Counter-Currents
1,649 words
October 12 is Spain’s national holiday, La Fiesta Nacional de España, also more commonly known as Día de la Hispanidad. The date coincides with Christopher Columbus’ arrival to the Americas in 1492.
To ring in both the national holiday and commemorate Columbus’ voyage, Spanish national broadcaster RTVE aired a documentary which followed a group of geneticists led by José Antonio Lorente from the University of Granada. For 22 years, Lorente and his colleagues had been trying to determine, once and for all, the elusive identity of the man the Spanish call Cristóbal Colón.
They studied hundreds of documents and forensically examined the remains of the famous explorer. Early in their investigation, they agreed that there were no fewer than 25 different possible origins for Columbus, including Galicia, Valencia, and of course, Genoa. These 25 possibilities were whittled down to 8 plausibilities. Eventually, DNA research led by Fracesc Albardaner from the Centre d’Estudis Colombins de Barcelona narrowed it down to just one.
Now the results are in. According to Lorente, Albardaner and their team, Christopher Columbus was a Sephardic Jew. Unsurprisingly, the reactions to such a conclusion have ranged from acceptance, to incredulity, to wild indignation.
The theory that Columbus was a Jew is not new. Every so often, Columbus’ ambiguous ancestry, ethnicity, and birthplace becomes a news item for one reason or another, and this is just the latest episode in the long-running mystery. Those who posit that Columbus was a Jew have relied on evidence such as the explorer’s personal correspondence with his son, which he is alleged to have signed writing in Hebrew letters “b’ezrat Hashem” or “with God’s help.” Other evidence for a possible Jewish background: Columbus had two wealthy benefactors who not only financed his voyage but also haggled with the Spanish crown for approval. Both Louis de Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez were Jews, conversos to Christianity, like Columbus himself, or at least so the claim goes. Some have also pointed to the intriguing timing of Columbus’ expedition. The year he sailed the ocean blue is also the year los Reyes Católicos expelled Jews from their kingdom.
This new genetic study is the first time that these documents and the historical record have been combined with exhaustive DNA research. However, it seems the DNA analysis has only complicated things, rather than clarifying them. Far be it from me to pretend to understand all the ins and outs. I will merely convey some of the objections and questions from those who do.
The investigation’s conclusion has to do with Y chromosomes and haplogroups. Lorente et al have decided that Columbus was a Sephardic Jew from somewhere in the western parts of the Mediterranean region based on analysis of his YDNA and the discovery that he belongs in Haplogroup J. Those who doubt this conclusion claim that YDNA analysis is not sufficient to determine one’s ethnic origin and Haplogroup J is prevalent all over Mediterranean Europeans; it is not unique to Sephardic Jews nor an indicator that someone is a Sephardic Jew.
This is the recurring problem with trying to solve the mystery of Christopher Columbus. For every piece of evidence in favor of one conclusion, there is evidence against said conclusion and in favor of a different conclusion. Let’s return to those letters signed in Hebrew. Some argue that there just isn’t enough proof that the characters Columbus scribbled in the corner of those papers are really Hebrew characters. There are those who say Columbus couldn’t have been Genoese because there is no record of him communicating in Ligurian or any other form of Italian. He only ever used a form Castilian Spanish (apart from those Hebrew signatures), known as Ladino, which was the “Yiddish” of Spanish Jewry. In response, defenders of his Genoese identity cite notes written in Italian in Columbus’ journals. In response to that response, the authenticity of those notes is brought into question.
Amongst the objections to the University of Granada’s investigation are claims that Lorente and Albardaner have an ideological or political agenda to push. We can’t trust this study because these are “the same people” who say that Vikings were transgender, Cheddar Man was black, and race isn’t even real. I don’t think this is a fair criticism. For starters, these are not “the same people”. The team from the University of Granada had nothing to do with the famous recreation of Cheddar Man nor any of the silly claims about transgender Norse. In fact, rather the opposite. In 2019, the same University of Granada conducted a study of the Spanish genome and ended up totally dismantling the myth that Spaniards interbred with the Afro-Arab invaders during the centuries long Muslim occupation of Iberia. Their research revealed that, even in Andalusia, there is hardly a trace of North African DNA in the Spanish population, that Spaniards’ DNA remains largely similar to that of Celtiberians from the Iron Age, and that Spaniards are much more closely related to Scandinavians than they are to indigenous North Africans or Arabs.
