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If you’re a powerful person, it’s going to be pretty easy to make enemies. But there’s nothing wrong with having some adversaries if you know what to expect out of them. They’ve got your worst interest at heart? Got it, no problem.
The people you’ve actually got to look out for are those who pretend to be on your side until they have an opportunity to stab you in the back. Redditors have recently been discussing some of the most infamous traitors of all time, so we’ve gathered the juiciest stories below. From betraying their own families to causing thousands to lose their lives, these double-crossers deserve to be remembered forever. Enjoy scrolling through their tales, and be sure to upvote the ones you can’t believe are true.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Donald John Trump.
RELATED:
#2
Mark Zuckerberg and most of the other big tech CEOs
Hear me out... Social media has literally destroyed a generation. Kids who went through puberty with Instagram and tiktok will have their brains permanently f****d for attention span and general behavioral impulse control.
Snazzy Smurf 7 months ago
Parents do have some responsibility for this as well. Phones and internet access, to some extent, are within the parents grasp.
Rafael 7 months ago
Technically true, but unless you shelter your kid, they will be exposed to this c**p, like you or not. My kid is not even 2 years old and he already learn stuff I disagree from other kids at daycare. We parents are in control of the good examples we set, but we can't prevent all the bad examples they'll see out there.
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Jane Jayne Jain Jeign Jein 7 months ago
Not too mention the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal where they used people like guinea pigs to learn how to interfere with democratic elections all round the world.
CatD 7 months ago
Don't make fun of his looks, make fun of the fact he's an awful person who jumped to kiss Trump's brown ring after the election.
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General Anaesthesia 7 months ago
When asked about how he obtained the information for his newly launched social network: "People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb f***s." -Mark Zuckerberg
Nils Skirnir 7 months ago
Plus they made their fortunes on the back of inventions made by US taxpayers via such things as DARPA and most make a significant (most?) of their profits via government contracts.
Heras buddy 7 months ago
If you didn't give your kids a phone they wouldn't be on social media. Hold up a mirror you are as much to blame.
#3
Thomas Edison.
He took the inventions of the people who worked for them and published them in his name. Then, he left them broke and without any credit to be able to continue being inventors.
Nikola Tesla is a great example. The US is taught that Edison made all these things, meanwhile in Canada, we are taught that Edison stole his ideas through a contract loophole and left Tesla broke and bereft.
#4
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
His crimes include stacking the supreme court and federal judiciary, helping to shut down the government, not removing Trump from office, and protecting insurrectionists.
Edit to add: McConnell betrayed his oath to defend and uphold the constitution. The consequences are at the least: the current constitutional crisis, a trade war, the loss of US dollar dominance and stagflation.
It’s possible that his betrayal may allow Trump to start a real war with China. We would fight alone. No one would defend us.
The worst consequence of McConnell’s betrayal is to the climate. Our lack of leadership on this will cause unbelievable damage to future humanity.
It’s possible that McConnell’s betrayal is the linchpin to humanity’s extinction.
#5
The Catholic Church.
They helped surviving N*zis flee to safe havens and helped reallocate/launder their stolen wealth. .
Robin Roper 7 months ago
And covered up massive child s** abuse by priests, often transferring them to different parishes where they had a whole new group of children to abuse.
#6
I might be biased, but, Pol Pot. He turned on his own country and brought upon the slaughter of millions of innocent men, women and children. They say he preferred to use hammers on his victims to conserve ammunition.
Snazzy Smurf 7 months ago
He was busy during his 75-79 reign of terror. Vietnam was instrumental in stopping him, according to wiki.
#7
Andrew Jackson’s betrayal of the Choctaw and other tribes. Ultimately resulting in the Trail of Tears.
The tribes that allied with him and fought alongside him during the War of 1812.
#9
Any woman like Ghislaine Maxwell who p**ps out children.
#10
Whoever turned in Anne Frank and her family.
Wild Cream 7 months ago (edited)
Whoever turned in any Jewish family hiding or fleeing for their lives. (Or anyone else targeted during the h*******t)
#11
* Vidkun Quisling
* Philippe Petain
* Anton Mussert
* Leon Degrelle
* Ferenc Szalasi
* Josef Tiso
* Ante Pavelic
* Milan Nedic
All the people who collaborated with the N*zis against their own countrymen.
#12
A kid named Tommy who ratted me out in First Grade for calling Ms. Radcliffe “Ms. Ratsjumpingoffacliff”. It’s been over 30 years and I haven’t forgotten your snitching, Tommy, you little s**t.
#13
The banks, conglomerates and billionaires who are happily hoarding wealth and resources while nonchalantly watching society crumble around them.
#14
Someone who intentionally spread their HIV to other people. For this and other reasons: Roy Cohn.
Snazzy Smurf 7 months ago
Would it surprise anyone that he mentored DJT and was his attorney from 73 to 86 when he was disbarred and died? While many won't agree, I am not shocked by this as he knows some "very fine people".
#15
Whoever invented the 'skip ad' button but made it appear after you’ve already watched the full ad.
#16
Recent history - Boris Johnson. He wasn't into Brexit but realised he could hitch his bandwagon to it. Illegally prorogued parliament. Under covid lockdown made people stay indoors, familes could not be with loved ones during births and deaths - meanwhile he and his cohorts partied on. I wouldn't mind so much if he believed what he said, but he just decieved to achieve what he thought was his rightful place.
James016 7 months ago
He jumped on the Brexit bandwagon for his own glory. His reaction to the leave side winning the referendum was telling. He was visibly stunned as it meant that he and his ilk would actually have to implement it and do the hard work. But somehow he was made party leader despite being sacked from the cabinet twice for lying.
#17
Quisling was pretty bad
LivingOk7270:
His name is literally a synonym for traitor in the thesaurus.
#18
Kim Philby the British MI6 agent turned Soviet spy. Philby knew almost everything going on against Eastern European communist countries things like agents being dropped into various countries who had already been burnt by Philby to the Soviets. Hundreds were executed thanks to him.
#19
Robert Hanssen. FBI double agent who worked for the soviets for more than 20 years.
Snazzy Smurf 7 months ago
His espionage was described by the U.S. Department of Justice as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history". That was until this current admin.
#20
Chaim Rumkowski
gringledoomOn German orders Rumkowski delivered a speech on September 4, 1942, pleading with the Jews in the ghetto to give up children 10 years of age and younger, as well as the elderly over 65, so that others might survive. "Horrible, terrifying wailing among the assembled crowd" could be heard, reads the transcriber's note to his parlance often referred to as: "Give Me Your Children".
Holy sh*t.
Multa Nocte 7 months ago
Sounds like the Republicans from Texas during COVID who said that resources for COVID shouldn't go to "old people" and that they should just step aside.
#21
Rebecca from my fourth grade class. She said she was in love with me but was just lying because she and her friends thought it would be funny.
Tarring and feathering is too good for her and people like her. It took years of therapy before I could accept that someone could care about me even a little bit.
Edit: Thank you everyone so far. I've never felt so vindicated in my hatred for Rebecca. I wish I could show this to 9 year old me lol.
#22
Corfitz Ulfeldt is not well known outside of Scandinavia, but very bad.
In a quick recap he was in a top position under the Danish king in the mid 1600's, but did a bunch a corrupt stuff (allegedly) and fled to Sweden who had been the mortal enemies of Denmark for hundreds of years.
Here he started working for the Swedish king and didn't just tell him every Danish secret he knew, but deliberate did everything he could to enrage the swedes against the Danes, so they would declare them war.
After a few years he succeeded and he didn't just help the Swedish tropes from the front lines (again with a bunch of important information about the Danish army and the landscape), he also let the Swedish king borrow insane amounts of money from him that he had stolen from the Danish treasury. Money that was then used to buy mercenaries for the invasion.
The swedes won and Ulfeldt got his own lands back and even a Danish island for his troubles. But it wasn't long before the Swedish king also started being annoyed with Ulfeldt who now fled back to Denmark where he was arrested.
For some insane reason he was eventually allowed to leave the country because he said he needed to go to a spa for his health. Of course he didn't go to a spa and fled Denmark once again. This time he went to a bunch of different kings in Europe and tried to get them in on his crazy schemes essentially. He also gave the skull of one of the biggest Danish saints to the French, another thing he had stolen.
He even tried to arrange a coup of the Danish throne, but without luck. The Danes never got him again, but his wife was famously imprisoned in a tower for 22 years, essentially in her husband's place.
Ulfeldt was so hated in Denmark that a "statue of shame" was erected for him, that people were supposed to spit on as they walked past. It stood in Copenhagen for hundreds of years.
#23
There's two ways to read this question, I'm going to read it in my own way. The worst traitor as in who was the worst at actually doing it.
Philippe Pétain
This dude had it all, served in WW1, had everything you could ever want from a career in the military, politics and everything in-between. He was a national hero.
His name was royalty, and he threw ALL of it away to run the French State (Vichy France) during N**i occupation.
Now, you could excuse it if he was just doing it to keep his people safe, and nobody else would step up. Fair enough.
