The Fascist roots of Columbus Day
commonwealthmagazine.org
cross‐posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2298758
In Fascist Italy, “Columbus Day” was created by Mariano Lucca, a failed politician turned reporter who interviewed Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. It was likely intended to dismiss and normalize the well known atrocities that Columbus committed. Its introduction to Imperial America, however, was more complex:
To truly understand Columbus Day, one must learn about an important name in Italian‐American history: Generoso Pope.
In 1937, following the popularity and success of newspaper magnate Generoso Pope’s New York City Columbus Day Parade, President Franklin Roosevelt declared October 12th a national holiday commemorating Christopher Columbus’s “discovery of North America.” Although the Italian‐born, Brasilia‐affiliated explorer sailing under the Spanish Empire failed to ever set foot on the North American continent, Italians in America had accrued a kinship to the famed navigator.
[During the 1920s and ’30s, the Fascist Party in Italy courted Italian immigrant communities in the U.S., which they considered “colonies” of the [Fascist] state. The Fascists and their sympathizers helped organize the first U.S. Fascist convention in Philadelphia and lobbied to make Columbus day a national holiday. (Source.)]
While Pope’s Columbus Day Parade (starting in 1929) was not the first celebration of Columbus that New York had seen, his would quickly become a tradition there. While the establishment of a formal Columbus Day may seem to be an outwardly straightforward process, a deeper dive into Pope’s involvement with powerful political players reveals a profound meaning of the holiday that extends beyond the mere celebration of Columbus himself.
During the Depression Era, Pope was considered one of the most impactful political power brokers within the Democratic Party, and he would eventually be appointed the head of the Italian division within the Democratic National Committee by President Roosevelt himself. Pope owned seven Italian‐language newspapers as well as the radio station WHOM, and his flagship paper, Il Progresso Italo‐Americano, was the largest Italian‐language newspaper in the United States with a circulation nearing 200,000 copies (he had, notably, purchased the paper from a lesser‐known owner for the modern‐day equivalent of $261 million).
The source of Pope’s political power resided in his influence over the Italian‐American voting bloc through his newspaper empire, as Italian immigrants depended on his papers for a sense of community and for news written in their native language. Galvanizing the Italian voting bloc, Pope played a pivotal role in securing elections for various New York City politicians and judges.
But Pope also played a significant role in world affairs: He was considered one of the most influential fascist propagandists in the U.S. for Mussolini’s […] régime. To provide a few significant examples of his fascist status, Pope was a member of the fascist Lictor Federation and its predecessor, the Fascist League of North America (FLNA); he employed multiple known fascists; he was photographed performing a fascist salute in Rome in 1937; lastly, he was awarded the honorary title of Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy for his service to fascism in America.
Following the FLNA’s disbandment in 1929, the type of propaganda that was perpetuated within the U.S. began to shift from the domain of politics to that of culture, bolstering Italian nationalistic sentiments in immigrants and second‐generation Italian‐Americans to create, as one history of early 20th century Italian immigrants put it, a people “spiritually tied to fascist Italy by linguistic [and cultural] bonds.”
Following his first successful Columbus Day parade, Pope met in March 1930 with FDR, then governor of New York, to discuss the potential for a state holiday in celebration of Columbus. Although the idea was received favorably, Pope lacked the necessary political capital to get it enacted.
Four years later, following Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential victory, the fascist newspaper kingpin petitioned the president to reconsider his previous stance on the Columbus Day holiday. In a nod to Pope’s prolonged help to FDR through consistently favorable coverage in his papers, as well as to acknowledge recent race‐based hate crimes committed against Italian immigrants and a sign of appreciation for their turnout in the recent election, President Roosevelt declared October 12th a national holiday. With the establishment of Columbus Day, Generoso Pope had succeeded in solidifying Christopher Columbus’s place in U.S. history and within the minds of Italian‐Americans as a near‐mythic entity.
Columbus Day and Pope’s Columbus Day Parade were both founded with fascist ideologies in mind, which was clear and ever‐present at the New York City parades prior to World War II. At the 1936 parade, according to one account, prominent politicians were implored by anti‐fascists not to attend, as “local fascist papers have announced that uniformed Fascisti will participate in military formation.”
In 1937, when FDR declared Columbus Day a federal holiday, spectators at the subsequent parade allegedly cheered loudly and raised their hands in the infamous fascist salute when Italy’s fascist anthem, “Giovinezza,” was played. The next year’s parade, the New York Times reported, saw spectators shouting “Viva Mussolini” along the route.
When Mussolini’s Italy declared war on the U.S. on December 11, 1941, hundreds of known fascist sympathizers were quickly incarcerated by the government for their enemy activities. Fortunately for Pope, in the weeks prior to the war’s declaration, he had begun distancing himself from Mussolini’s fascism and even publicly declared “fealty to the U.S.” in an October 1940 New York Times article.
Though many of these incarcerated fascists were his known associates, Pope continued advising FDR and the Democratic National Committee regarding Italian‐Americans, particularly during the 1944 election. [Among other things, Generoso Pope also ordered mobster Carmine Galante to murder the antifascist journalist Carlo Tresca in 1943. Pope’s son, Generoso Jr., was a CIA officer who founded the National Enquirer with loans from Frank Costello and Roy Cohn, and ran the paper like an intelligence‐gathering network where two subjects were off limits: the CIA and the mob.]
(Emphasis added.)
