New York school cites 19th century reason for banning 'Jingle Bells' over Christmas

An upstate New York public school chose not to include "Jingle Bells" in its repertoire of Christmas songs after linking the tune’s origins to 19th century minstrel shows, according to a local report.

Council Rock Primary School in Brighton replaced the Christmas classic with other songs that did not have "the potential to be controversial or offensive," the school’s principal Matt Tappon wrote in an email to the Rochester Beacon, which first reported the news on Dec. 23.

The paper reported that Tappon and other staff confirmed in emails that the decision to stop singing the song was due, in part, to a 2017 article written by professor Kyna Hamill, director of Boston University’s Core Curriculum. 

In her article, Hamill researched the origins of "Jingle Bells," its composer, James L. Pierpont, and other songs about sleighs that appeared during the mid-1800s. She wrote that the first performance of "Jingle Bells" in public may have been in Boston in 1857 during a minstrel show, where White performers wore blackface.  

When the paper reached out to Hamill about the school citing her article as part of the reason why it banned the song, she wrote in an email that she was "actually quite shocked the school would remove the song from the repertoire. … I, in no way, recommended that it stopped being sung by children."

"My article tried to tell the story of the first performance of the song, I do not connect this to the popular Christmas tradition of singing the song now," she wrote, adding that the song "should very much be sung and enjoyed, and perhaps discussed."

On Dec. 28, Brighton Central School District Superintendent Kevin McGowan addressed the decision in a letter posted onto the district’s website following the report in the Beacon.

McGowan wrote that "we couldn’t be more proud of our staff" in their ongoing effort "to be more culturally responsive, thoughtful and inclusive," adding that "this is not a political situation" and "is not an attempt to push an agenda."

"This wasn’t ‘liberalism gone amok’ or ‘cancel culture at its finest’ as some have suggested," McGowan wrote. "Nobody has said you shouldn’t sing ‘Jingle Bells’ or ever in any way suggested that to your children."

McGowan said that while the school was not teaching or discussing the origins of the song with students, it did feel it mattered when deciding what material should be used in school.

"It may seem silly to some, but the fact that ‘Jingle Bells’ was first performed in minstrel shows where white actors performed in blackface does actually matter when it comes to questions of what we use as material in school," McGowan wrote.

He said that he felt that teachers handled the decision "very thoughtfully" and was proud of their work.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-york-school-jingle-bells-christmas

Uproar as Swedish National Museum Adds 'Insane' Racism Warnings to Classic Art

 

Swedish Institute Disowns Two 19th-Century Professors Over Racial Research

5 hours ago

19th-century scientists father and son Anders and Gustaf Retzius have long been celebrated for their contributions to anatomy and histology, but their legacy has been marred by their interest in racial studies currently discarded as "scientific racism".

The Karolinska Institute, Sweden's leading institution for medical research, has decided to rename the street, laboratory, and hall named after famous 19th-century professors Anders Retzius and his son Gustaf.

The stated reason behind the name change is their interest in racial biology, which allegedly reflects a set of values that the institute no longer supports. The institute explained that its firm conviction is that all people are of equal value.

A 23-time Nobel Prize nominee, professor of histology Gustaf Retzius has been celebrated for his contribution to the histology of sensory organs and nervous system, yet is also known for his interest in a branch of racial studies that today is discarded as "scientific racism". His father Anders Retzius, a professor of anatomy and a supervisor at the Karlinska Institute, is credited with a number of anatomic discoveries, including the cranial index. Both the father and the son viewed the Nordic race as the pinnacle of mankind and were known for studying Finnish skulls, which in recent years has become a hot-button issue between the two nations, to prove their point.

"It's hard to find the right balance. The story behind the names is valuable as it can inspire discussion, but one should not praise what Retzius did either. It has been a difficult decision to make, but I think it is necessary", Karolinska Institute Rector Ole Petter Ottersen told national broadcaster SVT.

The statues of father and son will remain, but will be relocated.

"We will relocate and re-contextualise the statues in a context where you see what they did with their views on racial biology", Ottersen explained.

