On 2025-10-19 2:45 p.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:
Portugal is really really sorry about their role in the Spanish
Inquisition and is busily rewriting history. Really really, really and
truly sorry.
As we know, Ferdinand and Isabella (especially Isabella) forced Jews and Moors to convert or face expulsion from Spain. As a technical matter,
their marriage led to a cooperative but still separate rule of their underlying kingdoms (five, if I recall) but Spain wouldn't unite into
a single kingdom till later. I don't know the history of why Portugal retained its own separate kingdom.
The Jews and Moors were expelled in 1492, and many went to Portugal. But
just a few years later, Portugal did their own expulsion.
I've seen a few videos on the Reconquista, the 700 year (!!) effort by
the Iberian kingdoms to drive out the Muslims but none of them has given
an inkling of a hint of a suspicion for why Ferdinand and Isabella felt
they also had to drive out the Jews. I remain baffled by this. Was it
just standard anti-Semitism of was there more to it? Were Jews actually working with the Muslims to oppress the native Iberians? >
I had no idea but for the last few years, if a rabbi certifies that your ancestors had lived in Portugal before the expulsion, you can get
citizenship and a passport. Of course there was a huge scandal with one
rabbi doing a certification mill to defraud the Portuguese government.
You might be interested to hear that one video I saw recently says
there's a school of thought that Christopher Columbus himself might have
been Jewish. (I didn't bookmark the video otherwise I'd post the link.) >
There are legitimate archives searches performed by neutral archivists
to support claims but the taint of scandal remains and certain
politicians used the scandal to end the practice in an anti-immigration
push. My ancestors wouldn't have been Sephardic (Spanish) so nothing to
do with me.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/Turning_Portuguese
https://www.portugalist.com/portuguese-citizenship-for-sephardic-jews/
For our next trick, everyone with ancestors officially tortured by the
king's men in nearly all countries in Europe on behalf of the Church for suspicion of heresy can file a tort claim with a government. Europe
really really really wants to pretend the Middle Ages never happened.
It's as ridiculous as the Europeans that scoured the Middle East a few
years back trying to find anyone who might be a descendant of an Arab
that fought in the Crusades so that they could apologize to them for
what the (Europeans') ancestors had done to them.
YOU CAN'T UNDO HISTORY: shit happened and there were severely
unfortunate consequences but you can't undo what happened by apologies
or with money. I don't particularly object to the apologies, especially
when delivered by sincere people at their own expense, but using tax
money so that governments can deliver official apologies is just
expensive virtue-signalling. Using tax money to pay compensation is absurd.
Forcing descendants of slave owners to pay compensation to descendants
of slaves is ridiculous. The descendants of slave owners - and lets face
it, the money would essentially come from everyone (including the
descendants of slaves themselves), even if their ancestors had nothing
to do with slavery - did nothing wrong and the recipients of the money
did nothing to deserve it. It's probably reasonable to compensate any
living slaves but I don't see any reason to compensate their defendants.
--
Rhino
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