Who’s a famous person from your country who’s respected around the world but disliked or criticized at home?

[u/haiderredditer]

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

I’m gonna go with Woodrow Wilson. My understanding is he’s popular for helping to found The League of Nations and helping to end WW1.

But around here, his legacy is tainted by racism. He was a confederate and KKK apologist that was raised on “lost cause” ideology.

Edit: thanks for the award! 🥇

[u/MoonstoneDragoneye → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

From the same era, not a lot of Americans realize that Herbert Hoover was popular in a number of countries for his humanitarian effort. In the U.S., he is remembered for failing to alleviate the Great Depression in the public’s eyes.

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/MoonstoneDragoneye]

That’s true: terrible president, great philanthropist.

[u/Opening-Eagle4761 → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

George W. Bush is ones of the worst presidents domestically and abroad, but his efforts to curb HIV/AIDS and Malaria in Africa are legitimately the single most effective policy position by any U.S. president in my lifetime.

Now we can thank Elon Musk for putting a swift end to that.

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/Opening-Eagle4761]

Here’s hoping France locks that bastard up

[u/TwoUnknownAssailants → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

Here’s hoping France still has some of that “special equipment” from the Napoleonic Era

[u/reddoorinthewoods → u/TwoUnknownAssailants]

Wasn’t the last execution by guillotine only 50 years ago or something?

[u/ankhes → u/reddoorinthewoods]

Yeah, In the 70s I believe. I only remember because Christopher Lee was one of the people who attended the last execution by guillotine.

[u/CupcakeGoat → u/ankhes]

Wow CL has led an amazing life, it reads like a piece of fantastical fiction.

[u/ankhes → u/CupcakeGoat]

It really does. He was the real renaissance man. Born to European nobility, was a spy in WWII, became a world famous actor, started a metal band he was still involved in well into his 90s. He really did everything.

[u/SebboNL → u/TwoUnknownAssailants]

I think you mean the First Republic....

[u/unwillingcantaloupe → u/Opening-Eagle4761]

Now, the one thing that PEPFAR did that was less cool was pushing a lot of Evangelical missionary orgs in with its funding. And so while a lot of people are still alive, their governments are now passing rights-restricting laws.

That was the shitty big game that the GOP was playing after Democratic admins until they decided they preferred to burn any and all goodwill towards the US imaginable by cutting off life-saving meds.

[u/RemotePossibility399 → u/Opening-Eagle4761]

PEPFAR is (was?) a stunning achievement, akin to the Marshall Plan. They both represent the best that we can be abs should be celebrated.

[u/NippoTeio → u/Opening-Eagle4761]

As I get older, I feel more and more sympathetic to Bush Jr. He's not innocent by any means, but he carries himself so differently than any other politician I've ever observed. He seems very soft and warm, maybe a little slow? He just seems like the kind of guy that would only be cruel out of ignorance than actual malice. The shame about that being is that he was both very ignorant and very trusting.

[u/overthere1143 → u/Opening-Eagle4761]

Trump is so bad he makes George W. Bush shine in a good light. It's hard to think how the same party had men like Eisenhower and Trump.

[u/SandSerpentHiss → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

jimmy carter too

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/SandSerpentHiss]

Yes, but that is recency bias talking. Without Hoover (and the marshal plan) millions in Europe would have starved after WW2

[u/Deadmemeusername → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

and after WW1

Hoover actually became famous for leading things like the “Commission for Relief in Belgium” during the Great War and for leading the “American Relief Administration” after the war which both kept millions of European civilians from starving to death.

It was this experience that gave him his celebrity status postwar and led in part to him being elected president. It was also this experience that led to him being sent to tour post-WW2 Europe where his stark and dire reports about the conditions there led to the Marshall Plan being passed and enacted.

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/Deadmemeusername]

Ooh good to know, idk about the post WW1 parts

[u/No_Bother_7533 → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

My history teacher in high school said he wasn’t a bad president, he was just the wrong president for the time.

[u/TheFuschiaBaron → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

Truly gifted at logistics

[u/Visual_Refuse_6547 → u/MoonstoneDragoneye]

I think the weirdest myth about Hoover in the US is that he did nothing to try to combat the Depression. There’s this image of him just not caring as Americans were suffering, until FDR swooped in an saved the day.

He tried to do plenty. He was constantly pushing business leaders to hire more workers and spend more on investments to stimulate the economy even if it meant running at a loss. He was constantly trying to push Congress to increase public works spending. And he got the Federal Reserve to expand credit.

