Socialist Muslim Mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani (D) is under fire for not including Little Italy in the tourism bureau’s ethnic enclaves map of the five boroughs. It also left out Greek, Irish, and Jewish enclaves.

NYC Tourism + Conventions posted the map, titled “New York City Immigrant Enclaves,” citing its source as the New York City Mayor’s Office, highlighting 30 neighborhoods around the Big Apple, including Little Yemen, Little Palestine, and Little Pakistan on its website. Italian Americans in New York — as well as people on social media — were surprised to discover that Little Italy was not included, despite the rich Italian heritage of the city.

“Italians built that city. From the late 1800s to the 1920s, Italians came over about 4 million of them, including my great grandfather. And they arrived in America via Ellis Island. And they were poor and they were discriminated against. …And they tried with all their might to blend in and do this thing called ‘assimilate,’” posted political commentator, reporter and Daily Wire media personality Chloe Trapanotto in a video on X Friday. “They built the subways and the bridges and the tunnels. They brought a food culture that became quintessentially American. …When you think of New York City, you think of pizza. Where do you think you got pizza from?”

Of the 30 enclaves represented on the list, seven correlate with predominantly Muslim countries around the world, including Senegal, Egypt, and Bangladesh. Zero Jewish enclaves are represented. 

Mamdani, a self-described Shia Muslim, follows a religious teaching that rejects Christianity and Judaism. The enclave of Little Italy in New York City represents the European country of Italy, home to a Christian majority. Frustrated locals say this won’t help his anti-Semitic reputation. Recently, Mamdani received backlash after he defended the use of the phrase “globalize the intifada” last month. 

After this, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) stated, “[Mamdani] is unfit to lead a city with 1.3 million Jews — the largest Jewish population outside of Israel,” reported NBC News. 

“So, according to Mamdani’s calculus, if you ‘American dream’ a little bit too hard, your history just gets erased from his maps. The point of legal immigration is that you come over here for a better way of life. You assimilate, and then you adopt this American lifestyle. Mamdani and his fellow communists hate America, and they hate the West,” Trapanotto said. “And that’s why they’re almost rewarding those who do not acquiesce. … He’s trying to erase our history and replace it with the idea that the Third World built New York City, and they didn’t. If my great Grandpa Joe could see this now, he would turn his boat right back around to Sicily.”

In another video on X, President of the Italian American Civil Rights League Mike Crispi captioned his post about rejecting communism. 

“Why would he [Zohran] leave out Little Italy. Oh, it’s because he detests Italian Americans. Why does he detest Italian Americans? It’s because we stand for everything he is against,” Crispi argued. “We assimilated. We left our cultures behind. And we said, ‘We love America.’ We adopted the American way. That’s why the Italian Americans and other groups in New York City who built the city are being whitewashed by Zohran today.”

On Thursday, The Free Press took to X to post a video montage of interviews conducted in NYC Little Italy following the map controversy. 

One interviewee said he believes Mamdani is disgraceful. “He’s not fair to the Jewish people, which he makes everybody notice. He’s not fair to the Jewish people. He’s not fair to the Irish people. And now he hates the Italians. For what reason? What do we do to him that he should hate us?”

Another interviewee described the charm of Little Italy, remarking, “There’s no such thing as left or right down here [in Little Italy]. Both sides of the street are beautiful.”

Amid the controversy, the City Council’s Italian Caucus called for the map to be amended on Thursday. The group proclaimed in a statement: “You cannot tell the story of immigrant New York while airbrushing out one of the city’s most recognizable and historically significant immigrant communities.”

On Friday, Mamdani addressed the situation, saying in an unrelated press conference that the map will be edited to include Little Italy, after pointing out that the original map “clearly” was not meant to be a complete list of all of the enclaves, but not before blaming former Mayor of New York City Eric Adams for making the map. 

According to the New York Post, the Adams administration never made such a map. 

Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) wrote on Wednesday in The Washington Examiner, “Heritage should unite us, not divide us. New York’s greatness has never been that it remained a collection of separate enclaves. Its greatness is that generations of immigrants became neighbors, coworkers, police officers, teachers, entrepreneurs, soldiers, and fellow Americans.”