Italian Fascism in the United States

Paolo Ignazio Thaon di Revel

In 1924 Count Ignazio Thaon di Revel traveled from Italy to the United States to reorganize Italian-American supporters of Fascism into the Fascist League of North America or FLNA. The first incarnation of the FLNA had been founded earlier by Dino Bigongiari, Professor of Italian at Columbia University. So it can be seen that the drive toward Fascism was instigated by Italian-Americans in the United States and not by the directive of the Fascist government in Rome, though no doubt Mussolini approved. Count di Revel, however, in late 1924 took central control as President of the Fascist Council for the FLNA which stood for the opposition to radicalism, chiefly instigated by the Bolsheviks and their supporters in America (many of which were deeply imbedded in the labor unions). One member said they stood for opposition to “atheism, internationalism, free-love, communism and class hatred” which is as good a summary as any. The official oath of the Fascist League of North America stated:

I swear to my honor
To serve with fidelity and discipline the Fascist idea of society - based on religion, the Fatherland, and the family, and to respect the authority of the League and of the hierarchy and tradition of our race.
To love, serve, obey and exalt the United States of America and to render obedience and respect to its constitution and its laws.
To keep alive the cult with Italy as the Fatherland and eternal light of civilization and greatness.
To combat with all my might theories and ideas tending to subvert, corrupt, and disgrace religion, the Fatherland, or the family.
To do my best to improve my culture, my physique and my morals, to render me fit for the part I am to play in serving the nation in its hour of greatness.
To submit to the discipline of the hierarchy of the Fascist League of North America.

The FLNA attracted a great deal of criticism in the United States and other Italian-American groups, such as the Sons of Italy, condemned the organization. This threatened to damage relations between the U.S. and Italy, particularly when powerful politicians began calling for a Congressional investigation of the group. In 1929, to put a stop to such difficulties, Count Revel announced that the FLNA was disbanding, having, at that time, a membership of 12,500 in 80 branches across the country. Nonetheless, throughout the 1930’s many pro-Fascist Italian language newspapers and radio broadcasts were available to the Italian-American population, some of which had quite large audiences. One of the most prolific was the Italian Library of Information in New York City under the direction of Ugo V. D’Annunzio, son of the famous poet and nationalist. These included information on Fascist economics, the corporatist system, Italian history and the Italian contribution to the exploration, settlement and progress of America.

When the Second Italo-Abyssinian War broke out in 1935, most American sympathy was with Ethiopia, like most of the rest of the liberal-democratic world. However, Italian-American opinion was more divided and particularly as many African-Americans adopted the cause of Ethiopia, many Italian-Americans naturally took the side of Italy. Some volunteered to go and fight for Italy in Abyssinia, joining the 221st ‘Italiani all’Estero Legion of the MVSN Fascist militia (the “Black shirts”) which was made up of Italian expatriates from around the world. In the United States itself, violence sometimes erupted between African and Italian-Americans with shops being vandalized and so on. Yet, not everyone took the side expected. The noted African-American entertainer Josephine Baker (later a friend of Princess Grace of Monaco) was shocked that so many of her countrymen would sympathize with a regime that still enslaved their fellow Africans to the point that she expressed her wish that she could organize a volunteer corps of African-Americans to fight for Italy against Ethiopia.

Dr. Salvatore Caridi of the Italian War Veterans

On the world stage of course, the biggest result of the Ethiopian war was the open defiance of the League of Nations and the eventual alliance of Italy and Germany in the “Pact of Steel”. This change was mirrored in America as well as Italian-American Black shirts made common cause with the German-American Brown shirts in the United States. The Lictor Federation, led by Joseph Santi was one such group (founded by Domenico Trombetta). Dr. Salvatore Caridi was the leader of another, the pro-Fascist Italian War Veterans and in 1937 he and about 500 Black shirt Italian-American war veterans appeared at a gathering in New Jersey of the German-American Bund led by Fritz Kuhn. Caridi was one of the speakers and he encouraged his listeners concerning their political enemies that, “…if they insult Mussolini or Hitler we can punch them in the nose!” On one occasion they also joined forces with the strange American group known as the Silver shirts of William Dudley Pelley for a joint-meeting in support of the Nationalists in Spain, denouncing the Spanish republican government and communism in general.

Italian-American Black shirts

Exactly how strong these Italian-American Black shirt groups were cannot be known. Their sympathizers tended to inflate their numbers whereas their opponents tended to try to minimize them by downplaying the size of their membership. Studies have shown that about 90% of the Italian-language press in America was generally favorable toward Mussolini and his Fascist regime. And, needless to say, there were always plenty of anti-Fascist Italian-Americans, though as with similar groups elsewhere these tended to be on the far-left and often included communists and anarchists. These would ultimately have a longer life as the international situation developed. When World War II broke out in Europe, pro-Fascist Italian-Americans generally favored, like others, the policy of American neutrality. Most realized that the United States would never take the side of the Axis powers and so were content to push for the best reasonable position in their view which was for America to simply stay out of the fight.

