5 Feet of Fury

Michael Coren: ‘What other historical truths must never be mentioned for fear of hurting feelings?’

Michael Coren writes about being ‘appallingly oversensitive to the losers’ of history:

There is a terribly politically incorrect joke about French roads being lined with trees so that Germans can march in the shade. This joke should never be re-enacted because it might cause offence to someone. Trees perhaps. Or roads. Or the shade. (…)

That Africans themselves often sold people to white slavers and that long after slavery was abolished by the British the slave trade continued, particularly under African and Arab leadership.

That white, Christian slaves were still being freed as late as the 19th century by European navies.

Or that white men never purposely used infected blankets to kill natives or that cannibalism, widow murder, head-hunting, tribal genocide and forced female circumcision were all prevented by European empires in the Americas, Africa and Asia.

 Or that the Crusades were not known as such until long after they had stopped and that they were merely a direct response to Islam’s invasion of the Christian heartlands of North Africa and the Levant.

Or that Galileo was a faithful Catholic whose patron was a cardinal and that Copernicus was a priest.

Or that Joseph Stalin killed more people than Hitler, that Che Guevara was a mass murderer and that historical truth may be jarring but it’s nevertheless truth.