In recent decades, Christopher Columbus has been demonized out of ignorance, hatred, and spite.
"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. — Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. — George Orwell, 1984
"There are misconceptions, some of them benevolent, some malignant, some neutral, that, repeated, persist for a very long time in spite of their not being true. One such misconception is that Christopher Columbus set out on his voyage to dispel the popular view of his time that the world was flat. In reality, that idea was an urban legend that originated in the mid-1800s. No one, as far back as the Ancient Greeks, really thought that the earth was flat.
"But there are other misconceptions about Columbus that are extremely malignant. In recent decades, Christopher Columbus has been demonized. He has been called a war criminal, a thief, a rapist, a bumbling fool, and someone who carried out genocide. These accusations have supposedly been the basis for the recent vandalism and destruction of statues in America of Christopher Columbus in the cities of Richmond, St. Paul, Baltimore, Miami, Wilmington, San Antonio, Sacramento, St. Louis, Detroit, Trenton, Buffalo, Boston, and Providence (in Providence, the vandalism was done by a middle school teacher). In states controlled by Democrats, Columbus Day has been replaced by Indigenous Peoples’ Day, particularly during anniversaries of his discovering the New World (an instance of cultural appropriation), while some Republicans in Congress are trying to replace Columbus Day with Juneteenth Day.
"There is just one problem. The “crimes” that these individuals — and they curiously seem to be in a perpetual state of hysterics — attribute to him is a total fabrication. Not true. Not true at all. They are fictional."
"What makes matters worse is that the few defenders appear to be equally ignorant, and have accepted the defamation, arguing that regardless of his crimes, his exploratory achievements are praiseworthy — which, if anything, goes to show the power of repetition.
"There is not one single historical source in existence that substantiates any of the “crimes.” "Not one. "None!" . . .
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