I must stress the importance of such a conclusion. One of the Spanish left’s favorite tropes is this myth of mestizaje. They love to use this myth to sneer at Spanish nationalists and anti-immigrationists. “Stupid racist. You want to keep the Moroccans and Somalis away? Too late! We’re already half Moro and African anyway!” Anyone from Britain can relate to this, as British liberals use a similar tiresome tactic there: “What’s your problem with mass immigration from all across the third world? After all, we’re a mongrel race descended from Vikings, Romans, Normans, and even Cheddar Man was black!” This is why it is extremely annoying when people supposedly on the nationalist right repeat the same unfounded myths so beloved by neo-communists, globalists, and liberal progressives when it comes to Mediterranean Europeans.
Yes, it is true that Spain is in the clutches of an anti-Spanish liberal regime, and many of Spain’s institutions, above all its media, are the regime’s lackeys, but if the scientists from the University of Granada were honest and brave enough to smash the myth of Afro-Arab-Ibero mestizaje, I think we can give them the benefit of the doubt and refrain from accusing them of having a leftist agenda. That said, the opprobrium from some on the right is understandable. There are many implications to whatever the genuine identity of Christopher Columbus turns out to be.
For many years, anti-whites have attacked Columbus the man and Columbus as a symbol of wicked European colonialism. Naturally, pro-whites have defended Columbus as a great European explorer, a Faustian spirit who accomplished an amazing, world-changing feat. For Columbus to end up being a Sephardic Jew will certainly complicate things, as well as spice them up even more. On the one hand, the anti-whites will have to contend with the potential fact that Columbus was not really a European after all, but a Jew. There are many Jews in the choir of voices which call for the abolishment of Columbus Day and the removal of his statues. If it turns out he was one of them, it’ll make for an all-you-can-eat buffet of hat eating. As we have seen since the explosion of conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, when the BIPOC become aware of the evil deeds of Jews, tension follows and the “rainbow alliance” against whites falters. It’ll be amusing to see if and how they rewrite the Columbus narrative.
On the other hand, those who hold Columbus in high regard will also have to contend with their hero turning out to be someone who was only partially European at most, and his other parts were Semitic. Catholics, in particular, have taken the news rather hard. Across social media, I’ve seen Catholics either angrily refuse to countenance the idea that Columbus could be Jewish, or wave away Columbus’ possible Jewishness by adamantly proclaiming that, whatever his ethnicity, he was a stalwart man of God and servant of the Faith. That Catholics can welcome Jews into the flock and stand up in their defense when deemed necessary won’t do much to counter the argument that the Catholic Church specifically, and Christianity generally, are not of much use to the cause of white nationalism.
Personally, I have never cared much about Columbus one way or another. I’ve never seen him as an Italian hero. Columbus Day was a crumb thrown to angry Italian Americans in order to placate them after some Anglo Americans had lynched 11 Sicilians. It was an obvious attempt to garner the Italian American vote, but it was also a nonsense. Whatever Columbus’ background, we know for sure that he wasn’t Sicilian.
Sicilians don’t really give a damn about Columbus. Indeed, in Italy as whole, Columbus isn’t celebrated as a national icon. He’s merely one of many legendary figures to have come from that peninsula of renown, if in fact he really was Genoese.
As for the whining and crying about Columbus the genocidal murderer…well, even his contemporaries found some of his actions objectionable. According to the historical record, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel were furious with Columbus when they heard about his treatment of the tribes in the “New World”. They deemed it a horrific contradiction of Christian benevolence and peace. Queen Isabel even scuppered Columbus’ plans to get rich off of enslaving 1,600 “Indians”.
A Jew enriching himself through the slave trade? It’s not exactly unheard of, is it.
The documentary about Columbus’ DNA left many questions still unanswered. The full study of the geneticists’ research is yet to be published. We’ll have to wait a little bit longer to see the entirety of their evidence claiming that Columbus was a Jew. Until then, let those who wish to honor him do so. Those who wish to judge his deeds with fairness and perspective, without engaging in either moralistic melodrama or blunt refusal to acknowledge his misdeeds, are also welcome to do so too, in my opinion.
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28 comments
Fascinating article. I had not heard of this new research.
