[sofixa]

> Interestingly, there’s also strong circumstantial evidence to suggest that Columbus was Jewish, born in Italy to descendants of Jewish refugees fleeing the Spanish Inquisition (sorry Italian-Americans!). This line of inquiry seems to have gone quiet around when the “slaver, murder, and rapist” version of Columbus came to dominate public perception

I don't see what's the link between his origins and his sins in life. Both can be studied independently regardless of the other. (As long as someone doesn't try to link the fact that he was a "slaver, murder, rapist" alongside being bad in math with the potential fact that he's of jewish origin, that'd be unfortunate).

[deepdriver]

> I don't see what's the link between his origins and his sins in life. Both can be studied independently regardless of the other.

I agree! Historians who went quiet on this when “evil Columbus” became the dominant interpretation don’t seem to share that same view. Nor do those who downvoted and flagged my post, apparently.

[RalfWausE]

Ok, let me rephrase it: "It is very comparable to the flu if you look at the time when Columbus introduced illnesses in the americas that would later benefit eurpean settlers - and so unknowingly introduced biological warfare to the americas".

[bigDinosaur]

Unknowing introduction of a virus being 'biological warfare' would imply that people flying out of Wuhan in late 2019 were actually engaging in biological warfare. That's a stretch. There's no world, no matter how well intentioned Columbus may have been in an alternate universe, where disease doesn't devastate immunologically naive populations.

[deepdriver]

Unwittingly spreading disease is simply not biological warfare. There is no such thing as “unknowingly” waging it. That is just a pandemic.