Assault on Columbus statues sparked Italian-American groups to band together and fight back: community leader

Five years after statues of storied Italian explorer Christopher Columbus were toppled, beheaded and otherwise vandalized across America in the name of “social justice,” the issue has once again been raised before the Columbus Day holiday. 

Socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has been battling through many extreme viewpoints he’s shared in the past — including about the Italian man who discovered America. 

A resurfaced photo from his X account from June 2020 showed the candidate’s hand in the foreground flipping off a statue of Columbus, which stood in the background. 

Zohran Mamdani flipped off a statue of Christopher Columbus in 2020. (AP Newsroom)

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“Take it down,” the post’s caption said. 

However, one group isn’t standing for it, and has been working to further the interests of Italian Americans in the years following the assault on Columbus statues. 

“First, I think Mamdani should be ashamed of himself because the position he’s assuming is very hurtful and detrimental to the Italian-American community,” Basil Russo told Fox News Digital. 

Russo is the president of the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations, a conglomerate established to unify Italian American groups to stand up for their own interests. The group has grown from 35 member organizations to 75 in the 4 ½ years since statue-toppling gripped America. 

“He should show our community the same degree of respect that he purports to show all of the other groups that he claims that he’ll be representing if he wins,” said Russo. “You know, sometimes people have to be big enough to acknowledge that they made a mistake or that they didn’t know enough about a particular issue at a given point in time, and now they’ve educated themselves, they understand the issue more clearly, and they’ve adopted a more respectful position. He needs to do that.”

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

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has dropped his bid for re-election, is seeking to designate the explorer’s statues in Columbus Circle and Astoria’s Columbus Square as historical landmarks to prevent Mamdani from removing them should he be elected. 

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

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

Emboldened during the 2020 “summer of love” where troublemakers rioted against racism and torched urban areas in the name of George Floyd, wrath later turned toward Columbus, whom detractors have accused of genocide.

During a riot on June 10 of that year in St. Paul, Minnesota, a mob tied a chain to the Columbus statue on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol and hitched it to the back of a truck, dragging the statue to the ground while officials stood idly by. 

Protesters surround a statue of Christopher Columbus before marching, eventually returning and pulling it down in Richmond, Virginia, June 9, 2020. (Parker Michels-Boyce/AFP via Getty Images)

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

But Russo set straight some of the falsehoods that have led some Americans to their anti-Columbus sentiments. 

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

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

“This situation got so bad that Italy broke off formal relations with the United States after these immigrants were lynched,” he said. 

President Benjamin Harrison stepped in at the time to turn down the temperature. 

“He was one of the few people that was genuinely appalled by the lynchings. So Harrison was very upset about it. So the following year, 1892, he declares a national celebration of Columbus Day,” said Russo. “First time in our country, 1892, here’s a president saying, we’re gonna have a national celebration in honor of Christopher Columbus. Why? Because Columbus was associated with Italy, having come from Genoa. Italians were very proud of the fact that he discovered America. And this was his way. To encourage Americans to be more accepting of Italian immigrants.”

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

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Russo noted the irony that many of those preaching a message of acceptance for immigrants were among the crowds ripping statues of Columbus to the ground. 

“Every group has made important contributions to this country for which that group can be justly proud,” said Russo. “And of course, our community has made many such contributions. Columbus discovered America.”

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

Russo added that Italian Americans have a storied history of battling for America, too, noting that more Italian Americans fought in World War II than any other ethnic group. 

Still, through the summer of 2020, stories of statue destruction emerged from all corners of the country. 

In Miami, a Columbus statue was spray-painted with “George Floyd” and “BLM,” along with the communist hammer and sickle, and in Richmond, another statue of the Renaissance-era explorer was torn down and disposed of in a river, and its base left graffitied with “Columbus represents genocide.”

In Central Park, Columbus was spray-painted red, as was a monument to him in Tarrytown. 

Some city governments gave up on Columbus statues after multiple rounds of vandalization and decided to remove them, like in New Haven, Connecticut. 

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

A sign reading “stop celebrating genocide” sits at the base of a statue of Christopher Columbus on Monday in Providence, R.I., after it was vandalized with red paint on the day named to honor him as 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 proclaimed that Indigenous Peoples Day would be celebrated on the second Monday in October, though 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’re calling it Columbus Day,” Trump said while a White House staffer read the proclamation. 

The press in the room surprised Trump by applauding the move. 

“That was the press that broke out in applause,” Trump joked. “I’ve never seen that happen. The press actually broke out in applause. Good. Columbus Day. We’re back. Columbus Day. We’re back, Italians. We love the Italians.” 

Russo praised Trump’s effort. 

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

“You now see a bit of a change going on in the climate because President Trump isn’t mincing any words about his support for Columbus, and that kind of changes the environment throughout 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 the historical relevance of Columbus to the Italian-American community, and he supports Columbus being treated as a bona fide American hero. And that is extremely important to the Italian-American community because it helps us to preserve and perpetuate our heritage that we hope to pass on to other generations.”

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