But he didn't, he actively collaborated with the N*zis and actively sent French Jews and returned Jews fleeing Germany to their destructive fates.
He is, a traitor entirely, and a really bad one at that because there was actually no need for him to do it. France fell in 1940s, he died in 1951. He threw away his entire legacy for a m**h a****t leader in Germany and died a stain in history, imprisoned because he was too old to be shot.
>Pétain's motives are a topic of wide conjecture. Winston Churchill had spoken to Reynaud during the impending fall of France, saying of Pétain, "... he had always been a defeatist, even in the last war [World War I].
#24
The parents of that lobotomized Kennedy.
SouthernGal 7 months ago
Rosemary Kennedy, sister of JFK, underwent a lobotomy at the insistence of her father Joe, who did not tell her mother about it beforehand and there was no informed consent from Rosemary, who was 23. Rosemary had developmental and intellectual delays in early life and Joe thought a lobotomy, which was experimental at the time, was the cure. The procedure was botched, leaving Rosemary unable to walk or talk and with other physical disabilities. She was immediately institutionalized. Her father never went to visit, and her mother didn’t visit for over twenty years.
#25
Benedict Arnold betrayed his own people all because he felt he wasn't getting the laurels he deserved (even though he already had plenty).
When the British learned there was a man on the inside, feeding them info, they thought it was a low ranked soldier. When they found out it was actually a decorated man, they were really annoyed, but kept face as they needed Arnold to play his scheme out.
It was seen as a massive dishonour that a officer with responsibility over other soldiers would betray his own men.
In the end when he defected to the British, they gave him a lower rank than they promised, paid him less than he expected and a lot of the British made it known they did not respect him for his actions.
When he eventually died in London, his funeral was completed without Military Honours.
Which is about as "*F**k you, you scummy t**t*" as it would get in Gentlemen terms at that time.
Chris the Bobcat 7 months ago
Here in the USA, the name benedict arnold is a synonym for traitor. The name Benedict is very uncommon here too, for obvious reasons. In time, I think the name donald trump will go down a very similar road. But it might take a little while. (and no, I didn't forget to capitalize the names. Capitalization is a sign of respect, and I have none for either.)
#26
Anyone who fought for the Confederacy.
CatD 7 months ago
The Confederate Constitution explicitly protected and promoted slavery. It guaranteed the right to enslave others, both within Confederate states and in any new territories acquired by the Confederacy. It also ensured that enslavers could travel freely between states with their slaves. Additionally, the constitution included a three-fifths clause, similar to the US Constitution, which counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for representation purposes.
#27
Campbell's at Glencoe were pretty despicable.
"The Glencoe M******e (1692) was a brutal episode in Scottish history where government soldiers many from Clan Campbell, under orders from King William III, k*lled 38 members of Clan MacDonald of Glencoe. The MacDonalds had delayed swearing allegiance to the king after the Glorious Revolution, and this was used as a pretext for punishment. The most infamous part was that the Campbell soldiers had been living as guests among the MacDonalds for nearly two weeks, sharing food and shelter, before turning on them in the early morning hours. It wasn’t just a m******e—it was a betrayal, seen as a chilling example of state-sanctioned violence and clan politics. The event left a lasting scar and symbolized the deep mistrust between Highland clans and the central government.".
#28
Really surprised that I haven’t seen anyone mention Brutus yet.
Indvandrer:
For real Caesar treated him like a son, but he backstabbed him in the worst possible way and k**led him. Literally his last words were to Brutus.
Francois 7 months ago
Uhm Caesar turned into a dictator. For hundreds years Rome was a Republic ruled by a senate. Rome was sort of democracy, even plebs had some small degree of power. Caesar basically side stepped the senate the very one institution that controlled Rome. Some would argue, including me, that Caesar was the traitor to Rome.
#29
John Anthony Walker
My dad started in signals intelligence as an Airman in 1966, did that in uniform for 21 ½ years, then another 14 as a civilian executive with 2 or 3 alphabet agencies. He was intimately acquainted with the systems Walker betrayed. More importantly, he was officially “read in” to the extent of that betrayal. It literally haunted him for the rest of his life. I took care of him in his last months and he told me the amount of damage Walker did was almost impossible to comprehend.
#30
Ephialtes of Trachis. He allegedly showed the Persians the mountain path so that they could defeat the Spartans at Thermopylae.
#31
**Robert E. Lee.** He swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. Instead, he k*lled more Americans than Osama bin Laden.
#32
Thomas Midgley Jr., the American who betrayed humanity for the sake of profit and arguably ended being responsible for more indirect deaths than any other human being on Earth.
