From a later point of view, looking backward, words like 'fascist' and names like Mussolini bring shudders of horror. But from 1922 until the full outbreak of WWII, few Americans had any ideas about what would be unleashed in Italy. In 1938, Italy enacted - at the urging of Adolf Hitler - a series of anti-Jewish 'race laws' (the phrase 'anti-Jewish' is more accurate, if more clumsy, than 'anti-Semitic'). Historian Jonah Goldberg writes that
by the time Italy reluctantly passed its shameful race laws - which it never enforced with even a fraction of the barbarity shown by the Nazis - over 75 percent of Italian Fascism's reign had already transpired. A full sixteen years elapsed between the March on Rome and the passage of Italy's race laws.
Author Jonah Goldberg reminds the reader that, prior to WWII and prior to the Holocaust, the word 'fascism' did not carry the horrific connotations it now has. In the 1920's, Europe was plagued by political instability; in the 1930's, the world was plagued by the Great Depression. Fascism seemed like a reasonable, if not totally correct, response to those desperate circumstances.
Throughout the 1920s and well into the 1930s, fascism meant something very different from Auschwitz and Nuremberg. Before Hitler, in fact, it never occurred to anyone that fascism had anything to do with anti-Semitism. Indeed, Mussolini was supported not only by the chief rabbi of Rome but by a substantial portion of the Italian Jewish community (and the world Jewish community). Moreover, Jews were overrepresented in the Italian Fascist movement from its founding in 1919 until they were kicked out in 1938.
Prior to the Holocaust - generally thought to have begun in 1938 with the Kristallnacht - the word 'fascism' had no connection with anti-Jewish sentiments. But fascism's treatment of Africans evoked a different notion of racism in the minds of the public.
Race did help turn the tables of American public opinion on Fascism. But it had nothing to do with the Jews. When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, Americans finally started to turn on him. In 1934 the hit Cole Porter song "You're the Top"
did not create any negative reaction among the public. Imagine a song in which a boy woos his girlfriend by comparing her to Mussolini! That was acceptable in 1934. But the public would soon form a more negative opinion of Mussolini and his fascists.
When Mussolini invaded that poor but noble African kingdom the following year, it irrevocably marred his image, and Americans decided they had had enough of his act. It was the first war of conquest by a Western European nation in over a decade, and Americans were still distinctly unamused, particularly
African-Americans, who were still working to secure their own civil rights. It became clear fascism would be linked with racism and imperialism. Americans began to view Mussolini and the fascists in a worse light.
Still, it was a slow process. The Chicago Tribune initially supported the invasion, as did reporters
in influential newspapers across the country and around the globe. From New York to London, journalists had written glowing reports about Mussolini for over a decade. It would take a while for the new information, the unpleasant truth about Mussolini, to sink in.
And why shouldn't the average American think Mussolini was anything but a great man? Winston Churchill had dubbed him the world's greatest living lawgiver. Sigmund Freud sent Mussolini a copy of a book he co-write with Einstein, inscribed, "To Benito Mussolini, from an old man who greets in the Ruler, the Hero of Culture."
When the leading psychologist of era, Sigmund Freud, who was himself a Jew, praises Mussolini, it becomes clear how far the world had gone in one direction, and how far it would have to reverse itself, in its assessment of "Il Duce" as Mussolini was known. But until the full unpleasant truth was known about him, he remained popular in America. Of all the newspaper, museums, and universities, no
institution in America was more accommodating to Fascism than Columbia University. In 1926 it established Casa Italiana, a center for the study of Italian culture and a lecture venue for prominent Italian scholars. It was Fascism's "veritable home in America" and "a schoolhouse for budding Fascist ideologues," according to John Patrick Diggins. Mussolini himself had contributed some ornate Baroque furniture to Casa Italiana and had sent Columbia's president, Nicholas Murray Butler, a signed photo thanking him for his "most valuable contribution" to the promotion of understanding between Fascist Italy and the United States. Butler himself was not an advocate of fascism for America, but he did believe it was in the best interests of the Italian people and that it had been a very real success, well worth studying. This subtle distinction - fascism is good for Italians, but maybe not for America - was held by a vast array of prominent
thinkers, writers, and celebrities. Mussolini had the status of a movie star or popular musician. His name and photo were common in the newspapers.
While academics debated the finer points of Mussolini's corporatist state, mainstream America's interest in Mussolini far outstripped that of any other international figure in the 1920s. From 1925 to 1928 there were more than a hundred articles written on Mussolini in American publications and only fifteen on Stalin. For more than a decade the New York Times's foreign correspondent Anne O'Hare McCormick painted a glowing picture of Mussolini.
Many American newspapers and magazines featured Mussolini. While it was clear that Italian fascism was not in sync with America's belief in a freely-elected republic, Mussolini retained some fascination with the reading public. The New York Times carried an article, written by McCormick, on November 28, 1926, which demonstrates this odd paradox:
Fascism, as has been sufficiently pointed out, does not pretend to be political democracy. At present it does not pretend to be any kind of democracy. But it can no longer be considered merely reaction. As the motor power of the only European country actually going forward since the war, it has a right to be heard when it claims that votes for everybody are less urgent than work for everybody and order for everybody, and that it is engaged in creating "organic democracy," a representation of interests more real and responsive than political representation.
So it was that the readership of newspapers in the United States retained this odd fascination with the paradox of an Italian leader, who was clearly opposed to the American notion of a republic with free elections, yet who seemed so charismatic and so effective at galvanizing Italy into an effective nation. Only the ugly aggression of Italy's attack on Ethiopia, and only the unseemly alliance with Hitler, would finally awaken the American reading public to Mussolini's darker side.
