Open Letter To President Donald Trump In Defense of Columbus

by Liliana Gorini, Chairwoman, Movisol

President Donald Trump
The White House
Washington, D.C.

Mr. President:

As an Italian citizen and chairwoman of Movisol, Lyndon LaRouche’s movement in Italy, I call on you to intervene in defense of Christopher Columbus and Columbus Day. The same people who are out to destroy the U.S. Presidency, led by Wall Street speculator George Soros (who destroyed the Italian lira in 1992), are also trying to eradicate history and culture not only in the United States, but internationally. Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, his Italian collaborator Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli, Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and others were part of a revolution in culture, art, geography, and science, which made the discovery of America possible. The deliberate explosion in human creativity that was the Italian Renaissance is a truly proud moment in all humanity’s history, and not merely for Italians. The people who want to abolish Columbus Day, whether they are maliciously witting, or merely deluded, are out to also dismantle this Western cultural and scientific heritage.

‘Columbus’ Last Appeal to Queen Isabella,’ dedicated by Darius Ogden Mills who wrote, “the Rotunda of our State Capitol [Sacramento, California] is an appropriate place for a work of art commemorating an event that had so great an influence on the destinies of the western world.” Photo: A Yee

It has always been the British, including the “cultural thought-police” associated with the British Museum, who have tried to downplay and dismantle the Italian Renaissance: to undermine its successful expedition to explore new lands, and to obfuscate and deny its mission to construct, “in a new world,” a new and better sovereign nation-state, superior to those of Europe.

The United States of America eventually became that nation-state. This was a central, conscious part of the grand project of discovery, of Cusa, Toscanelli, and Christopher Columbus. There was nothing mistaken in that intention.

There is also nothing “sincerely mistaken” about this Dark Age movement to “bring down the statue.” The Aug. 29 beheading of a statue of Columbus in the city of Yonkers, New York, reminds one of the beheading of 28 statues of religious figures in one day in October 1793, during the French Revolution—the same month that Marie Antoinette was guillotined. They called their movement “The Cult of Reason.”

Similarly, it was the 1950s Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) which actually tried to abolish culture and our historical roots from the 1950s on, and now apparently inspires gangs of protesters who, similar to ISIS in Palmyra and other jewels of culture in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, are out to destroy monuments and statues which remind the population of its inheritance. Beauty, in the classical, aesthetical sense, disturbs them.

Columbus and his trip of discovery was the result of the Italian Renaissance, which is, to this day, an important reference point for each Italian citizen in a moment of great crisis.

This is why there was an uproar here in Italy, and rightly so also in the Italian-American community in the United States, when we heard that a statue of Columbus was knocked down and that there are petitions to abolish Columbus Day and the Columbus Parade on Fifth Avenue.

Statue of Christopher Columbus. Onondaga County courthouse in background, Syracuse, NY. Photo: Ed (Goosefriend)

What will be next? Tear down the city of Columbus in Ohio, which I visited years ago to admire its Columbus statue? Tear down the Brunelleschi Dome in Florence? Or the statue of Leonardo da Vinci in front of La Scala in Milan, which shows how Leonardo was not only a Renaissance genius, engineer, and painter, but also invented Bel Canto with his treatise, De Vocie, on the human voice?

We trust that you will intervene to defend this historical heritage, which cannot be forgotten, but should rather inspire a new Renaissance in culture, leading to scientific and economic cooperation between the United States and the rest of the world, including Russia and China. As Italians, we also call on you to keep our electoral promise and reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, which would not only stop speculation and free up credit to build urgently needed infrastructure, but would also put an end to the excessive power of Wall Street, which is certainly behind, and financing, such misguided grass-roots campaigns. We are hoping to do the same here, and thus to jointly work with your Administration and other nations on new discoveries worthy of the true legacy of Christopher Columbus and Western civilization.

Liliana Gorini
Chairwoman of the Movimento Internazionale per i Diritti Civili Solidarietà (Movisol),
Milan, Italy

Learn more:
The discovery of the Americas and the Renaissance scientific project
The ‘Toscanelli Project’ factor in the Christopher Columbus story