True Left

OK, but if we can take down statues of Columbus, why are we still calling the country "Colombia" after Columbus? We need:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/issues/name-decolonization/

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Some among Colombia�s white majority continue to consider Columbus and even controversial characters like Belalcazar as part of their cultural identity.

These are the only ones who should be called Colombians (and hence Western occupiers). The rest should choose a new name.

It's interesting that Colombia came from Francisco de Miranda, a military leader who fought against Spain.

Colombia/Christopher Columbus: Colombia is named after Columbus, but not in the way that you might think. The name Colombia dates back to Francisco de Miranda, a revolutionary who sought to overthrow Spanish colonial rule in late-18th and early 19th century Latin America. He used "Colombia" as a term for all of so-called Spanish America. After General Simon Bolivar actually defeated the Spanish in 1819, the name came to refer to the new country of Gran Colombia (roughly present-day Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, and Venezuela).

Before that, Gran Colombia was called the Viceroyalty of New Granada (Spanish: Virreinato de Nueva Granada)

TOWSON, Md. (AP) � Towson University has decided to remove the names of slave owners from two dormitories following a vote by the University System of Maryland board of regents allowing the school to rename them.
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Charles Carroll was one of Maryland�s first U.S. senators and William Paca served as the state�s third governor. Both signed the Declaration of Independence.

Paca owned at least 100 slaves when he died in 1799 and Carroll had as many as 500 � ranking them among the Marylanders who owned the largest number of slaves, according to a January report by the renaming committee.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/georgia-emory-university-latest-school-183000550.html

the school�s Longstreet-Means residence hall will be renamed to simply Eagle Hall. The building currently takes its namesake from Augustus Baldwin Longstreet. He was the university�s president from 1839-1848 and was all about slavery and secession, and very much against abolition.

Congressional Democrats introduced a bill Friday to rename more than 1,000 places in the US named with offensive language and racist slurs.

Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Edward Markey, and Rep. Al Green introduced the bill along with 25 cosponsors in the House of Representatives, all Democrats.

Lawmakers first introduced the bill last year with Rep. Deb Haaland, who now serves as the secretary of the interior as the first Native American cabinet secretary in US history.

"We need to immediately stop honoring the ugly legacy of racism and bigotry, and that's why I'm introducing the Reconciliation in Place Names Act with my colleagues," Warren said in a statement.

The bill would take aim at land units and geographic features, like forests, streams, and wilderness areas, with racist or bigoted names. It would create a process to review and rename places with inoffensive names. According to the statement from the lawmakers, questionable names have been identified for 1,441 federally recognized places.

More than 600 places have the word "n----," a slur for Black people, in their name, according to a database from the US Geological Survey. In Oklahoma there is Dead N---- Spring, so-named because a deceased Black person was found there, according to the USGS.

In New Mexico, there is a reservoir called W------ Tank, named with a slur for Mexican people living in the US. Nearly 800 results are returned by the USGS database when searching for the term "s----," an offensive word for Native American women.

Rightists often claim that different "non-white" ethnicities are even more bigoted towards one another than "whites" are bigoted towards them. If so, where are all the places named by people of one "non-white" ethnicity using slurs for another?

New Zealand could change its NAME after Māori Party said it is 'sick to death' of the 'colonialist' European title

LONG LIVE AOTEAROA!

College cites �scientific racism,� renames Linnaeus building
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Linnaeus has been criticized for his 18th century book �Systema Naturae,� in which he classified four varieties of human, largely based on skin color and geography, which became the basis for scientific racism.
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The 120-acre plot that includes over a dozen formal gardens and restored natural areas has been renamed �The Arboretum at Gustavus Adolphus College.�

Next they should get rid of the formal gardens, a Western (and extremely sadistic) style which has no justifiable place in America (or anywhere, to be honest):

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-right/western-civilization-is-ugly-48/msg4050/#msg4050

A New Jersey school district is planning to rename one of its schools named after former President Woodrow Wilson due to what critics say is a legacy of racism.
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Woodrow Wilson, a Virginia-born Democrat, served as New Jersey�s governor from 1911 to 1913 and as US president from 1913 to 1921.

His legacy has been challenged by activists and academics in recent years due to his support of racist policies.

In June 2020, the board of trustees at Princeton University, Wilson�s alma mater, voted to drop his name from his namesake School of Public and International Affairs.

