Following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared the attack a “premediated invasion”Footnote 1 and invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to classify non-US citizens of Japanese, German, and Italian descent as alien enemies. The subsequent arrest, detention, forced removal, and internment of individuals from these ethnic groups, alien enemies and citizens alike, resulted in one of the worst violations of civil liberties and constitutional rights in American history, with the Japanese case being the most extreme in terms of the number impacted and the extent to which these wartimes measures were carried out.Footnote 2 Although all targeted groups sought to reclassify their status as alien enemy, this was not a unified cause. An antifascist leadership assumed the helm of an Italian American in-group mission to serve and protect their own following American entry into the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor. This article considers these efforts to be a movement – the “reclassification movement.”Footnote 3 The strategies employed therein were, as a result of the above, designed to maximize ethnic-specific resonance. For the movement’s actors, success was pegged to an Italian American demonstration of a singular loyalty to the United States. This rallying call ultimately meant that people of Italian descent, a term inclusive of American-born citizens, Italian-born naturalized American citizens, and Italian-born non-naturalized residents of the United States, would have to fight their parentela and fight on Italian territory.Footnote 4 Undoubtably, for any ethnic group, the notion of having to fight against the ancestral homeland in the name of the adopted one is a charged prospect. But for this ethnic group, the dilemma was further complicated by attempts by the fascist project in the United States to affirm its ancestral ties to an Italian identity and destiny.Footnote 5
Scholars have long held the view that this process was an easy one.Footnote 6 The conventional argument is that the attack on Pearl Harbor marked the turning point for the people of Italian descent, whereby they immediately dropped, without contestation or conflict, their affection for, affiliation with, and allegiance to Mussolini and the Italian fascist state. However, this generally accepted conclusion fails to provide a line of reasoning to support this claim, outside the simple notion that the war acted as a forcing function for this ethnic group. The only logical takeaway is that the fascist project in the United States, even if the links made to the ancestral homeland were more emotional than ideological and the depths of attachment to Italy varied across generational lines, did not have lasting and/or lingering implications for the people of Italian descent, or complicate the prospect of fighting their own on Italian soil. But the antifascist Italian American leaders seeking to reclassify Italian alien enemies, who had been at the forefront of countering fascist propaganda and had witnessed its impact on their ethnic community for almost two decades, assessed the situation quite differently.Footnote 7 They understood that bonds of these types had been “cultivated for centuries” and would therefore “not die quickly and certainly not easily.”Footnote 8 They recognized that an American conflict with Italy would be particularly difficult for “our good and old ones,”Footnote 9 but would also yield unease for immigrants and their children alike.Footnote 10 They determined, regardless of disagreements about the degree of fascist entrenchment amongst their fellow ethnics,Footnote 11 that a neat resolution did not suddenly prevail with the advent of war. They were concerned about the capability of the masses to organically mobilize on behalf on the “right” side of history. The figures involved with the reclassification movement, from government officials to ethnic brokers, were unified in concluding that in order for the people of Italian descent to display a singular loyalty to the American war effort, they would have to be actively guided towards recognizing the dangers of Mussolini and Italian fascism, and reconciling their contested allegiances.Footnote 12 In turn, they sought to shift the Italian American worldview, to one in which fighting “the flesh of their flesh” was understood not as an act of treason and/or fratricide but rather as a patriotic duty in service to the ancestral homeland.Footnote 13 These movement actors tapped into the preexisting cultural database to make their pitch resonate amongst the masses.
Several Italian narratives were reworked for the above purpose. This article is focussed on one of the narratives, the barbarian-invasion narrative, and on how it was used by Luigi Rocco Antonini, the president of the Italian-American Labor Council (IALC), to mobilize this ethnic group. Variants of this narrative have been used throughout Italian history to maximize ethnocentric patriotism by framing foreigners as hostile forces and as threats to the purity of the nation. Antonini constructed a new version, a paradox in relation to the legal status and political climate that framed his fellow ethnics as dangerous outsiders, to realize reclassification for his own people. In this wartime iteration, Benito Mussolini and his pro-fascist allies were framed as the barbarians who had invaded Italy. The objective of this reworked narrative was to persuade the people of Italian descent to fight on behalf of the United States and of the ancestral homeland to end foreign oppression. The resonance of this variant was recognized by the federal government and subsequently appropriated by the Roosevelt administration to maintain extreme loyalty from this ethnic bloc.
I first detail the pro-fascist efforts in the United States, explain the emergence of the reclassification movement, describe the singular importance of Antonini to movement success and his alliance with FDR, and outline the federally supported strategies employed by the IALC to fulfill its demands. Subsequent sections provide an analysis of the new barbarian-invasion narrative. I explore its utility by the Italian fascist state, explain its construction by Antonini, evaluate its resonance in reconciling the dilemma as a self-evident and favorable course of action, and illustrate the means by which the Roosevelt administration appropriated this variant in pursuit of continued ethnic mobilization. To this end, I examine the mobilizing discourse with a close reading of the speeches given by Antonini on his radio broadcast Voice of Local 89 that were reprinted in the most widely read and nationally distributed ethnic newspaper, Il Progresso Italo-Americano, over the course of the reclassification movement; the performances given at the marquee event for the IALC on 31 January 1942; and the “Americans of Italian Origins” address delivered by Attorney General Francis B. Biddle on 12 October 1942. It is not within the scope of this article to directly tie the removal of the Italian alien enemy status to the new version of the barbarian-invasion narrative. However, I do suggest possible implications, in terms of favorable movement outcomes, and the longer-term effects on this ethnic group and the American body politic.
