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
If there is one thing that amply demonstrates leftists’ colossal ignorance of history, it is the recent vandalism and destruction of statues in America of Christopher Columbus in the cities of Richmond, St. Paul, Miami, Wilmington, Sacramento, St. Louis, Detroit, Boston and Providence (in Providence, the vandalism was done by a middle school teacher). The “crimes” that these hysterical individuals – and they seem to be in a perpetual state of hysterics – attribute to him is a total fabrication. A lie. Not true. Bullshit.
What is just as depressing – actually, what makes it 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, in turn, goes to show the power of repetition.
If these people actually knew that Columbus fought to stop the crimes on the Indians by the Conquistadores, the very same crimes that have been foisted on him by these leftists, they would die of shame and embarrassment, but that presupposes that they have at least an ounce of integrity and decency in them. So that’s out.
In a way, it is not surprising when one considers that statues of Thomas Jefferson, Raoul Wallenberg, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Julius Ceasar, Earl Grey, Robert the Bruce, Caesar Rodney, George Washington, General Kosciuszko, Abigail Adams, Calvin Griffith, Winston Churchill, Napoleon, Ulysses Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, St. Junípero Serra, Andrew Jackson, Hans Christian Heg, Mahatma Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln have also been vandalized by other like-minded leftists here and abroad (Earl Grey, Ulysses Grant, and Abraham Lincoln, if you did not know, both abolished slavery while Abigail Adams was an abolitionist). In Boston, the Red Guards also vandalized the Glory monument of the Civil War’s African-American 54th Regiment, along with the Holocaust Memorial. Pair that with the looting, the killing and the burning in cities, and it should be obvious by now that the goal is not just against Columbus, or Confederate statues, but against civilization itself, or, put another way, cultural destruction. We haven’t been invaded by barbarians; we have created barbarians. (Notice that the desecration of the statues is not reported by the national media).
In regards to Churchill’s statue, one British woman declared: “Some say that he’s a racist; some that say he’s a hero. I haven’t personally met him.” These are the type of ignorant barbarians that are trying to reshape society in their image.
The history of America in the past few decades have been deliberately mutilated and distorted by a resurgence of homegrown communists. This is no delusion on my part. Just look at the “1619 Project” put out by America’s Pravda. The hammer and sickle is flying in Seattle, Austin, NYC, San Francisco, Berkeley, and other cities. And if you know anything about communists, either here or in Europe, then you know that they have a long, well-documented, record of historical distortion and mutilation (represented in Orwell’s “1984”). Foremost among these is Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” (the word “People’s” in a title is always a dead giveaway that the communists are involved), which is actually being used in some classrooms. The book has been relentlessly promoted in television and films, which, if nothing else, shows the degree of communist infiltration in the media. Once you finish reading this mutilated history of America, you will be ready to dynamite it. It is full of horrendous lies. Yes, lies. Fabrications. Mendacity. Not true. Bullshit. Some of it is subtle. Some of it is blatant. Here is an example of Zinn’s lies on Columbus, a brief one:
“At one part of the island he got into a fight with Indians who refused to trade as many bows and arrows as he and his men wanted. Two Arawaks were run through with swords and bled to death.”
A little background first. This incident occurred on the return trip from Columbus’ first voyage. Hitherto, whenever Indians had been encountered, they had initially ran away, thinking that the explorers were cannibals. The Arawaks/Tainos were terrorized by sea faring cannibals. Cannibals ranged widely among the islands in boats, landing and capturing their meals; they would take them home alive and if, they were men, were castrated in order to improve their flavor. The cannibals (aka Caribs/Caribes/Canibas) had a technological advantage: powerful bows and arrows, whereas the other Indians had sticks. When it was clear that the Spaniards were not cannibals, the Indians welcomed them, thinking that they came from heaven. A brisk trade ensued for the gold nuggets that the natives wore. In Hispaniola, the gold was so abundant that nuggets could be found among the tree roots (gold was the only metal they knew since they were still in the Stone Age). Incidentally, all the natives were naked, not wearing even a loin cloth, and some tribes’ members were as white as Europeans. Again, and again, Columbus ordered his men not to steal anything and to respect the Indians, to trade, not steal.
When Columbus encountered the island that Zinn mentions, the dynamics were different. The natives (cannibals, not Arawaks/Tainos) went towards the lifeboat with their bows and arrows, screaming and “looking ferocious.” Undoubtedly, they were surprised that anyone would come to them. The natives were told to leave their bows, arrows, and ropes off to one side. Columbus traded for two bows (he had collected plants, animals, foods and crafts to take back as proof of his voyage), but the natives refused to trade any more. When the Spaniards were about to leave, the fifty cannibals ran to their bows and arrows and the ropes with which to tie up their dinner and rushed to the seven Spaniards to overwhelm them. For once, their dinner fought back. One cannibal was stabbed in the buttocks and another in the chest, whereupon they all fled. None “bled to death”. (Later, during the second voyage, they entered a deserted village and they found a human arm in the process of being roasted and pots full of human bones. The captured noncannibal women begged to be taken away).
So, as can be seen, Zinn’s account has just enough details to seem truthful. But a mountain of details is deliberately left out that gives a totally different picture.
But it is not just Zinn. There are many, many others that parrot lies about the man. For starters, just read the horrendous lies published in The Philadelphia Tribune by one Michael Coard. A lot of people repeat the lies that they heard or read, thinking that those lies are true. They are even inserted in television programs (The Sopranos, The Office, The Good Place), like a drive by shooting. 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 this country.
Columbus never set foot in North America.
If one were to check the primary sources, one would learn that he was constantly complaining to the Crown about the Spaniard’s crimes, particularly against the women, including little girls. It’s in the record. Yet, the communists have proclaimed that he was the one carrying out those crimes – with no evidence whatsoever to substantiate their accusations other than hatred and cynicism, of which they have an abundance. After he died, the Spaniards committed many crimes against the natives, bad enough to rival that of the Mongols or the Khmer Rouge. On top of everything else, the communists have attributed these, documented, crimes to Columbus. Years, decades, after he died. Historical accuracy is not a concern of leftists.
There is one other important fact that needs to be pointed out, namely, that in the cities (Sacramento, St. Louis) where no attempt has been made to protect erected statues, a Democrat has been the mayor. Oftentimes, it is the Democratic mayor himself that has had the statues removed (in Philadelphia, the Democratic mayor was furious that an ad hoc group of citizens formed to defend a Columbus statue). This parallels the situation in universities that have a group of communist students seemingly having a disproportionate amount of power and influence in those universities – it is the communist college administrators and faculty themselves that give them the power and encourage their tactics while staying in the background.
And “punishment” for those acts of vandalism? A slap on the wrist. 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 activist barbarian flippantly said, “I’m willing to take that”.
And while Democrat politicians enable barbaric acts, Republican politicians are unresponsive cowards, terrified that the media will target them.
Meanwhile, in France, Macron stated that he will not tolerate the destruction of statues. It is pretty pathetic when Americans have to take a lesson on courage from the French.
In the end, I have no illusions that the acts of vandalism towards his statues will cease, or that leftists will become rational and fair minded when reading this, not with the saturation of hysterical propaganda being put out at all levels of society, but perhaps it will get through to one or two people here and there. It is the least one can do.
And, as someone recently pointed out, history shows that after statues are torn down vandalized and destroyed, people are next.