Salvatore Caridi and Fritz Kuhn

All of that, of course, came to an end with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. When, a few days later, Italy declared war on the United States, it became “open season” on all those Italians and Italian-Americans in the country who had voiced support for the Fascist cause. Many Italian-language media outlets were closed down by the government and known Italian-American Fascists were arrested. Those on the west coast were forced to move inland and many had their homes and businesses seized. Although not as well-known as the Japanese-Americans, Italian-Americans and German-Americans were also arrested and put into internment camps for varying periods of time after the U.S. entered the war. However, the vast majority of those who were interned were Italian nationals rather than Italian-Americans who were citizens or who had been living in the United States for many years.

Italian-American Black shirt girls

Certainly those who had been prominent supporters of the Fascist regime could count on close scrutiny by the authorities, including such figures as Joseph Ferri in California, the aforementioned Joseph Santi and Salvatore Caridi in New Jersey, John J. Olivo, Paul Lucenti, Joseph Bono, Ralph Ninfo and Floyd Carridi in New York, Luigi Scala in Rhode Island, Father Arthur W. Terminiello of Mobile, Alabama and so on. The vast majority, of course, of Italian-Americans embraced the cause of the United States wholeheartedly and served with distinction in huge numbers during World War II. However, as with the Germans, the Japanese and even the Soviets, Fascist Italy was not without its supporters in America. They are not much remembered today but there was a time when they caused considerable alarm even into the halls of power in Washington DC.

Italians (in the Black shirts and white trousers) at a Bundist camp

Italian-American Fascists at Camp Siegfried (FBI photo)

Controversial Monarchist

It was on this day in 1898 that the thinker and writer Julius Evola was born; a staunch monarchist, ultra-traditionalist, anti-egalitarian and ardent believer in a great deal of hocus pocus. He is often credited with introducing the concept of the "radical traditionalist" or (contradictory as this may sound) the "conservative revolutionary". However, he is not so controversial because of any of that, most people having never read any of his books and of those who have, few have probably been able to grasp their meaning -especially when he started getting into all of his mystical mumbo-jumbo. No, what makes Evola controversial today is his association with Fascism and even National Socialism (especially the dreaded SS). That, however, is unfair and could probably have been put to rest long ago were it not for the neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis constantly quoting and citing Evola to try to provide something that sounds intellectual for their political agenda which usually lacks any real agenda anyway besides, "we want what we want" and can never be consistent. The fact is that Evola was never a member of the National Fascist Party nor the Nazi Party with whom he had some very major disagreements. In fact, he often described himself as an anti-Fascist at a time when that was not popular.

Evola was a very complex and somewhat odd man but if one were to label him as one thing more than any other in political terms it would have been "monarchist". In fact, one of his problems with the Fascists was the division created between the Duce and the King. Eventually, of course, the King was ejected by the Italian Social Republic. Evola wrote that, "We can reasonably affirm that a true Right without the monarchy ends up deprived of its natural centre of gravity and crystallisation, because in almost all traditional states the principal reference point for realizing the independent and stable principle of pure political authority has been the crown." Despite his name being used these days by people calling themselves the advocates of a "third way" or "third position" Evola was nothing of the sort. He was never trying to be something other than "left" or "right" but rather much more "right" than most people had become used to in the post-revolutionary world.

Both the Fascists and the National Socialists were originally republican. The Fascists dropped republicanism (only to re-embrace it in their twilight) while the Nazis remained devoted to it. Evola had a big problem, not only with this but with the mentality that brought it about. His idea of leadership was based on a spiritual sort of authority, not the leadership of a champion of the great mass of the public, advanced by popularity. He said, concerning his ideal of leadership that, "This ideal implies the affirmation not only of the concept and right of the nobility, but also of the monarchy. [...] It must be renewed, strengthened and dynamized as an organic, central, absolution function that embodies the might of power and the light of the spirit in a single being; then the monarchy is truly the act of a whole race, and at the same time the point that leads beyond all that is bound by blood and soil. Only then is one justified to speak of an Imperium." This was, of course, contrary to what ultimately came about with the efforts to compartmentalize and diminish the monarchy whenever the higher, ancient, sacred institution became inconvenient for the government. At most, Evola can be said to have viewed the Fascists as the least objectionable alternative and a movement which could be purified or adjusted to become something better than it started out as. He was never happy with it as it was nor did he ever even view it as complete.