Italian American support for Italian fascism and Mussolini
Reclassification leaders, who were primarily drawn from the Italian American antifascist front, had to combat the implications of the fascist project in the United States, which rendered this ethnic group largely in favor of Mussolini.Footnote 14 These efforts, led by officials in the Italian fascist state and the prominenti in the United States,Footnote 15 were empowered, for the most part of the interwar period, by the American embrace of fascism. Various sympathetic groups understood fascism to be a more effective approach, at least in theory, to meeting the challenges brought by modernity. In other words, fascist sympathies in the United States were reflective of anxieties deeply felt by Americans at large.Footnote 16 The American government also largely viewed Mussolini as a force of stability, who could safeguard Europe from communism, act as a strong statesman for Italy, and be an economic and diplomatic partner for the United States.Footnote 17 The presidential administrations of Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and FDR, until the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, maintained friendly relations with the Italian fascist state, and refrained from issuing any public critique or rebuke of the illiberal rise of Mussolini and his regime.Footnote 18 As a consequence, this type of legitimization enabled the agents of the fascist project to secure the means to indoctrinate people of Italian descent. Actors in the Italian American antifascist movement, despite their persistent efforts to disrupt the lines of communication to their fellow ethnics and challenge fascist influence in the United States during the interwar period, were unable to penetrate this type of hold over people of Italian descent.Footnote 19
Pro-fascist actors pursued several channels to disseminate propaganda. First, the Italian American prominenti, who often worked in tandem with Italian authorities, utilized ethnic media in the United States to impart the fascist party line and present a favorable image of Mussolini.Footnote 20 Generoso Pope, the owner and editor of the nationally distributed ethnic newspaper Il Progresso Italo-Americano (Italian American Progress), was the most critical prominente in the above pursuit. He instrumentalized his publication, which had the largest Italian American readership, without peer, to act as the regime’s “mouthpiece in America,”Footnote 21 for which he was compensated with clout and reverence in the ancestral homeland. Second, prominent American Catholic clergy endorsed a favorable view of Italian fascism, most notably Father Charles E. Coughlin, which, as a result, contributed to a generally positive American Catholic opinion on Mussolini.Footnote 22 Although there were a number of antifascist clergy who pronounced their dissent and rejection,Footnote 23 the majority view held for most of the interwar period. The religious embrace of Mussolini provided the tacit consent and the conditions for Roman Catholic churches in the United States to evolve into spaces wherein fascist ideas, alongside biblical tenets, were promoted and, in turn, political bonds, not just cultural ones, were forged amongst ethnic parishioners.Footnote 24 Third, fascist organizations abroad (fasci di combattimento) established in 1922 provided opportunities for members to rally around and meet in support of fascism.Footnote 25 Lastly, pro-fascist actors adopted a cultural approach to garner support from Italians abroad. This meant that a variety of outlets, such as summer camps, textbooks, and Italian-language maintenance programs in parochial schools, were utilized for this end.Footnote 26
Pro-fascist actors tailored propaganda to counter derogatory Italian American tropes.Footnote 27 And this pitch was resonant. It resonated with people of Italian descent by offering them an opportunity to counter anti-Italian sentiment, nativistic stereotypes, and heightened xenophobia in the period following the First World War. The fascist project in the United States was also effective in providing a form of redress to unite the diasporic Italian population around a common cause and move them away from regionalism by affirming a unified national identity. Its success thereby lay in mobilizing the masses in the name of “nostalgic nationalism,”Footnote 28 rather than enacting a collective shift towards an ideological embrace of fascism. The structure also allowed for all members of the Italian American community, regardless of generational or citizenship status, to have a stake in this project by not conflicting with American patriotism. The propaganda enjoined people of Italian descent to commit to their civic duties and responsibilities in the United States. This strategy was solidified by Mussolini in the 1930s to maintain favorable relations with the American government and organize the masses as a lobbying force on behalf of the Italian fascist state.Footnote 29 The messaging encouraged its target audience to engage in American political life. This foreign-policy directive was intended to widen the opportunity for Mussolini to tap into human capital outside Italy, but it also, inadvertently, provided flexibility for people of Italian descent who were further removed, either generationally or psychologically, from their ancestral homeland to develop both their American and Italian identities. In this respect, people of Italian descent could embrace American life without sacrificing their commitment to the Italian cause. This prescription fostered bonds of the type requisite for Mussolini to consolidate his power within Italian American communities.
Even when the Roosevelt administration began to distance itself from Mussolini and critique the regime in public, a significant portion of the ethnic community demonstrated their loyalty to Italy. In 1935, FDR expressed his disapproval of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and, in response, many people of Italian descent donated their wedding rings to fund Mussolini’s imperial ambitions and wrote letters to the President on behalf of Italian interests.Footnote 30 In 1940, FDR suggested in a speech that Mussolini was traitorous by officially joining Hitler; in response, voters of Italian descent began to retreat from the Democratic Party.Footnote 31 And as the United States edged closer to war with Italy, the prospect of a military conflict with the ancestral homeland loomed heavy in Italian American communities. People of Italian descent, albeit to a lesser degree with each successive generation, remained in a state of limbo that left many of them feeling “not too hot”Footnote 32 about the war and thinking about this conflict as “a special kind of war” – “a civil war”Footnote 33 – and hoping against the increasingly likely odds that they would have to meet their brethren on the battlefield.Footnote 34
The reclassification movement
Reclassification leaders organized a movement in response to the issuance of Presidential Proclamation 2527 by FDR on 8 December 1941. This wartime policy restricted the rights and movements of non-naturalized Italian immigrants, aged fourteen years and above, who were living in the United States, and classified these individuals as alien enemies. The approximately 700,000 Italian alien enemies living across the United States were subjected to regulations concerning travel and the possession of items deemed contraband, and other restrictions.Footnote 35 This executive action, alongside Presidential Proclamations 2525 and 2526 that respectively categorized non-naturalized Japanese and German immigrants as alien enemies, granted the Attorney General and the Secretary of War full discretion to detain and/or deport any alien enemy that they deemed to be suspicious and/or dangerous. The reclassification movement also sought to remove additional wartime measures that were enacted in early 1942. First, FDR issued Presidential Proclamation 2537 on 14 January 1942 to require alien enemies “to apply for and acquire certificates of identification,” and to “at all times have his identification card on his person.”Footnote 36 Second, FDR issued Executive Order 9066 on 19 February 1942 to authorize the Secretary of War to “designate” and “to prescribe military areas,” and empowered him with the full discretion to exclude “any or all persons” and determine the “right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave.”Footnote 37 This wartime measure led to the forced removal and internment of alien enemies and American citizens of alien enemy descent in camps in the United States. Although the people of Japanese descent were disproportionately impacted, all targeted ethnic groups were subjected to these wartime measures.
FDR derived the basis for these powers from the surviving statute of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 – the Alien Enemies Act.Footnote 38 This law, similar in objective to the others in the series, sought to counter fears related to threats of domestic subversion from disloyal elements, both foreign and homegrown. The Federalists who led this charge established the grounds for future Presidents to exercise greater power during times of political turmoil and uncertainty, such as “war … invasion or predatory incursion.”Footnote 39 This tension between national security and freedom, which has existed since the start of the republic and been deliberated by all branches of government, was most exacerbated at heightened periods of xenophobia and nativism. The threat of foreign radicalism on American soil during the First World War led to the passing of the Espionage Act of 1917 by the US Congress, which curtailed the First Amendment right to the freedom of speech.Footnote 40 The suspicion of aliens with roots in the Axis Powers at the start of the Second World War resulted in the passing of the Alien Registration Act in June 1940, which required non-naturalized residents to register with the authorities, to be fingerprinted, to carry an identification card, and to be aware of stricter regulations concerning seditious talk.Footnote 41 It was in this latter climate of national anxiety that more specific measures were taken by federal agencies to gather intelligence on potential subversives based on ethnicity and ethnic affiliation. The preemptive work of the FBI in compiling the Custodial Detention Index (CDI) was drawn upon to build the “ABC” list of potential suspect persons with ancestral ties to belligerent nations in 1941 and laid the foundation for the design and swift implementation of the wartime measures regarding alien enemies.Footnote 42
These wartime measures impacted the Italian American community at large, despite differences amongst members regarding citizenship status and/or generation. First, the classification of Italian alien enemies exacerbated preexisting ethnic and racist presumptions about this group that only added to the stigmatization and othering of its people. Second, the FBI raided homes, irrespective of citizenship status, across state lines. People of Italian descent watched as family members, friends, and neighbors were arrested without charge and without a search warrant.Footnote 43 Many Italian American families also comprised members across generations and with different citizenship status. This meant that families were torn apart, loved ones were left with unanswered questions,Footnote 44 and some restrictions were applicable to American citizens of Italian descent living with alien enemy family members, such as the possession of items deemed contraband pursuant to Presidential Proclamation 2527.Footnote 45 Executive Order 9066 also led to the mass evacuation of over ten thousand people of Italian descent who resided on the West CoastFootnote 46 – this number is inclusive of both Italian alien enemies and American citizens of Italian descent because mixed-citizen families often moved together.Footnote 47 This not only had an impact on the evacuees, but also ignited panic in Italian American communities across the United States.Footnote 48 All Italian Americans were touched to some extent by these wartime measures, either firsthand, as witnesses, and/or through hearsay. Their anxiety was thereby collectively held, even if it was more acutely experienced by the older generations and those without American citizenship.Footnote 49
Antonini and FDR
Antonini, the vice president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), immediately responded to the classification of Italian alien enemies by organizing his fellow trade union leaders around the mission to “protect and defend the Italians in America against unjust discrimination” on 20 December 1941 in New York City.Footnote 50 The IALC advocated for the restrictions pursuant to Presidential Proclamation 2527 to be lifted early and for pressuring the Roosevelt administration to halt the expansion of forced removal from the East Coast by mobilizing Italian Americans to enlist in the US military. He understood that fear alone – the instinct to avoid arrest, detainment, and/or internment; to avoid shame and dishonor; and to maintain intact families – was a significant force, but it was not enough for the people of Italian descent to genuinely reconcile the dilemma of having to fight against the ancestral homeland.
Antonini was in an ideal position to lead this charge. He built reputational capital as a prominent antifascist ethnic broker, and a champion of unions and democracy through his work at the ILGWU, wherein radical, ethnic, and feminist politics found expression through organized challenges to the oppression of capitalist conditions and societal injustices.Footnote 51 He started as a garment presser after emigrating to the United States in 1908 from the town of Vallata Irpina in the Campania region of Italy, and ascended the ranks to lead his own local for Italian dress and waist makers local 89 in 1919 and to serve as the vice president of the ILGWU in 1934. He rose to positions of union leadership by demonstrating his political instinct to understand realities on the ground, to leverage power in clever ways, and to communicate effectively with his audience. His efforts to protect his fellow ethnics from capitalist exploitation, and from the dangers of Mussolini and the Italian fascist state, alongside an accumulation of resources and political connections, afforded him an unparalleled position among his peers and cemented his role as the leading figure of the antifascist Italian American movement in the United States.Footnote 52
The Roosevelt administration recognized Antonini as a valuable asset in the interwar period. For FDR, Antonini was instrumental in securing his ethnic coalition. For Antonini, besides the obvious political boon of a favorable relationship with a President, the policies of the New Deal were critical to the future of unions, specifically the National Industrial Recovery Act, which provided a lifeline to the ILGWU.Footnote 53 This alliance afforded Antonini a direct channel to the White House and FDR a loyal ally within the Italian American community. In the months leading up to the American intervention in the Second World War, the President leaned more heavily on Antonini, rather than the prominenti. FDR had previously valued Pope as the most significant player in Italian American affairs and prioritized his alliance with him, secured through an informal agreement to support their respective interests in the mid-1930s, to maintain and extend his hold over this ethnic bloc.Footnote 54 But FDR recognized that his ties to these pro-fascist ethnic brokers, especially Pope, were deeply problematic and thus politically untenable at this moment. Consequently, Antonini emerged in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor as the optimal candidate to represent the people of Italian descent during wartime and in a post-Mussolini/post-fascist world.Footnote 55
The IALC put forward a plan to guide the people of Italian descent towards a new common sense whereby the idea of fighting against “the flesh of their flesh” in the name of the United States was rendered free of any contradictions and resonated as truth,Footnote 56 without question, and to shift people of Italian descent away from their preexisting links to Mussolini and towards a singular loyalty to the United States. This plan stressed that this realization would be achieved with a top-down approach, and not by collaborative means, such as dialogue or debate. It prioritized tactics that would shift popular beliefs through a cultural offensive designed and waged, with consistency, by those with greater power within the IALC than the masses. To reach the largest swath of the Italian American community, the IALC targeted the media. The IALC sought to expunge ties to Mussolini and the Italian fascist state, and to carry out its aim by “crystallizing,” “impressing a clear understanding,” and “inculcating in the minds” of the masses a new common sense through these various channels.Footnote 57
Antonini might have been, as the IALC secretary Joseph Catalanotti recognized him to be, the “one man, that great spark-plug,”Footnote 58 who spearheaded the efforts to reclassify Italian alien enemies through a cultural offensive, but in a short time he was not alone in advocating for this strategy. This strategy also informed and shaped the initiatives put forward by the Foreign Language Division (FLD) within the Office of War Information (OWI), which was tasked with the OWI’s aims of countering misinformation, propagated by both domestic and foreign forces, and controlling the flow of information to alien and ethnic groups.Footnote 59 The FLD took an active role in facilitating Italian American mobilization by providing ethnic brokers with the necessary political interventions, resources, and legitimacy to carry out this project on the ground.
By spring 1942, the IALC and the OWI were collaborating with one another to execute the above. On 12 October 1942, the claim of the movement was met, with the Attorney General formally announcing the reclassification of non-naturalized Italian immigrants, and the lifting of regulations and restrictions pursuant to Presidential Proclamation 2527. But this did not mark the end of federal efforts to energize the Italian American base and to continue mobilizing this ethnic group to secure American wartime interests. Biddle relied upon discursive means, inclusive of the barbarian-invasion narrative, to extract continued commitment and cultural expertise from Italian Americans to defeat fascism in the Mediterranean theater of war.
The barbarian-invasion discourse
The theme of victimization is deeply rooted within Italian nationalist discourse. Since Roman antiquity, political actors have mined it to mobilize the masses in support of Italian liberation from foreign rule. As for Mussolini, he appropriated the idea of the dangers of outsiders to present the failures of the liberal government, the Italian experience in the First World War, and the perceived snubs in the postwar period by the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles as evidence of sustained Italian oppression by hostile external forces.Footnote 60 He offered a second chance at reclamation through fascism to fulfil the revolutionary goal of securing Italian destiny. But in this imaginary, a Third Rome was expected to be a model society, without equal – a futuristic state, which expressed its supremacy through its military might, imperial ambitions, and projects of reclamation.Footnote 61 Mussolini marked the seizure of the city of Rome as the denouement of the battle for Italian greatness and the metaphoric slaying of barbarian influence.
Fascist legions never technically marched on Rome on 28 October 1922. Mussolini only leveraged the threat of insurrection to extract the most consequential of concessions from King Victor Emmanuel III – his appointment as prime minister. But he presented the March on Rome as the foundational act of the regime and the advent of a Third Rome, wherein Italy would restore its homogeneity and eradicate the legacy of foreign occupation. Mussolini declared to his followers in anticipation of this moment that the fascist revolution would be “Roman and Latin” in nature, and “without Tartar or Muscovite influences.”Footnote 62 Mussolini assured the people in the crowds, who gathered at Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan to witness the establishment of the Fascio di Combattimento, that the drive towards an Italian fascist state would be “neither military nor German, but simply Roman.”Footnote 63 He reaffirmed the notion of an Italian greatness by proclaiming that “we [the people of Italy] are not the ones copying the Germans, but rather it is they who have always copied the Romans.”Footnote 64 The March on Rome came to symbolize in fascist discourse the end of foreign infiltration and an assimilatory stance on nonnative people, as Mussolini declared, “we are returning to our origins, to the Roman, Latin and Mediterranean style,”Footnote 65 and that Rome will be “purified, disinfected of all elements that corrupt and sully it; we seek to make Rome the beating heart, the vigorous spirit of the imperial Italy of which we dream.”Footnote 66 In this presentation, the era of barbarian rule in the motherland was officially over with the March on Rome.
The fascist agenda prioritized projects of reclamation, through various domestic initiatives, to secure Italian dominance in the wake of centuries-long foreign oppression, and, in turn, to remake Italy in the Mussolinian image of a Third Rome. This cautionary tale of invaders also found immediate resonance in advancing the imperial project in the 1930s, as the call to reclaim rightful land, defend its classical treasures therein, demonstrate military superiority, and restore cultural primacy were neatly mapped onto the narrative of the civilized Roman versus the barbarian. However, the fascist alliance with National Socialism complicated this Italian reading of history, as the Germans were the barbarian heirs. To reconcile this problematic impasse in the existing interpretation, various tacks were taken by fascists to recast the dynamic in a more favorable light, whereby these two forces were necessary in the making of Italian greatness.Footnote 67 But regardless of the creative efforts to spin the narrative in support of a strong Italo-German front, the core of it remained the same, insofar as the singularity of the Italian spirit, genius, and destiny were still prioritized.Footnote 68
This narrative, wherein native supremacy over hostile external forces renders a third iteration of Italian greatness, was central to the propaganda disseminated to the Italian American public. The notion of defending the motherland from outside intervention, told across various media and throughout the interwar period, resonated with this ethnic enclave.Footnote 69 It provided an opportunity for the people of Italian descent to affirm their character and purpose in the face of their own struggle with antiforeign sentiment in the United States.Footnote 70 Fascists operatives instrumentalized the appeal of this imaginary to mobilize the masses in support of the interests of the Italian fascist state, and to consolidate the power of Mussolini in Italy and abroad.
The antifascist Italian American barbarian-invasion narrative
The protean nature of the barbarian-invasion narrative offered Antonini a familiar discursive tool to make the case to the people of Italian descent that they were justified in seeking to defend their motherland. To this end, he presented the March on Rome as another barbarian breach of Italian territory. Just as the Romans faced sieges and sacks by the Germanic tribes in late antiquity, Antonini argued that his fellow antifascist ethnics have “been in a state of continuous, unremitting war against Mussolini and his bloody regime since a treacherous king opened the gates of Rome to him 1922.”Footnote 71 In this variant, the failure of King Victor Emmanuel III to declare martial law, and his cowering in the face of the threat of insurrection, made possible the establishment of a new barbarian kingdom – the Italian fascist state. And just like the far-reaching implications of such acts on the Roman Empire, Antonini, who was among the group of antifascists who took Mussolini seriously and rightfully understood the dangers of this event,Footnote 72 presented the March on Rome as the advent of a new form of barbarian oppression, which did not revive the “beating heart” of his ancestral homeland, but instead nearly broke it.Footnote 73
Antonini articulated this narrative to his largest audience at the Freedom Rally held at Madison Square Garden on 31 January 1942, the inaugural event of the IALC which drew an estimated twenty thousand attendees of Italian descent.Footnote 74 The event attracted media attention at local, state, national, and international levels, and garnered the public support and commendation of FDR and officials in New York State.Footnote 75 Antonini proclaimed in his speech, “we call upon our brothers over there [in Italy], from the Alps to Sicily, to break their chains, to drive the barbarian invader from the fair land of our fathers.”Footnote 76 The first draft of his speech indicted a “Teutonic invader,” but he edited the final version to read, “barbarian invader.”Footnote 77 This correction might seem insignificant at first glance, but attention to this word choice (considering that there are very few pen-and-pencil corrections to the reading transcripts relative to the approximately two thousand pages of speeches that he typed within this ten-month period) speaks to the import he ascribed to eliciting a sense of collective urgency amongst his fellow ethnics with more culturally resonant imagery.