When asked whether more name changes may be relevant in the future, the rector emphasised that his say is not the last one and welcomed a positive discussion.

The Solna-based Karolinska Institute is a research-led medical university and is also known for hosting the Nobel Assembly that awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Uproar as Swedish National Museum Adds 'Insane' Racism Warnings to Classic Art

21 June, 06:40 GMT

Last year, dozens of memorials and statues seen as tributes to slave traders, colonialists, and racists were renamed or taken down amid Black Lives Matter protests that swept the western world, despite originally being against police brutality in the US.

While the protesters during unrest in the US targeted above others Confederate and Columbus statues, instances of removing the Founding Fathers were not uncommon. Most recently, the NYC Council decided to remove a statue of Thomas Jefferson, citing his history as a slaveholder.#

https://sputniknews.com/20211103/swedish-institute-disowns-two-19th-century-professors-over-racial-research-1090433883.html

 

The BLM threat to both God and man

The instruction by South Africa’s cricket authorities that national team players must kneel in homage to the Black Lives Matter movement presents a useful opportunity to educate the reading public about the perils of endorsing the joint new religion and ideology that BML homage represents. 

The lazy cliché is that the BLM movement arose in response to police violence in the United States of America. The more informed view is that Marxist activists exploited the idea of police violence in America as a means to supplant separately and collectively Christian and liberal values in Western societies. 

In July of 2020 the IRR published a report titled Because Black Lives Matter, tracking the deep origins and ideological objectives of the Black Lives Matter Movement whilst debunking the myth of widespread racially motivated police killings in America. This document should be required reading for any person before engaging with that movement.

We won’t go into the deep origins and police-killing data here, but will focus instead on producing a heavily condensed précis of what the report found about the ideological objectives and strategies of the movement and why these should concern the free world.  

That ideology was best exposed in two 2015 quotes. The first comes from BLM Global Network founder Patrisse Cullors, who explained in that year: ‘We actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia [Garza] [BLM co-founder] in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.’ 

Also in that year, the third of the [founding] trio, Opel Tometi, wrote after visiting Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro: ‘In these last 17 years, we have witnessed the Bolivarian Revolution champion participatory democracy and construct a fair, transparent election system recognized as among the best in the world.’

Origins

In tracking the origins of that ideology the report went further back to argue:

‘To understand the full scope of BLM Global Network’s ideological grounding one must look at the mid-19th Century German intellectual climate from which Karl Marx emerged….One of the most popular ideas at the time was that it had been wrong to think of individuals as the kernels of society. Races came to be thought of, by some, as i) the true bearers of value, ii) the true competitors in power-struggle, and iii) the units that must be respected for justice to thrive. The term volksgeist was coined in 1801 by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, meaning the “spirit” or “soul”, the geist of the people or “volk”, where people came to be racially defined.

‘The new idea emerged that government, and, from there, the law, must reflect the will of the people, understood as the race. This was the genesis of race nationalism….an idea taken up later by Otto von Bismarck in unifying Germany in the “second Reich” and by Hitler in the “third Reich”.

‘WEB du Bois, one of the great black American intellectuals of his time, received a fellowship at the University of Berlin in the 1890s where he came across the “volksgeist concept” in action in Bismarck’s Germany….One of Du Bois’ teachers, Heinrich von Treitschke, who opposed Catholics, Poles and Jews in Germany, put it unambiguously thus: the individual “lives only in and through submitting himself to the aggregate culture of his volk”.

‘Du Bois followed this in his Conservation of Races lectures, saying: “The history of the world is the history, not of individuals, but of groups, not of nations, but of races, and he who ignores or seeks to override the race idea in human history ignores and overrides the central thought through all history…[and] Thus Du Bois brought the volksgeist theory back to black America.”’

Strong parallel

There was a strong parallel here to Marx. Like Du Bois ‘Marx [also] believed the individual must “submit himself” to a folkish group, but preferred class to race as a place to find true human value….Marx believed that the capitalist who seeks rents, or gains profits on investments, is backed up by “bourgeois” legal concepts, ultimately the law and its hired enforcers, which is itself simply an abuse of power. The difference between the “robber baron” and the plain “robber” is that the former is simply more violent, more powerful, and more corrupt.’

