Fascist League of North America
The Fascist League of North America (FLNA) Lega Fascista di Nord America also Fascist League of America was an umbrella group for fascist Italian-American organizations founded in 1924. With the rise of fascism in Italy, grassroots Fasci clubs started to form in Italian-American communities in the United States with nearly forty such groups being organized by mid-1923.[1] In 1924, the groups came together under the umbrella of the FLNA. The FLNA grew out of the Fascio of New York which was under the direction of the National Fascist Party in Italy and acted as a central coordinating body of fascist activities in the US.[2] They published a magazine called Giovinezza.[3] and had eighty branches with a reported membership of 12500.[4]
During the early years of Benito Mussolini's rule, when the fascist dictatorship had not yet been consolidated, and there were still outstanding diplomatic questions between the US and Italy regarding war debts and emigration, the National Fascist Party did not seek an official connection with the American fascists. However, by the mid-to late 1920s the party decided to extend its suzerainty over the foreign fascist groups through the Fascio d'estra, or Fascists Abroad organization. Count Ignazio Thaon di Revel was sent to the US to organize the Fasci into the FLNA.[5]
Despite the continuing hostility of the Italian diplomatic corps, the FLNA had the support of Fascist ideologues on both sides of the Atlantic. The United States Department of State was ambivalent, initially viewing the FLNA as a group committed to law and order and anti-communism, and seeing no reason to ask for its disestablishment, despite this being offered by the Italian ambassador.[6]
The presence of the FLNA provoked a counter-response by Italian-Americans of liberal, socialist, communist and anarchist persuasion, and an Anti-Fascist Alliance of North America was formed as early as 1923 and continued into the 1930s.[7] Clashes between pro- and anti-fascist Italian Americans became more common, ending in at least a dozen fatalities evenly divided between the two factions.[8]
The final death knell was a sensational article published by Harper's Magazine, "Mussolini's American empire"[9] by Marcus Duffield, that claimed the FLNA was part of Mussolini's plot to control the Italian-American community in the US and raise "soldiers for Fascism". In December 1929 Mussolini disbanded the Fascist League of North America. Many of the leaders and membership of the FLNA continued their activities in a new organization know as the Lictor Federation.
See also
- Paul Castorina
- The Order of Black Shirts
- Circolo Mario Morgantini
- United States of America Union of Fascists
- International Anti-Fascist League of North America
- German-American Bund
- Lineage of American Nationalist organizations and individuals
References
- ↑ Cassels, Alan "Fascism for Export: Italy and the United States in the Twenties" The American Historical Review, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Apr., 1964), p. 708
- ↑ The Emergence of a Euro-American Radical Right, By Jeffrey Kaplan, Leonard Weinberg, page 26
- ↑ What Price Tolerance, by Paul M. Winter, page 244
- ↑ Ethnic and Racial Groups: The Dynamics of Dominance, page 290
- ↑ Cassels, Alan "Fascism for Export: Italy and the United States in the Twenties" The American Historical Review, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Apr., 1964), pp. 709-710
- ↑ Iorizzo, Luciano "Fascism" The Italian American experience: An encyclopedia pp. 216-7
- ↑ Iorizzo, Luciano "Fascism" The Italian American experience: An encyclopedia pp. 216-7
- ↑ de Caprariis, Luca "'Fascism for Export'? The Rise and Eclipse of the Fasci Italiani all'Estero" Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Apr., 1964), pp. 709-710
- ↑ Harpers online
