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mimi85

(1,805 posts)
Mon Oct 12, 2015, 07:47 PM Oct 2015

The Right’s Nauseating Columbus Day Hate

When the fuck are we going to dump this so called "holiday?" Even as a little kid, I always chose to play the Indian. I was born with some kind of Democratic gene that has hurt me at times and has made me proud to be on the "right" side. This article from Salon kinds of sums up my feelings about this day.

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The right’s nauseating Columbus Day hate: Fox News, Trump, Limbaugh embolden white supremacist Twitter

As Scott Eric Kaufman of Salon noted on Monday morning, some folks on Twitter are honoring the Columbus Day holiday with the nauseating hashtag #ColumbusWasAHero. While some liberals are using the hashtag to push back against the adulation of Christopher Columbus, correctly noting that the man was a moral monster, most of the tweets are from right wingers defending the existence of the holiday and Columbus’s legacy generally.

Or perhaps the term “right wingers” is too mild, as the racism exploding all over that hashtag is so grotesque that most conservatives would probably blanch at it, sneering that Native Americans were a bunch of untamed savages prior to Columbus’s landing and claiming that white people invented everything worth caring about. It’s so hateful and wrong-headed that it hardly seems worth arguing against, as there’s undeniable, empirical evidence–say, the Mayan temples–that Native Americans did not conform to the “uncivilized” stereotypes being flaunted on this hashtag.

Nor is it true, as one tweeter suggests, that liberals believe Native Americans were “cuddly brown teddy bears.” Obviously, there were many, diverse Native civilizations over thousands of years and some were more violent than others, just like every other corner of the world. One need not believe that people are perfect in order to believe they don’t deserve to be stampeded over, colonized, and wiped out by genocides.

But this hashtag isn’t newsworthy because it’s so full of misinformation. What is frightening is how truly flagrant all of this is. Right out there in public, people are saying things like Columbus “represents the adventurous spirit of the white race” and that he’s a hero for “making North America an extension of White / Western Civilization.” There’s nothing coded going on here, just a bunch of people openly and shamelessly asserting that white people are morally and intellectually superior to everyone else.

It’s yet another sign of the growing boldness of white supremacists online. As Keegan Hankes reported at the Southern Poverty Law Center back in March, white supremacists used to hide out at their own dedicated websites, such as Stormfront or the Vanguard News Network, but now those sites are losing membership. It’s not, however, because white supremacists are waking up en masse and giving up bigotry. It’s because they’ve moved to more mainstream venues, like Reddit, where openly racist subreddits became some of the most popular on the board. While Reddit has banned some of the most egregious offenders, but others continue to exist, if often behind a “quarantine,” which only means you need a verified email to read or post on them.

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http://www.salon.com/2015/10/12/the_rights_nauseating_columbus_day_hate_fox_news_trump_limbaugh_embolden_white_supremacist_twitter/

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