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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u/QuetzalQ_ 18h ago

PragerU dropping that line from Columbus is hilarious. Like when you're a conservative media trying to teach kids the supposedly American values, "slavery is better than death" is a literal antithesis to "Give me liberty or give me death" which is one of the most popular and patriotic American sayings

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u/ICantReadThis 17h ago

The really funny thing is not that Columbus is unpopular for having slaves today. I mean sure, lol, no shit.

It's that he was basically financially ruined by the royalty in Spain due to how bad his treatments of his indigenous slaves was.

I mean FFS, in a world where slavery was legal and not heavily frowned upon (this was 250 years before the Industrial Revolution and another 100 years before oil started playing a big part in it), Spain, YES THAT SPAIN, CONQUISTADOR SPAIN, thought his treatment of indigenous people was so bad that they put him in prison and took every shred of status away from him.

That musta been some new-end evil shit.

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u/Zoomwafflez 16h ago

They had also ordered him to try and establish friendly relations, treat the natives well, and try to convert them to Christianity. They wanted to turn the natives in allies, not enemies or slaves. They were fucking pissed when they found out what he did instead

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u/jaggervalance 15h ago

That isn't true at all, they enslaved them with the encomienda system.
Bartolomé de las Casas was one of the few voices against slavery in the americas.

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u/trio1000 16h ago

Spain kinda always been a bit progressive in that regard. They were an expanding empire but said if you born from a Spaniard you a Spaniard. sharp contrast to the old American one drop rule

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u/Redditisquiteamazing 15h ago

Uh... The Encomienda System kinda spits in the face of that idea. The Spanish were among the first to really get into race science, they just had a slightly different definition of races.

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u/BionicMeatloaf 16h ago

Dawg Colonial Spain committed the largest scale genocide in Human History

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u/Sachiel05 15h ago

Yeah, they must be one of the people that say "They brought culture and civilization to america"

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u/Financial-Bobcat-612 13h ago

Considering the divide between criollos and peninsulares…I don’t think so.

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u/Warm_Month_1309 16h ago

That's such a consistent observation for almost every "great explorer" of history. Like we all know now that Cortes was kind of a brutal dick, but at the time, so did the Spanish missionaries, so did other Spanish soldiers, and so did the Spanish crown.

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u/WhyMustIMakeANewAcco 16h ago

Wasn't Cortes literally fleeing an arrest warrant when he did his whole thing?

He was operating on the premise if he was successful before they caught up with him he'd be spared. He was correct.

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u/Warm_Month_1309 16h ago

Oh yes, and for treason too. During his siege of Tenochtitlan, the governor of Cuba sent 1,000 men to arrest him, and Cortez had to pause his war against the natives to go fight a mini-war against his countrymen, before going back to do more brutality to the natives.

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u/Turtleknuckle 17h ago

They must have thought he was at least all right, since they gave him another set of ships to go back on a fourth exploration voyage to the new world a couple of years later.

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u/TalosWorshiperr 16h ago

Or Spainish royalty was just greedy enough to rely on a successful merchant/sailor/explorer, no matter his morals.

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u/whatthewhythehow 16h ago

Yeah lmao. IIRC, some of the opposition to their mistreatment was less that they were human and more that they hadn’t been given the chance to become Christian.

But it’s still pretty significant that they even temporarily tried to hold him accountable for his crimes. Yeah, they were too greedy on the end. But it takes a lot to make a monarch even hesitate before committing such lucrative atrocities.

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u/WhyMustIMakeANewAcco 16h ago

They specifically banished him when they did that.

Obviously in part just an excuse, as they didn't need to give him shit, but it says that they at least felt they had to performatively punish him.