Antonini continued to build the narrative of a barbarian invasion throughout the reclassification movement to coalesce as a new variant. First, Antonini framed Mussolini as a barbarian by casting him as foreign to the expectations of the contemporary Italian man. For this purpose, he appropriated the fascist imagery of the new masculine protype as “disciplined and collectively oriented, virile and militaristic,”Footnote 78 as a means to dislodge Mussolini from his heroic status and emasculate him to people of Italian descent. Antonini pitted him in opposition to the traits that were supposed to be embodied by the new Italian, with “courage first of all; fearlessness, love of risk, dislike of shirking [panciafichismo] and pacifism; [and] always being ready to dare in private and collective life.”Footnote 79 Antonini thereby rendered his profile to be reflective of the moral decay of the past, as he was portrayed as “individualistic and anarchic, unmanly and unwilling to fight.”Footnote 80
To discredit the notion that his actions were disciplined and collectively oriented, Antonini painted Mussolini as a slave to his narcissism, from which all flowed. Antonini explained that his rallies, wherein he mobilized the masses from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, were evidence of this psyche, as he used this platform as a performative tool to feed his own insecurities, rather than attend to the collective need. He described how Mussolini “struts out on the balcony of Palazzo Venezia and dares to declare war on mighty America! And naturally speaks a few minutes before Hitler, because, as the ‘Forgotten man’ of the Axis gang, he hopes to get a little much-needed publicity.”Footnote 81 Antonini illustrated this arrogance and attention-seeking behavior by imaging alongside his audience that Mussolini was “once again bragging from the balcony overlooking Piazza Venezia,”Footnote 82 but also added that he was “grinding his frightening jaws as any perfect bully [Ammazzasette] and unreasonable person does, declaring war to super-power America.”Footnote 83 Likening Mussolini to the Italian character of Ammazzasette was intended to cast him as a master of manipulation and cunning. The protagonist of this popular fable is generally understood to be a clever player in extracting advances from various forms of manipulation, with his original act of deceit being a lie about killing seven enemies, when in reality it was seven flies – not seven people – which, after many twists and turns filled with trickery, ends with his appointment as king. This comparison served to strengthen the imagery of Mussolini as a man singularly oriented to his own interests, who could not resist his individual will for the good of the nation, and thus consolidated power through an Ammazzasette-like tall tale. In this respect, Antonini was able to argue that Mussolini was a specter of the old Italian, rather than the coming of a new one. Following this line of reasoning, he assured his listeners that Mussolini would leave no legacy for other Italians to follow, as he argued that even now “the world had forgotten about him!”Footnote 84
To undercut his claims of exemplary virility and militarism, Antonini proclaimed that it was Mussolini and his fascist accomplices who were, in fact, the “cowards, and therefore accuse all others of being coward.”Footnote 85 He called him an “idiot” and a “goner” who acts out of a fear of risk, rather than out of a love of it, as he told his listeners, “[Mussolini] has rushed to obey unquestioningly to his Berlinese master.”Footnote 86 Mussolini was defined as a weak man – one who dares not to go against the will of his superiors or act in defense of his own convictions. The implication was that his natural disposition is to shirk away in the face of intimidation or threat. Not only is he portrayed as a subordinate, but the notion of him as a modern-day Caesar was completely debunked. Antonini tore into the fascist claim that Mussolini embodied manliness with his warlike valor by reminding his listeners that he was “unable to conquer the small Greek islands or defend his own ‘empire’ made of African sand.”Footnote 87 The emphasis on the size and the terrain of these intended sites of occupation reified the point that Mussolini was incompetent in terms of military might, as he lacked the requisite bravery and skill to realize his imperial dreams of reclaiming the rightful land of the Italian people.
Antonini framed the March on Rome as not only the day that ushered in the barbarian Mussolini and his fascist tribe, but also the day when the gates were left open for Germanic people, once again, to invade the ancestral homeland. He argued that it was Mussolini, acting in his capacity as a “criminal ringleader,”Footnote 88 who welcomed the historic enemy of the Romans back on Italian soil, with his alliance to Nazi Germany. Instead of ridding the nation of the “German elements, which corrupted and sullied it,”Footnote 89 Antonini asserted, Mussolini consolidated German rule in Italy. He told his listeners that it was in fact Hitler, not Mussolini, who was the true leader of Italy. To this end, he declared that Mussolini “has appointed himself Hitler’s podestà and prison guard in Italy.”Footnote 90 In terms of the podestà charge, the Italian fascist state established a system, wherein authoritarian power was allocated to one figure, the podestà, per commune. But Antonini was claiming that Mussolini was the podestà of the entire country, not of one commune, and thus this line of argumentation was made clear – Hitler was the ultimate decision maker in Italy. The “prison guard” comparison was also employed to strengthen the claim that Mussolini was simply a pawn of German imperial ambitions.Footnote 91 Antonini stressed the nature of the above relationship, with two iterations of the same sentiment that he often repeated throughout the reclassification movement: “Mussolini hastened to obey his master in Berlin and declared war against our America”Footnote 92 and “Hitler and his servant Mussolini!”Footnote 93 Antonini provoked his audience to imagine “Germans who are now bossing around in Italy.”Footnote 94 This particular descriptor furthered his case against Mussolini, insofar as the arrogant and foreign “group of criminals and rascals,”Footnote 95 which were now roaming Italian streets, did not use force to invade and humiliate the ancestral homeland, but were openly invited to do so.