Are Ladino and Castilian Spanish really the same thing? Google is telling me that Ladino = Castilian Spanish + Hebrew. Maybe I misunderstood Pox’s statement on this.
Sorry for causing misunderstanding. I have clarified that sentence. Yes, Ladino is like the “Yiddish” of Spain’s Jewry.
Imo the strongest argument that Columbus might have been Jewish is his odd Hebrew signature. However, this is easily explained.
Math is essential for navigation, and math at that time was also essential to and intertwined with the occult. Hebrew was widely regarded as a magical language in Western occultism back then. Its likely that Columbus picked the Hebrew signature up from the circles he learned math in, it would be an interesting line of research to track down who he learned math from and what they were involved in.
This isn’t as wild as it seems. John Dee who was Queen Elizabeth’s royal navigator was also an occultist and used math for both fields. Dee was also familiar with Hebrew and wanted to speak with angels (his assistant supposedly could). Heinrich Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy also have Hebrew and numerology scattered throughout them. Neither Dee nor Agrippa were biologically Jewish, nor did they see any clash between their magic and their Christian faith.
I prefer Leif Erikson Day, which is typically observed around the same time as Columbus Day. Erikson of course came earlier, and he does not share the more unsavory elements of Columbus or the questionable lineage. There’s also a proposal to rename this Explorers’ Day, which I think is somewhat less colorful but would include other Europeans worthy of celebration. Of course, the Left hates this day because it’s a celebration of whites arriving in the Americas, not because of any historical trivia about the actual person of Columbus.
I first heard that Columbus was a Jew on a Paul Harvey rest of the story story years ago.
It certainly seems possible considering that this study shows that the Spanish population has “a high mean proportion of ancestry from North African (10.6%) and Sephardic Jewish (19.8%) sources” ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2668061/
Just for fun, here’s a link from an invaluable Jewish website:
http://www.jewornotjew.com/profile.jsp?ID=881
Part of this is all so tired. Part of me is just tempted to capitulate and foist the evil enslaver on the backs of those who happily ran large scale slave trading networks since time immemorial.
No matter what, Columbus’ accomplishments are incredible. He mapped the mid-Atlantic crossing and tirelessly worked to optimize it. He mapped the currents and tides and winds throughout the Caribbean. He discovered and envisioned the Panama Canal location. Do we discard that to run from anti-White hatred?
I like the idea of Navigators Day. I propose that at least we make it granular enough to attribute Our accomplishments and to leave room for all navigators and explorers on their own days.
European Earthwide Oceanic Navigator’s Day
EuroAmerican Space Explorer’s Day
EuroAmerican Continental Wilderness Explorer’s Day
EuroAmerican Continental Wilderness Settler’s Day
EuroCanadian Continental Wilderness Explorer’s Day
EuroCanadian Continental Wilderness Settler’s Day
European Scientific Achievement Day
…
…
At the dawn of the 20th century European man used globalized or non-distinct titles for his awards. That is because we towered above the world in such achievements, so it didn’t require stating. Now we are undergoing a systematic cultural genocide. The world wants our stuff and part of taking it, along with our homelands, is the eradication of our culture and our towering achievements.
We need to get out of this, they call this day XYZ, mindset. At the dawn of the 21st century we need to assert ownership over our accolades, heritage and cultural preservation. We name the days, and we decide the names and we reserve the honors for ourselves. It isn’t like what Jews did with the Nobel prizes which are weird since they include a bunch of softy awards and are voted on and heavily influenced by the media.
We are building our own media, and our own education networks. This is essential since we and we alone will preserve and cultivate our positive identity and we must bear sole responsibility for transmitting it.
The collective achievements of:
Sir Francis Drake
Henry Hudson
Ferdinand Magellan
Vasco de Gama
Captain Cook
and many other of the incredible Oceanic Navigators from Europe who sailed the globe and pioneered and commanded the Earth’s vast oceans by wind powered vessels are ours and ours alone to claim. It is time we do so and that we transmit the majesty of their achievements that would not have been possible without the advanced civilization of high character and high trust people that supported these grand logisitic, mathematical, engineering, nautical and heroic endeavors.
P.S. This is a very dangerous thing to concede. This would give claim of North and South America and The Caribbean to the people who currently occupy us. It would be a sticky situation to get out of the racist/enslaver Chinese finger knot/trap. However, given media talents and control over the education system, that history would be easily memory holed and replaced with sainthood.