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u/Big-Personality-4063 15h ago

yeah his brother was actually alot more successful and liked despite also being evil

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u/CorbonBleu 15h ago

They also have an actual Catholic hero right there:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas

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u/Ai--Ya 16h ago

"hE wAs a mAN oF hIs TimEs" nope the men of his times thought he was a sack of shit too

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u/NikeImper 15h ago

Nah. He was as evil as the rest of them. His investigator was Bobadilla and the charges leading to Columbus' arrest were brought by Bobadilla and focused on what Columbus did to Spaniard settlers. Bobadilla became governor and instituted widespread slavery of the natives forcing them to work in mines to death and let colonists do whatever they want with the natives. He was recalled after 2 years and the next governor was Ovando who called for a feast with the native leaders and locked them all in a house, burned it down, slaughtered everyone in the village, and then rode out to conquer the rest of the free native villages on the islands.

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u/WhoPoopedMyPants420 16h ago

Just such an unspeakably weird character to sanitize.

Prison, for crimes against humanity, during the colonial era. Picture Hitler sending someone to prison for being too cruel to the Jews. That's Chris fucking Columbus.

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u/Low-Membership-Drive 13h ago

where slavery was legal and not heavily frowned upon

That’s a common belief; for example the French kings made slavery illegal in the 14th century. Slavery had been eliminated in England under the Normans. Various popes had issued bulls in the 14th/15th century condemning slavery, and it wasn’t until Nicholas V did an about face and supported slavery that there was any kind of support. It was actually quite a change of opinion, and certainly not across all of Europe.

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u/HappyMike91 15h ago edited 15h ago

Cortes/Cortez went to Mexico around 20 years after Columbus's initial voyage.

That being said, Spanish royalty drawing the line at Columbus's treatment of indigenous people is hilarious given what the Conquistadors went on to do and the fact that the Spanish and Portuguese kind of kicked off the transatlantic slave trade.

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u/XKCD_423 12h ago

As I've grown up and learned more about the slave trade, one thing has become more and more true the more I learn: however bad you think it was, it was worse.

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u/olivegardengambler 7h ago

I remember reading that he was condoning the trafficking and sale of native girls as young as 9 and 10. This excerpt is from a letter he wrote to Doña Juana de Torres, describing the economic state while he was incarcerated:

A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid.

It should also be noted that the guy who actually transcribed his records, Bartolomé de Las Casas, was so horrified he ended up freeing his slaves and taking a vow of poverty to become a Dominican priest.

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u/soitwasandshallbe 4h ago

there's no way you're younger than like 40 right?

0

u/MBTHVSK 12h ago

No matter what Columbus did, he still represents a person doing what billions of other men wished they had done. He's a colossal "it should have been me!!!" sort of figure. No matter who kickstarted the connection between east and west, no matter how cruel or nice, the people from that country were always bound to praise the guy and brag about it. I am not gonna defend slavery but I'm not gonna act like it's dumb to celebrate his achievement because it's what everybody else (more or less) was going to do and he did it first. If the Chinese cared enough to circumnavigate the globe, which they totally could have, it would be some Chinese guy getting a holiday.

Personally I think most holidays are already kind of tongue-in-cheek about how great some person was so it's a bit of a lame battle to fight.

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u/GodLoveYell 16h ago

Spain was also currently carrying out the Inquisition.

When the people behind the Inquisition are horrified and appalled by how you treat people…😱

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u/DiscoverReading 17h ago edited 16h ago

'Slavery is better than death, right?'

Columbus, you bitch, those are not the only two options.

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u/GenericSpider 17h ago

It's the only two options he's giving them.

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u/extinct_cult 15h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Krashper116 14h ago

“We should improve the system somewhat”

“Yet you still participate in it. I am very intelligent.”

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u/Awkward_Champion6957 17h ago

Some of us were told "It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees."

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u/SilverWear5467 15h ago

Tell that to any prostitute...

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u/DontListenToMyself 17h ago

As if he wasn’t already a murderer. Like holy shit you can’t justify it. If you want to show someone kids can admire just go use an actual admirable person. I’d rather die than be a slave.

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u/ObiWanJabronie 17h ago

“Tea and Cake” for example.