These barbarian invasions were explained as driving Italy and its people to a catastrophic end. Just like the unification leaders and fascists linked the presence of foreign occupiers on Italian soil to a collective sense of national violation, a loss of sovereignty, and a lack of primacy on the world stage, Antonini made the case that the ancestral homeland was also victim to hostile external forces.Footnote 96 To articulate this claim, he broadly described that “fascism has literally deprived Italy and Italians of everything, by all means.”Footnote 97 He attended to the various forms of ruination that his country of origin had endured under the rule of Mussolini, including the means by which it was deprived of its power and made “a slave.”Footnote 98 In terms of its global reputation, he explained that the state was forced to endure dehumanizing treatment “under the lash of his [Mussolini’s] jokes,”Footnote 99 which resulted in “the discredit of the Italian name all over the world.”Footnote 100 Italy had been deprived not only of its pride and rightful place among world powers in this interpretation, but also of its economic strength and leverage, culminating “in the economic ruin of Italy” and “the loss of its old colonies.”Footnote 101 Antonini included in this claim that the nation suffered brain drain, as it had been deprived of its best talent, and deprived of the ingenuity and the intellect needed for the coming third iteration of Italian supremacy with the “destruction of the ‘cream of the crop’ of Italian youth.”Footnote 102 Moreover, he detailed the impact of the alliance with Hitler, in respect to trade agreements, wherein he described Italian yields being pilfered to feed the Germanic people. In other words, the ancestral homeland suffered at the hands of these new enemies, which, without recourse, would result in its demise.
Antonini extended this metaphor to his parentela by detailing the means by which “fascism has literally deprived” the populace.Footnote 103 He pointed to the fascist policy that blocked Italians from receiving remittances from their American relatives and parcels of clothes sent from the United States. But he moved beyond the literal to attend to the various ways in which the people had also been deprived of their own agency. Antonini framed Italians as hostages, being held against their will and forced to act according to the dictates of their new barbarian captors. To establish this claim, he started from the premise that “the Italian people are innocent.” From there he detailed their experience and likened it to being “dragged along by a gang of swindlers and a rogue junta” and imprisoned by the “shackles of slavery,”Footnote 104 which rendered them helpless in countering the advances of the foreign oppressors. Antonini illustrated the above by spotlighting a story in the newspaper involving Italian troops in Cairo, Egypt, which he deemed “very significant.”Footnote 105 He read this article to his listeners and informed them that “a couple of thousand Italian soldiers have twice tried to come out and surrender because they do not want to fight, but on each occasion the Germans open fire and compelled them to return.”Footnote 106 Antonini built this argument out further with a speech given over the Easter weekend in 1942, wherein he vividly described the process of enslavement that “the good people we [Italians] came from” endured, as “despotism chained them and gagged them and got them drunk and blindfolded them first, and then dragged them into the precipice of war.”Footnote 107 In this respect, Antonini was able to suggest that the people of Italian descent would have acted in the same manner if they had been living under the hegemonic forces of the Italian fascist state. It was thereby not the Italian people that were immoral, but rather the barbarians that they were held hostage to. If they were chained, gagged, made drunk, blindfolded, and then dragged to pick up arms against their American brethren, it was not out of fratricidal intent, but out of the will of those who held their freedom captive.
Antonini lingered on the latter part of this Italian experience, wherein the people were made drunk and were blindfolded, to further the claim that they were acting in opposition to their true intent. In a radio broadcast early on in this movement, he sought to differentiate Italians troops from their German counterparts to make the above point. The reading transcript of this speech shows that he typed the following: “Hitler’s soldiers may not understand why they should be on the icy field of Russia. The Italian soldiers do not understand why they should be in Greece or in Africa, or in Russia.”Footnote 108 This section is of great import, as the reading transcript reflects his fixation on two small words – do not. The document reveals that Antonini crossed out “do not” in pen and wrote above it in ink “may not.” Yet he seemingly contested this change again, as “may not” was crossed out in ink, and the words “do not” were then written in pencil for the final version. This correction reflects the weight given, again in consideration of the very few changes to speeches in this data set, to making the case that Italians were not complicit aggressors in this war. Antonini sought to disentangle the Axis troops by nation in this speech, in order to cast into greater relief the fundamental divide between Italians and Germans. The notion that German soldiers may not understand their wartime actions left open the possibility that they were willing participants in advancing the interests of the Axis powers. Antonini seemingly toyed with the idea of framing the Italians similarly, but ultimately decided against it, as it might have planted a seed of doubt about the intent and the character of their parentela. Instead, Italians were depicted as being the unwitting pawns of the appetites of their foreign oppressors.
The Third American Rome
This variant of the barbarian-invasion narrative contributed to the reconciling of the dilemma that the masses faced in having to fight “flesh of their flesh.”Footnote 109 The notion of going to war against the ancestral homeland was not portrayed as an act of treason and/or fratricide. Antonini framed the call to arms as a liberating mission wherein Italian Americans would free the nation and its people from suffering at the hands of external enemies and regain Italian sovereignty. It is not surprising that this pitch resonated amongst his fellow ethnics, as it provided them a means by which to demonstrate a singular loyalty to the United States without sacrificing their fidelity and/or forgoing their ancestral duty to Italy. The possibility of improved sociopolitical conditions and reputational standing in postwar America and Italy were significant motivational forces in meeting this challenge. But it also offered them a fated opportunity to bring about, after two failed attempts, a Third Rome.
Antonini mobilized the masses in support of an American victory over the Axis powers by fantasizing with his audience about the coming of a third iteration of Italian greatness in the wake of a defeat of respective foreign aggressors and the reclamation of Rome, just as the unification leaders and fascists did. He promised his audience,
The day will come when the Italian soldiers and the Italian people will open fire on those traitors and Quislings who have imported the Germans into Italian territory. That day the song [Giuseppe] Garibaldi will be heard again reminding the people that “The German club shall not enslave Italy.”Footnote 110
He saw this day as a “historical vindication,” and “on that glorious day, the Italian masses will again assemble on Venezia Square, but this time as a free people to hang Mussolini from that very same balcony which has witnessed his numberless infamies.”Footnote 111 Antonini appropriated the foreign-invader trope to image the retaking of Rome as requisite for national rebirth to commence.
