Is Christopher Colombus a victim of Cancel Culture?

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There's a very weird game of telephone that happens with Columbus. In the early twentieth century the default was to see as a generic nice Italian explorer who discovered America and proved the world was round despite everyone thinking the world was flat, but was still centuries before the founding of the US itself. Then some historians pointed out that he wasn't actually a good person, and that he wasn't actually the first European to reach the Americas (to say nothing of the millions of people who were already here to begin with), and didn't ever set foot in any of the modern US (besides territories), and that actually it was widely known that the world was round and that his entire voyage was due to a miscalculation of the size of the Earth.

Somehow in popular culture that got turned into "Columbus was a genocidal maniac who is completely irrelevant to history because Leif Eriksson got there first" vs. "Columbus was a good person and a conservative icon who should be celebrated as a founder of the United States" both of which are ahistorical and are conflating being a good person and being a historically important person. Obviously the "left" side of this argument is right that Columbus Day shouldn't be a thing, but there's still some nuance needed here.

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Option 3

Why doesn't a genocidal maniac deserve to be cancelled? 

For all the same reasons Mongolians continue to celebrate Genghis Khan.

He discovered America, launching the modern era and changing the course of history. We owe our existence as a nation to him.

but:
1.he died thinking he wasn't in America but Asia
2.because he was very very very wrong about the size of the world
3.because everyone knew the world was round in 1492 and how big it was, they were right, he was not
4.nevermind the whole "he was bad even for his day" which is saying a lot


If he was just wrong and an otherwise nice guy, sure, celebrate him as one of the great accidents history, still wouldn't deserve a Federal holiday.  But the fact that he was amazingly dumb and cruel for his day makes celebrating him very wrong.  And it's not like someone else wouldn't have tried to go west eventually, and probably sooner than later.

Leif Erikson became the first European to discover America half a millennium before Columbus did, and he didn't become a brutal dictator.

sure, but nothing came of it so I don't think it should be an important part of the already good arguments against Columbus being a historical "hero".  He was a piece of sh**t and he was wrong, he "proved" nothing and only accidentally discovered a continent, and he didn't even believe that he did.

That's fair. And we're also forgetting that Columbus Day is essentially an Italian-American holiday. (This is what criminal Adam Cuomo complained about.) So the Nordics got Leif Erikson Day and the Italians got Columbus Day. But it is very strange that Columbus should be their representative, when there are so many others. Why not an Amerigo Vespucci Day?

How about someone who is actually relevant to modern Italian-Americans?

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Option 3

Why doesn't a genocidal maniac deserve to be cancelled? 

For all the same reasons Mongolians continue to celebrate Genghis Khan.

He discovered America, launching the modern era and changing the course of history. We owe our existence as a nation to him.

but:
1.he died thinking he wasn't in America but Asia
2.because he was very very very wrong about the size of the world
3.because everyone knew the world was round in 1492 and how big it was, they were right, he was not
4.nevermind the whole "he was bad even for his day" which is saying a lot


If he was just wrong and an otherwise nice guy, sure, celebrate him as one of the great accidents of history, still wouldn't deserve a Federal holiday.  But the fact that he was amazingly dumb and cruel for his day makes celebrating him very wrong.  And it's not like someone else wouldn't have tried to go west eventually, and probably sooner than later.

#1 and #4 are just plain wrong. 

Columbus writes in the journal of his third voyage (1498) that America was "a mighty continent" "hitherto unknown."

The atrocities of Columbus are largely mythical and more correctly ascribed to Nicolas de Ovando, who was the Spanish governor of Hispaniola from 1501 to 1509.  A lot of the bad stuff attributed to Columbus is Black Legend revisionism pushed by later English and Dutch colonists.   

Why are US conservatives so obsessed with defending Columbus? What is the connection, other than both being racist?

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Option 3

Why doesn't a genocidal maniac deserve to be cancelled? 

For all the same reasons Mongolians continue to celebrate Genghis Khan.

He discovered America, launching the modern era and changing the course of history. We owe our existence as a nation to him.

but:
1.he died thinking he wasn't in America but Asia
2.because he was very very very wrong about the size of the world
3.because everyone knew the world was round in 1492 and how big it was, they were right, he was not
4.nevermind the whole "he was bad even for his day" which is saying a lot


If he was just wrong and an otherwise nice guy, sure, celebrate him as one of the great accidents of history, still wouldn't deserve a Federal holiday.  But the fact that he was amazingly dumb and cruel for his day makes celebrating him very wrong.  And it's not like someone else wouldn't have tried to go west eventually, and probably sooner than later.

#1 and #4 are just plain wrong. 

Columbus writes in the journal of his third voyage (1498) that America was "a mighty continent" "hitherto unknown."

The atrocities of Columbus are largely mythical and more correctly ascribed to Nicolas de Ovando, who was the Spanish governor of Hispaniola from 1501 to 1509.  A lot of the bad stuff attributed to Columbus is Black Legend revisionism pushed by later English and Dutch colonists.   

Why are US conservatives so obsessed with defending Columbus? What is the connection, other than both being racist?

In the interest of truth?

You can correct misconceptions about Columbus without claiming that he was a morally good person or that he should be celebrated. Also US conservatives are definitely not interested in "truth" when it comes to history.