LogFAQs > #968619354

All the Columbus hate springing up recently is weird.
The only count of direct genocide I can think of is of the Canibs (Where we get the word "cannibal"), but that was in retribution:
Columbus loved the Taino people. So much so that he wrote in his journal something along the lines of "They are the greatest people I have ever encountered." When he came back on his...second voyage, I think? All the Tainos were killed or forced into sexual slavery by the Canibs. Enraged and wanting to free them, Columbus attacked the Canibs and killed most of them to free the Tainos (As mentioned in his journal and other primary accounts, the Canibs refused to surrender the Taino despite repeated attempts to negotiate). He even brought back one of the surviving Tainos to Spain to live out the rest of his life as a member of the high-society royal court.

This is why I'm always cautious of besmirching propaganda. Almost all of it never ends up being true and is just concocted to make people feel like they have a nonexistent cause to fight for against an equally nonexistent boogeyman :/ Like Columbus: every first- or third-party account of his exploits I've seen depicts him far from the racist or genocidal conqueror that's been going around. If anything, he was often reported as very curious and open to other cultures and their ways of life, unless it was a case like the Tainos and the Canibs.

But this is CE. Bunch of middle-aged individuals who need to be angry about something to give themselves purpose.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Along with:

"racist"
"homo/trans/etc.-phobic"
"rapist"
"genocide"
"bigot"

And many, many more that have no real effect any more.