But this vision of the future was not imagined to be solely rooted in the ancestral homeland, as he dreamt alongside his fellow ethnics about a Third American Rome, which would represent a binational apex for the United States and Italy, wherein the liberal principles set in motion by the Risorgimento and the ideals of American democracy would prevail. In this interpretation of Italian destiny, there would be no competition between these two great forces or rivalry over their respective supremacies. Instead, he anticipated a communal earthly paradise, which awaited Americans and Italians alike.
In this respect, the collective fear of war with the ancestral homeland was replaced with a patriotic mission to save Italy from a barbarian end. Antonini reworked the rallying call of the revolutionary leader Giuseppe Mazzini – “Rome is your metropolis. You [the Italians] cannot have a Fatherland without her. Without Rome, no Italy is possible”Footnote 112 – to champion the argument that “America’s Victory is Italy’s Freedom.”Footnote 113 Antonini made the case that “Italy will only be free solely if America wins. Victory is an absolute certainty, since only by breaking the chain of slavery will Italy continue its journey towards civil progress.”Footnote 114 Antonini pointed to an American win as “indispensable” to the pursuit of the Third American Rome,Footnote 115 whereby the reclamation of the ancestral homeland from its modern-day occupiers would restore the nation to its rightful place of glory within a “united and pacified world.”Footnote 116 This call to ancestral duty was not an easy charge, but he reminded his fellow ethnics that the final stage of “civil progress,”Footnote 117 just as Jesus’ life illustrated, was the “most painful and tragic and terrible,”Footnote 118 but also the most promising, as this “stage is the closest to the resurrection.”Footnote 119 Antonini suggested that the collective pain of fighting the “flesh of their flesh” would be temporary and would result in the salvation of Italy from its barbarian invaders, and finally yield Italy its destiny and the world its peace.Footnote 120
An American appropriation
Antonini pushed this variant of the barbarian-invasion narrative, as well as other reworked Italian discourses, to mobilize his fellow ethnics behind an American victory. The discursive strategy to shift the common sense of the masses initiated by the IALC and subsequently adopted by the federal wartime agencies was understood to be critical in the early lifting of restrictions. The Italian American commitment to the war effort was remarkable, with heavy representation on the battlefields and on the home front.Footnote 121 This impressive display of collective patriotism, alongside a sustained campaign by Antonini and other ethnic brokers to exert pressure on the Roosevelt administration, the political exigency of appealing to the six million voters of Italian descent, and the generally held assessment that Italians were less of a threat than other alien enemy groups, most notably reflected in the quip made by the President in private to Biddle – “I don’t care about the Italians … They are a lot of opera singers, but the Germans are different; they may be dangerous”Footnote 122 – contributed to the decision by FDR to remove Italians from the category of alien enemy.
The formal announcement to remove Italians from the enemy aliens list was made on 12 October 1942 by Attorney General Biddle. The nationally broadcast radio speech was not simply intended to announce the change in wartime policy. It was primarily meant to function as a tool of continued mobilization. Federal officials recognized that a united Italian American front against a common cause would not only contribute to the aim of reclassification, but also serve American strategic interests, in terms of fighting against Italy and wielding influence in the postwar period.Footnote 123 The Roosevelt administration therefore capitalized on the opportunity to tap its human capital to prove victorious in the Mediterranean theater and, more broadly, to consolidate support for FDR, the Democratic Party, and its wartime policies. To this end, significant efforts were made to appeal to the people of Italian descent on this day. Most conspicuously, Biddle delivered his “Americans of Italian Origin” speech on the culturally resonant date of Columbus Day 1942. This holiday had been a contested symbol of ethnic identity in the interwar period, wherein fascist and antifascist forces in the United States sought to appropriate – the prominenti having greater success in this pursuit – the celebration of Christopher Columbus to mobilize the masses behind their interests and shape their worldview.Footnote 124 Biddle acknowledged the group’s dilemma in having to fight the “flesh of their flesh,”Footnote 125 noting that the experience was akin to being “torn”Footnote 126 and feeling “like children in the misery of the separation of father and mother.”Footnote 127 With the help of his Italian-born executive assistant, Ugo Carusi, he appropriated the reclassification discourse to reconcile the dilemma, and extract the same energy and commitment from this ethnic group, so that it could be applied to fulfilling the aims of the federal government.
Biddle relied upon various discursive elements to align this speech to the targeted audience, this newest variant of the barbarian-invasion narrative being one. First, he marked the day when “Mussolini marched on Rome” as the start of the invasions by “the plague of fascism” and the Italo-German alliance.Footnote 128 In terms of the former, he cast Mussolini in the same role as the foreigner to the protype of the new Italian “strong man,”Footnote 129 whereby he was portrayed as the worst of the old national character – “individualistic and anarchic, unmanly and unwilling to fight.”Footnote 130 Biddle facetiously asked the audience, “Where was the strength, the dignity of the great nation that had been promised by Mussolini, the fascist?”Footnote 131 He responded by mockingly noting that “their leader, [was] cringing, waiting for crumbs from the table of the Fuehrer.”Footnote 132 Biddle emphasized his self-interested decision to serve as a puppet to Hitler and illustrated his submission to the Germans with his lampoons that “in the halls of Rome a jackal cowers” and that he “has hidden himself behind a curtain of German steel.”Footnote 133 In this way, Biddle was able to sever Mussolini from the metropole of Italian modernity and brand his persona a relic of the past.