As fas as I know, he is Genovese.
Inspiring comment!
The possible Sephardic background of the great Columbus is not going to hurt or help the cause of white preservation. We can worry about these issues after the future existence of our race has been secured. The Ethnostate will undoubtedly have various networks of scientific and social scientific investigation which will probe such matters, and whose conclusions we can safely accept. Until then, keep our eyes on the prize.
For me the problem with Sephardic Columbus is that I did not know prominent Jewish seamen/navigators in the history, at least before the 20th century. Spaniards, Portuguese, Chinese, Greeks (even in the Türkish navy), Arabs (either in the Türkish navy), Italians, English, French, Swedes/Danes/Norwegians, Russian Pomory (descendants of Novgorod Slovenians, but not Muscovites) – I know their maritime feats. But I do not know Jewish or Black African navigators.
What if Columbus was genetically Jewish but didn’t know it? It’s almost certain that Columbus was a fanatical medieval Catholic. He wanted to use the gold from the New World to fund a crusade to conquer Jerusalem from the Saracens. Do we, as White nationalists, want to reject Jews who don’t feel Jewish but want to be White nationalists? That’s not a completely silly question, because indeed many Huwhites are assimilated Jews or have Jewish ancestors. Adolf Hitler would say no way, we can never trust them. I would disagree with that. Whoever fights on our side and professes our ideals is ours.
I’ll perhaps get flak for this, but I’m fine with those who row with the team rather than rock the boat. I only have a problem with the ones who make trouble.
“Whoever fights on our side and professes our ideals is ours.”
Yes…..BUT.
Clearly this works for the long dead like Columbus. But im not breaking any new ground on this site by saying the living (jews) professing our ideals should be held with a hefty dose of suspicion.
Jim Goads latest article on Howard Sterns heel (simp?) turn is simply a reminder, not a first warning, of their well documented fifth column predilictions.
It’s unfortunately true that some of them have been promising but flip-flopped later on. As for Stern, I don’t know what happened to him that threw him into the arms of Cupcake and the Bidet junta, but surely there’s a story in it. Was it just a change of ideology such as the “Ziological clock”, or did he have to make a deal with the devil? Heck if I know.
Anyway, my thoughts are that if someone outside our ethnic sphere has something sensible to say, it’s better to go with “trust but verify” rather than to throw rotten tomatoes by default. However, that doesn’t qualify them for leadership positions – that would be a big mistake.
Rainbow, your attitude of bemused toleration toward pro-civilisation Jewish assimilationists is one of your best features as a political thinker. No flak from me. I have quoted your “just stop doing that” catchphrase to many.
Do you think your unusually big heart derives from your Mormon upbringing?
For me, it’s not about religion. It’s a rather long discussion. Briefly put, I’d like there to be a deescalation at some point. Society really has rolled out the red carpet for Jews, but the problem is that both parties have to want to deescalate for it to work.
A couple things stand in the way: Zionist paranoia, and refusal to acknowledge their role in their past woes. The result of that way of thinking is they fail to learn from their mistakes. Instead, they think everyone else is out to get them and it’s only a matter of time before tempers will explode “at random” once again. Therefore, they believe it’s right to use sneaky tactics to undermine their host societies and all that. The problem is that eventually other people get wise to that. Sometimes this leads to yet another reversal of fortune, which they believe just came out of nowhere because of course they weren’t doing anything wrong.
Bringing this back in, if my message to them is to go to hell, that would tend to exacerbate their paranoia, even if only a small way. If I instead remind them that the things they’re doing don’t win hearts and minds, there’s at least a slight chance that some of them will start to examine their behavior.
Goof that I am, I must confess that my comment about your heritage was less “Mormons simp Jews” and more “Mormons are have a very good-natured gene pool”
Jews are definitely paranoid and their extreme neuroticism is probably their biggest downside. I’m not talking Woody-Allen-style neurotic, more Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir, Genrikh Yagoda type shit.
I’m kind of a Jew simp to an extent. They’re freaks but they excel at certain honourable pursuits in addition to their other “excellences”.
Whites should have a state like Israel (it would be less creepy, but still brutal). Did somebody say apartheid?