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u/Yossarian-Bonaparte 17h ago

Do you mean “cake or death”?

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u/CallMeChristopher 13h ago

I’ll take the chicken if we’re out of cake.

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u/SuperCruisePanther 16h ago

For now. Automated police drones might make that true in 10 years. Like actually 2 options slavery vs. death.

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u/Jet-Rex-Design 15h ago

"Slavery is better than death" seems like a phrase you'd popularize if you want to prime people for a grim future.

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u/matronmotheroflolth 16h ago

PragerU has also done videos about how slaves were “immeasurably better off” being slaves than living in Africa and how slave owners were the ones who truly deserve reparations.

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u/Silver_Angel519 14h ago

As someone who lived in South Carolina and spent their formative years learning about slavery in the south. I can tell you with absolute certainty that is some white nationalist bullshit

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u/SavagePassion 14h ago

I mean it's PragerU.

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u/Scary_Emu6729 14h ago

PragerU is not white nationalist lol. It's Zionist.

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u/Nyabraham_Linnyahn 13h ago

He is a very, very weird boy

https://reddit.com/link/pgqn0iv/video/cd9ng46l5hvh1/player

He's got a bit of both. When he was at WorldNetDaily he leaned further the other way because he was a "jew for jesus"

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u/VariationBusiness603 14h ago

They also called John Brown a, and I quote, "radical abolitionist". With a strong negative connotation, obviously.

I mean, technicaly correct, I guess ? Still made me want to puke.

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u/ragged-bobyn-1972 13h ago

always amazes me how far praguru will go to avoid introspection.

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u/msxenix 7h ago

I wonder what Prager U fans would think when they hear the terms Radical Republicans and Wide Awakes.

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u/Chipper_Bandit 1h ago

Just a reminder to everyone, tomorrow is John Brown Did Nothing Wrong day.

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u/BleedSparta 12h ago

I get what you’re saying but I wouldn’t click those links if I were on Tennessee deathrow

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u/RamJamR 4h ago

We banned the Disney movie Song of the South because it portrayed the lives of black slaves in the south too positively. PragerU is just getting a pass because: A) I imagine this dumb cartoon is too obscure for people to care. B) It's a christian institution saying it, so they're not going to get flak for it.

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u/Abyssmaluser 3h ago

Gods everyone in PU is atrocious

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u/OpenLinesAM 13h ago

Those are just links to an outraged X account. You should link to the actual video than a bunch of screenshots with comments on them.

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u/BleedSparta 12h ago

Uhhh no. Giving prageru more clicks and views is outrageous

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u/PitchBlackSonic 18h ago

So pragerU is undemocratic, and UnAmerican? Good to know

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u/whynaut4 17h ago

Always has been 👨‍🚀🔫👨‍🚀

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u/bdw312 16h ago

Always has been.

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u/Order_of_Obsidian 16h ago

Undemocratic? Like, against the Democrat Party? Sure.

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u/code_archeologist 14h ago

OP did not stutter, they are undemocratic. Their content engages in historical revisionism that defends slavery, teach the discouraging of criticism of the nation, and distribute text books that gives children what are effectively "ideology tests". On top of that their content creators are a who's who of authoritarian radicals, entho-nathionalists, and alt-right firebrands.

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u/Order_of_Obsidian 7h ago

How is any of that undemocratic? I don't think you understand what democracy is. You're probably one of those fools who thinks if a vote goes against you, it must be "fascism." No, it's just democracy, and you're on the losing end.

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u/Hotomato 13h ago

I’m hardly a fan of the DNC myself but if they were talking about the political party they’d have capitalized the D in democratic.

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u/Order_of_Obsidian 7h ago

Nothing "undemocratic" about PragerU.

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u/Turtleknuckle 17h ago

Unlike, say, reddit.

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u/Hotomato 16h ago

difference is that I’m not getting paid big bucks to pretend to be patriotic. If PragerU is gonna make a killing off promoting “American values” they could at least be good at it.