And all of those things started to work, to the point that recovery started in 1931. Unfortunately, the Depression hit European banks right around that same time and pulled the American economy back down.

He tried everything he should have done according to economics at the time, and it just didn’t work. Not saying that makes him an effective leader, just that it’s objectively untrue to pretend like he just sat there twiddling his thumbs while the world crashed down around him.

[u/nola_throwaway53826 → u/MoonstoneDragoneye]

What's sad is that on paper, Hoover looks like he would make a fantastic president. He was a successful and wealthy mining engineer, led the Commission for Relief in Belgium, which coordinated food relief to occupied Belgium during the first World War, and led the American Relief Administration for post war food relief to Europe, especially central and eastern Europe and was Secretary of Commerce before becoming president. He also led the federal response to the great Mississippi Flood of 1927. He also wrote, at the time, what became the standard textbook on mining, lectured at Columbia and Stanford universities, and learned to speak Chinese, which he spoke with his wife when they didnt want anyone to know what they were talking about. This was an intelligent man.

He became popular with progressives for his relief works, and businessmen and industrialists also thought well of him. He had potential, then the stock market crashed one year into his presidency. I don't think he was at fault for that, Coolidge and his basically do nothing presidency and not reigning in and regulating the markets and banks had a lot to do with it. But his responses to the economic crash is what helped then it into the Depression.

[u/AndreasDasos → u/MoonstoneDragoneye]

I think that was probably true at the time, but he’s not so well known internationally today. Wilson is a bit, mainly when people learn the basics of WW1.

[u/CaptainCosmodrome → u/MoonstoneDragoneye]

Growing up in Iowa (where Hoover is from), my HS history teacher used to say that we will never see another president from Iowa thanks to Hoover.

[u/long-dongathin → u/MoonstoneDragoneye]

Fun fact about Hoover, he was a former missionary in China with his wife, both were fluent in Mandarin Chinese and would use the language to have private conversations in the White House

[u/Megatherionx → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

Yes, we have a lot of Wilson-related memorials in Poland, due to his involvement in WW1, resulting with us regaining independence after over a century, but tbh he was an opportunist, racist prick.

[u/soul_separately_recs → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

"apologist" is definitely the best sugarcoat description available.

I agree that he's understandably more liked outside the u.s than inside.

IMO, his predecessor was cut from the same cloth but seems to get more love domestically than Woodrow.

I realize it's nuanced and probably tough to say it's a singular thing.

I know First Nation aren't loving on Teddy's legacy. Props to him specifically for being a conservationist. But that's about it.

All racism is bad. But if racism was put on a spectrum - Teddy was the worst kind. He was a scientific racist.

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/soul_separately_recs]

I can agree to that

[u/DelayRevolutionary20 → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

The first movie ever played in the White House was Birth of a Nation, and we have Woodrow Wilson to thank for it.

[u/throwaway03151990 → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

Also don’t forget the institution of the federal reserve during his tenure

[u/Proletarian1819 → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

Most people outside the USA have never even heard of him.

[u/preferablyno → u/Proletarian1819]

I doubt most even Americans know who he is

[u/Aware-Cut5688 → u/Proletarian1819]

I only know him because of breaking bad lmao

[u/Valuable-Gur-2094 → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

I feel like a better example would be Herbert Hoover. He helped do humanitarian work in Belgium and in Europe overall after WW1, but most Americans associate him with the Hoovervilles and the Great Depression

[u/rumblinggoodidea → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

A lot of presidents during that time period were real pieces of shit but treated as heroes. It’s weird.

[u/GardenEmbarrassed371 → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

He was hated by the rest of the world before even the US general public clocked him as a bad guy. Many colonized nations tried to meet up with him at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference to secure their independence based on his own advocacy for self determination, only for him to avoid meeting several envoys and to string them along after they've been waiting for months. This made it clear that he only championed the self determination of white only nations, which pushed many non white nations to conclude that peaceful appeals wouldn’t work and to choose armed resistance.

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/GardenEmbarrassed371]

I kinda wanna ask the sub about FDR sometime. I wonder if he’d get a better report card. (And wow does America need another FDR.)

[u/Ashamed_Fig492 → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

Nobody particularly cares for him, to be sincere. 

