Fascism for export: Radio and Italian Fascist Transnationalism (1922-1943)

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My project explores how the Fascist regime in Italy attempted to use radio broadcasts to promote its cultural and political ideology internationally. This new mass medium allowed Mussolini's Italy to spread its message far and wide, as the rise of Fascism in the interwar period worked to reshape the existing world order. By exploring how the regime attempted to use broadcasts to maximise its international reach, we can better understand its cultural vision and the role it aimed to play on the global stage.When Mussolini seized power in 1922, radio in Italy was drastically underdeveloped compared to its European neighbours. Nonetheless, the medium grew gradually in the first decade of Mussolini's rule. It was in the months directly preceding Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935, however, that there was a marked increase in radio output as the regime tried to legitimise its belligerence and garner support at home and abroad. This spike in output points to a wider, unexplored use of radio as a tool for buttressing Fascist Italy's expansionist aims which my project examines.Existing studies offer a brief history of Italian Fascist broadcasts abroad, look at broadcasts targeted specifically at Middle Eastern countries, and touch upon Italian-language broadcasts to the USA. However, no study exists that specifically explores the use of radio as a tool for the transnational dissemination of Fascist culture. The project is divided into three sections, permitting an exploration of how broadcasts were adapted to consider different cultural and political contexts. The first focuses on the representation of foreign policy and foreign cultures in domestic broadcasts in order to understand Italian Fascism's perception of its place on the global stage and the part radio played in disseminating that vision. The second section looks at radio programmes in Europe, broadcast mostly in Italian, examined as calls from the motherland to Italians living abroad and as part of wider attempts to spread Italian language and culture to foreign peoples. My research explores, in particular, how these broadcasts were designed to convince Italians to promote Fascist ideology in their host countries. To better understand how broadcasts were used to intervene in the politics of other countries by promoting fascist ideology as an alternative to liberal democracy, the research also focuses on the clandestine Radio Verdad broadcasts in Spanish which were designed to support the cause of Franco's Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. The project explores how the broadcasts were adapted to the target audience and the collaboration that occurred between the regime and the Nationalist movement in Spain. The third section looks at Italian-language programmes broadcast to the USA. As a liberal democracy founded on free-trading, corporate capitalism, the USA was diametrically opposed to Fascist values and Italian Americans found themselves at the centre of an ideological tug of war borne out over the airwaves. My research explores how the regime, through broadcasts, balanced encouraging Italian Americans to support the Fascist cause with a desire to maintain positive diplomatic relations with the USA.These three sections allow an examination of how the Italian Fascist regime promoted its cultural and political ideology in markedly different contexts: in Italy where it had political control, in Spain where it perceived a potential ally, and in the USA where the dominant ideology was directly opposed to its own. My research relies on a combination of online and physical archives, including editions of the Radiocorriere magazine, transcripts and recordings of broadcasts, reports, ministerial correspondences, and surveys regarding radio output. Through textual and technical analysis of broadcasts as well as an exploration of the political and bureaucratic organisation of the radio service, my project aspires to a holistic approach to my resea