�Wilson�s racism was significant and consequential even by the standards of his own time. He segregated the federal civil service after it had been racially integrated for decades, thereby taking America backward in its pursuit of justice,� university President Christopher L. Eisgruber wrote in a statement on the board�s decision. �He not only acquiesced in but added to the persistent practice of racism in this country, a practice that continues to do harm today.�

Also last June, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said he would no longer use Wilson�s desk at his office in Trenton.

�The country is having a reckoning and Woodrow Wilson, and his legacy is being swept up in that, as it should be,� Murphy said at a press conference at the time.

More about Wilson:

Wilson was an apologist for slavery and the southern redemption movement; he was also one of the nation's foremost promoters of the lost cause mythology.[11] At Princeton, Wilson used his authority to actively discourage the admission of African-Americans.[1]
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Wilson specifically criticized efforts to protect voting rights for African-Americans and rulings by federal judges against state courts that refused to empanel black jurors. According to Wilson, congressional leaders had acted out of idealism, displaying "blatant disregard of the child-like state of the Negro and natural order of life", thus endangering American democracy as a whole.[13]

See also:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/western-democracy/msg9997/#msg9997

In contrast:

President of Princeton
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Wilson appointed the first Jew and the first Roman Catholic to the faculty
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In 1909, Wilson received a letter from a young African-American man interested in applying to attend Princeton; Wilson had his assistant write back promptly that "it is altogether inadvisable for a colored man to enter Princeton."[23] Wilson eventually came to include in his justification for refusing to admit African-American students that Princeton had never done so in the past, though he knew such claims to be false. By the end of his time as president at Princeton, Wilson had taken steps to erase from the public record that African-Americans had ever attended or instructed at Princeton, though neither was true.[24] Princeton college would not admit a single black student until 1947,[25] becoming the last Ivy League institution to racially integrate.[26][27]
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Exclusion of African-Americans from administration appointments

By the 1910s, African-Americans had become effectively shut out of elected office. Obtaining an executive appointment to a position within the federal bureaucracy was usually the only option for African-American statesmen.[44] As Wilson named white supremacists to the highest levels of his administration, African-Americans were appointments in record low numbers. While it has been claimed Wilson continued to appoint African-Americans to positions that had traditionally been filled by blacks, overcoming opposition from many southern senators,[45] such claims deflect most of the truth however. Since the end of Reconstruction, both parties recognized certain appointments as unofficially reserved for qualified African-Americans. Wilson appointed a total of nine African-Americans to prominent positions in the federal bureaucracy, eight of whom were Republican carry-overs. For comparison, Taft was met with disdain and outrage from Republicans of both races for appointing "a mere thirty-one black officeholders", a record low for a Republican president. Upon taking office, Wilson fired all but two of the seventeen black supervisors in the federal bureaucracy appointed by Taft.[46][47]
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Not only were African-Americans almost completely excluded from higher level appointments, the Wilson cabinet was dominated by southerners, many of whom were unapologetic white supremacists.[61]
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Veto of the racial equality proposal

Japan had fought on the side of the allies during WWI and was the only non-white nation of the five major powers (the others being the Great Britain, France, the United States and Italy). The first draft of the Racial Equality Amendment was presented to the Commission on February 13, 1919 and stated:

The equality of nations being a basic principle of the League of Nations, the High Contracting Parties agree to accord as soon as possible to all alien nationals of states, members of the League, equal and just treatment in every respect making no distinction, either in law or in fact, on account of their race or nationality.
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For Wilson, even if it was inline with what his country claimed to stand for, it was repugnant to his personal belief in white racial superiority, an ideology that had guided policy in his administration since he took office.[100][101]
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Wilson exercised his power as Chairman and overturned the vote unilaterally. Wilson proceeded to explain that this specific amendment was so divisive and extreme it must have unanimous support in order to pass.[102]

Wilson's decision garnered praise from the governments of South Africa, Australia and Great Britain 

Thus Japan turned to Hitler.

Another point of contrast:

Though Wilson aggressively championed the cause of self-determination for many stateless peoples of Eastern Europe, his sympathy did not extend to the "backward countries" of Asia and Africa
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Wilson did insist that Poland and other eastern European countries (whose borders were carved out of the defeated empires of the Central Powers following the outcome of the war) ratify binding treaties, obligating them to protect the rights of minorities, mainly Jews, within their own borders.[122]

Thus we see that Wilsonism is the exact opposite of Hitlerism.

he consistently expressed the belief that all members of the white race could and should be integrated into American society as equals regardless of heritage.[119] This was a recognition that Wilson never extended black Americans.[6]: 103
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Further dispelling claims he harbored anti-Semitic prejudices, Wilson appointed the first Jewish-American to the Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis.[123]

See?

