The human sacrifice double standard

(Public domain)

A clip has been making the rounds on social media of right-wing media personality Candace Owens talking about the campaign to rename Columbus Day to honor the indigenous peoples of the Americas. She told conservative radio host Dennis Prager: “[The Native Americans] cannibalized, they ate, they had sacrifices… The Aztecs killed hundreds of thousands of kids sacrificed to the rain gods. That stuff stopped when white men started adopting a monotheistic worldview and assigning morality.”

As tempting as it is to call this a hot take, it’s about as cold as takes get.

Owens is just repeating colonialist ideas and assumptions that date back centuries to before the founding of the United States. Though Owens is starting a few months early, it’s an annual conservative tradition on Columbus Day to remind everyone that the Native Americans were savages until the white man blessed them with the gift of civilization (also smallpox).

Owens’ fellow PragerU alums Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder put out racist cartoons depicting Native Americans as cannibals in 2017 and 2018…