How bad of a tyrant was Khan Noonien Singh?

[FederationHistorian]

A recent rewatching of “Space Seed” inspired me to make this topic.

In the 23rd century, Khan was considered to be the best of tyrants and the most dangerous, and was the last tyrant overthrown. He is also known to speak in military terms frequently, considered to have a magnetic personality, and he personally considered himself a prince.

His rule in the mid-1990s was synonymous with severely curtailed personal freedoms, no internal massacres, and no wars of aggression until other governments moved in to overthrow him. He and his fellow Augments (some of whom were military commanders, according to Archer in “Hatchery”) were considered to be a bunch of Alexander the Greats & Napoleans capable of both offering courage to the rest of the world and following the rules of war. On one hand, Khan ruled 1/4 of the planet and controlled 40 nations, from North Africa & the Middle East to Asia, ruling over millions. On the other, his fellow Augments began warring with each other after they took power, and after other nations joined in, it resulted in at least 37 million deaths, with entire populations bombed out and nearly causing a new Dark Age, and Khan fleeing Earth on the SS Botany Bay with over 80 fellow Augments and they were considered to be war criminals by the governments of Earth.

Spock is shocked that a dictator like Khan is admired by Starfleet officers, particularly Kirk, Bones and Scotty. Scotty himself admits has a soft spot for him. Note that this is the same era where 20th century humans are considered to be extremely primitive and not as evolved as 23rd century humans. Kirk chooses to pardon Khan by dropping all charges against him and allows him to colonize Ceti Alpha V at the end of “Space Seed,” even after Khan holds the crew hostage and attempts to kill Kirk and the rest of the Enterprise by blowing up the ship. Meanwhile, Chekov considers Khan to be a criminal in TWOK. And Spock later comes to see Khan as brilliant and ruthless, as he explains to the crew of the Enterprise of the Kelvinverse.

By the time of the 24th century, the perception of Khan has clearly changed. Picard shows concern over the rise of another Hitler or Khan on an endangered planet in “A Matter of Time”:

What if one of those lives I save down there is a child who grows up to be the next Adolf Hitler or Khan Singh? Every first year philosophy student has been asked that question since the earliest wormholes were discovered...

Seeing Khan mentioned on the level of Hitler, even though Khan’s rule was supposedly peaceful yet authoritarian, does seem contradictory to me. How does one reconcile the romanticism of him as just a strong and forceful leader and military commander in the 23rd century, and the realization that he was a ruthless tyrant in the 24th century? Did the events of “Space Seed” & TWOK influence perception of him afterwards? Or was it intellectual dishonesty on the part of Kirk’s crew as to what Khan really was?

 

[F. King Daniel]

According to Into Darkness, the continuation of Khan's goals involved "the eradication of anyone [he] deemed to be less than superior."

So I'm guessing in the Kelvin timeline, more records had been unearthed than Prime.

 

[BillJ]

Or was it intellectual dishonesty on the part of Kirk’s crew as to what Khan really was?

Romanticism of a bygone time. Easy to ignore the bad, and gush about the good when there's two to three centuries of history in between.

Kirk and Company quickly learned the error of their ways.

 

[Khan Jr]

According to Into Darkness, the continuation of Khan's goals involved "the eradication of anyone [he] deemed to be less than superior."

So I'm guessing in the Kelvin timeline, more records had been unearthed than Prime.

It's just poor writing. Khan didn't intend to kill anyone on the Enterprise in "Space Seed" as long as they submitted to him as their leader. He didn't eradicate the Reliant's crew in the second movie, though there would have been no consequences for him doing so. He didn't even wipe out Kirk's landing party on Regula, instead leaving them to the punishment he deemed fitting. Khan is authoritarian - something still eminently worth fighting against - not genocidal.

 

[BillJ]

It's just poor writing. Khan didn't intend to kill anyone on the Enterprise in "Space Seed" as long as they submitted to him as their leader.

Isn't that, by-and-large, any authoritarian leader. Reward those who are loyal, dispatch of those who aren't?

He didn't eradicate the Reliant's crew in the second movie, though there would have been no consequences for him doing so.

No, he marooned them on Ceti Alpha V. Where even genetically engineered humans struggled to survive. Just because he wasn't getting blood directly on his hands doesn't mean he expected them to survive. If he had his way, Ceti Alpha V would've been a death sentence for the Reliant crew.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Khan didn't intend to kill anyone on the Enterprise in "Space Seed" as long as they submitted to him as their leader. He didn't eradicate the Reliant's crew in the second movie, though there would have been no consequences for him doing so. He didn't even wipe out Kirk's landing party on Regula, instead leaving them to the punishment he deemed fitting. Khan is authoritarian - something still eminently worth fighting against - not genocidal.

Ahem.

 

[BillJ]

Ahem.

C'mon. If dude had just told Khan what he wanted to know, we all know it would've been "happy fun time". I even bet Khan would've taken him to Chuck-E-Cheese.