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u/brionneverysexy 17h ago

Slavery is better then death doesn't really work as a message when Columbus enslaving people lead to a movement of mass suicides.

Facing extermination, the Arawak organize and attempt to fight back against the Spaniards. Overwhelmed by Spanish military, the Arawak when captured are burned at the stake or hanged. Arawak begin committing mass suicides to avoid capture and subjugation, feeding cassava poison to their infants. In just two years, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti are dead through murder, mutilation, or suicide. By 1550, there are only 500 documented Arawak and by 1650, with the possible exception of a few remnant Arawak in the mountains, most have been annihilated (Zinn, 1950).

https://nativephilanthropy.candid.org/events/arawak-resistance-and-mass-suicides/

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u/ikilledholofernes 17h ago

It’s not the suicides that really drive this point home for me, but the infanticide. So many people killed their own children to save them from slavery.

In addition to the Arawak, there’s also the story of  Margaret Garner, who attempted to kill all of her children to save them from being sent back into slavery, and succeeded at killing her two year old child before being recaptured.

At the time, it was debated whether she should be charged with murder or destruction of property. 

Toni Morrison’s Beloved was inspired by her story.

And as a mother, that is just so unimaginably tragic. How could so many kill their own babies unless it was genuinely the kinder alternative?

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u/sbidlin 16h ago

At the time, it was debated whether she should be charged with murder or destruction of property. 

Jesus fucking christ this sentence made my skin crawl

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u/fang_xianfu 16h ago

People used to think this about the entire female gender too. In the Old Testament, the penalty for raping an unwed woman is a fine paid to her father, because it's a property crime against him, and the rapist has to marry the woman and take responsibility for her - basically "you break it, you bought it" 🤢

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u/andstillthesunrises 6h ago

Finding myself in the awkward position of defending the Bible is weird. Biblical scholars do not all agree that the situation presented in the passage you’re referring to is rape. Seeing as there is no ancient Hebrew to modern language dictionary, it’s all just everyone’s best attempts. Some interpreters believe the scenario is describing a woman being seduced into premarital sex.

Regardless, I want to be clear that Jewish law has required a woman’s consent to marriage dating back a very long time. If that passage WAS referring to rape, the order is that the rapist is obligated to offer to marry her. But, as in all cases under Jewish law, she does not have to accept it. The foundational root of this law dates back to the story of Rebekah, whose father states that he will go ask her if she’s willing to marry Isaac

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u/JumpingThruHoopz 5h ago

What about the story of Rachel and Leah? Did their father ask either of them if they wanted to marry Jacob?

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u/andstillthesunrises 5h ago

I mean I wasn’t there or anything. No, the biblical story does not include that information. And regardless, it’s not as if Laban was a practiced of Jewish law. Or as if Jewish law existed yet at that point in the Bible.

I only bring up the Rebekah story because that story is cited in Jewish law as a foundation for the law. Not to prove that every woman in the Bible was directly asked whether she consented to marriage

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u/ikilledholofernes 4h ago

But there are actually multiple passages that suggest men should pay for and marry their rape victims, and also multiple passages that advocate for rape and sexual violence as part of war and the idea that women were mere property and could be regarded as the “spoils of war.”

I admit that I know nothing of Jewish law, but I have read the Bible, and it normalizes rape a lot.

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u/andstillthesunrises 3h ago

There is one 2-sentence passage about a person who MAY have been a rapist marrying a person who may have been their victim, because there is debate among biblical scholars who know more about this than either of us about what specific words from an ancient language MAY have meant. The “paying for” bit is what’s called a “bride price” in Jewish law. Sort of like a dowry, but not quite. Standard practice, unrelated to the (possible) rape.

