Columbus Day is almost here and we can expect leftists to, once again, crawl out to engage in their periodic acts of vandalism towards Columbus’ statues while feeling self-righteous, just as they have with statues of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Jefferson, and many others.
When Mike Forcia was told by the police that he would be charged with criminal damage to property for destroying a statue of Columbus, the AIM barbarian flippantly said, “I’m willing to take that.”
Leftist animus towards Columbus is accompanied by accusations of genocide, rape, and mutilation of natives (however, he has not – yet -- been accused of not providing transgender bathrooms in his ships). There is just one problem.
They are all lies. Deliberate fabrications.
Some of the lies are so breathtakingly stupid as to leave one open mouthed, such as the claims by some Native Americans that Columbus carried out genocide in the United States, that is, that he was responsible for “war crimes” committed in North America. State Rep. Rachel Talbot-Ross (D) of Maine called him “a war criminal.”
So they have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day in a blatant act of cultural appropriation.
Defenders appear to have accepted the defamation, arguing that regardless of his “crimes,” Columbus’ exploratory achievements are praiseworthy.
The sick irony here is that, if one consults primary (i.e., contemporary) sources, it was Columbus who constantly prevented depredations of the inoffensive natives by the Spaniards, particularly towards the women. This prohibition was resented by the Spaniards, particularly since the admiral was a foreigner. There is not one single contemporary historical source in existence that substantiates any of these “crimes.” Consult not secondary sources written centuries later by leftist individuals, but primary sources, preferably in the original Spanish: Los Cuatro Viajes del Almirante y su Testamento, and, Brevísima Relación de la Destrucción de las Indias, both by Bartolomé de las Casas, as well as the Capitulations (also known as the Book of Privileges), and Fernando Columbus’s biography of his father. De las Casas, as every schoolchild in the Caribbean and Spain knows, was the Apostle of the Indians, an indefatigable defender of the native peoples who persuaded the Vatican itself to intervene against the Spanish crimes against the indigenous people. Not once does he mention Columbus as an evildoer.
Years after he died, the Spaniards committed many bloodcurdling crimes against the Caribbean natives, on a par with those of the Muslims or the Khmer Rouge. Present-day Communists have attributed these (documented) crimes to Columbus, committed decades after he died. Historical accuracy has never been a concern of leftists.
Foremost among today’s historical mutilations is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States., a Marxist interpretation of American history widely taught in schools. Once you finish reading this history of America, you will be eager to burn the country to the ground.
You can find related propaganda on YouTube and in articles in the Huffington Post, The Guardian, and The New Yorker, and many other publications.
“On his first voyage back, Columbus brought back hundreds (sometimes its thousands) of Indians as slaves.” Only ignorant imbeciles would say this, as a caravel (he was reduced to two towards the end of the trip) is the small ship designed expressly for exploration and not for purposes of shipping or transport. I have set foot on one; they are about the size of a tugboat.
“Columbus’ voyage is unimportant because the New World had already been discovered by the natives and/or the Vikings.” The refutation to this was best clarified by Hans Selye in Dreams and Discoveries: “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.”
“He raped a 9 y/o girl.” Or, “He gave a 9 y/o native girl to a friend to rape.” This is based on a letter which has been proven to be fraudulent, since it mentions temples on the islands -- temples which did not exist. Plus, the letter has internal inconsistencies.
So, in the end, why blacken the memory of a great man? What purpose could it possibly serve? I will quote two writers who lived behind the Iron Curtain. Alexander Solzhenitsyn said that, “To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.” Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting: “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 goal of these vandals is not just against Columbus, or Confederate statues, but against civilization itself, or, put another way, cultural destruction. Regardless of the slogans used to rationalize e vandalism, the participants are destroying our civilization for the joy of destroying it.
Armando Simón is a retired psychologist and historian, author of Humorous Stories of The Great Pandemic of 2020.
Image: Nicolino Giovannucci