{"id":691,"date":"2026-07-23T13:38:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T13:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=691"},"modified":"2026-07-23T13:38:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T13:38:39","slug":"the-fake-controversy-behind-little-italys-exclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=691","title":{"rendered":"The Fake Controversy Behind Little Italy\u2019s \u2018Exclusion\u2019\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In May 1971, dozens of members of the Jewish Defense League filed into a Brooklyn federal courtroom. Their leader, Meir Kahane, had ostensibly founded the group to combat antisemitism, particularly in the Soviet Union, though it soon became a full-blown Zionist extremist outfit, advocating for the mass expulsion of Arabs from Palestine. The league engaged in vigilantism and violence, leading federal prosecutors to indict Kahane and six of his associates for allegedly trafficking weapons and explosives.<\/p>\n

Read more Marco Rubio\u2019s Cuba Fantasies Are More Dangerous Than They Seem<\/a><\/p>\n

Also into the courtroom walked Joseph Colombo, purported leader of one of the infamous New York City crime families. He brought a crew of his own: members of the Italian American Civil Rights League, which Colombo had founded, supposedly to resist what the group deemed anti-Italian discrimination. (Its most notable advocacy involved scrubbing \u201cdefamatory\u201d terms like \u201cMafia\u201d from popular culture.)<\/p>\n

Kahane\u2019s and Colombo\u2019s groups formed what Kahane described as a \u201cbrotherhood\u201d to push back against federal \u201charassment.\u201d As Colombo put it: \u201cWe\u2019re defending our people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strange bedfellows found camaraderie in their mutual adherence to a reactionary worldview then pervasive among white American ethnic groups. The Holocaust was a recent memory at the time, as was Anglo-American racism toward Italian immigrants; historical oppression, the logic went, made these men and their causes all but infallible. Their communities had experienced injustice, and it was further injustice to accuse them of brutality, corruption, prejudice, or crime.<\/p>\n

Fifty-five years later, Kahane\u2019s movement has made an industry out of that worldview. One of its adherents is Israel\u2019s national security minister. Kahanists have killed Palestinians and pulled American and Israeli Zionism ever violently rightward, often in the name of righting the wrong of Jewish suffering.<\/p>\n

This playbook is more or less well-known. Less widely interrogated is how Italian-Americans have deployed it. Many within our community still do, even though few living today can remember a time of significant anti-Italian prejudice in the United States. Their lack of self-awareness borders on the absurd\u2014but it offers valuable insight into the cynical politics of white victimhood.<\/p>\n

The latest embarrassment started earlier this month. As part of a World Cup promotion, the New York City tourism office released a map of some of the five boroughs\u2019 \u201cimmigrant enclaves.\u201d The map shows 30 of the most prominent sub-neighborhoods with foreign-born populations, like Queens\u2019s \u201cLittle Egypt,\u201d Brooklyn\u2019s \u201cLittle Haiti,\u201d and Manhattan\u2019s \u201cLittle Senegal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sparing no opportunity to manufacture outrage at Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s administration, conservatives whipped up a controversy that the map didn\u2019t honor the white immigrant groups that made up some of the largest foreign-born populations of generations past. Descendants of the founders of the original \u201cLittle\u201d were particularly incensed. Even though New York\u2019s Little Italies haven\u2019t housed significant numbers of Italian-born residents in decades\u2014a 2000 census could not find a single resident of Manhattan\u2019s Little Italy that had been born in Italy\u2014members of the local Italian-American establishment complained that the map didn\u2019t pay proper homage to their history.<\/p>\n

The most strident complaints were leveled by none other than the leaders of the recently revived Italian American Civil Rights League (IACRL), including Colombo\u2019s grandson. They went on right-wing cable news and published a statement accusing the popular socialist mayor of \u201ccultural erasure.\u201d A New York Post<\/em> opinion piece went further, simultaneously accusing him of antisemitism and \u201canti-Italian hate.\u201d Apparently seeing no point in fueling the outcry, Mamdani said the city would update the map.<\/p>\n

Read more \u201cCuba Will Not Be Starved Into Submission\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

In traditional media outlets, the IACRL leaders expressed disappointment at being excluded from an accounting of New York City\u2019s immigrant heritage. \u201cThere is nothing wrong with celebrating today\u2019s immigrant communities,\u201d they wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Examiner<\/em>. \u201cEvery generation has enriched New York with new cultures, new traditions, new businesses, and new dreams. They deserve to be welcomed, celebrated, and embraced.\u201d<\/p>\n

On social media, however, they let their real feelings hang loose. On Elon Musk\u2019s X, the IACRL\u2019s account is a repository of sloppy anti-immigrant screeds. It condemns \u201cthird-world Islamists\u201d and demonizes African immigrants. One post baselessly accused \u201cforeigners\u201d and \u201cthird-worldists\u201d of committing an unsolved arson for which police hadn\u2019t named a suspect.<\/p>\n

Central to the league\u2019s narrative is the idea of Italians as the good, \u201cpatriotic\u201d immigrants. They came to the US \u201cthe right way,\u201d overcame prejudice, and \u201cassimilated.\u201d While today\u2019s Pakistani immigrants steal business and Somali immigrants protest, Italian immigrants and their descendants stand hand over heart, pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, according to the IACRL.<\/p>\n

The narrative is overtly racist and MAGA-friendly. It\u2019s also ahistoric. The story of Italians\u2019 mass migration to the United States is multi-faceted. Many made it their project to climb the nation\u2019s racial hierarchy, establishing Italian-American associations in police departments and creating a mythology around their connection to the continent\u2019s genocidal \u201cfounder.\u201d (Christopher Columbus is another sore spot for the IACRL and their allies, who decry his demystification as another form of anti-Italian hate.)<\/p>\n

Other Italian immigrants, however, rebelled against US racial capitalism. They organized against big business and were critical to the growth of the labor movement. They also led the US\u2019s anarchist movement, including its violent elements. In fact, those revolutionaries faced the most egregious persecution of Italians in America, but you\u2019ll never hear the people yelling about the New York City map mutter a word about Nicola Sacco or Bartolomeo Vanzetti.<\/p>\n

Those stories aren\u2019t convenient for conservative descendants of Italian immigrants, who demand both the privileges of occupying America\u2019s top racial caste and deference to the prejudice their ancestors endured before ascending to it. Pay no attention to their own hate. Our people had it worse, they say. They overcame. They made this country; today\u2019s Black and brown immigrants are destroying it.<\/p>\n

What a farce. In the same way the brutality of the genocide in Gaza has laid bare the cynical weaponization of antisemitism, hollow cries over \u201canti-Italian hate\u201d expose Italian-American right-wingers for what they are: anti-immigrant reactionaries trying to launder their own racism by feigning victimhood.<\/p>\n

Read more Slavery\u2019s Musical Threads<\/a><\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Nation Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Fake Controversy Behind Little Italy\u2019s \u2018Exclusion\u2019\u00a0 - Atlas Living Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=691\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Fake Controversy Behind Little Italy\u2019s \u2018Exclusion\u2019\u00a0 - Atlas Living Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Nation Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=691\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Atlas Living Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-23T13:38:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=691#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=691\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/f6233854b1f92a6d21147fe5d5e58abc\"},\"headline\":\"The Fake Controversy Behind Little Italy\u2019s \u2018Exclusion\u2019\u00a0\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-23T13:38:39+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=691\"},\"wordCount\":1047,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=691#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/42af3355ff06eff78572dfa785161fa2.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Society\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=691#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=691\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=691\",\"name\":\"The Fake Controversy Behind Little Italy\u2019s \u2018Exclusion\u2019\u00a0 - 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