The Newspapers, the Fasces, and the Ballots: The Ethnic Press and Italian Americans’ Political Behavior during the Fascist Regime
The Italian ethnic press played a significant role in facilitating Italian Americans’ accommodation within U.S. society. Articles in the native language introduced the immigrants and their children to the host country and helped them understand a reality that could be rather obscure.
The assimilation process included politics, too. Newspapers stressed the inclusiveness of the U.S. electoral system and urged immigrants to apply for American citizenship and to register for the vote. As they put it, going to the polls would enable Italian Americans to assert themselves and to protect their rights. That encouragement, however, also benefited the editors and publishers, who often acted as brokers between their community and the Democratic and Republican parties. Still, full Americanization would have deprived the Italian-language press of its sense of purpose and would have undermined the editors’ and publishers’ leadership position. Thus, newspapers tried to strengthen their readers’ ethnic identity and allegiance to the motherland, too. Against this backdrop, electoral participation was presented as a means to influence Washington’s stand to the profit of Italy.This approach also fitted Benito Mussolini’s interests. Fascism funded many ethnic newspapers to build consensus for the regime among Italian Americans and to turn them into a political lobby calling for the alignment of U.S. foreign policy with the goals of the Italian dictatorship. Yet, harmonizing U.S. democracy and fascism in Italian Americans’ eyes was no easy task. On the one hand, reflecting Mussolini’s ideological anti-Americanism, a few ethnic newspapers interfered with the immigrants’ political accommodation. They offered a gloomy characterization of American representative democracy and depicted the U.S. political system as a plutocracy controlled by a handful of financiers and entrepreneurs who marginalized ordinary people in the decision-making process. On the other hand, they rushed to distance themselves from fascism as soon as World War II loomed on the horizon.
Stefano Luconi è Professore Associato di Storia degli Stati Uniti presso il Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Geografiche e dell’Antichità dell’Università di Padova, dove insegna Storia degli Stati Uniti d’America e Storia dell’America del Nord. Dopo il dottorato in Studi Americani all’Università di Roma Tre (1994), ha insegnato in numerosi atenei italiani, tra cui Genova, Firenze, Bologna-Forlì, Roma Tor Vergata, Pisa e Napoli L’Orientale. Le sue ricerche spaziano dall’immigrazione italiana negli Stati Uniti all’antisemitismo, dalle relazioni Italia–USA alla storia afroamericana, fino alla politica elettorale statunitense. Tra i suoi volumi si segnalano From Paesani to White Ethnics (2001), The Italian-American Vote in Providence, Rhode Island (2004), La “nazione indispensabile” (2020) e L’anima nera degli Stati Uniti (2023). Fa parte dei comitati editoriali di Altreitalie, Forum Italicum e Italian American Review.