The report went on to show how ‘(these) two ideas – property is theft, and volksgeist race essentialism – intersect in Critical Race Theory (CRT)’ which is the theory that came to underpin the BLM ideology. 

CRT’s basic axioms are that:

• From the concept of volkgeist, every society is divided into two absolute and unbridgeable, racially determined groups. 
• The first is the black group. Its members are permanently disadvantaged victims of a society which is set up to enforce black poverty and underdevelopment. 
• The second is the white group. Its members are permanently privileged and perpetrate various crimes against the black group in order to secure their unearned privilege and maintain black poverty.
• And, from Marxism, all liberal democracies are structured to maintain white privilege and black disadvantage. 
• Any challenge to that thesis is racist and reveals, if it comes from a white person, what is called ‘white fragility’ or the fear of facing the truth and surrendering unearned privilege and if it comes from a black person that they are race traitors for whom no mercy should be afforded.   
• Any facts to the contrary are themselves racist as they arise from a system controlled by white people and should therefore be disregarded. 
• Individuals in society have very little agency or moral responsibility. 
• Their character and role in society is assigned to them at birth by their race.
• Therefore, no black person can hope to become better off through their own efforts, while no white person can do anything that cleanses them of their guilt and crimes against black people.
• As a consequence, the trappings of modern liberal democracies, including capitalism, the free market, freedom of speech, private enterprise, and the rule of law, must therefore be dismantled and all wealth distributed by the state to liberate the black group from poverty and relieve the white group of its unearned privilege.

Go very much further

Hence the calls by the BLM movement to ‘disband’ and ‘defund’ the police. But the demands of the BLM movement go very much further than that to include that private schooling should be ‘eliminated’ because education ‘privatization strips Black people of the right to self-determine the kind of education they receive’; that the Glass-Steagall’s ban on affiliations between investment and commercial banks be restored; that private ownership of natural resources be terminated; that ‘radical and sustainable redistribution of wealth’ occurs through the state; that super PACs be banned; that the Trans Pacific Partnership be terminated; US military spending be halved; all international military bases be closed; the decriminalisation of all drugs and the release of all drug-related convicts take place; and that industries that make money on the production of fossil fuels be divested’. 

I am always struck by how astounded the institutions that begin to dabble with CRT and BLM are when they come to learn that the ideological objectives of the BLM movement extend very far beyond the contested question of police violence and racism. And how shocked those institutions are to learn that by endorsing the movement and demanding kneeling acquiescence to its demands they are signing up to a campaign to dismantle the trappings of liberal democracy in favour of the pursuit of a utopian socialist and later communist order.    

Seven parts

The strategy employed by BLM in pursuit of this objective has seven parts that are as follows: 

1. The BLM strategy raises a plausible socio-economic concern. Racial bias in US policing, or in South African cricket, is, prima facie, a plausible problem and every decent person will affirm the claim that black people’s lives do matter and that black cricketers do too.

2. BLM uses those concerns to win institutional endorsements for the broader movement. The endorsing institutions, which are typically corporations, universities, schools, non-profits and bodies such as Cricket South Africa, seldom possess a full appreciation of what they are really signing up for or the implications of the ideology they have begun to endorse.  

3. But, immediately, via those initial endorsements, the organisation finds itself defaulted to a position where its constituents, clients, students, pupils, or supporters are classified into the unbridgeable camps of white perpetrator and black victim  – classifications determined not by their actions or agency but by their race.

4. Now under pressure amidst the early signs of public fallout, and still not properly appreciating the trap that has been laid, the endorsing institution steps right into the trap in doubling down via loud public defences of, and commitments to, the BLM movement and its objectives, exactly as cricket authorities in South Africa are now doing. 

5. The trap is then sprung when the endorsing institution is asked to make good on its commitments to deliver on the BLM agenda whilst any evidence of a reluctance to do so is churned and twisted to foment conflict between the now formally fractured parties to the institution.

6. BLM activists then use the ensuing conflict as hard evidence of the reluctance of the institution to embrace transformation and racial justice. 

7. In the final stage, BLM employs that reluctance to justify calls for tearing the institution down, the stated objective from the very beginning.

Brilliant and ruthless 

It is all very brilliant and ruthless. But the true grotesqueness of it all only reaches its peak when the implications for Christian belief are made clear. 

For believing Christians, being compelled to kneel to the BLM movement is an impossible demand. Exodus 20 (3-6) makes it quite explicit that ‘You shall have no other gods but me….You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments (Exodus 20 3-6).

Psalm 95 (6 and 3) instructs Christians that, ‘Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!…For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods’, while Mathew 6 v 7 warns ‘When you pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathens do’. Ephesians 3 (14) reads ‘They who kneel before God can stand before anyone.’ 

For believing Christians, Cricket South Africa’s instruction thereby represents a direct challenge to the will of God. 

Gravity of the implications 

But lest you think me a religious zealot, let me make clear why the gravity of the implications is not determined by the extent of your own belief. The challenge to Christian faith is intentionally woven into the BLM ideology because of how inherent the Christian values of the reformation and enlightenment are to the deep underpinnings of all modern democracies. 

The former opened the door to the freedom of thought and belief that – matched with the latter’s emphasis on the importance of rationality and reason – came together to distinguish a civilised society, and hence contemporary democracies, from a state of nature. Possessed of a full awareness of the importance of this influence, the purpose in BLM’s assault on Christianity is not at all to eliminate faith from society but rather to harness its influence via supplanting Christian beliefs with the worship of BLM ideological orthodoxy. 

And having the South African cricket team fall on its knees in worship to this orthodoxy is a fine way of signalling to a society that it better fall in line with the new religion. See it that way and the vicious attacks from within the mainstream media on Quinton de Kock, the lone voice of caution in the South African team, take on all the characteristics of the many historical inquisitions into religious heresy.     

What are the lessons in this? 

Don’t endorse third party ideologies and political organisations without knowing what they stand for and what their objectives are. Read sufficiently deeply to develop some understanding of the values and principles that underpin modern democracies if you wish to continue living in a free society. 

Your demise 

Don’t virtue signal under pressure in the hope that the pressure will be relieved as you will be committing to objectives that you can never meet, the consequences of which may bring about your demise. 

Demand hard evidence of the forces and trends that you are told determine socio-economic conditions and read critically when what is put forward as evidence is presented. Don’t fall for the line that because everyone else is doing it, it must be the best thing to do. 

If unsure, ask if this is the way good and decent people would treat and classify each other in the privacy of their own homes. Understand how demonstrations of forced public subservience to an ideology have precipitated many of the greatest catastrophes of human history.  

And resist therefore the idea that human value and character rest in the colour of someone’s skin so that you are extremely cautious when told that as an individual ‘you live only in and through submitting [your]self to the aggregate culture of [the] volk’.

https://dailyfriend.co.za/2021/10/28/the-blm-threat-to-both-god-and-man/

 

‘Don’t chicken out of the race debate’ – IRR

Allowing the ‘tiny minority who see racism everywhere’ to command trending attention in the South African debate will mean that the ANC government ‘will continue to diverge from the self-described priorities of most people’, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has warned.

In a statement yesterday, the IRR said the evidence was ‘overwhelming that South Africans do not, in the main, believe racism is currently a particularly serious crisis, or that poverty is currently imposed by white supremacists. These are facts that few in the brand and information industries are eager to face’.

‘The major crisis is unemployment, currently 34% on the narrow definition, whose contemporary source is not widespread racism. Over 70% of people wish to work together across racial lines, according to the IRR’s 2020 field survey of ordinary South Africans, and a higher proportion would like people to be appointed to jobs on merit.

‘Moreover, according to the same poll, over 70% think more jobs and better education will cause racial divisions to disappear. Only 3% think racism should be a priority for government to tackle.