#34
La Malinche is synonymous with traitor in Mexico due to her coordination with the Spanish during their conquest of the Aztecs. She was a Nahuatl tribeswoman who was gifted to the Spanish alongside other slaves when they defeated a tribe during an expedition into Mexico. She would go on to be a key interpreter for the Spanish as she spoke the Aztec language and would marry Hernan Cortes post conquest.
#35
Maximilien Robespierre. Betrayed the National Convention, was a leading figure in the e*******n of Louis XVI, and was himself executed for being a traitor.
#36
Wang Jingwei, who collaborated with the Imperial Japanese to form a puppet state during the Second Sino-Japanese War. (WWII)
He’s basically the Philippe Petain of the East.
To a lesser extent, Akechi Mitsuhide could be considered a traitor as well. During the Sengoku Period (Warring States of Japan), he served under one of the three great Daimyos (Shoguns), Oda Nobunaga. He betrayed Nobunaga during the Honnoji Incident and laid siege to Honnoji temple, while Nobunaga was on the verge of unifying Japan.
Another Daimyo, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, would later unify Japan.
#37
Dermot MacMurrough, a minor king of Leinster who invited the invaders into Ireland.
#38
I mean - there's Wu Sangui who opened the Shanhai Pass to the invading army and betrayed his entire country - is there anyone who comes close or surpasses him in the magnitude of their treachery and betrayal? We're looking for a single person, more or less - but close-knit groups of individuals are accepted as answers too - provided they were acting entirely as one and they were not the size of an army.
#39
Mir Jafar.
hirako97
Arguably the worst possible guy historically sending the sub-continent into 150 years of slavery and making them from one of the richest to the poorest. Guy's impact is crazy.
#40
Robinhood app.
Significant_Menu_178:
At the height of the GameStop craze they disabled the buy button for that specific stock and AMC only. Since the GameStop craze was being pushed so heavily by Reddit, whose users overwhelmingly chose Robinhood as their trading platform of choice, it pretty much stopped all upwards price movement right in its tracks. That day could have been arguably one of the largest transfers of wealth from the rich to the poor in history. Ironic that an app called Robinhood is the reason it didn’t.
ƒιѕн 7 months ago (edited)
Blame DFV, he started the squeeze. Simply put, RH didn't have enough margin with APEX to open any more trades on gme and RH didn't have enough cash to keep getting shares. For those that don't know, RH let you have instant access to your cash as soon as your deposit is made. This deposit takes time to settle in RH's account, in the meantime thousands of people were making deposits and trying to immediately buy GME. Also it wasn't just RH that shut down trading, several other brokerages also shut down trading on GME.
#41
Krasnov.
#42
Alcibiades- Athenian general and statesman who was a foe of Sparta. He betrayed Athens at Messina during the Sicilian campaign. He fled Athens for Sparta to avoid the actions of his political rivals. He convinced Sparta to send troops to join the Syracusans against Athens. He fell afoul of the Spartans and fled to Persia.
He then worked to undermine the Peloponnesians (Sparta and allies) by advising the Persians on how to weaken them until the time was right to invade.
He then returned to Athens for several years before being forced into exile in Persia where he finished out his life.
Snazzy Smurf 7 months ago
What did people have against Sparta to frequently find ways to turn on it?
#44
Harkis, during the French colonization of Algeria.
Not only they sell their brothers to the enemy but also made themselves involved in the t*****e and interrogation of liberation militants.
#45
I have scrolled a long time and am shocked to not have seen any references to Brutus, Cassius, or Decimus? The betrayal and subsequent assassination of Caesar is likely among the most influential betrayals in history.
#48
Nico Harrison.
Bobblefighterman:
You don't understand, that fat Euro likes drinking beer, he's a negative asset!
#49
That rat Judas.
Rebecca Ferguson 7 months ago
But was he acting on free will or was it his destiny so the crucifixtion and resurrection would occur?
#50
Eve
for eating the d**n apple for all of us 😅.
winterwidow87 7 months ago (edited)
Seriously? If we believe the apple was the fruit of knowledge and God wanted humanity to stay ignorant, is Eve really the bad guy here, or did she gave humanity the gift of knowledge? Prometheus did the exact same thing in greek mythology by stealing fire, and was also punished by Zeus, but he's not as hated as Eve for some reason.
What do you think ?
Corvus 7 months ago (edited)
No Andrew Wakefield - the godfather of the anti-vaxxer movement? Indirectly responsible for thousands of deaths worldwide...
Lauren Wilder 7 months ago
Can we add Christopher Columbus to this list. If he were never born the world might be a better place.
