‘Superattainers’: Philippine firm hails leadership skills of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Marcos

A Manila-based management recruiting firm that gives leadership awards has extolled Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Attila the Hun, Mao Zedong and Ferdinand Marcos as “superattainers” who are “high achieving individuals.”

The five appear as part of a long list of leadership exemplars on the website of Chalre Associates, which runs the Asia-CEO Awards and hosts a monthly “Asia CEO Forum.” This month, it is organising a lunch featuring senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, son of the deposed Philippine dictator.

Asked why her company lists the tyrants and their supposed virtues on its websites, Chalre president Rebecca Bustamante-Mills said: “People have different mindsets, have different personalities. It doesn’t mean that we follow them.”

However, the site doesn’t cite the dictators as negative examples - in fact it is silent about their crimes. Of Hitler, it says: “He was instrumental in building the autobahn (superhighway) as well as putting German industry back on its feet” – leaving out the Holocaust in which approximately six millions Jews were killed.

Of Mao, the website says: “(His) supporters view him as a great revolutionary leader whose thought was the highest expression of Marxism.” No mention is made of the Cultural Revolution or the catastrophic Great Leap Forward, in which tens of millions likely died.

As for Marcos, whose brutal 14-year martial law regime resulted in the deaths of at least 3,200 Filipinos, the torture of tens of thousands and the plundering of at least US$10 billion, Chalre says: “In 1972 he declared martial law, which allowed him to stay in power until lifting it in 1981”.