‘Unemployment, and failures in housing, service delivery, water and sanitation, poverty relief, infrastructure, and education (cumulatively identified by over 50% as major problems) are caused by the corrupt application of taxpayer funds, government policy that is hostile to investment-driven job creation, and schools that fail to properly prepare the great majority of young people for gainful employment.’

The IRR warned that, ‘in the week before an election that may see South Africa’s governing party, the enforcer of these destructive policies, lose its majority grip, there will be vested interests with a motivation to deny this reality and supplant it instead with the view that this country’s contemporary problems are directly caused by racism and not by the policies of the ruling alliance’.

The Institute added: ‘Third parties should be cautious of endorsing this view in order to be seen as popular because the implications of doing so will be to promote a false narrative and thereby delay the reforms ordinary South Africans need if the plight of the poor and marginalised is ever to be addressed.’

The finding in the 2020 field survey that 80% of all black respondents said they had not ‘personally experienced any form of racism over the past five years’, was ‘good news’ and should ‘be emphasized in the pursuit of a democratic system of accountability that serves most people’s interests’. 

IRR head of campaigns Gabriel Crouse said the debate between Gareth Cliff and Mudzuli Rakhivhane ‘was emblematic of two divergent streams of root-cause analysis in South Africa’. 

Warned Crouse: ‘If the tiny minority who see racism everywhere continue to trend the course of debate, the South African government will continue to diverge from the self-described priorities of most people.’

https://dailyfriend.co.za/2021/10/26/dont-chicken-out-of-the-race-debate-irr/

 

NYC Commission Votes to Remove Thomas Jefferson's Statue From City Hall Over Complaints

© AP Photo / Richard Drew

The statue of one of the nation's Founding Fathers stood in the Big Apple's City Hall for 187 years, gifted in 1834 by naval officer and Jefferson admirer Uriah Phillips Levy. Activists and lawmakers have struggled over the painted plaster statue for decades.

The statue of Thomas Jefferson will be removed from the City Council chamber before the end of the year, while the body is still considering where to put the monument of the third US president.

After four members testified that his status as a slaveholder was an affront to the council's many Black members, as per the New York Post, the Public Design Commission unanimously agreed to remove Jefferson from the legislative chamber at City Hall.

“We acknowledge that the piece needs to be removed from the City Council chamber,” commission president Signe Nielsen is quoted as saying after the two-hour debates. "We as a commission will act before the end of 2021 in finding an appropriate location where it remains in the public realm."

The nine-member commission, all of whom are mayoral appointees, had planned to vote on whether to loan the New-York Historical Society the 1833 painted plaster monument of the Declaration of Independence author. The original can still be found at the US Capitol's rotunda.

A statue of Thomas Jefferson, created by Parisian sculptor Pierre D'Anger at the behest of American Navy Lt. Uriah Levy in the early 1800s, stands in Capitol Rotunda in the Capitol Nov. 13, 2001.

© AP Photo / DENNIS COOK

However, Nielsen reportedly opposed the original idea of lending the statue to the public, because it is a private institution with a $22 entrance fee.

According to the newspaper, the Governor's Room at City Hall, just across from the Council chambers, and the New York Public Library, which holds a copy of the Declaration of Independence in Jefferson's handwriting, were mentioned by members of the public and the commission as possible locations for the statue.

“When we remove this statue, we’re making a step in the right direction for erasing honoring of those who murdered and raped us,” Democrat Assemblyman Charles Barron, who is also a Black activist, said in an interview after the vote.

The Council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus initiated a hearing for the removal of the Jefferson statue, claiming that the monument serves as "a constant reminder of the injustices that have plagued communities of color since the inception of our country," as per The New York Times.

Democrat Assemblyman Charles Barron, who initially took up the fight to have Jefferson removed from the Council rooms 20 years ago, reportedly said the revolutionary hero would go to a landfill if it was up to him.

“I don’t think it should go anywhere. I don’t think it should exist. I think it should be put in storage somewhere, destroyed or whatever,” Barron said at the hearing. "He was a slave-owning pedophile."