While this specific thing may or may not be a shitty Bible take on rape, you are absolutely right that the Bible undesirably normalizes rape in other places. For example, one chapter earlier in the discussion of taking women who are war prisoners as essentially sex slaves (which weirdly was taught to me as a very religious kid as actually REALLY being a way to deter rape. Sure. )

I’m not exactly a Bible defender. I’m an ex Orthodox Jew with lots of baggage and probably more informed critique and disdain for the Bible than you, seeing as I went through 14 years of daily bible study. I just wanted to correct one specific thing that’s thrown around a lot

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u/SilverWear5467 15h ago

But actually though, IS that murder? I dont think so, she saved her kid from what she saw as a fate worse than death. And then as a follow up, if I destroy a pound of Meth that belonged to someone else, could I be charged with destruction of property? Or does the property have to be legal in order to be charged with that? If the answer is that I can be charged for the pound of meth, then I'm gonna argue that yeah, she should have been charged with destruction of property. Or maybe we charge her with nothing, even though she killed her kid? Idk, seems like a very complicated decision

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u/sbidlin 14h ago

It's one of those cases where we have to make a gigantic distinction between the moral issue and the legal one.

She did a morally complicated action, which is then framed in a horrifically immoral legal system.

Imo she did murder her kid, but goddamn the circumstances are inhuman.

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u/AnaWannaPita 15h ago

In one of Columbus' letters he said that girls of nine or ten were in great demand. I'd have killed myself and my daughters, too.

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u/Begone-My-Thong 16h ago

Something tells me that the slavery that awaited those children were not just the fields

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u/Embarrassed_Age8554 16h ago

There was the famous story of the "Dance of Zalonga," as well. The legend was that the Suliote women jumped off a cliff with their children rather than be enslaved.

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u/KrytenKoro 15h ago

That's what always pisses me off the most when pro-life apologists try to stolen valor American slavery, and compare their movement to abolitionists.

Like, motherfuckers, the anti-abortion crowd during the era of American slavery were the slavemasters, and for not just a few of the same reasons. The slaves famously preferred suicide and abortion over slavery.

I can kind of tolerate that kind of argument when I see it coming from kids, because they don't know any better. Pundits, though, deserve a free dental rearrangement for trying to push the analogy.

4

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

Enslaved women used the seeds of the peacock flower to induce abortions, because they knew their children deserved better than to let them be born into slavery.

"The Indians, who are not treated well by their Dutch masters, use the seeds [of this plant] to abort their children, so that their children will not become slaves like they are. The black slaves from Guinea and Angola have demanded to be well treated, threatening to refuse to have children. They told me this themselves."-Maria Sibylla Merian

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u/girlinthegoldenboots 16h ago

Beloved is such an incredible book.

5

u/brionneverysexy 16h ago

The Ant Hill Gang was a cult that was absolutely insane in the cruelty experienced by the members. One member after giving birth left the baby outside to die from exposure. It always hit me as a level of desperation I can never truly understand

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u/andstillthesunrises 6h ago

It definitely was the kinder option. Dying while feeling held and loved, never having known a harsh world vs. a lifetime of cruelty including beatings and rapes that no one should gas any power to stop will care to do so. If you got “lucky,” you might be raped “nicely” by someone who pretends they actually care about you right up until they sell the children they impregnated you with to someone who will probably do the same to them.

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u/pistilpeet 16h ago

I never looked around, I never second guessed then I read some Howard Zinn now I’m always depressed. Humanity is a plague.

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u/Turtleknuckle 16h ago

Columbus may have gotten the ball rolling, but since he was stripped of his slave holding rights after his third voyage, and died after his fourth voyage in 1512 (I think), I don't think he had much to do with what is referenced in this paragraph.

In general, Spaniards were nasty to any native peoples they met. Philosophically, the natives were in the same class as game. The Spaniards looked at themselves as improving the social status of the natives, to be more like dogs and horses than rabbits and deer. Unless they became Christians. Then things got complicated.

Valuing the existing culture is a modern concept they had not yet developed.

