October 12th is celebrated in the greater part of the United States as Columbus Day, though not everywhere. California, Oregon, Nevada and Hawaii do not have it as a public holiday, while a number of states have kept the date, but changed the celebration to “Native American’s Day” seemingly unaware of the immense irony of Caucasians celebrating the indigenous inhabitants on that particular day. Rather like the Germans holding an annual celebration to the Beer Hall Putsch on Yom Kippur.
That will undoubtedly strike many as a gross exaggeration: Hitler was obviously the epitome of evil, how could anyone not named Genghis or Attila possibly compare to him? Certainly not Chris Columbus, who looks more like somebody’s grandfather than a mass murderer. Yet without throwing anyone into ovens or dosing them with Zyklon-B, Columbus nevertheless bears responsibility for the deaths of anywhere from 15 to 100 million people [1] and the utter ruination of every civilization from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.
