On Monday, Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump’s ex-personal attorney who is now embroiled in a criminal investigation for election interference in Georgia, took to the air on the Real America’s Voice network show War Room With Steve Bannon to display all his colonizer ignorance and racism.
Giuliani made the unfortunate decision to step out of his lane and into one he clearly knew nothing about: the history of Christopher Columbus and his attempt to completely annihilate most of the Native people he encountered in his travels.
When asked about the 15th century explorer, Raw Story reports that Giuliani made an effort to defend the actions of Columbus, dismissing the violence and enslavement committed at his hands and that of his crew by saying, “Columbus is probably the first hero, and there's no evidence that he did any of these things. In fact, most of the atrocities they're talking about occurred thirty years after he left.”
Giuliani added:
If anything, he was a, he was, he was benevolent. He tried very, very hard to avoid the wars that went on. But let, let, I mean, look. The people he brought over with him, they weren't saints. They were soldiers. But the people there were living in the third world, including a third world of violence where, where they scalped each other and killed each other and raped each other. This wasn't a civilization he came to. This was a third, fourth-world country. They had no idea of what they were facing. Columbus did everything he could to control it. It got out of control forty years later and he's being blamed for it. And this history is only like ten years old.
When he was finished gaslighting Native Americans, Giuliani went on to add John F. Kennedy to his list of heroes who’ve faltered, Business Insider reports.
"And have all of our other heroes done that? I mean, John F. Kennedy — now it's a different age, but now we know things about John F. Kennedy that make him considerably less than perfect."
He then pivoted to President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration during World War II, when they made the infamous choice to turn away Jewish refugees who came to the U.S. to flee the Nazis.
Here’s the truth, in case Giuliani is listening: According to History.com, Columbus and his men “enslaved many native inhabitants of the West Indies and subjected them to extreme violence and brutality.”
History.com writes:
On his first day in the New World, he ordered six of the natives to be seized, writing in his journal that he believed they would be good servants. Throughout his years in the New World, Columbus enacted policies of forced labor in which natives were put to work for the sake of profits. Later, Columbus sent thousands of peaceful Taino “Indians” from the island of Hispaniola to Spain to be sold. Many died en route.
Those left behind were forced to search for gold in mines and work on plantations. Within 60 years after Columbus landed, only a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island.
As usual, Giuliani and the party he stands with are simply out of touch.
According to The Washington Post and MIT, since 2018, at least 40 monuments to Columbus have been removed—most in 2020 and 2021—with over 130 that remain standing.
In 2021, President Joe Biden declared Columbus Day to be observed as Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Hillary Kempenich, an artist and member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, told the Associated Press at the time, “This was completely unexpected. Even though we’ve been talking about it and wanting it for so long,” adding that she was “overwhelmed with joy.”
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