Italian-American leader touts Columbus Day pride after years of statue battles

Five years after statues of famed Italian explorer Christopher Columbus were toppled, beheaded, and vandalized across America in the name of “social justice,” the issue has come to the fore once again ahead of the Columbus Day holiday.

Socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is fighting many of the extreme viewpoints he’s shared in the past, including the Italian man who discovered America.

A. resurfaced photo The X account from June 2020 showed the candidate’s hand in the foreground throwing the statue of Columbus in the background.

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The post’s title read: “Download.”

But one group opposes this and has worked to advance the interests of Italian Americans in the years following the attack on the Columbus statues.

“First of all, I think Mamdani should be ashamed of herself because the position she has taken is very hurtful and harmful to the Italian-American community,” Basil Russo told Fox News Digital.

Russo is president of the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations, a conglomerate founded to unite Italian American groups to advocate for their interests. The group has grown from 35 to 75 members in the 4.5 years since the toppling of statues shook America.

“If he wins, he should show our community the same respect he shows to all the other groups he claims to represent,” Russo said. “You know, sometimes people need to be old enough to admit that they made mistakes or didn’t know enough about a particular topic at a particular time and now they’ve educated themselves, they understand the topic more clearly and they adopt a more respectful attitude. He needs to do that.”

In this Oct. 8, 2012 file photo, people ride on a float bearing a large bust of Christopher Columbus during the Columbus Day parade in New York City. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is withdrawing his re-election bid, is seeking to designate the explorer statues at Columbus Circle and Astoria’s Columbus Square as historic landmarks to prevent Mamdani from removing them if elected.

“The beauty of New York City is that we celebrate and respect all of our diverse communities and cultural heritage,” Adams said. New York Post. “As mayor of the city with the largest Italian population in the world, I am proud to celebrate Italian-American heritage today and every day.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to Adams and Mamdani for comment.

The anger emboldened during the 2020 “summer of love,” in which troublemakers rioted against racism and set fire to urban areas in the name of George Floyd, then turned toward Columbus, which its critics accused of genocide.

On June 10 that year, St. During a riot in St. Paul, Minnesota, a mob tied chains to the Columbus statue on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol and tied the statue to the back of a truck, dragging the statue to the ground. The officials just stood there.

Protesters surround a statue of Christopher Columbus before marching and eventually turning around and tearing down the statue on June 9, 2020, in Richmond, Virginia. (Parker Michels-Boyce/AFP via Getty Images)

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Around the same time, the statue bearing Columbus’ name in a Boston park was beheaded in the middle of the night.

But Russo corrected some of the lies that had led some Americans to anti-Columbus sentiment.

He said Columbus Day was born and Italian-American pride in Columbus stemmed from the largest-ever mass lynching in 1891, when 11 Italian immigrants were killed.

“Most people, especially people outside the Italian-American community, are unaware that Columbus Day resulted from the largest mass lynching in American history,” he said. “In 1891, 11 Italian immigrants were beaten, shot and lynched by a mob of more than 5,000 people in New Orleans.”

“The situation got so bad that after the lynching of these immigrants, Italy cut off official relations with the United States,” he said.

That’s when President Benjamin Harrison stepped in to lower the temperature.

“He was one of the few people who was truly appalled by the lynchings, so Harrison was very upset about it. So the next year, in 1892, he declared Columbus Day a national observance,” Russo said. “For the first time in our country, in 1892, a president said: We will have a national celebration in honor of Christopher Columbus. Why? Because Columbus was associated with Italy because he came from Genoa. Italians were very proud of his discovery of America. And this was his way of encouraging Americans to be more accepting of Italian immigrants.”

The pedestal on which stands a statue of Christopher Columbus is pictured on June 11, 2020, in Richmond, Virginia. (Zach Gibson/Getty Images)

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Russo said it was ironic that many of those preaching a message of acceptance to immigrants were among the crowds that tore down Columbus statues.

“Each group has made significant contributions to this country and can be justifiably proud of those contributions,” Russo said. “And of course, our community has made many similar contributions. Columbus discovered America.”

“When you look at cities like New York City, the infrastructure of that city was literally built by Italian immigrants,” he added.

Russo noted that Italian Americans also have a storied history of fighting on America’s behalf, with more Italian Americans fighting in World War II than any other ethnic group.

Yet throughout the summer of 2020, stories of statue destruction emerged from every corner of the country.

In Miami, a statue of Columbus was spray-painted with “George Floyd” and “BLM” and a communist sickle and hammer; In Richmond, another statue of the Renaissance explorer was torn down and thrown into the river, and the words “Columbus represents genocide” were written on its base.

In Central Park, Columbus was spray-painted red, as was his monument in Tarrytown.

Some city governments have given up on Columbus statues after multiple lootings and decided to remove them, as in New Haven, Connecticut.

Erected in 1892, this monument finally found a new home at the Lost in New Haven Museum earlier this year. NBC Connecticut reported.

A sign reading “stop celebrating genocide” was placed at the base of a statue of Christopher Columbus, which was vandalized with red paint in Providence, R.I., on Monday, the day he commemorated one of the first Europeans to reach the New World. The statue has been the target of vandals on Columbus Day in the past. (Michelle R. Smith/Associated Press)

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In 2021, then-President Joe Biden declared that Indigenous Peoples’ Day would be celebrated on the second Monday in October, but the holiday was never officially changed.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation recognizing Monday’s holiday as Columbus Day.

“In other words, we call it Columbus Day,” Trump said as a White House staffer read the proclamation.

The press in the hall was surprised by applauding Trump’s move.

“It was the press that applauded,” Trump said, joking. “I never saw that happen. The press actually applauded. Good. Columbus Day. We’re back. Columbus Day. We’re back, Italians. We love Italians.”

Russo praised Trump’s effort.

President Donald Trump signed a proclamation Thursday ahead of a Cabinet meeting honoring Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

“You’re now seeing some change in the climate because President Trump isn’t mincing words about his support for Columbus, and that’s changing the environment across the country,” he said.

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“What the president is doing is saying that he understands the contributions that Christopher Columbus made to this country and that he appreciates Columbus’s historic relationship with the Italian-American community and that he supports seeing Columbus as a true American hero. And that is extremely important to the Italian-American community because it helps us preserve and perpetuate our legacy that we hope to pass on to other generations.”

Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton and Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.