COLUMBUS DAY Is The Most Important Day Of The Year

[kpete]

....................


The final and most important thing to understand about colonialism is that Hitlerian fascism was not something separate from colonialism, but in a real sense its logical endpoint. My grandfather was a historian who spent his whole life writing about the Spanish conquest, and during Hitler’s rise he perceived the extremity of Nazi racism as the culmination of the colonial tendency, developed over hundreds of years, to define huge swaths of the world as subhumans who could justly be exterminated.

But don’t take my grandfather’s word for it. Hitler himself said on several occasions that part of his inspiration came from the U.S. treatment of Native Americans. These were his words on October 17, 1941, as he spoke with a small group about Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union:

We’ll take away its character of an Asiatic steppe, we’ll Europeanize it. … As for the two or three million men whom we need to accomplish this task, we’ll find them quicker than we think. They’ll come from Germany, Scandinavia, the Western countries and America. …

There’s only one duty: to Germanize this country by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins. If these people had defeated us, Heaven have mercy! But we don’t hate them. That sentiment is unknown to us. We are guided only by reason. …

All those who have the feeling for Europe can join in our work.

It’s worth reading what Hitler said carefully. He did not hope to see the Soviet Union settled purely by Germans; “all those who have the feeling for Europe,” including Americans, were welcome. He flattered himself, like many European conquerors before and after him, that his civilization was motivated purely by reason. And of course he wanted to treat those they conquered “as Redskins.”

Consider all that, and consider what it means about us that there is still a professional football team called the Washington Redskins. We know what it would mean about Germany if they had a sports team called the Berlin Kikes.

......... I say October 12, 1492, is the most important day in history, and October 12 is the most important day of every year. We shouldn’t celebrate it. But if we want to comprehend the world — and we should, since our lives depend on it — we have to understand it.

MUCH MORE (fascinating stuff about $$$ origins too):
https://theintercept.com/2015/10/12/columbus-day-is-the-most-important-day-of-every-year/
https://books.google.com/books?id=fk-aXlliu6cC&lpg=PA54&ots=Ok_qGYCfNk&dq=%22We%E2%80%99ll%20take%20away%20its%20character%20of%20an%20Asiatic%20steppe%22&pg=PA54#v=onepage&q=%22We%E2%80%99ll%20take%20away%20its%20character%20of%20an%20Asiatic%20steppe%22&f=false

[niyad]

1. k and r

[ryan_cats]

2. To speak of

To speak of Columbus using such language, I am OK with. To bring such a level of intellectual dishonesty to someone like Hitler is beyond the pale. Words (except these ones) cannot express my disgust at such writings. Where would we be if Hitler hadn't demanded the right to sit on a bus in Alabama or if he hadn't stood up and said, "Have you no shame" during McCarthy's witchunt?
People always mention the pogroms and the millions in deaths but no one mentions or stands up for his good side.

[jack_krass]

3. Utterly ridiculous

Hitler had many influences and motivations, but mostly what drove him was an obsession with German racial purity and expansion. He was not inspired or motivated to any great extent by the conquest of the new world.

[kpete]

4. read the whole thing

Today, October 12, is Columbus Day. Every year it’s officially the second Monday in October; this year it falls on the exact anniversary of the Niña, Pinta and Santa María’s arrival in the Bahamas 523 years ago.

So to mark today, I’ve made a list. I’m sure to almost all Americans it would seem like a meaningless jumble of things with no connection to each other. But in fact it tells one story, the story of why October 12, 1492, is the most important date in human history — and demonstrates that you have to understand that in order for anything happening on Earth now to make sense:

$ (i.e., the dollar sign) — and Cerro Rico, Bolivia’s “Mountain That Eats Men”
the movies War of the Worlds and Avatar — and the movies Apocalypse Now and Day of the Jackal
the original seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony— and the “generous offer” made by Israel to the Palestinian Authority in 2000
Cinco de Mayo — and the investor-state dispute settlement section of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
an abortive 2003 attempt to bring Nelson Mandela to the United Nations to oppose the invasion of Iraq — and South Koreans protesting the 2010 Israeli attack on the first Gaza flotilla
Hitler’s October 17, 1941, discussion of the invasion of the Soviet Union — and the Washington Redskins

• • •

Confused? Here’s the explanation:


Columbus’ landfall in the Western Hemisphere was the opening of Europe’s conquest of essentially all of this planet. By 1914, 422 years later, European powers and the U.S. controlled 85 percent of the world’s land mass.

White people didn’t accomplish this by asking politely. As conservative Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington put it in 1996, “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion … but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”

In fact, European colonialism involved a level of brutality comparable in every way to that of 20th-century fascism and communism, and it started with Columbus himself. Estimates of the number of people living on the island of Hispaniola when Columbus established settlements range from 250,000 to several million. Within 30 years of his arrival, 80 to 90 percent of them were dead due to disease, war and enslavement, in what another Harvard professor cheerily called “complete genocide.” Contemporary accounts of the Spainards’ berserk cruelty really have to be read to be believed.




and there is still MORE:
https://theintercept.com/2015/10/12/columbus-day-is-the-most-important-day-of-every-year/peace
kp