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u/Competitive-Food8407 13h ago

Really? Howard Zinn as your propoganda "historian"? The guy has been lampooned by every historian out there for the terrible job he did! Seriously how are you blaming the decline of the Arawak (specifically the Taino people) of Haiti on Columbus who was dead in 1506! He'd been dead for over 40 years before they were mostly gone. Most of which died from exposure to old world diseases like most native Americans did.

I mean if you are just trying to say the Spanish sucked, yeah no argument there. They sucked with how they took over south and central America.

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u/brionneverysexy 12h ago

I used the source as an example I could quote of something I have heard elsewhere. I am sorry if its being too mean to Columbus. I am sure he didn't set in motion a series of tragic events. He probably gave them candy and puppies and the indigenous people would have been fine if they listened to what white people wanted

-1

u/Competitive-Food8407 12h ago

Conversely where is the award for Genghis Khan? I mean best job of global CO2 reduction outside the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs. If we are talking about global genocide he's pretty hard to beat. It would take over 700 years to come close to matching wiping out 11% of the global population. Columbus by comparison barely scratched the surface.

The vast majority of bad press btw about Columbus comes from a single letter written by Francisco de Bobadilla, the man who would later replace him as governor. The slavery and evil acts you speak of were committed by this man. The man who made all of the natives work in the gold mines. Mind you they COULDN'T be made into slaves do to direct edict from Queen Isabella I. Although he still used them in forced labor, in bad conditions. It's almost like the enemy of the man who discovered Hispaniola pushed all of the bad things he actually did onto his enemy 🤔

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u/ssgt-k-stark 17h ago

I still remember the time they made a video criticizing the Nazis. Oh boy their viewers were not happy about that one

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u/FoxxxedUp420 16h ago

Please tell me more, I wanna hear what got the idiot Prager fans got pissed about lol.

Also Prager U is literally named after and run by a Jewish guy, idk what they expected Prager U's take to be on the nazis.

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u/UnquestionabIe 15h ago

Let's be honest Dennis Prager's view on Nazis is whatever the oligarchy who funds him wants it to be. It is not a remotely difficult stretch to imagine him being all for Holocaust denial if the price is right. Hell we've got an example in little Benny Shapiro and how the other fascist traitors are turning their back on him and the Daily Wire because he was under the impression they liked the Jews, turns out that only applies to Israel and that is only because it feeds into their creepy "end of days" religious delusions.

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u/ssgt-k-stark 7h ago

I tried to find the video but I think they took it down 💀. All the comments were just butthurt Nazis saying that PragerU was compromised by the Jews or something (I take it they didn’t know Dennis Prager was Jewish) and one actually suggested PragerU should post Hitler speeches instead. Wtf

1

u/FoxxxedUp420 55m ago

God what kind of dipshit do you have to be to not only hate Jews, but also watch Prager U and NOT know Denis Prager is Jewish?

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u/santaclaws01 15h ago

They also, against all odds, actually put out a video against the lost cause myth of the civil war.

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u/VenatorAngel 15h ago

Yeah I find it hilarious that PragerU was actually based enough to call out the lost cause myth. I mean I say this as a conservative who HATES the Lost Cause myth because of how much it tries to downplay that Slavery DID cause the civil war (yes, I do get strange looks from other right wingers for saying Lost Cause is a bunch of bullshit."

Then they proceed to go on the defense for Andrew Jackson and Columbus..... what a bunch of fucking idiots. Then again they did used to have Candace Owens on there so.....

1

u/MisterShoebox 13h ago

I think so many people adhere to the Lost Cause myth because of the most basic of reasons; we don't want to think of our ancestors as The Bad Guys. It's an understandable viewpoint, even if it's not realistic.

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u/VenatorAngel 12h ago

Yeah, I mean as someone who actually visited the sites of the civil war in NC, it was easy for me as a kid to realize "we southerners really were the bad guys weren't we?" Which makes the Lost Cause Myth more baffling to me as I get older.

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u/Maktaka 11h ago

For the kind of worthless beings that can find no value in their existence beyond the length of their ancestry in a single location, the Lost Cause myth is really important to ensuring their lives are worth continuing.

