in 1952, he launched a military coup, seizing outright control.
01:52What followed was seven years of terror.
01:55The press was muzzled, protests banned, and his secret police accused of killing over 20,000 people.
02:02Batista even aligned with American mobsters like Meyer Lansky,
02:05turning Havana into a center for organized crime and amassing vast fortunes.
02:10Whereas in 1940, his accumulation of wealth appeared as a byproduct of his populist rule,
02:15now the reaping of profits was his only evident goal.
02:19His family basked in mansions in luxury, while ordinary Cubans were crushed by poverty.
02:25Ultimately, it was Fidel Castro's revolution that forced Batista to flee in 1959,
02:31ending not just his rule, but his family's iron grip on Cuba.
02:34The plush hotels now house the evidence, crowds of witnesses waiting to testify
02:40about the outrages of Batista's strong-arm men.
02:43The Khomeini family.
02:45Following the Iranian revolution led by Ruhala Khomeini,
02:49he rose as Iran's supreme leader in 1979.
02:52And what followed was a harsh new order.
02:54He established revolutionary tribunals which executed thousands in the name of fighting corruption.
03:15Leftist political prisoners were also purged.
03:18Under his regime, women's rights collapsed.
03:20Hijabs became mandatory, freedoms were rolled back, and strict morality codes took hold.
03:27The imposition of Islamic law here has started with an order to women to cover their heads in government offices.
03:32Many are furious.
03:34Only a minority in Tehran already follow the instruction.
03:37Even underage boys weren't spared.
03:40They were sent to front lines of war, sparking global outrage.
03:43Though Khomeini's wife and daughter kept low profiles, they supported his vision.
03:48His sons, on the other hand, were deeply involved, with Ahmad becoming his chief enforcer, ensuring his doctrines lived on.
03:55As a family, the Khomeinis clung to power through repression, betraying Iran's hope of democracy.
04:01We are doing this owing to the tenets of Islam.
04:05The Pinochet family.
04:07Chile's democracy didn't just collapse.
04:09It was crushed under a military coup in 1973, led by Augusto Pinochet.
04:14From that moment, freedom vanished.
04:17Out on the streets of Santiago, leftists, protesters, artists, and intellectuals were all being rounded up
04:22and marched to the internment camps that were springing up across the city.
04:26He suspended civil rights, dissolved Congress, and unleashed a secret police responsible for killing, torture, and the disappearance of thousands.
04:35I want to know when my father was killed, on what day, where are his remains?
04:40Then I can finally say goodbye.
04:42His neoliberal policies deepened inequality, driving many Chileans into poverty.
04:47His wife, Lucia, openly supported his regime, helping manage finances, until she was later charged with embezzlement.
04:54Their five children were equally complicit, entangled in scandals over siphoning public funds.
05:00In the end, Augusto was charged with crimes against humanity and corruption, amassing over $28 million.
05:07For the Pinochets, power wasn't about leading a nation, but enriching themselves at the devastating expense of Chilean lives and democracy.
05:15Some time ago, I would have said that the dictatorship was behind us, and hadn't played such an important role in Chile.
05:23But I wasn't fully aware of what had really happened.
05:25The Marcos family.
05:27The Philippines once hoped for progress, but under the Marcos family, that hope became a nightmare.
05:33Now everybody seems to be involved in the destiny, not only of himself, but of the entire country and of the entire nation.
05:41And this is what we have been hoping and praying for.
05:45Ferdinand Marcos led the growing economy into a debt crisis, and when things escalated, he declared martial law in 1972, ushering in a dictatorship.
05:55His regime oversaw thousands of extrajudicial killings, torture, and illegal arrests of political opposition and ordinary citizens.
06:02At that same time, he looted an estimated $5 to $10 billion in public funds.
06:08And all the while Filipino citizens were being tortured and imprisoned, the Marcoses would spend really brazenly and lavishly.
06:19While his wife Imelda and their children lived in notorious luxury, millions of Filipinos were left impoverished.
06:25Though the family was exiled, they returned and reclaimed political influence.
06:30Today, Bongbong Marcos Jr. sits as president, and the Philippines remains in the shadow of the Marcos family's grip.
06:37That we'll need, that we must remember, we must be motivated by the lessons that he left with us.
06:44The lessons that we must exercise good judgment.
06:47And always, always side with the national interest and the interest of Filipinos.
06:54The Duvalier family.
06:56You'd expect the doctor to heal a nation, but not Francois Duvalier.
07:01It's the beginning of decades of dictatorship for Haiti.
07:05Rising from rural physician, he turned Haiti into his personal dictatorship, crowning himself president for life and ruling through terror.
07:13He filled his circle with loyalists paid from stolen state funds, while his feared Tonton Makut death squads silenced dissent, leaving thousands dead or disappeared.
