Columbus, Criticism, and the Klan

The Mad Logic of Calling Anti-Columbus Protesters the New Klan

Are anti-Columbus protestors just as bad as the KKK? Of course not, don’t be stupid.

Here we go again. While digging into the legacy of Christopher Columbus for a recent article, I stumbled across a 2017 piece from The Hill with the headline: “In attacking Columbus, Antifa tries to finish what the Klan started.” It’s pure propaganda, trying to sell us Columbus as a misunderstood choirboy who “linked” two worlds with nothing more than good intentions and a hearty handshake. This teetering stack of revisionist nonsense was written by two leaders of the National Christopher Columbus Association — a PR firm whose only client is a 15th-century war criminal. The article may be 8 years old, but its central theme still deserves a swift, overdue ass-kicking.

It opens like a bargain-bin political sermon: “In an effort to fight hateful rhetoric,” it begins — a clever feint, pretending sympathy for anti-racist protestors before pivoting to the real grievance — the desecration of Saint Columbus, patron of genocide and European exceptionalism. The authors huff and puff about “tragic irony,” warning us that the protestors toppling Columbus statues are apparently continuing the work of the Ku Klux Klan.

Seriously.

That’s the thesis.

The entire argument teeters on a wobbly comparison: because the Klan once despised…