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Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919-1945
In Transatlantic Fascism , Federico Finchelstein traces the intellectual and cultural connections between Argentine and Italian fascisms, showing how fascism circulates transnationally. From the early 1920s well into the Second World War, Mussolini tried to export Italian fascism to Argentina, the “most Italian” country outside of Italy. (Nearly half the country’s population was of Italian descent.) Drawing on extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, Finchelstein examines Italy’s efforts to promote fascism in Argentina by distributing bribes, sending emissaries, and disseminating propaganda through film, radio, and print. He investigates how Argentina’s political culture was in turn transformed as Italian fascism was appropriated, reinterpreted, and resisted by the state and the mainstream press, as well as by the Left, the Right, and the radical Right. As Finchelstein explains, nacionalismo , the right-wing ideology that developed in Argentina, was not the wholesale imitation of Italian fascism that Mussolini wished it to be. Argentine nacionalistas conflated Catholicism and fascism, making the bold claim that their movement had a central place in God’s designs for their country. Finchelstein explores the fraught efforts of nationalistas to develop a “sacred” ideological doctrine and political program, and he scrutinizes their debates about Nazism, the Spanish Civil War, imperialism, anti-Semitism, and anticommunism. Transatlantic Fascism shows how right-wing groups constructed a distinctive Argentine fascism by appropriating some elements of the Italian model and rejecting others. It reveals the specifically local ways that a global ideology such as fascism crossed national borders.
344 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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About the author
Federico Finchelstein
17 books43 followersFederico Finchelstein is Professor of History at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College. He has taught at the History Department of Brown University and he received his PhD at Cornell University. Finchelstein is Director of the Janey Program in Latin American Studies at NSSR.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 23, 2020
My former professor at the New School, Federico Finchelstein, stakes several interesting claims in this work of transatlantic history. He intervenes in several ongoing debates in fascist studies, among them the question of whether fascism even belongs as a term to anything outside of 1919-1945 Italy, whether there’s such a thing as non-European fascism, and the dreaded “fascist minimum.” His lens on these questions is the relationship between, and comparisons betwixt, Italian fascism and Argentine nacionalismo. The vistas this perspective opens up prove to be interesting ones.
Italy and Argentina had a special relationship in the early twentieth century, as something like forty percent of all Argentines were of Italian descent, product of a massive immigration wave beginning in the last decades of the nineteenth century. When Mussolini took power in Italy, he and other fascists saw Latin America in general and Argentina in particular as potential growth fields. Like a lot of fascist plans, this was more hazy projection than thought out plan, but the Italian foreign service did distribute propaganda in Argentina and try to help its far right along. Here, it was impeded by the parochialism of fascism- convinced of Italian superiority and the superiority of their form of fascism, the Italian fascists failed to make meaningful connections to the far right burgeoning in Argentina in and around the Uriburu dictatorship of 1930-1932. Various pressures kept Argentina out of World War II until it was almost over, but that was the most the country would do to help fascism.
Argentine nacionalismo was influenced by Italian fascism, Finchelstein argues, but didn’t look that much like it, and was sufficiently independent, dedicated to Argentina’s specific mission in the world, to remain an independent force. This is enough to discredit the idea — prevalent with both fascists and, according to Finchelstein, Argentine antifascists — that fascism is a purely imported idea, that Latin American fascism was purely imitative. Argentine nacionalismo had enough of its own features to be its own thing under the sun, though Finchelstein still sees it as part of the fascist spectrum of ideologies and worth being denoted as such. Among other things, nacionalismo, while believing in singular leadership as a principle, didn’t have a singular leader, in part because the first right wing dictator Uriburu died early of natural causes. This led to a cult of the dead leader whose mantle others would pick up. Argentine nacionalismo was also much more Catholic than most other fascisms, though imagined less direct role for the clergy than the Austrian or Spanish regimes.
Finally, Finchelstein argues that while nacionalismo never came to power directly in Argentina, it did definitively shape the Argentine right and the country’s future dictatorships. This includes the peculiar left-right mishmash of Peronism, but more so the military regimes before and after it. In particular, nacionalismo’s emphasis on the enemy as utterly abject, which it has in common with other fascisms like Nazism, found its way into the torture and disappearance regimes for which Argentina became notorious.
