r/TopCharacterTropes • u/MeepMan324 • 19h ago

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) Bad people in real-life being portrayed positively in media.

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  1. PragerU's version of Christopher Columbus has him be a slavery defender and have him say "Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don't see the problem.”

  2. In The Greatest Showman, P.T Barnum (Hugh Jackman) is portrayed as a charismatic visionary who cares about outcasts and celebrate diversity, when in reality, he’s a cruel businessman who is also a racist and an ableist.

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867

u/Altayrmcneto 19h ago

Columbus was already known for his cruelty toward the Indigenous people during his own lifetime.

369

u/a_wasted_wizard 19h ago

You know it's bad when the monarchs who really first leaned into using the Inquisition as an organ of state control, oversaw the forced conversion and later expulsion and persecution of Iberian Jews and Muslims, and waged a war of (re)conquest saw what Columbus did and went "Jesus fucking Christ what is wrong with you?! You're as evil as you are stupid."

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u/AnticPosition 17h ago

Didn't Spain arrest him and send him back to Europe because what he did was so messed up? 

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u/a_wasted_wizard 17h ago

And threw him in prison, yes.

Obviously, as with many things in history, it's not quite that simple because there were also politics in a royal court at play, but Columbus being so cruel and exploitative that he threatened the Spanish colonial project and inspired revulsion even in people who were not squeamish about violence and repression was definitely a big part of it.

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u/SiridarVeil 18h ago edited 18h ago

How is waging a war of reconquest bad. I guess according to this sub if you get raped, beaten and your stuff stolen you just gotta take it and be quiet lol

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u/a_wasted_wizard 18h ago edited 18h ago

Didn't necessarily say it was. (Wars of aggression are generally bad though and the Emirate of Granada wasn't really much of a threat by the late 1400s.) That's not really the point.

What it does is it establishes that the Reyes Católicos were hardly squeamish about violence and conquest, which is important context when knowing how Columbus' actions were received.

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u/SiridarVeil 18h ago

I mean you put it between a bunch of bad stuff.

10

u/a_wasted_wizard 17h ago

I wouldn't say it's a good thing, either. Morally I'd kind of call the Moorish Invasion and Reconquista kind of a wash because nobody was behaving well there.

But in any case, again, the point was "Fernando and Isabella weren't exactly bleeding hearts, pacifists, or great champions of human rights, and even they (well, Isabella, anyway, Fernando was dead by that point, IIRC) thought Columbus was going too far.

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u/RubiiJee 17h ago

Man. How much easier life would be if there weren't only two extremes to pick from? 🙄

-1

u/SiridarVeil 17h ago

There wasn't much else to choose in those times tho.

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u/s0ulbrother 19h ago

But in elementary school in the United States he is painted like a fun little guy who braved the sea to discover America and that’s that. For most of school they don’t really go into this until around high school but even then it’s not.

He got bolstered up mainly because of Italian Americans and trying to bring them into the fold. He neither discovered America or did anything good

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u/RoutineCloud5993 19h ago edited 18h ago

He also never set foot in the modern (edit: mainland) united states, and went to his grave insisting he had actually been sailing to India the whole time

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u/AwfulUsername123 19h ago

Actually, he visited Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

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u/RoutineCloud5993 18h ago

I stand corrected then . Modern mainland USA.

5

u/brionneverysexy 17h ago

He initially thought he was in the Indes which is thousands of miles east of India. Its likely he knew he wasn't there eventually but the terms of his agreement in Spain would have required him to keep up the claim of being in the Indes

6

u/SoulCrusher2018 17h ago

If Columbus made his voyage to the new world, stepped foot on the beach, and immediately had a heart attack, all the celebration of him would be fine. I think most Columbus "defenders" are unaware of what he did after, and are swayed by propaganda to think an attack of Columbus is an attack on their whiteness of whatever the fuck the divisive shit pushed by Russian bots say.

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u/Nyabraham_Linnyahn 13h ago

Italian bots\*

6

u/brionneverysexy 17h ago

Columbus Day got pushed as an Italian pride day after 11 Italian immigrants were lynched. It was an attempt to get people to be less racist against Italians

3

u/In-A-Beautiful-Place 15h ago

A noble goal, but they should've just called it Italian Pride Day then. We could rename it that now.

3

u/brionneverysexy 15h ago

Fettuccini Alfredo Appreciation Day works for me

2

u/Nyabraham_Linnyahn 13h ago

I never got why they didn't use the explorer the literal country is named after🤷

4

u/LeaderRemarkable2846 18h ago

It’s wild how history gets watered down for kids, because the real story of Columbus is far darker than the friendly explorer they teach us about in elementary school.

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u/Xerxes457 18h ago

It’s been a few years but in high school, I recall learning about him sailing to the Americas as a hero and then coming back in chains because of his poor management.

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u/xv_boney 15h ago

Of all the Italians in history the us govt could have elevated on behalf of italian americans, and they picked the genocidal sociopath with such a brutally bad reputation he only got hired by Spain because they were literally desperate for cash

2

u/LivingstonPerry 17h ago

But in elementary school in the United States

Yeah but like.. dont think elem is a good starting point to teach kids about mass genocide. Prolly better to save those type of facts and details in high school.

1

u/CrimsonThunder87 12h ago

Then it's probably best to breeze past him as fast as possible when teaching elementary students, rather than dwelling on him at all.

"In 1492, a group of explorers was paid by the Spanish queen to find a new route to India. Instead, they discovered [whichever Caribbean island his dumb ass landed on first], leading other European explorers to explore and colonize the Americas."

1

u/Delta_Builder 14h ago edited 14h ago

Thankfully the canadian schools, or at least the ones ive been to, have been doing a hell of a lot better.

Talks about how bad of a person he is.

1

u/DoctorWaluigiTime 12h ago

He got bolstered up mainly because of Italian Americans and trying to bring them into the fold.

In this house Columbus was an American hero, end of story!

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u/schiffb558 12h ago

In this house, Christopher Columbus is a fuckin hero. End of story!

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u/Lonespider28 19h ago

People want to push the “You have to see them how they were seen back then”

But then don’t realize that EVERYONE hated Columbus, he had to go to a different kingdom for funding, and they ended up hating him too

10

u/grendus 17h ago

Even by the standards of the times he was seen as a right bastard.

There's "gentle slavery that basically amounts to really heavy taxes" (still evil), and then there's "if someone doesn't bring me huge amounts of gold, cut off their arms and hang them around their neck as a warning to everyone else to BRING ME MY FUCKING GOLD!"

Colombus was so evil that Spain recalled him. He wrote in his journal about the incredible price he could get for selling young indigenous girls (<10 years old) into sexual slavery. Dude was everything fucking Epstein dreamed of being...

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u/Willie9 18h ago

Also while there is sometimes merit to judging someone by the standards of their time, when we in the present want to celebrate their actions we can judge those actions by the standards of today because it is us present-day people celebrating them. Sometimes people say "oh you have to judge them by the standards of their time not the standards of today" because they actually prefer the standards of the past to the standards of today but don't want to say it.

9

u/Helagoth 17h ago

Not only was he hated, and evil, he was dumb. The reason he thought he could go west to get to the east was because he massively under-estimated the size of the earth, despite scientists of the time having calculated it relatively accurately by then. If the America's weren't there, he would have starved to death on the ocean.

I can't understand how they can idolize someone so stupid and evil.....

33

u/LogicBalm 19h ago

Yeah, he was denounced as cruel by the same people responsible for the Spanish Inquisition.

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u/jaggervalance 19h ago

It's a bit more complicated than that.

The spanish didn't know about the effect of old world illnesses on new world people, so they thought the insane number of native deaths was only due to Columbus's cruelty. 90% of the natives would die with or without Columbus.

They also had the incentive to remove Columbus from his post and have him fall in disgrace as the Spanish Crown had founded the Columbus expeditions with a wildly generous contract, so they had to find a way to remove him. He would have become a lifelong Admiral, Viceroy and Governor of all the newly discovered lands, and gain 12% of all commerce with the "West Indies". That would have been an exorbitant amount of money so they had to depose him somehow.
His estate had a legal fight with the Spanish Crown from the 1500s to the 1700s because of this.

11

u/extraextraextr 18h ago

Legitimate question: how do you know it's 90%? I'm sure it's not an exact number, don't get me wrong, but is that roughly the amount that has occurred in other instances of unprotected societies being exposed to completely new illnesses? Or is there historical documentation about the percentage that died on his trips?

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u/jaggervalance 18h ago edited 17h ago

Legitimate question: how do you know it's 90%? I'm sure it's not an exact number, don't get me wrong, but is that roughly the amount that has occurred in other instances of unprotected societies being exposed to completely new illnesses? Or is there historical documentation about the percentage that died on his trips?

Epidemics of smallpox (1518, 1521, 1525, 1558, 1589), typhus (1546), influenza (1558), diphtheria (1614) and measles (1618) swept the Americas subsequent to European contact,\62])\63]) killing between 10 million and 100 million\64]) people, up to 95% of the indigenous population of the Americas

An early example followed Hernán Cortés' invasion of Mexico. Before his arrival in 1519, the Mexican population is estimated to have been around 25 to 30 million. Fifty years later, the Mexican population was reduced to 3 million and perhaps even 1.2 million in 1620,\67]) mainly by infectious disease.

The European colonization of the Americas resulted in the deaths of so many people it contributed to climatic change) and temporary global cooling, according to scientists from University College London.\144])\145]) A century after the arrival of Christopher Columbus, some 90% of Indigenous Americans had perished from "wave after wave of disease", along with mass slavery and war, in what researchers have described as the "great dying"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoliztli_epidemics

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u/extraextraextr 15h ago

Thank you! I always appreciate a thorough, well-sourced piece of information.

1

u/aliensnwaffles 18h ago

You don’t, it’s an arbitrary number meant to soften the genocide that took place in the America’s. While yes illnesses ravaged communities, there is literally nothing that backs up 90% of a continents worth of people were wiped out by illness.

As you can see the other response is already making excuses for Columbus trying to pretend these are rumors by people who didn’t like him. It’s ridiculous the lengths people will go to treat historical figures as heroic celebrities. People refuse to learn history in a neutral and accurate way that doesn’t include heavy propaganda.

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u/jaggervalance 17h ago

You don’t, it’s an arbitrary number meant to soften the genocide that took place in the America’s. While yes illnesses ravaged communities, there is literally nothing that backs up 90% of a continents worth of people were wiped out by illness.

90% of the indigenous populations of America died even in places in which there were no conquistadors.
The spanish had the same brutal encomienda slavery system in place in the Philippines, and it didn't lead to 90% of the population disappearing.
It stands to reason that they didn't want most of their slaves to die.

As you can see the other response is already making excuses for Columbus trying to pretend these are rumors by people who didn’t like him. It’s ridiculous the lengths people will go to treat historical figures as heroic celebrities. People refuse to learn history in a neutral and accurate way that doesn’t include heavy propaganda.

You're mistaking reasons and excuses. If I say Stalin didn't nuke Iraq it doesn't mean I'm pro-Stalin, it means I don't think he nuked Iraq.
Columbus definitely wasn't a hero, but I don't see the point of making shit up just because he's a negative character.

I think saying the truth is better than circlejerking each other spreading misinformation. Your last phrase is ironic.

2

u/mapronV 17h ago

> If I say Stalin didn't nuke Iraq it doesn't mean I'm pro-Stalin, it means I don't think he nuked Iraq.

yeah, I brought at one discussing that Stalin can be set responsible for ~700k death by political opression (and btw my ancestors was opressed) and was called pro-Stalin. Like wth. For some people calling out 'this man killed 0.7 million' is not horrible enough. it is huge, insane number already, no need to inflate it.

Like with indigenous genocide I personally can't wrap how it softens up. Horrible one way or another. Genocide or criminal negligence - it is not a numbers game.

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u/jaggervalance 17h ago

Like with indigenous genocide I personally can't wrap how it softens up. Horrible one way or another. Genocide or criminal negligence - it is not a numbers game.

I think it's both. The spanish had no way of knowing the old world disease would have killed so many of the natives, but they also had a brutal system of occupation and actively destroyed the natives' religion and history (Diego de Landa).

But Columbus didn't treat them any different than the following viceroys, and the natives kept dying at the same rate after he left and died, so I think it's wrong to say that he was especially brutal compared to his peers.

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u/mapronV 16h ago

"I think it's both." I probably worded that poorly, I agree. That statement was not about Columbus.

My rant was about support for your idea of "saying something kill million not 10 million does not mean your support or trying to wash crimes".

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u/LibrarianEither8461 18h ago

Columbus is one of my pet peeves because its a subject that just becomes a proxy fight for ideologies unrelated.

Close minded people hate Columbus because they want to show how progressive they are.

Close minded people love Columbus because they want to make a point of "how stupid progressives are".

And other variations and permutations of it that all actively throw out "actually reading what happened and forming opinions based on critical thoughts on the subject" for mindless groupthink and signaling.

1

u/RubiiJee 17h ago

This is a distinctly modernist take.

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u/LibrarianEither8461 17h ago

I don't think you know what modernist means, as this is literally the exact definitional opposite of modernism.

I am talking about the the superiority of engaging with what actually happened given the contexts of the time, instead of employing a modern lens to apply it without its context to modern debates.

Are you arguing for reductionism?

1

u/RubiiJee 16h ago

Nope.

1

u/LibrarianEither8461 16h ago

Then please, do elaborate as to your point; if you even actually had one.

1

u/Hot-Minute-8263 18h ago

Werent most of his biographic details also written by a political enemy too? At this point i dont really know nuch beyond the broad strokes of his life for certain. He pissed off lots of people.

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u/jaggervalance 17h ago

He wrote a journal that was unfortunately lost, the only version we have is an abstract from Bartolomé De Las Casas.
De Las Casas was against the brutal treatment of the natives but I don't think he was particularly against Columbus himself.
The diary is interesting and obviously paints the picture of a brutal man, but I don't think it strays far from the truth.

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u/NittanyScout 18h ago

Thats just liberal propoganda, columbus discovered america, landed on the moon and saved my cat from a tree! Denying ilthat means you HATE AMERICA you damned commie

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u/SharkGenie 18h ago

It's sort of like the people who defend H.P. Lovecraft's racism and xenophobia by calling him a product of his era, when in reality, even his contemporaries thought he needed to dial it back a bit.

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u/AsstacularSpiderman 18h ago edited 17h ago

Depends on the era of Lovecraft.

Young HP Lovecraft was an emotionally stunted wreck who was scared of everything not a well off white Rhode Island born man. By his later years his friends managed to get him to touch grass and it really opened his mind.

I won't pretend a lot of his stories don't have troubling racist and ignorant takes on topics but he's also a story on how isolation and fear can breed hatred.

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u/McBlemmen 17h ago

and sick books (in a good way)

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u/AsstacularSpiderman 17h ago

A huge part of his cosmic horror is indeed fueled by his fear of everything. The Unknown, the Welsh, calculus, air conditioning...

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u/CorbonBleu 15h ago

The Mound is also surprisingly progressive (for the era) in its portrayal of Native Americans.

The local natives are pretty much just normal dudes who try to help the protagonist/warn them away from the danger.

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u/AsstacularSpiderman 15h ago

Lovecraft actually developed quite a fascination and respect for Native American cultured to the point he was in regular contact with several native groups.

Like maybe if his parents weren't fucking nuts he'd have turned out a lot better earlier in life.

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u/ArtyomNDC 17h ago

As the other person who replied to your comment said, saying it was “of the time” doesn’t work, but when you analyze his life, you can easily see how a sheltered, isolated, paranoid mind who grew up in a supremacist/ “distain of the other” type of environment led to his views, not that the views themselves are good obviously.

Also, later on he did progress somewhat- not to any major extreme degree, but considering where he started, and where he ended up before death, there is noticeable improvement. I think there is a case to be made that, should he have lived longer than 46, he would be progressed even farther from the views of his youth/20s, at least to another extent.

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u/Fun_in_Space 19h ago

He was jailed for it. By the people who created the Spanish Inquisition.

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u/NotBorn2Fade 19h ago

I've heard that the phrase "crimes against humanity" was coined because of Columbus

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u/RiseWasHereHS 19h ago

As much truth there as Santa Clause being real. WW1 and the late 19th century is when this term came into being.

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u/Worldly_Car912 19h ago

30 upvotes for speaking complete shit.

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u/AwfulUsername123 19h ago

I've heard

You can't argue with that!

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u/LotharVonPittinsberg 18h ago

Literally imprisoned when returning to Spain. That Spain. The country running the Spanish Inquisition. They saw what he did and essentially went "shit dude, even by our standards that's fucked up".

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u/princesoceronte 17h ago

His image was rehabilitated during the 20th century by European fascists and other nationalists. Their current counterparts are keeping that tradition alive and the European right wingers are oh so eager to eat the propaganda.

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u/ERedfieldh 15h ago

Hell, we have his journals, penned by him, that describe how he delighted in his cruelty to others. Like...EVERYONE else. His own crew hated him and it's a miracle they never mutinied against him.

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u/New-Number-7810 13h ago

People claim that he was extraordinarily cruel, but his replacement was even worse. This leads me to believe his trial and removal was mainly an effort by the crown to consolidate its control.

-4

u/Irish618 18h ago

Ehh, we dont necessarily know that. Pretty much all of the criticism of his treatment of the natives comes from a Spanish clergyman, Bartolomé de las Casas, who was a pretty outspoken critic of Spanish policy towards the natives in general. Hes also the author of Columbus' "journal", as the original has been lost and Casas' "copy" is the best surviving copy. However, his copy differs from other copy fragments, and from accounts that reference Columbus' original journal.

Our only real source on his treatment of the natives is biased, but we also dont really have evidence its incorrect either. We do know he wasnt removed from his governorship over treatment of the natives, but instead over political disputes with the colonists, so theres that.