Fascist and Anti-Fascist Propaganda in America: The Dispatches o ...

My archival sources convinced me to organize my research more systematically, and I began working on the present book. In the meantime, the present generation of scholars began emerging: Ronald H. Bayor, Stefano Luconi, Philip V. Cannistraro, Claudia Damiani, Gian Giacomo Migoni, Anna Maria Martellone, Grazia Dore, Gianpiero Carocci, Gianfausto Rosoli, Donna R. Gabaccia, Alexander J. De Grand, and Emilio Franzina, among others. They have given a further impetus and added new dimensions to the study of Italian American Fascism and anti Fascism in the United States. Their research and work indicate the life and vibrancy of the historiography of Fascism and anti Fascism in America.

I based this book on first hand, original, and archival documents uncovered in Italian and American national archives. It presents to the national and international audience of scholars and readers a clear view of the causes of the dissemination of Fascism in the United States from 1922 to 1940.

While some sectors of America’s public saw in Fascism an ideological movement requiring alignment and conformity to Mussolini’s doctrine and discipline, most Italian Americans welcomed Fascism as a movement that emphasized Italian patriotism and a newly found national identity—an antidote to and defense against American nativism, xenophobia, and the paranoid stigma that victimized the entire Italian American community.

The book underscores the notion that none of the activities of the Italian American Fascist associations organized in the United States had political designs. Contrary to some interpretations, still in vogue, Fascism in America never assumed conspiratorial tones. Fascist organizations in the United States were plagued by factionalism, internal struggles, and heterogeneity. Moreover, the presence in the United States of a vocal anti Fascist movement, the International Anti Fascist League of North America, prevented Fascism from developing an efficient propaganda network throughout the United States. Beset by internal factionalism, personal feuds, ambassadorial and consular conflicts, and frequent clashes with anti Fascist groups, Fascism in the United States never emerged as a political ideology capable of creating an alternative to American democracy.