In his introduction, Finchelstein places himself as perpendicular to antifascist historiography, and I remember him doing so in the classroom as well. He saw it as distortive in its own right- he opposes fascism, but attempts to understand it in a way antifascists supposedly don’t. I’m not sure what I think of that. I’ve certainly seen some pigheaded intellectual attitudes on the part of antifascists but by and large the ones I’ve worked with have been welcoming of finely grained attempts to understand the enemy. Maybe I just know good ones? Either way, as a practicing antifascist, I recommend this book highly. Contemporary American fascism draws a lot from Latin American models, as their admiration for Pinochet attests, and especially their treatment of enemies as abject beings, so it’s good stuff for people to know about. *****
Italy and Argentina had a special relationship in the early twentieth century, as something like forty percent of all Argentines were of Italian descent, product of a massive immigration wave beginning in the last decades of the nineteenth century. When Mussolini took power in Italy, he and other fascists saw Latin America in general and Argentina in particular as potential growth fields. Like a lot of fascist plans, this was more hazy projection than thought out plan, but the Italian foreign service did distribute propaganda in Argentina and try to help its far right along. Here, it was impeded by the parochialism of fascism- convinced of Italian superiority and the superiority of their form of fascism, the Italian fascists failed to make meaningful connections to the far right burgeoning in Argentina in and around the Uriburu dictatorship of 1930-1932. Various pressures kept Argentina out of World War II until it was almost over, but that was the most the country would do to help fascism.
Argentine nacionalismo was influenced by Italian fascism, Finchelstein argues, but didn’t look that much like it, and was sufficiently independent, dedicated to Argentina’s specific mission in the world, to remain an independent force. This is enough to discredit the idea — prevalent with both fascists and, according to Finchelstein, Argentine antifascists — that fascism is a purely imported idea, that Latin American fascism was purely imitative. Argentine nacionalismo had enough of its own features to be its own thing under the sun, though Finchelstein still sees it as part of the fascist spectrum of ideologies and worth being denoted as such. Among other things, nacionalismo, while believing in singular leadership as a principle, didn’t have a singular leader, in part because the first right wing dictator Uriburu died early of natural causes. This led to a cult of the dead leader whose mantle others would pick up. Argentine nacionalismo was also much more Catholic than most other fascisms, though imagined less direct role for the clergy than the Austrian or Spanish regimes.
Finally, Finchelstein argues that while nacionalismo never came to power directly in Argentina, it did definitively shape the Argentine right and the country’s future dictatorships. This includes the peculiar left-right mishmash of Peronism, but more so the military regimes before and after it. In particular, nacionalismo’s emphasis on the enemy as utterly abject, which it has in common with other fascisms like Nazism, found its way into the torture and disappearance regimes for which Argentina became notorious.
In his introduction, Finchelstein places himself as perpendicular to antifascist historiography, and I remember him doing so in the classroom as well. He saw it as distortive in its own right- he opposes fascism, but attempts to understand it in a way antifascists supposedly don’t. I’m not sure what I think of that. I’ve certainly seen some pigheaded intellectual attitudes on the part of antifascists but by and large the ones I’ve worked with have been welcoming of finely grained attempts to understand the enemy. Maybe I just know good ones? Either way, as a practicing antifascist, I recommend this book highly. Contemporary American fascism draws a lot from Latin American models, as their admiration for Pinochet attests, and especially their treatment of enemies as abject beings, so it’s good stuff for people to know about. *****
March 20, 2023
Opiniones encontradas sobre el libro. Por un lado, está muy bien documentado y ofrece un marco general para el estudio de las relaciones entre la Italia fascista y su recepción en Argentina, así como los intereses geopolíticos que mantenia en Sudamérica en el periodo de entreguerras.
Por otro, sin embargo, muchas afirmaciones tautologicas y autoafirmativas, que llevan, en ocasiones, a conclusiones poco claras. En ese sentido, no estoy tan seguro de si el nacionalismo argentino era un fascismo como tal. Tampoco queda claro si llego a ser un movimiento de masas y no un movimiento cultural.
Por otro, sin embargo, muchas afirmaciones tautologicas y autoafirmativas, que llevan, en ocasiones, a conclusiones poco claras. En ese sentido, no estoy tan seguro de si el nacionalismo argentino era un fascismo como tal. Tampoco queda claro si llego a ser un movimiento de masas y no un movimiento cultural.
July 27, 2020
Pretty good, even great at points, but not very unified
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December 29, 2025Interesting interventions, but the writing was uneven and left me wanting more. It felt like he undermined his own arguments at times, and often only alluded to the evidence. After reading, I’m not sure I know what an Argentinian fascist believed, who they were, or how they adapted Italian fascism.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews