Why The Left Tells Lies About Christopher Columbus
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All on Tue Oct 12 21:05:09 2021
XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.history, alt.politics.usa
XPost: alt.tv.pol-incorrect
For over a decade, Columbus has been painted as a mass murderer,
committing all sorts of crimes in the New World, including genocide.
So far, though, he has not�at least, not yet�been accused of not
providing transgender bathrooms in his ships.
Those accusations are complete fabrications, unsupported by even one
shred of historical evidence. Let me repeat that because it is very
important: there is no historical basis, no contemporary documents,
nothing, that indicates that he engaged in all of the �crimes� that
present-day activists have promulgated. None! Zip! Nada!
The �accusations� (which often sound more like insults than rational accusations) range from the gruesome (claiming he chopped off Indians�
hands for not bringing gold or carrying out genocide�total
fabrications) to the infantile (ridiculing the fact that one of his
ships sunk�he was not the captain of that particular ship and they were
sailing in uncharted seas abounding in hidden reefs), to the stupid
(Democrat politicians and Native Americans claiming that Columbus
carried out genocide in North America, where he never set foot nor
sail).
Nonetheless, we can expect the usual posturing and sloganeering on
Columbus Day by historically illiterate leftists and �indigenous
people,� some of the latter being about as Native American as Elizabeth
Warren.
One should consult primary sources (preferably in the original Spanish
and not in translations): his logbook, the �Capitulations� (legal
documents, also known as the �Book of Privileges�), the contemporary biographies, and especially �Los Cuatro Viajes del Almirante y su
Testamento,� and, �Brev�sima Relaci�n de la Destrucci�n de las Indias,�
both written by Friar Bartolom� de las Casas, who as every schoolchild
in Spain and the Caribbean knows, was the Apostle of the Indians for
working indefatigably to protect the Indians from his fellow Spaniards.
De las Casas never mentions Columbus committing any crimes, and De las
Casas did not shrink from accusing anyone. On the contrary, he mentions Columbus as constantly protecting the natives from his crew and the
settlers. The explorer often had trouble controlling the men under him
because he was a foreigner and the Spaniards resented any foreigner
ordering them; in fact, because he was a foreigner, some contemporary
Spaniards even downplayed his discovery. On top of that, the natives
were helpless, had gold nuggets, and the women and men were completely
naked. Picture the problem.
Sometimes, the accusations/insults hurled at him are of events that
occurred decades after he was dead, carried out by the Spaniards, who
worked the natives to death after he was gone, to the point that,
unlike the North and South American continents, no natives were left
alive in any of the Caribbean islands. When he is not directly accused
of committing those acts, he is accused of being responsible for them
because of his discovery of the New World, which is like arguing that
Henry Ford was responsible for all of the traffic accidents and the
deaths from tank battles, almost a century after Ford�s death.
Furthermore, Spain was in a race with Portugal for finding a route to
Asia to establish trade. Columbus� expedition was seen as a commercial
voyage, which at the very least would hopefully pay for itself, if not
actually be lucrative. The discovered islands were henceforth seen as
trading posts and as stepping stones to Asia. His first voyage cost
relatively little compared to the massive expenditures of subsequent
voyages (huge supplies had to be sent because the climate and the land
were not conducive to raising European crops; additionally, hundreds
died from yellow fever; Columbus himself was stricken). This explains
the preoccupation with finding gold. Fortunately for Spain, Cuba and
Hispaniola had gold.
Something that has to be understood, which is counterintuitive to us,
is that European monarchies were poor. Much of Europe�s mineral wealth
had been sent east for spices, and the silver and gold mines of the
continent had been long exhausted. The splendor and wealth that we
associate with monarchies really begins in the 1500s, partly as a
result of the discoveries of the massive presence of silver and gold in
Central and South America (Potos� practically had a mountain of silver
with some dirt sprinkled on it).
An additional result of finding the New World, according to Wootton�s
�The Invention of Science,� Columbus� discovery of a new continent was
a tectonic shift for European minds. Hitherto, it had been assumed by
everyone that the Ancient Romans and Greeks had discovered everything
that there was to know about anything. It came as a shock that there
was an unknown antipodal continent, with unknown people, animals,
vegetation, and geography. And many discoveries awaited. By anyone.
Nowadays, it is seen as fashionable to dismiss Columbus� Promethean
effort because the New World had already been discovered by the Vikings
and the natives. However, Hans Selye clarified it best in �From Dream
to Discovery:� �The important difference between the discovery of
America by the Indians, by the Norsemen, and by Columbus is only that
Columbus succeeded in attaching the American continent to the rest of
the world.�
The propaganda against Columbus has come primarily from Marxists, best exemplified by Zinn�s �A People�s History of the United States�
(anytime that you see the word �People�s� in the title of a
publication, a Marxist probably wrote it). Zinn was an admitted
Communist and the purpose of his textbook (which is presently being
used for indoctrination in American schools through the innocent-
sounding Zinn Project) was to make gullible, na�ve, students hate their
country and motivate them to destroy it. It has succeeded. And
Christopher Columbus has been one of his victims. Nor is Zinn alone in
such efforts.
Similar propaganda is found in Huffington Post, The Guardian, The New
Yorker, and many, many other publications which have saturated the
culture, all stating the same message, all written by smug, self-
confident leftists with a colossal ignorance of history. One can also
find examples on YouTube. They are even briefly inserted in television
programs (�The Sopranos,� �The Office,� �The Good Place�), like
intellectual drive-by shootings. That illustrates how thoroughly
saturated our society has become with leftist lies.
Ultimately, the matter boils down to one question: who do you trust
more, writers for Huffington Post and The Guardian, who cannot even
read Spanish, or, documents and historians writing at the time of
Columbus and witnessed events?
Marxists have a long-standing record of mutilating history for
ideological purposes. In the first half of the century, Soviet
historians claimed that Russia had invented the car, the plane, the
light bulb, soccer, baseball, etc. In the comedy film, �The Mouse That
Roared,� a group of ambassadors pass the time playing Monopoly; the
Russian ambassador claims that they invented the game.
At any rate, the attack on Columbus is not an isolated incident. His
statues have been vandalized, or toppled, as have been the statues of
Lincoln, Jefferson, Lee, and many, many others. The falsification of
Columbus� history is not an isolated case either, just look at the 1619 Project, to cite simply one of the most obvious cases, not to mention
the CRT movement.
All these are actually attacks on America, on civilization. This is not hyperbole. The leftists say so. Why? Perhaps Milan Kundera, a former
resident of a Communist country can best put it together: �The first
step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books,
its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books,
manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that
nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world
around it will forget even faster.�
The question remains, then, whether Americans will permit this
sacrilege. From what I have seen so far, yes, they already have. Their
only response to this outrage has been to whine.
--
Trump won.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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