To clarify, I’m really not too devout. To me, religion seems silly but deeply meaningful at the same time – though surely I’m not making much sense with that. Since I can’t use a test tube and a mass spectrometer to prove which set of holy books is correct, it’s hard for me to get too worked up about whose beliefs are right. Surely I’ll know more on the other side. Until then, I’d be more certain about it if I got an extensive personal gnosis, but I’m not expecting the creator of the universe to stop whatever She’s doing just to clue me in about it.
That said, simping does happen a bit, though fortunately less so than the Israel Firster variety of evangelicals. Relations between Mormons and Jews in Salt Lake City are fairly cordial. It’s rather like how in Dixie one finds that most Southern Jews are basically ordinary people distinguished mainly by attending services on Saturday. Surely there’s a lesson in that!
As for me, I try not to be a dick to people over religion. I confess my patience wears thin at times, though that has to do with their bad behavior rather than dogmatism on my part. I do notice the neurotic tendencies you mentioned. The Ashkenazim are quite inbred, and those genes do bubble up a lot. The ones afflicted with these mattoid genes tend to be the troublemakers, Zionist meddlers, leftist whack-jobs, etc. I wish the more level-headed Jews would tell them to shut up and stop ruining everyone’s reputation. Unfortunately, a lot of well-meaning ones give unquestioned support to the neurotic elites, donate to their crappy foundations, and so forth. They should stop doing that, right?
It’s an interesting speculation, but it seems a bit flimsy. To quote a Jack London novel, “Sheenies don’t take to the sea.” It seems CC’s identity remains a mystery. All told, if Columbus did have some Sephardic ancestry way back, it didn’t seem to affect his worldview perceptibly. If Columbus had been Jewish, it’s pretty unlikely that he would’ve been in a close partnership with the very Catholic King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. If he had lingering Jewish sympathies from family connections or otherwise, I figure he at least could’ve pitched the idea to set up a colony for them in the West Indies as an alternative to forced conversion, much like how the British later offloaded religious dissenters to the American colonies.
As for the alleged atrocities mentioned later on, this probably was from Francisco de Bobadilla. It’s a long story, related by Wife With A Purpose on her YouTube channel, but I think it was taken down. The object was to deprive Columbus of his agreed-upon 10% commission of the profits. Francisco de Bobadilla arrived and had Columbus fired as governor of the New World, and arrested on the spot. He was brought back to Spain in chains, put on trial, and then fully exonerated. After that, he was offered his old job back – but without the commission. Still, pinko “historians” like Howard Zinn overlook this trickery and take Francisco de Bobadilla’s wild atrocity stories at face value, in order to poison the minds of our youth with a guilt trip.
He could even be a Pole, Colon=Columb=Gołąb=dove. Just like Marco Polo maybe was a Pole, Marek Polak.
Good one!
The Poles were and are good seamen, and you know, you can find a Pole everywhere in the world. So a Pole as an Italian merchant or a Spanish navigator – it was not totally impossible.
For me is more interesting the idea, that the CHINESE Zhèng Hé reached America in 1421, more than for 70 years earlier than Columbus.
I picked up my kid(s) from school on the Holiday Formerly Known as Columbus Day. I suggested pizza for dinner noting that Columbus may have been Italian. I was informed by a pre-teen that last year school had been teaching that Columbus was bad and did bad things to the Indians. And that was all that kid could say about Columbus at all. And coming from a school that is one of the less woke ones in my area. Well we had pizza and not a knish.
Current science likely simply cannot answer of Columbus’s ancestry, and many other questions. An analogy is imagining an 1850s astronomer theorizing about the universe but not yet having infra-red telescope available.
why do you send your kids to Jew indoctrination centers? It’s the current year
My anecdote had nothing to do with Judaism at all. It was about wokism. Some comments are so off the charts I wonder if the are coming from certain hysterical Jews who need to be seeing anti-semitism everywhere. If they don’t get a daily dose then they must manufacture it.
Absolute truth. In my daily life, wokism, affirmative action and immigration are log orders more of a threat than the Jews. Though I grant that the US and other western entities give way too much military aid to Israel and it has never been clear what the west gets out of the arrangement. But in these days of wokism and affirmative action, I have definitely seen multiple Jews fuck over other Jews to make sure there are colorful faces in the workplace group photos. That’s my take on the current year.
Woke was created by jewish academics
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