Mussolini's National Project in Argentina [Hardcover]

During the 1920s and 1930s, Mussolinis fascist regime attempted to promote fascist Italys national project in Argentina, bombarding the republic with its propaganda. Although politically a failure, this propaganda provoked a debate over the idea of a national identity outside the nation-state and the potential roles that citizens living abroad could play in their country of origin. In propagating an Italian national identity within another sovereign state, Mussolinis initiative also inspired heated debate among native Argentines over their own national project as a nation of immigrants. Using the experiences of Mussolinis efforts in Argentina as its case study, this book demonstrates how national projects take on different meanings once they enter a contested public space. It details how both members of the Italian community as well as native Argentines reshaped Italys national discourse from abroad by entangling it with Argentinas own national project. In exploring the way in which nations are imagined, constructed, and recast both from above as well as from below, Mussolinis National Project in Argentina offers new perspectives on the politics of identity formation while providing a transatlantic example of the dynamic interplay between the Italian state and its emigrant communities. It is in short, a transnational perspective on what it means to belong to a nation.David Aliano is assistant professor of History and Modern Languages and Literatures at the College of Mount Saint Vincent.

This is a thoughtful analysis of fascist Italy's project to promote the political and ideological construction of transnational Italian nationhood among Italian immigrants in Argentina. The author draws effectively on government archival material in Italy and Argentina, as well as on newspaper and other sources. ... This book excels in illustrating Italian fascist policy making and propaganda, the links between Mussolini's national project and both pro- and anti-fascist pol3*