Is Christopher Colombus a victim of Cancel Culture?

[Figueira]

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?

[Del Tachi]

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?

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

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?

I see DT isn't convinced by the CNN article that my friend Torie posted either.  The truth is always some where in middle, especially with subjects that are over 500 years old.

[Del Tachi]

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?

I see DT isn't convinced by the CNN article that my friend Torie posted either.  The truth is always some where in middle, especially with subjects that are over 500 years old.

Indeed.  The caricature of Columbus as a genocidal imperialist is as pseudo-historical as the savior-hero version who proved the earth was round.  Per usual, the reality is complex and somewhere in between.  Honoring Columbus for his feats of exploration and discovery of a New World inspires other enterprising individuals to step out into still unchartered waters and press new frontiers (which is exactly why Leftists bemoan him.)

[sting in the rafters]

Memes aside Tony gives the correct take here; you can’t cancel something that never was. Columbus didn’t have to change his surname walking through Ellis Island, he ain’t help great great pop-pop when he lost 2 children to the disease-ridden squalor of early 20th century South Philly, he wasn’t in the Navy Yard alongside my great pop-pop installing the Battleship New Jersey’s boilers, he didn’t stand up when Frank Rizzo preyed upon Italian-American racial biases to break their New Deal Era solidarity via urging Philly to “vote white”, he never put a dime in the pension nor insurance funds which took care of my pop-pop as he was dying from radon exposure, he ain’t bail out my uncle getting beaten on in the drunk tank overnight, he didn’t take in my cousins as his own when that same uncle OD’d off vicodin,  he never babysat me when my dad worked 2 jobs as a mailman and Dominos delivery boy to put my mom through grad school, he never loaned my family a dollar during the Recession when I was killing kitchen mice because we couldn’t afford a damn exterminator, you catch my drift. Columbus wasn’t there during our struggles nor did he work towards our success. So please, someone explain in plain English why me or any other wop/wopette should claim that colonial rapist mf as our progenitor when the most he ever did was give us a public holiday my privately-employed ass doesn’t even get off for?

[DaleCooper]

This may sound like a joke, but I do genuinely suspect that at least part of the recent outrage directed towards Columbus Day has been a corporate endeavor to justify not giving people a day off.

[Figueira]

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.

[HisGrace]

Pretty sure the natives he met in the Caribbean got "canceled" a lot harder than he did.

Generally not into PC pet issues but I really have no issues throwing Columbus to the curb. Just a Spanish imperialist who thought he was in India anyway. The emphasis should be put on the Mayflower as the "first Americans".

[Badger]

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.

I do not favor replacing that with something that sounds like a perpetually offended HR bureaucrat came up with.

And no, this isn't just an American thing. Anyone want to take a guess who Genova's airport is named for?

Please. Let mongolia's darn near sole source of historical import, with the possible exception of Kublai Khan, and do their thing. It doesn't mean we should emulate it.

Let's face facts. Christopher Columbus was a god-awful navigator and mathematician / astronomer, who just got insanely lucky. He was absolutely bullheadedly convinced that his calculations of the Earth's circumference, much smaller than pretty much all learned men of the world at the time, was correct and they were wrong, thus permitting him to readily sail west to the indies. And of course, Columbus was dead wrong and all the other mathematicians of the world he doggedly refused to listen to were right. It was only because this heretofore continent stood in the way of his death sale to the West stood in the way before either he and his crew died of starvation and thirst, or they mutinied and killed him, either way relegating him to minor footnote in history.

The best analogy would be if one of the Flat Earth freaks, in their effort to launch themselves into the air with a homemade rocket to somehow prove the Earth was flat, by some utterly lucky Twist of coincidental chance managed to create a huge breakthrough in quantum physics which they never intended to do, but it landed in their lap by chance and RAW full hearty stupidity nonetheless. That is Christopher Columbus's contribution to exploration in a nutshell. Hardly worthy of respect let alone having a national holiday after them.

Oh, and even that summary completely ignores the fact that said flat earther turned out to be commander of a large gang of slavers, gang rapists, and mass murderers. @DT I am fully aware that much of Columbus's reputation comes from Court schemers trying to discredit him in political backstabbery, but there are more than enough other and reliable historical accounts of Columbus's rank brutality towards natives which firmly establishes him as a complete POS even for the times. Just saying.

[Badger]

I prefer the term "historically re-contextualized."

"Cancelled" is as meaningless and overused of a term as "woke" now.

Did your wife's boyfriend give you permission to post this are you being naughty?

What the hell does this even mean? Is this some sort of weird non sequitur attempt at calling him a cuck? Bizarre and utterly random.

[Badger]

I will never understand the desire to brand Columbus as "genocidal." It is possible for someone to be a massive historical villain without slapping the word "genocide" on their actions, and the term simply doesn't apply to Columbus. Why bother piling that adjective on top of everything else? The man was a slaver and a brutal oppressor of native peoples; his crimes were so extreme that even at the time the Spaniards were shocked to hear of them. Despite being perhaps the best-remembered navigator in history, he was too stupid to know the correct circumference of the Earth and he went to the grave believing he'd found a western passage to India.

What he did not do (to my knowledge) is deliberately try to exterminate the natives. Columbus viewed them essentially as pack animals with whom he could do as he pleased; he wrote of them using paternalistic language and hoped to convert them to Catholicism. His treatment of them included forced backbreaking manual labor, as well as letting his men rape the native women. It did not, however, include death camps. The native people Columbus interacted with largely died of disease and as a result of his obscene brutality, but their deaths were merely side effects of his goals.

Columbus is one of the great historical villains, and his voyage set the tone for centuries of native enslavement and butchery. That doesn't mean he had the same goals or methods as someone like Hitler. But honestly, that doesn't make him any better. People need to realize that there are multiple types of barbarians and monsters out there, and trying to analyze who was "more evil" is just a waste of everyone's time. Hitler viewed the suffering of the Jews as his end goal. Columbus viewed the suffering of the natives with complete indifference, and did not care how much misery he had to cause to achieve his other goals. Both of these mindsets are reprehensible, on the same level as someone like Albert Fish or Jeffrey Dahmer.

You and I largely agree here, but I have to disagree in the semantics of whether or not he quite purposely worked natives to death as not being genocidal just because he didn't also set up death camps with the exact same goal. I see your point, but to take an extreme example I'm not sure Hitler would have been considered any less genocidal due to the hundreds of thousands or even Millions who died from being worked to death at slave labor camps just like Columbus did on an admittedly smaller pre-industrial scale, then if Hitler had simply not open Bonafide death camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

In short, I'm not sure I see a dime's worth of difference in the terms of genocidal or mass murderer based on whether he quite knowingly and deliberately enslaved and worked Native Americans to death as opposed to outright trying to ethnically cleanse the Caribbean by fire and sword. Hell, at least the latter might have been a quicker more Humane death for most of his victims.

[Badger]

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?

Amerigo Vespucci unfortunately does not have entirely clean hands when it comes to the issues of slavery and bad navigation either. But he's a damn sight better than Columbus on both points to be sure.