Although the one of the possible original etymologies of Georgia is a word to distinguish agricultural ethnic groups from non-agricultural ones, the specific spelling many nations use to refer to Georgia came to them from the Russian language. In the past decade, a number of countries have de-Russified their official names for Georgia:

The Russian name for Georgia is Gruziya (Грузия [�gruzʲɪjə]), believed to come from Persian origin. This name first appeared as gurzi in Ignatiy Smolnyanin�s travel documents dating back to 1389. Later, the name grew popular among Slavic regions and across the Russian Empire.

With the request of the Georgian government, Israel, Lithuania, Japan, and South Korea changed their exonyms for the country to �Georgia.� Lithuania plans to call Georgia by its native name, Sakartvelo, in 2018.

https://theculturetrip.com/europe/georgia/articles/why-is-georgia-also-called-sakartvelo/

And Georgia de-Russified their name for Lithuania in return:

As a gesture of appreciation, Georgia also changed Lithuania's Russian-derived name of "Litva" (Russian: Литва) to its native "Lietuva".[27]

The renaming of Washington Elementary, the last Berkeley public school named after a slave owner, has been delayed until the end of the school year by a controversy surrounding one of the luminaries who�d been shortlisted to be the school�s new namesake.

Yuri Kochiyama, a survivor of Japanese incarceration camps known for speaking out against American imperialism, had been chosen as one of seven finalists. A supporter of reparations for Japanese Americans, she worked alongside Malcolm X against the oppression of Black Americans, famously cradling his head in her arms after his assassination.

Her name was taken off the list after parents notified the school principal that Kochiyama had once expressed admiration for Osama bin Laden. Though her name was reinstated shortly afterward, the removal brought up what some parents say is the all-too-familiar erasure of a figure who they called a �revered and respected hero.� She lived the final years of her life in Berkeley, where she died in 2014 at age 93.

Not only should admiration of bin Laden by American civil rights activists not be a problem, but there should be schools named after bin Laden himself! He was an American ally FFS!

Some sources have alleged that[1][2][3] the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had ties with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda and its "Afghan Arab" fighters when it armed Mujahideen groups to fight the Soviet Union during the Soviet�Afghan War.

About the same time as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the United States began collaborating with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to provide several hundred million dollars a year in aid to the Afghan Mujahideen insurgents fighting the Afghan pro-Soviet government and the Soviet Army in Operation Cyclone. Along with native Afghan mujahideen were Muslim volunteers from other countries, popularly known as "Afghan Arabs". The most famous of the Afghan Arabs was Osama bin Laden, known at the time as a wealthy and pious Saudi who provided his own money and helped raise millions from other wealthy Gulf Arabs.
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In conversation with former British Defence Secretary Michael Portillo, two-time Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto said Osama bin Laden was initially pro-American.[6] Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, has also stated that bin Laden once expressed appreciation for the United States' help in Afghanistan. On CNN's Larry King program he said:[7]

Bandar bin Sultan: This is ironic. In the mid-'80s, if you remember, we and the United - Saudi Arabia and the United States were supporting the Mujahideen to liberate Afghanistan from the Soviets. He [Osama bin Laden] came to thank me for my efforts to bring the Americans, our friends, to help us against the atheists, he said the communists. Isn't it ironic?

Larry King: How ironic. In other words, he came to thank you for helping bring America to help him.

Bandar bin Sultan: Right.[8]

It was the US' fault for not turning against Israel after the Cold War ended. Had the US turned against Israel promptly, bin Laden would surely have remained pro-American to this day. After the US turns against Israel in the future, it should not forget to belatedly honour bin Laden:

In a December 1998 interview with Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai, bin Laden stated that Operation Desert Fox was proof that Israeli Jews controlled the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom, directing them to kill as many Muslims as they could.[90] In a letter released in late 2002, he stated that Jews controlled the civilian media outlets, politics, and economic institutions of the United States.[66] In a May 1998 interview with ABC's John Miller, bin Laden stated that the Israeli state's ultimate goal was to annex the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East into its territory and enslave its peoples, as part of what he called a "Greater Israel".[91] He stated that Jews and Muslims could never get along and that war was "inevitable" between them, and further accused the US of stirring up anti-Islamic sentiment.[91] He claimed that the US State Department and US Department of Defense were controlled by Jews, for the sole purpose of serving the Israeli state's goals.[91] He often delivered warnings against alleged Jewish conspiracies: "These Jews are masters of usury and leaders in treachery. They will leave you nothing, either in this world or the next."[92]

Related:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/issues/military-decolonization/msg6761/#msg6761