Intel Memoirs 7 months ago
Talking of really infamous spies, sleepers, moles and even the fictional Smiley, Bond and Bourne, one day Donald J Trump will eclipse them all. Why? Credible revelations from seven former KGB/FSB officers about Donald J Trump being a KGB agent or asset (codenamed Krasnov) since the 1970s were published recently on TheBurlingtonFiles website at https://theburlingtonfiles.org/news_2025.03.16.php. The following KGB/FSB officers and defectors have disclosed (at great personal risk) that Donald Trump was a KGB/FSB agent or asset decades before he first became President of the USA: Yuri Shvets (KGB Major); Oleg Kalugin (KGB General); Alexander Litvinenko (assassinated FSB Officer); Viktor Suvorov (GRU Officer); Boris Karpichkov (KGB Major); Sergei Tretyakov (SVR Officer); and Alnur Mussayev (Kazakhstan's KNB (National Security Committee) Chief). Perhaps things would have been different if Trump had read the enigmatic fact based spy thriller Beyond Enkription in TheBurlingtonFiles.
Forrest Grump 7 months ago
Bill Gates and his gang reverse engineered one of the original Apple Macintosh computers and software in order to make Windows.
Lee Gilliland 7 months ago
Gaetan Dugas. Patient zero for AIDS. Gave it to the world because he couldn't stop scr*ewing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ga%C3%ABtan_Dugas
Heras buddy 7 months ago
What about Sykes and Picot you have them to blame for all the trouble in the middle east. They decided the boarders of the countries.
Patrick H 7 months ago
This list is fùcking stupid. It's not a list of traitors. It's a list of people that other people hate. Sure, a lot of them are bad, but you can't twist their actions into "traitor to X" just to include them. If you do that, you could include every criminal or even just anybody that chose a side you don't like ("Joe is from Boston, but he's a Mets fan. Fùcking traitor!").
Marlowe Fitzpatrik 7 months ago
Really? I don't know, if you actively use state-secrets and sell or otherwise bring them to the state's enemy, I'd say that's pretty much the epitome of treason, making them traitors. I admit that some are not fairly on that list, though.
Load More Replies... Corvus 7 months ago (edited)
No Andrew Wakefield - the godfather of the anti-vaxxer movement? Indirectly responsible for thousands of deaths worldwide...
Lauren Wilder 7 months ago
Can we add Christopher Columbus to this list. If he were never born the world might be a better place.
Intel Memoirs 7 months ago
Talking of really infamous spies, sleepers, moles and even the fictional Smiley, Bond and Bourne, one day Donald J Trump will eclipse them all. Why? Credible revelations from seven former KGB/FSB officers about Donald J Trump being a KGB agent or asset (codenamed Krasnov) since the 1970s were published recently on TheBurlingtonFiles website at https://theburlingtonfiles.org/news_2025.03.16.php. The following KGB/FSB officers and defectors have disclosed (at great personal risk) that Donald Trump was a KGB/FSB agent or asset decades before he first became President of the USA: Yuri Shvets (KGB Major); Oleg Kalugin (KGB General); Alexander Litvinenko (assassinated FSB Officer); Viktor Suvorov (GRU Officer); Boris Karpichkov (KGB Major); Sergei Tretyakov (SVR Officer); and Alnur Mussayev (Kazakhstan's KNB (National Security Committee) Chief). Perhaps things would have been different if Trump had read the enigmatic fact based spy thriller Beyond Enkription in TheBurlingtonFiles.
Forrest Grump 7 months ago
Bill Gates and his gang reverse engineered one of the original Apple Macintosh computers and software in order to make Windows.
Lee Gilliland 7 months ago
Gaetan Dugas. Patient zero for AIDS. Gave it to the world because he couldn't stop scr*ewing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ga%C3%ABtan_Dugas
Heras buddy 7 months ago
What about Sykes and Picot you have them to blame for all the trouble in the middle east. They decided the boarders of the countries.
Patrick H 7 months ago
This list is fùcking stupid. It's not a list of traitors. It's a list of people that other people hate. Sure, a lot of them are bad, but you can't twist their actions into "traitor to X" just to include them. If you do that, you could include every criminal or even just anybody that chose a side you don't like ("Joe is from Boston, but he's a Mets fan. Fùcking traitor!").
Marlowe Fitzpatrik 7 months ago
Really? I don't know, if you actively use state-secrets and sell or otherwise bring them to the state's enemy, I'd say that's pretty much the epitome of treason, making them traitors. I admit that some are not fairly on that list, though.
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