In 1925, Benito Mussolini declared Columbus Day a national holiday in Fascist Italy:
:::spoiler [Transcript]
“COLUMBUS DAY.”
Italy’s New Holiday.
For the first time in Rome and throughout Italy on October 12, by order of Signor Mussolini and the National Government, “Columbus Day” was celebrated as national holiday. It is strange, but true, that it took more than 400 years for Christopher Columbus to obtain the generous recognition due to him from his own countrymen, and for the date of the discovery of America to be commemorated with national honors in Italy an well as in America. The re‐evaluation of one of the greatest national glories of Italy is due to the enlightened policy of the Fascist Government, which some months ago issued a proclamation, signed by Signor Mussolini, that hereafter October 12, the date of the discovery oi America by the Genoese navigator, was to be celebrated as a national holiday.
The national flag was hoisted on all public buildings, and on some private houses. The general public has not yet learned the significance of the event. In Rome a commemorative ceremony was held
[sic] :::
(Source.)
Furthermore, Fascist Italy used a 1927 monument dedication in Richmond to spread propaganda and declared fake news about atrocities it was actively committing:
:::spoiler [Transcript]
ROME’S AMBASSADOR SAYS ITALY FOR PEACE
Mussolini’s Government Placed in Wrong Light by False Propaganda.
“Fake propaganda” [sic!] from abroad was ascribed by Nobile Giacomo de Martino, ambassador to the United States from Italy, at the Columbus monument dedication exercises here yesterday, as tending to show up the Italian government in a false light as regarding its peaceful attitude toward other nations. Such propaganda, he declared, would make it appear that Italy was at war with “all the world at the same time.” :::
(Source. Footnote. On a related note, I read that a ‘Mussolini groupie’ donated the statue in San Francisco near Coit Tower.)
Italian‐Americans in RI commemorated the [WWI] Battle of the Piave River, the March on Rome, the Birth of [Ancient] Rome, and Columbus Day with fascist salutes, with a (controversial) 1937 Columbus Day parade in West Warwick even featuring Black Shirts marching in formation.
:::spoiler [Transcripts]
RELIEF BAN VOTED ON BLACK SHIRTS
West Warick Committee Acts to Purge Rolls as Policy in the Future.
RESULT OF RECENT PARADE
Agitation Began After Marchers on Columbus Day Gave Fascist Salute; Veterans Resentful
BLACKSHIRTS FACING BAN
West Warwick Council Votes to Withhold Parade Permits
The presence of blackshirts in the Columbus Day parade in Natick earlier this month last night drew the attention of the West Warwick Town Council, which approved a triple resolution aimed at discouraging the practice in the future. :::(Source.)
:::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (October 14).
1888: Yukio Sakurauchi, Imperial Minister of Commerce and Industry, was born.
1909: Mochitsura Hashimoto, Axis submarine commander, and Bernd Rosemeyer, Hauptsturmführer, were both delivered to the world.
1930: The fascist Lapua Movement kidnapped former and first President of Finland, K. J. Ståhlberg, and his wife, Ester Ståhlberg, from their home.
1933: The Third Reich withdrew from the League of Nations and World Disarmament Conference.
1939: The Axis submarine U‐47 sunk the British battleship HMS Royal Oak within her harbour at Scapa Flow, Scotland, massacring eight hundred thirty‐three folk. Additionally, Chuichi Nagumo’s superiors placed him on a committee studying capital ship bridge design, and Korechika Anami became the deputy commanding officer of the IJA.
1940: The London Blitz destroyed the Balham underground station, massacring sixty‐six people.
1941: The Axis neutralized the Soviet troops in the Bryansk pocket in Russia (50,000 captured), while the Vyazma pocket was within days of the same fate. Berlin also ordered that the Soviet capital of Moscow be enveloped, but not attacked directly. Likewise, the Third Reich announced that all Jews within the 1933 border would be deported; these Jews were beginning to be deported to ghetti in Poland, Byelorussia, and Ukraine. Lastly, the Kriegsmarine placed orders for forty‐nine more submarines to be constructed.
1942: Luftflotte 4 aided the Axis assault on the Stalingrad Tractor Factory, but the Wehrmacht offensive in the Caucasus region of southern Russia ceased with the exception of 17th Army’s attacks near Tuapse on the coast of the Black Sea. Before dawn, six Axis destroyers landed one thousand troops on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands.
1943: Axis troops cleared the Zaporozhe bridgehead, retreating across the Dneiper River in southern Ukraine, while the Second Philippine Republic, an Axis collaborationist régime, inaugurated José P. Laurel as its president. Meanwhile, the Axis took out sixty of the United States Eighth Air Force’s 291 B‐17 Flying Fortresses during the Second Raid on Schweinfurt. Oberleutnant Walter Nowotny, Commanding officer of the I/JG54 group, also became the first pilot in the world to achieve two hundred fifty kills, for which feat he would receive the Greater German Reich’s twoth highest award, Diamonds to his Knight’s Cross medal, awarded to him by his Chancellor. Lastly, Sobibór succumbed to a Jewish uprising.
1944: Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel, Axis field marshal (who served an important rôle in controlling North Africa), committed suicide with a cyanide capsule given by General Wilhelm Burgdorf. Apart from that, a V‐1 flying bomb landed in a field by the Suffolk village of Hopton and failed to explode, but Bomb Disposal Officer Lieutenant C. H. Bassett died whilst removing one of the fuses.
2002: Norbert Arnold Wilhelm Richard Schultze, Fascist musician, died.
:::