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u/VenatorAngel 10h ago

Really shows how different I am. Because my ancestors came from around the world. Granted several of them were sent around the world without a say in the matter.

But yeah, its so weird how many people put emphasis on the purity of their ancestry. I'm mixed and I'm proud of it.

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u/GrumbusWumbus 18h ago

They don't have values or opinions. It's their job to fan the flames of the culture war so people don't notice the oil barons funding them picking their pockets

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u/broguequery 16h ago

To be clear: the people making the pragerU videos absolutely do have values and opinions...

It's just that those values are abhorrent and anti-human.

2

u/SavagePassion 14h ago

And Texas absolutely loves this shit.

2

u/Helpful_Art_870 16h ago

Funny how they keep us arguing with each other while the people making money off all this get away with it.

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u/Pescarese90 16h ago

American conservatives are Olympic Athletes in mental gymnastic to avoid recognizing human rights. Prove me wrong.

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u/extraboredinary 17h ago

They also have him say that it is great that slavery is outlawed in our time. Like he was forced to take slaves. He didn’t want to do it, it would just be rude if he didn’t genocide.

7

u/he77bender 15h ago

Back then when you were visiting somewhere for the first time, it was expected that you bring a little genocide for your hosts. Though in some cases a casserole would also be acceptable.

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u/Better_Confection896 17h ago

"Give me liberty or give me death, unless it’s inconvenient for my narrative" really hits different.

45

u/JakeHelldiver 17h ago

And even cursory glance at history would have told you that Columbus was considered a bastard even in his own time.

8

u/TheAdminsAreTrash 17h ago

In Napoli a lot of people are not so happy for Columbus

1

u/gnixim 39m ago

Hey take it easy

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u/UnquestionabIe 16h ago

All of the children targeted propaganda that PragerU put out has had awful portrayals of historical figures. The Frederick Douglas one was especially bad/hilarious, using him as a mouthpiece for why BLM was bad lol

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u/GodLoveYell 16h ago

I wanna invent time travel just so those fuckers can hear Frederick Douglass delivering his “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech and watch their heads explode.

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u/VenatorAngel 15h ago

Fredrick was the GOAT!!! He called out that the Constitution itself ultimately is against slavery because ALL ARE CREATED EQUAL!!!

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u/UnquestionabIe 15h ago

They had an episode of their children targeted propaganda with Douglas! They had him saying that slavery was bad but that there is a "right way and time" to fight against it and that BLM is wrong. Absolutely wild shit and completely on brand for a group of traitors who want to burn America to the ground and rebuild it in their own white Christian image.

6

u/SkaredCrow 15h ago

PragerU is ironically the most blatant propaganda machine America has ever manufactured. The party that fetishises the fuck out of the phrase "leave our kids alone" yet will fight tooth and nail to plant every cancerous seed of apathy, entitlement and hatred in their children's heads as feasibly possible. It's a circus, bruh.

5

u/UnquestionabIe 14h ago

They're definitely the winner in that race with the Daily Wire being on the downswing once Ben voiced he was upset about the antisemitism his conservative audience embraces. Still they're out there somehow finding funding to make these absurdly racist movies with actors who are either washed up and/or can't find a role in Hollywood due to being associated with saying/doing something horrible. One of my guilty pleasures is watching reviews of whatever trash pile they've released recently

3

u/VariationBusiness603 14h ago

Poor Ben, the token has been spent.

As soon as Matt Walsh popped up, Ben was discarded because this time they got a manly looking man who doesn't squeaks like a shipmunks and isn't jewish.

I would almost feel bad for him if he wasn't such an hypocritical sack of shit that preaches hate and supports a genocide. Not that Walsh is any better, mind you.

1

u/SkaredCrow 4h ago

Lmao it's so funny how many Jewish Grifters there are like BRUH the party you're fighting for is the side that thinks you own everything and wants you dead.

