John Oliver on Columbus Day


His show Last Week Tonight has an recurring series called How is this still a thing? Earlier he dealt with Ayn Rand but in the latest episode he took on Columbus Day, yesterday’s holiday that celebrates a brutal murderer and slave trader.

Comments

  1. md says

    All the same, Im glad live in a society of Columbus descendants instead of Geronimo or Black Elk. Im much better at computer work than Bison Hunting.

  2. Anthony K says

    All the same, Im glad live in a society of Columbus descendants instead of Geronimo or Black Elk. Im much better at computer work than Bison Hunting.

    What the hell? You’re glad for Columbus’ slave-trading and genociding because you think the descendants of Black Elk would have remained bison hunters and not become computer users? Did you know that Columbus never used a computer, but his descendants do today because human societies change and develop and use new technologies over time? This includes First Nations?

    Jesus dude. I get that you’re most likely going to pass this off as just joking, but that was savagely racist.

  3. lorn says

    With all due respect you are missing the point, Columbus is not about discovery really. Discovery is the polite euphemism for exploitation and Columbus was a real genius at exploitation. But for new world gold Spain would have been pretty much what it is now 500 years earlier and his successful exploitation set the model for even more successful and bloody exploitation by the conquistadors and, in time, other nations. We celebrate Columbus day to honor the tradition of finding new lands and grinding them, and the people that inhabit them, down to maximize profits.

    It is the most libertarian and neo-con of holidays and Ayn Rand herself loved the idea of such exploitation with men of will and destiny inflicting their designs upon a labile people and land without any regulation or limits as to how they maximize their profits. It is a celebration of greed and avarice, of the crushing of grapes to extract the sweet juice of profit.

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