In terms of the Italo-German alliance, Biddle reminded the audience that “within a few days, twenty years will have passed since” the March on Rome,Footnote 134 which not only ushered in the foreigner Mussolini and his occupying ideology of fascism to Italian soil, but also made possible the second wave of invasions from its historic enemy – the Germanic people. He attributed this barbarian return to Mussolini, who extended a “special invitation” for the Nazis to be “brought into their country.” The result of such sycophancy was that Italians, “an unarmed civilian population,” were now “staring into the barrels of machine guns – Nazi guns,” and witnessing “storm troopers patrol the streets and the Gestapo lurk[ing] in the byways.”Footnote 135 Biddle catalogued this affront as “yet another invader!”Footnote 136 It was at the request of Mussolini that this “brutish, swastika-wearing horde masked as friend and ally has become to Italy” an additional setback to its centuries-long fight against hostile external forces.Footnote 137 And thus “today there are sullen, silent watchers lining the streets of Naples and of Rome, and stepping aside on country roads to make way for another foreign army, as it marches through and pauses to give them arrogant commands.”Footnote 138
Biddle presented the implications of these barbarian invasions in catastrophic terms. He worked within a similar metaphorical framework to argue that Mussolini vis-à-vis fascism deprived the nation of its capacity to act in its own interests. The March on Rome, like previous breaches of Italian territory, marked an era of foreign occupation, which rendered the sovereign agency of the state null by depleting the resources it required to realize a third iteration of Italian greatness. Biddle explained that fascism “drained [Italy] to satisfy the ambition of a single man” and “overran” it like a “plague.” Italy, as a result, lay “prostrate.”Footnote 139 In other words, fascism hollowed the nation of its potential to defend itself against existential threats, and thus the ancestral homeland was fettered to the will of Mussolini. Biddle marked this attack on Italian liberation as the most ominous to date by expressing the presumed sentiment of the native people, who “know that they have been betrayed, and they see the shadows of a new enslavement lengthening over the land, more terrible than any that their forefathers knew.”Footnote 140
Not only was the state deprived of its capacity to act, but Biddle extended this line of argumentation to claim that Italians were, in this respect, victimized as well. On a literal level, Biddle outlined the various forms of deprivation that the native people suffered under the Italian fascist state, as he stated that they “began to see the product of their labor, their earnings, and the youth of their country wasted in useless wars.”Footnote 141 On a more metaphorical note, Biddle made a similar case to Antonini by suggesting that Italians were held hostage to act on behalf of Mussolini. Initially, the native people were unknowing participants in carrying out his project of collective oppression, as fascism functioned by “concealing its underlying purpose by talk of ‘work, order and discipline.’”Footnote 142 This yielded a situation wherein “many [Italians] fell for those labels and failed to see the criminal contrabbando of war and tyranny that they covered.”Footnote 143 However, in time, the masses awoke to the danger of this new reality, as “through the thin shell of a new industrial order, the fraud of fascism began to show.”Footnote 144 Biddle was firm in his belief that ultimately “the people of Italy did not like it” and “were disturbed” by their enlightened understanding of the hegemonic forces at play.Footnote 145 The result was that “today the people of Italy are sick of fascism, sick of Mussolini, and particularly sick of Adolf Hitler.”Footnote 146 But these true convictions were overpowered by contemporary warfare, as he explained that “we are in an age when unarmed civilian populations can no longer hope to match, with sheer courage, the machine guns of an army of conquest” and the barbaric nature of fascist violence.Footnote 147 And in this way, the people remained enthralled participants of the Italian fascist state. Yet, Biddle assured his audience, their fate was not doomed, as their brethren across the Atlantic were endowed with a will that “cannot divert the destiny of a people” and were born with “blood in its veins [that] will not turn forever from such a past, and bow down before the little men of Europe.” It was this will that “arose to resist the arms of the invader of their soil, armies of Spain, of France, and of Austria.” And it was the same will, with the help of Italian Americans, that would be mechanized into a force more deadly than fascist arms, coercion, or violence. From this position, Biddle was able to reconcile the dilemma that the people of Italian descent faced in feeling their loyalties, allegiances, and affections “torn” by the “separation of father and mother,”Footnote 148 as the fight against Italy was framed as a patriotic duty in service of the ancestral homeland, rather than an act of treason or fratricide.
This speech, given in furtherance of the federally endorsed strategy to leverage the momentum of reclassification to yield continued mobilization of this ethnic group in support of an American victory, met its aims. Not only were people of Italian descent heavily represented in the regular armed forces, but they also served in a range of distinct capacities to delivery military wins for the Allied powers. The United States government recognized the singular contribution to its success of their ethnicity, inclusive of language and dialects, cultural know-how and networks, geographical familiarity with Italian territory, and familial ties.Footnote 149 In general, these resources were mined to offer the United States insight and assistance in dealing with the Italian enemy. Men of Italian descent were recruited to serve in the Office of Strategic Service (OSS), the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), within the Italian section of their Special Intelligence (SI) unit and military Operational Groups (OG) to carry out missions behind enemy lines, respectively intelligence and shadow warfare tasks.Footnote 150 Operation Husky, which proved victorious in its swift defeat of the Axis powers in Sicily and marked the beginning of the end for Mussolini, was greatly informed by the work of the units and soldiers of Italian descent involved in this campaign. And in this respect, the Roosevelt administration profited from its sustained investment in the Italian American community, as the appropriation of reclassification discourse, with specific attention given to this variant of the barbarian narrative, contributed to the construction of a new common sense, whereby the liberation of Italy from hostile external forces would secure the rightful fate of the ancestral homeland.
Conclusion
This variant of the barbarian narrative was instrumentalized for the purpose of liberation, in terms of the reclassification of Italian alien enemies, the defeat of fascism, and the removal of the German occupation of Italy. This narrative, alongside a variety of discursive means, sought to mobilize the Italian American base behind the American war effort and reconcile the dilemma of having to fight “the flesh of their flesh.”Footnote 151 Reclassification movement leaders sought emancipatory aims for their fellow ethnics and the United States, but the employment of this narrative also yielded the potential for regressive ends to manifest. The significance given to ancestral power and fate remained central in their retelling, and thus, in turn, presented an opportunity for fascist notions of supremacy and prophecy to endure in the wartime construction of the Italian American identity. Moreover, the appropriation of the barbarian-invasion narrative by the Roosevelt administration, although designed to function as a progressive force, legitimized its use within the Italian American community and introduced this language into American political life.
Antonia Cucchiara received her PhD in Politics from the New School for Social Research, the New School. She is an interdisciplinary researcher of contentious politics and social-movement discourse in the United States. She is currently a Lecturer in Politics, Social Science and Economics Education at King’s College London, and a Visiting Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Roehampton.
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