Barron was referring to Jefferson's sexual relationship with his slave Sally Hemings, which allegedly began when she was 14 and he was 44, and which some modern scholars consider essentially a rape that resulted in Hemings having at least one child by her master.

Mayor Bill de Blasio had tasked his wife, first lady Chirlane McCray, with deciding the destiny of the sculpture as head of the Commission on Racial Justice and Reconciliation back in summer 2020 following racial protests in light of the death of Black man George Floyd in police custody in late May.

"The de Blasio administration will continue the progressive war on history as he, himself, fades away into a portrait on a City Hall wall," Councilman Joe Borelli, R-Staten Island, told The NY Post earlier. "I hope he is at least gone a couple hundred years before someone cancels him."

Other politicians, as well as historians and social media users have expressed dissatisfaction with the statue's removal, suggesting that progressive politicians may have issues with perceiving history, which is controversial in almost any country.

"This is just ridiculous. #NYC will be going too far if they vote to remove a #ThomasJefferson statue from City Hall. Will they reject the Declaration of Independence as well? How about the bill of rights, which were inspired by TJ & written by Madison?" a netizen wrote.

https://sputniknews.com/20211019/nyc-commission-votes-to-remove-thomas-jeffersons-statue-from-city-hall-over-complaints-1090022428.html

 

Spurs’ Popovich Slams Italian-American Support for Columbus Day: Like Germans Being ‘Proud of Hitler’

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THOMAS COEX/AFP via Getty Images

JOSHUA KLEIN

10 Oct 2021

San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich attacked Columbus Day on Friday, slamming his “backward” hometown for marking the day while accusing the famed 15th-century explorer of initiating a “new world genocide” and branding Italian-American support for honoring the day akin to Germans “proud of Hitler.”

After the first-ever presidential proclamation for Indigenous Peoples’ Day — which honors Native American peoples — was issued by President Joe Biden on Friday, Popovich praised the move, which has long been pushed by the left, calling it “appropriate, important, needed and all those sorts of things.”

Ahead of Friday’s Spurs-Heat preseason matchup, he also expressed confusion over San Antonio’s decision to celebrate the newly-proclaimed day along with the long-observed Columbus Day, claiming he was “a little confused about our city and why it’s [marking] Indigenous Peoples’ Day slash Columbus Day.”

He then slammed the Italian navigator who is credited with the discovery of North America.

“Columbus?” he asked mockingly. “I mean he initiated a new world genocide; that’s what he did.”

“Beginning with him and what he set in motion, what followed, [was] the annihilation of every indigenous person in Hispaniola, which was Haiti and the Dominican Republic today, that’s what he did,” he continued. 

“He took slaves, he mutilated, he murdered, and we’re going to say ‘slash’ and honor him?” he added.

Praising the major Texas city’s independent school district for having, at the very least, chosen to recognize the more recent Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Popovich knocked the school district of the incorporated city of Alamo Heights.

“Well, I’ve got to give the San Antonio Independent School District a little bit of credit because at least they added Indigenous Peoples’ Day along with [Columbus Day] and that’s a step in the right direction,” he said. 

“But what the hell is Alamo Heights thinking?” he added. “It’s Columbus Day, that’s why they’re off on Monday?!”

Claiming that he may be ignorant and there may be “something I’m missing,” the virulently left-wing coach said he feels “like [the school district personnel are] living in a phone booth — and they’re educating our kids.” 

“Columbus Day?! And we’re going to honor that?” he added.

Calling it “no knock on Italian Americans,” he then equated support for marking Columbus Day with pride in Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

“That’s a silly argument,” he said. “It’s like saying we should be proud of Hitler because we’re German.” 

“I mean it makes no sense,” he added. “It’s about Columbus, it’s not about Italian Americans.”

Citing many states that “have come out and scratched Columbus Day and made it Indigenous Peoples’ Day” instead, he expressed amazement that the San Antonio school district would continue to recognize Columbus Day.

