Yes, you read the title right. It’s Wang Mang, the name of a real person. And as you probably imagined, he was Chinese. He governed China 2,000 years ago as Jesus walked in the Holy Land.

Jesus spoke of love and peace. Wang Mang delivered neither. He was one of history’s worst tyrants, a man who proved that armed with weapons and a monopoly on the use of legal force, one man can do a world of harm.

Wang seized the throne of China in a coup d’etat in 9 A.D. and ordered the murder of many potential opponents. His time at the top proved to be a brief and bloody 14 years, ending with his violent overthrow.

In many ways, Wang was a Marxist nearly 2,000 before Marx. He nationalized the country’s gold supply. He imposed draconian regulations on commerce and money lending. He declared that all

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