 

[XCV330]

Khan and his group seemed to have a pretty stable understanding of Khan's authority. The Augment's of Enterprise did not seem impressed that he was willing to walk away from the fight, and if Malik is anything to judge them buy, the next batch out of the incubators might have been real trouble for Khan. Anyway Khan's era was marked by the Eugenics Wars, not the Eugenics Golden Age. It couldn't have gone over that well, regardless of Khan's Magic Blood.

 

[Damian]

Khan was ruthless. There's no doubt about that. And he was incredibly dangerous and would eliminate anyone who dared get in his way.

Now, he wasn't bloodthirsty. It's true he didn't kill people just for the fun of it. Generally you'd have to do something to try to stop him or interfere with his goals to be eliminated. But he didn't just kill people for giggles. But that doesn't make him any less dangerous or any less a tyrant.

As BillJ noted above, he may not have directly killed everyone in his path, but he did things that would clearly lead to their death. And he intended on destroying the Enterprise in TWOK. I don't think he marooned the crew of the Reliant out of any sense of mercy. He left them there to die a slow death. In "Space Seed" the only reason he didn't outright kill the crew is he needed at least some of them to help operate the ship. He said as much. He promised to spare the others if someone helped him---but you'd have to be pretty naïve if you were one of the crew and agreed. I have no doubt once Khan had learned all he needed to know that he would dispatch with the crew at some point. Or see that they came to a bad end.

This is where I usually plug Greg Cox's excellent Khan novels. The first two give some pretty good background on the Eugenics Wars in light of real history. And the 3rd book, To Reign in Hell, is excellent. It takes place during his exile on Ceti Alpha V. One of my all time favorite Star Trek books.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I think Scott's "There were no massacres under his rule" line still allows a bit of leeway. Perhaps Khan committed all sorts of atrocities on his way to becoming ruler of 1/4 of the planet, but stopped once his new world order was achieved. Perhaps the records of the full extent of his crimes were lost in the aftermath of Eugenics Wars. Spock says that records of that time are "fragmentary" and the fact that some 80 Napoleons were unaccounted for was left out of the history books and kept from the general public. I could easily see some of Khan's crimes getting lost in the shuffle like that, especially if Khan kept them secret in the first place.

And hell, even today we have Holocaust deniers. It's not too tough to imagine that there's some equivalent of those in the 23rd century, some two to three centuries after the fact. (Please realize that I'm not saying that Scotty was one of those people. Just that there might not have been a historical consensus on all of Khan's crimes.)

Kirk says "We can be against him and admire him all at the same time," about midway through "Space Seed", but I doubt there was a whole lot of admiring of Khan going on when the episode was over. And I think the fact that Khan tried to asphyxiate the entire bridge crew and then torture them all one by one when they defied him shows his true nature effectively enough. Hell, look at how horribly he treated Marla McGivers, and he loved her.

 

[BillJ]

I think Scott's "There were no massacres under his rule" line still allows a bit of leeway. Perhaps Khan committed all sorts of atrocities on his way to becoming ruler of 1/4 of the planet, but stopped once his new world order was achieved.

Or he simply didn't have time/resources to deal with internal discord while fighting wars on probably all of his borders?

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Or he simply didn't have time/resources to deal with internal discord while fighting wars on probably all of his borders?

Another good theory!

 

[Damian]

Kirk says "We can be against him and admire him all at the same time," about midway through "Space Seed", but I doubt there was a whole lot of admiring of Khan going on when the episode was over. And I think the fact that Khan tried to asphyxiate the entire bridge crew and then torture them all one by one when they defied him shows his true nature effectively enough

Yeah, true. You can be a tyrant and not be bloodthirsty. I'd imagine people under his rule would live under fear of death for not falling into line. Now, Khan may not necessarily kill people for no reason, and he seemed to value loyalty, that's not uncommon for tyrants. You can't rule without having people being loyal to you and you as the tyrant have to show some loyalty to them to stay in power. But get in his way or try to stop him, and he would destroy you.

 

[XCV330]

It was the 90's. Khan's ruthless eradication of Third Eye Blind, replacement of the Space Shuttle with DY class nuclear freighters, and his preventing millions of cans of Surge soda to poison a generation have caused subsequent historians to reevaluate the nature of his regime.

 

[Henoch]

His rule in the mid-1990s was synonymous with severely curtailed personal freedoms, no internal massacres, and no wars of aggression until other governments moved in to overthrow him. He and his fellow Augments (some of whom were military commanders, according to Archer in “Hatchery”) were considered to be a bunch of Alexander the Greats & Napoleans capable of both offering courage to the rest of the world and following the rules of war. On one hand, Khan ruled 1/4 of the planet and controlled 40 nations, from North Africa & the Middle East to Asia, ruling over millions. On the other, his fellow Augments began warring with each other after they took power, and after other nations joined in, it resulted in at least 37 million deaths, with entire populations bombed out and nearly causing a new Dark Age, and Khan fleeing Earth on the SS Botany Bay with over 80 fellow Augments and they were considered to be war criminals by the governments of Earth.