“In our city, are we that backward that we have school districts that do that?” he said. “I’m amazed, amazed.”

Biden’s proclamation which recognizes Monday — the day the federal government will observe Columbus Day — as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, declared, in part:

For generations, Federal policies systematically sought to assimilate and displace Native people and eradicate Native cultures. Today, we recognize Indigenous peoples’ resilience and strength as well as the immeasurable positive impact that they have made on every aspect of American society. 

The president also issued a separate proclamation for Columbus Day, casting it as a holiday of importance to “Italian Americans,” but adding that it marked “the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities.”

US President Joe Biden looks on after signing three proclamations on the North Lawn of the White House on October 8, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)

As Breitbart News’ Frances Martel observed, Columbus himself was indirectly responsible for the creation of the doctrine of human rights, through the extension of Christianity to the New World:

In the past few decades, the holiday has been sabotaged by leftist movements seeking to turn Christopher Columbus into the sacrificial lamb of European America, calling for statues of the man to be taken down and the second Monday in October to be renamed “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

While Columbus was the first European with the courage to venture west enough to find this hemisphere — hence becoming a lightning rod for anti-white sentiment — he was no successful conquistador, and his adventure is largely responsible for America (and greater Latin America) being a heavily Christian land. The discovery of the Americas by the Spanish empire, and not the English, also led directly to the formation of what is now modern human rights theory, and it was a Spaniard who applied the budding human rights concepts in Catholic doctrine to Native Americans for the first time.

…

It is important to note that the abuses for which the Spanish would one day be famous for on mainland North America — the attempts to convert Native monarchs like Atahualpa and Montezuma — occurred long after Columbus had authority in the eyes of Spain.

Biden also observed Indigenous Peoples’ Day on the campaign trail in 2020, and completely ignored Columbus Day, issuing a statement declaring, “Our nation has never lived up to our full promise of equality for all — especially not when it comes to the rights of the indigenous people who were here long before ships arrived from Europe.”

Last year, many Democrats, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) condoned the destruction of a statue of Christopher Columbus in Baltimore, Maryland, by a mob of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks during her weekly news conference at the U.S. Capitol on September 8, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Popovich, a frequent Trump critic, has a history of controversial statements.

In March, he ripped Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for lifting the state’s mask mandate, vowing his team would continue to mask up.

“As far as the players go, we listen to the NBA, not the governor,” he told reporters.

In January, he praised the effort of House Democrats to impeach Trump for a second time, calling it a “good move,” and “the least we can do” to destroy Trump.

In August of last year, he heaped praise upon Austin, Texas, after it voted to defund the police, adding that he hoped San Antonio would follow.

As mobs rioted in dozens of American cities in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death last year, Popovich lambasted then-President Trump, calling him a “deranged idiot,” while insisting that the rioting is concurrent with a “lack of leadership” in the White House.

An active supporter of the BLM movement, he also said that Hispanics have also been the victims of systemic racism.

“Black and brown people are the two major groups that suffered these injustices,” Popovich said. “Obviously, the Black population, for hundreds of years. But our brown brothers and sisters have suffered the same discrimination in a lot of ways that reflect the same system that has created such inequality in wealth across the board for Black and brown peoples.”

Protestors stand as mattresses are set on fire in front of the North Precinct Police building in Portland, Oregon on September 6, 2020. (Photo by ALLISON DINNER/AFP via Getty Images)

In March last year, the outspoken coach attacked then-President Trump over the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic, accusing him of being a “coward” because of his COVID policies, yet found himself unable to criticize China for its crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong or its long record of human rights abuses.

In 2019, he stated that former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick “was very courageous” for starting the NFL anthem-kneeling movement. He also called his protest of the anthem “a very patriotic thing.”

In 2017, in response to then-President Trump denouncing national anthem protests, he called the U.S. “an embarrassment,” adding that white people are privileged and “especially” need to be made “uncomfortable” for any change to be made.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/10/10/spurs-popovich-slams-italian-american-support-columbus-day-like-germans-being-proud-hitler/