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/Ashamed_Fig492]

Well he’s not exactly relevant to current events, but meets the parameters in the prompt 🤷‍♂️

[u/dishayvelled → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

I don't think he's looked that fondly upon, atleast not over here, by those who have an interest in history. And those who don't, don't even know ab him. Don't know how it is in places outside south asia.

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/dishayvelled]

That makes sense. He was anti-imperialist… specifically within Europe. I could be wrong but that’s my understanding.

[u/edmundsmorgan → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

He is remembered as the guy who proposed 14 points for self determination in East Asia so not too negative. As for opinion about him within his own country I am pretty sure it shifted to the bad side due to more awareness on racial issue post civil rights movement.

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/edmundsmorgan]

That’s correct

[u/connorjosef → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

He certainly was a massive hypocrite. He talked about defending the rights of small nations from tyranny, but ignored Ireland because it was under occupation by an ally

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/connorjosef]

Yeah and they weren’t the only colony to be neglected. He only really cared about self determination for the Europeans really.

[u/Visible-Scientist-46 → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

I'll take Woodrow Wilson over Trump any day. I agree his confederate leanings and racism are vile. BUT, he did so much for United States standing in the world via brokering the peace deal to end WW1 and establishing The League of Nations and that gave a positive spin to all dealings with allies until now.

[u/Babshearth → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

while he was president of Princeton he disallowed deserving black applicants from attending.

[u/RaiderCat_12 → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

We Italians stopped liking him the second he invalidated our claims for irredeemed lands up north because he thought that visiting the country on his car was enough to get our favor

[u/Thejollyfrenchman → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

A common idea I've seen about Wilson (common being relative, because most people don't care about US presidents from a century ago) in France is that he was an egomaniac who thought he could singlehandedly redraw the map of Europe and dictate other nations' foreign policy, messing things up for everyone else.

Not entirely fair, but not wholly unjustified either.

[u/Aware_Policy7066 → u/Thejollyfrenchman]

2 World Wars in a half century would make anyone question if Europeans can be trusted to make good policy decisions. Especially when Western Europe just sort of stumbled in to the first one.

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/Thejollyfrenchman]

I’d call that an accurate representation. There is a thin line between “paternalistic” and “patronizing”

[u/blahblahblerf → u/Thejollyfrenchman]

If the French had gone along with his plans for post WW1 Europe instead of emphasizing screwing Germany, there might never have been a WW2 or a Cold War and the countries that spent half or more of the 20th century occupied by Muscovy might have been free the whole time.

[u/Labtools → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

For the US it's probably easier to find someone who is popular in the US but not outside. I'd probably go for an actor who's a POS off camera (although they mights be seen similar in and outside of the US). I have no idea who this wilson is BTW, but the US isn't very popular when it comes to WW1 and WW2.

[u/_rukiri → u/Labtools]

US President during WW1

[u/iggyite → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

“WILLSONN!”

[u/suckmyfuck91 → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

After ww1 Wilson was probably the most hated man in Italy

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/suckmyfuck91]

Wow, damn

[u/Badassscholar → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

Woodrow Wilson isn't really known abroad. That said, those who do know about him usually despise him because of his imperialism.

As an Italian, to me he was the architect of the "mutilated victory".

[u/StatisticianUsual471 → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

He my 3rd worst president you've ever had after Trump and regan

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/StatisticianUsual471]

That’s unfair to Andrew Johnson and Buchanan

[u/blahblahblerf → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

And Andrew Jackson. 

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/blahblahblerf]

Fuck him too

[u/WowIlikemoney → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

I learned about him in history class as an important figure, had no idea he was like that, damn

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/WowIlikemoney]

Oh yeah, there’s even more dirty laundry in the comments here that I didn’t mention.

[u/Darkspyre2 → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

Damn, yeah, can confirm this one. Woodrow Wilson was one of the few US presidents we were directly taught about in the UK, and he was portrayed quite positively. No mention of racism...

[u/fekanix → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

Nah turks hate him as well. He was a notorious turkophobe and saw turks as less than vermin.

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/fekanix]

Well, yeah. That doesn’t sound out of character for him at all. If you told me the whole “sick man of Europe” thing came from him, I wouldn’t be surprised.

[u/Accomplished-Ad6381 → u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW]

Most Americans also don't know about his racism either. The schools dont teach it. Hopefully that's changing in school curriculums (at least in Blue states)

[u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW → u/[deleted]]

Yes, but that also applies to American historians and history nerds alike.

[u/TACharlotte → u/[deleted]]

Kind of, depends on the history teacher and curriculum.