07:25He even cloaked his reign in voodoo mystique to tighten his grip.
07:29He calls elections in 1961.
07:32And there is only one name on the ballot for president.
07:35After his death, his son Jean-Claude took power in 1971, ruling less brutally, but with far more negligence.
07:43He siphoned public wealth for a lavish lifestyle, while poverty ravaged Haiti, until rebellion forced him into exile in 1986.
07:51And for someone like that to have a mass misfortune, to have a wife with a cold room in the palace where she has a collection of fur coats in Haiti.
08:05In the end, instead of healing, the Duvaliers left Haitians scarred for generations.
08:11The Leopold II royal family.
08:14Can a nation be owned by a monarch as his personal estate?
08:17Between 1885 and 1908, King Leopold II of Belgium claimed the Congo Free State as his own, ruling it with absolute power.
08:27Leopold once said about his Congo, what I do there is done as a Christian duty.
08:33Under his system, villagers were forced to harvest rubber and collect ivory under impossible quotas.
08:39Failure to meet demands was punished by whippings, killings, and severed hands as proof of obedience.
08:45During this time, millions of men, women, and children died from forced labor, famine, and disease.
08:51I think one can assume that he knew, maybe not all the details, but that he knew that the system of exploitation of the rubber in the Congo had gruesome effects.
09:04While the Congolese endured unimaginable suffering, King Leopold enriched his royal family with ivory and rubber wealth.
09:11It was humanitarian outrage that finally forced Belgium to take control in 1908, but by then, Leopold's family greed had consumed an entire nation.
09:21The Ceausescu family, using his charisma to mask the harsh realities of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu rose through the ranks after spending time in prison.
09:43He eventually became president, giving citizens hope by easing press censorship and promising reforms.
09:49But soon, he and his wife Elena, the deputy prime minister, unleashed even worse tyranny.
10:05Their secretate secret police enforced harsh repression, resulting in thousands of deaths, while their pervasive cult of personality hid the country's economic turmoil.
10:15Vroia să arate că noi producem mai bine și mai mult decât sovietici în agricultură.
10:25De aceea, în unele cazuri absolut particulare, unele din aceste raportări nu oglindeau realitate.
10:34While the Ceausescu's lived in opulence, their policies forced Romanian's into severe hardship, including exporting food while people starved.
10:43Hunting deer was Ceausescu's favorite sport, so he passed a law forbidding anyone else to shoot them, and then cordoned off 2,000 acres of the best hunting land for himself.
10:55Their reign ended in the 1989 revolution, with Nicolae and Elena executed on Christmas Day.
11:01Today, the Ceausescu's legacy in Romanian history is one where power trumps compassion.
11:07The Pol Pot family. Can a single family plunge a whole nation into a nightmare?
11:12Pol Pot, born to a rural family in Kampong Tam, rose to lead the Khmer Rouge and impose his radical vision on Cambodia.
11:21The bloody and cruel regime of Pol Pot is said to be responsible for the death of more than one million people.
11:26His first wife, Kyo Panare, and his brother-in-law, Ieng Se, held top government posts, orchestrating purges and enforcing communal living.
11:35Other relatives held positions that further entrenched the regime, implementing policies that caused mass suffering.
11:42Who dares to say there was no genocide? I can't use one of my ears or one of my eyes.
11:48Cities were emptied, money and religion abolished, and ethnic minorities targeted, leaving millions dead, as later confirmed by international tribunals.
11:58Though Pol Pot died under house arrest in 1998, his family will forever be remembered as a chilling testament to how ideology and familial power can destroy a nation.
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12:36The Kim Family
12:39It's hardly surprising when you hear about the Kim Family in North Korea.
12:44Since 1948, their iron grip has shaped the nation's every breath.
12:48They rule over their people as gods.
12:51It began with Kim Il-sung, whose Stalinist rule and Juche ideology bred fear and blind devotion.
12:59Then his son, Kim Jong-il, devoted the nation's resources to military and nuclear ambitions.
13:04It's about, if you attack us, if you do anything to us that we don't like, we'll fire a nuclear missile at you. Game over.
13:12Now, Kim Jong-un continues that legacy, ruling through fear, propaganda, and famine.
13:19During the arduous march, countless starved while others perished in brutal labor camps.
13:25Their cult of personality turned them into gods and their citizens into worshipers.
13:30It's kind of the mirror image of a religion, of the worst sort.
13:34Even family figures like Kim Yo-jong help uphold the regime's myth of divine leadership.
13:40For over seven decades, the Kims have turned power into a birthright, passing tyranny down like a family tradition.
13:48Which dynasty is the worst to have ever existed?
13:51Let us know in the comments section.
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