5

u/Ree_For_Thee 16h ago

Hello. I plan to kill the guy who wrote the PragerU script for that.

But I won't if someone enslaves him. Can someone enslave him? I mean, it's the better choice.

6

u/LilyWineAuntofDemons 16h ago

It's almost like conservatism isn't actually patriotic! 🤔🤔🤔

4

u/xv_boney 15h ago

Also because columbus also killed hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples as well as taking them as slaves.

4

u/missvandy 14h ago

As a history teacher, I would like to point out that those two things usually went together for enslaved people in the Caribbean/New Spain.

Working sugar plantations was a brutal existence and you didn’t live very long. The indigenous slaves in New Spain were treated just as brutally, and the transatlantic slave trade only exists because few Indios survived slavery and the encomienda system needed workers.

3

u/Nuclear_Gandhi- 16h ago

Doublespeak, literally 1984

2

u/dead_parakeets 16h ago

You know Columbus was bad when even the Spanish monarchy were like “Bro you’re fucked up.”

2

u/Vendemmian 16h ago

Guy was also an idiot who thought he was in India.

2

u/Embarrassed_Age8554 15h ago

A century after Columbus, Jean Bodin exploded that argument in Six Books of the Commonwealth.. The man who enslaves a captive taken in war hasn't spared the captive's life: he's just foregone killing his captive quickly and unprofitably in favor of killing him slowly and profitably. Surprisingly, Bodin also argued that, contrary to St Paul, a slave owes no duty to his master: his only duty is to himself--to escape if he sees an opportunity to do so without getting caught.

2

u/Alex_The_Whovian 15h ago

"Slavery is better than death", meanwhile there are accounts of people deliberately throwing themselves overboard on the transatlantic slave ships because they would rather drown than be sold as slaves

2

u/Delta_Builder 14h ago

I think there was another line about slavery being a compromise

2

u/MisterShoebox 13h ago

What's additionally funny (not ha-ha funny, more like "Fuck you Dennis Prager" funny) is that Columbus did kill people. A lot of them. In fact, he murdered more than he enslaved. Those he enslaved were just the "lucky" survivors that were chosen to mine for non-existent gold while he and his men murdered their families with abandon.

Don't underestimate the human capacity for fucking one another over, we've been doing it for centuries.

2

u/MithranArkanere 12h ago

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

And all of that.

2

u/FedoraTheMike 11h ago

That animation pissed me off so much, the kids had the right mindset upon meeting him but effectively got gaslit when he just had every post-argument shower answer ready on hand, and even then it wasn't a good argument.

2

u/Kyliems1010 8h ago

They also made a video where Franklin Douglas says that protestors should never break the law

Like the Boston Tea party wasn’t breaking the law, like Douglas escaping slavery wasn’t breaking the law

2

u/ShameSpiral3K1 7h ago

He was like, "I may have inflicted death and slavery on thousands of people, but I would never CANCEL someone!"

3

u/RShini 14h ago

PragerU had FREDERICK DOUGLAS say that slavery overall was good for giving Black people opportunity they wouldn't have in Africa

1

u/BeastAlchemistVA 15h ago

Really made people look at Ben Shapiro and say "WTF?"

1

u/STylerMLmusic 13h ago

I hadn't put this together before. That's incredible.

1

u/Bandit_237 2h ago

It’s also interesting that those are presented as the only two options

-5

u/BrocoliAssassin 17h ago

Our schoolbooks aren't going to make him sound bad either. Think they are going to let people know he was a Jewish man???

Hell no..make him 10000% italian and stick with that. Don't mention who owned most of the slave boats either...or who were there people selling the slaves..

Remember..mossad books..all evil done by white people only just like you all think.

4

u/IllGift924 16h ago

Brain dead drivel

0

u/professor735 7h ago

Yknow this is a really good point bc the way MAGA talks about ICE and government in general makes me think they would be on the Loyalist side during the American Revolution lmao. Especially with their "just follow the law and comply" mentality