Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, most famous as author of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, is well-known to take pride in his Italian heritage. According to a recent profile, this includes celebrating the controversial historical figure at the center of the narrative surrounding America’s so-called discovery, Christopher Columbus.
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“On a Sunday in October 1959, the whole neighborhood, including the future Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito and his family, stood alongside church leaders and diplomats to erect an image of their hero, Christopher Columbus, peering from the prow of a ship as he approaches the New World,” wrote Peter S. Canellos, author of ‘Revenge for the Sixties: Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement,’ in a New York Times article on Sunday.
Even after Alito had long ceased being a 9-year-old boy celebrating a statue’s unveiling, he continued to be loyal to the literal and figurative Columbus institution.
“Most Italians had left Chambersburg [New Jersey] by 2020,” Canellos added. “Many of the town’s residents, chiefly Black and Central American, decried Columbus as a symbol of slavery and genocide. ‘What we know about Columbus simply makes his image a poor fit for a city that is as diverse as Trenton,’ the mayor said at the time.”
Canellos continued, “But what the statue symbolized has not been forgotten. As it lay in pieces in a warehouse, a six-year saga ensued in which local Italian Americans, supported by a valuable ally — Justice Alito himself — feuded with the city to restore it. After years of patient advocacy, Italian Americans in Trenton have agreed to compromise. They are negotiating to acquire the statue and re-erect it outside a Knights of Columbus hall in neighboring Hamilton.”
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Alito is reportedly displeased with the status quo regarding the statue.
“Despite optimism surrounding this year’s Columbus Day, the city has yet to approve the transfer,” Canellos concluded.
President Donald Trump has seized on the movement to eliminate Columbus Day by writing, “the Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much,” adding that they “tore down his statues, and put up nothing but WOKE…” But Columbus, he assured, “is going to make a major comeback.”
During his tenure as governor and viceroy of the Indies after conquering them for Spain (for whom Columbus worked, although he personally hailed from the Italian city-state of Genoa), Columbus became notorious as a dictator who ordered a corn thief’s tongue and ears cut off before being sold into slavery, torturing a woman for insulting him, beating those who openly disagreed with his policies and ultimately becoming so unpopular he was forcibly recalled from his post by the Spanish monarchs. Additionally, Columbus committed brutalities against indigenous populations, such as the Arawaks who approached his ships when they first arrived in 1492.
“They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance…” Columbus wrote in his journal at the time. They would make fine servants… With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
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