Spock is shocked that a dictator like Khan is admired by Starfleet officers, particularly Kirk, Bones and Scotty. Scotty himself admits has a soft spot for him. Note that this is the same era where 20th century humans are considered to be extremely primitive and not as evolved as 23rd century humans. Kirk chooses to pardon Khan by dropping all charges against him and allows him to colonize Ceti Alpha V at the end of “Space Seed,” even after Khan holds the crew hostage and attempts to kill Kirk and the rest of the Enterprise by blowing up the ship. Meanwhile, Chekov considers Khan to be a criminal in TWOK. And Spock later comes to see Khan as brilliant and ruthless, as he explains to the crew of the Enterprise of the Kelvinverse.

MERIK: There's been no war here for over four hundred years, Jim. Could, let's say, your land of that same era make that same boast? I think you can see why they don't want to have their stability contaminated by dangerous ideas of other ways and other places.
SPOCK: Interesting, and given a conservative empire, quite understandable.
MCCOY: Are you out of your head?
SPOCK: I said I understood it, Doctor. I find the checks and balances of this civilisation quite illuminating.
MCCOY: Next he'll be telling us he prefers it over Earth history.
SPOCK: They do seem to have escaped the carnage of your first three world wars, Doctor.
MCCOY: They have slavery, gladiatorial games, despotism.
SPOCK: Situations quite familiar to the six million who died in your first world war, the eleven million who died in your second, the thirty seven million who died in your third. Shall I go on?

My take on Spock's number of deaths from the three world wars: Spock was clearly responding about the political system of controlled slavery and gladiatorial combat and not military combat deaths. He's proposing that less death and hardship (i.e. carnage) occurred with the Roman slave system than due to eradication policies from the Germans and their allies during WW1, from Germans and Russians during WW2, and from Middle East/Asian/Augment governments during WW3 where "resistant" civilian population centers were bomb out of existence. Khan might have been one of the few augment leaders where he resisted mass eradication policies which made him historically, the best of the worst.

 

[Khan Jr]

Isn't that, by-and-large, any authoritarian leader. Reward those who are loyal, dispatch of those who aren't?

It sure is, but what's that have to do with the "Into Darkness" quote? It claims Khan kills people for being less than superior, not for being disloyal. You've moved the goalposts from the line as written to try and match what Khan actually does, probably because the line as written is nonsense.

Kirk says "We can be against him and admire him all at the same time," about midway through "Space Seed", but I doubt there was a whole lot of admiring of Khan going on when the episode was over. And I think the fact that Khan tried to asphyxiate the entire bridge crew and then torture them all one by one when they defied him shows his true nature effectively enough.

Do you think that was a mass genocide initiated because he deemed the bridge crew inferior? I know Khan's a megalomaniacal villain, I've never argued otherwise. He's simply not the eradicate all inferiors bad guy that the script I rebutted Flanderizes him as. Khan doesn't kill people for failing to meet some superiority checklist, even in the movie that says he does.

 

[BillJ]

It sure is, but what's that have to do with the "Into Darkness" quote? It claims Khan kills people for being less than superior, not for being disloyal. You've moved the goalposts from the line as written to try and match what Khan actually does, probably because the line as written is nonsense.

You'll have to ask the crew of the Reliant.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

He strikes me as equally bad as any other tyrant, just more skilled.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Do you think that was a mass genocide initiated because he deemed the bridge crew inferior? I know Khan's a megalomaniacal villain, I've never argued otherwise. He's simply not the eradicate all inferiors bad guy that the script I rebutted Flanderizes him as. Khan doesn't kill people for failing to meet some superiority checklist, even in the movie that says he does.

...Huh? I wasn't talking about Into Darkness at all, as that's a separate continuity with a different treatment of Khan. I was responding to this quote of yours talking about "Space Seed" and TWOK:

Khan didn't intend to kill anyone on the Enterprise in "Space Seed" as long as they submitted to him as their leader. He didn't eradicate the Reliant's crew in the second movie, though there would have been no consequences for him doing so. He didn't even wipe out Kirk's landing party on Regula, instead leaving them to the punishment he deemed fitting. Khan is authoritarian - something still eminently worth fighting against - not genocidal.

I wasn't arguing that Khan's attempted executions on the Enterprise were genocide. I was arguing against your POV that Khan wasn't bloodthirsty or homicidal, as you deliberately the dozens of murders he commits in TWOK. Khan doesn't say anything about executing people he finds inferior in TWOK.

 

[BillJ]

I wasn't arguing that Khan's attempted executions on the Enterprise were genocide. I was arguing against your POV that Khan wasn't bloodthirsty or homicidal, as you deliberately the dozens of murders he commits in TWOK. Khan doesn't say anything about executing people he finds inferior in TWOK.

He sounds like a swell guy to me...

TERRELL: He tortured those people. But none of those people would tell him anything. He went wild. He slit their throats. He wanted to tear the place apart, but he was late. He had to get back to Reliant in time to blow you to bits.

http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie2.html

I think it is clear that history didn't tell the whole story on Khan. Perhaps some of his misdeeds were buried to protect the scientists that helped create him and his non-eugenic co-horts who didn't get berths on the Botany Bay.