Alalá all’Indiano! Native Americans in Fascist Italy: Useful Characters from Dime Novel Foes to “Natural Leaders” against Anglo-American Imperialism

TheImperialism relationship betweenMagrin Haas, Alessandra Italian fascismFascism and Native Americans is a topic which has hardly found interest in scholarship—rather mysteriously given the breadth of connections and the resources available. In this chapter, I will, therefore, stretch Hartmut Lutz’s concept of IndianthusiasmIndianthusiasm, commonly applied to GermanyGermany, to embrace also specific Italian understandings of Native Americans, expressly those which emerged during the time frame of the ventennio, the twenty years of fascist rule in Italy. At the turn of the twentieth century, American live entertainments and popular press imports engendered a collective fascination with the characters of the “Old WestOld West.” Under fascism this captivation spawned an increased interest in Native American matters; for the first time in modern Italian history, Native “characters” and issues were met with ostensible sympathy and regard. They proved, in fact, advantageous to the AnglophobicAnglophobia rhetoric promoted by Mussolini’s regime and resonated, in certain aspects, with the fascist ideals of “natural leaders,” “spiritual aristocracy,” and “nobility of the raceRace.” As leaders and prominent Italian figures of the era like General Armando DiazDiaz, Armando and “Pilot-hero” Italo BalboBalbo, Italo, “adopted” by First Nation tribes while touring North America, affectedly professed their admiration for Native Americans, a self-appointed “Canadian Indian Prince” roamed the peninsula from South Tyrol to Apulia, allegedly advocating for SixSix, Claus Nations rights while in reality engineering a dupe which entangled Austrian aristocracy and fascist hierarchs alike. Tracing the development of Native American representations from nineteenth-century literary engagements to fascist Italy’s use of its connection to (self-styled) Indigeneity, this chapter outlines how the popular interest for Native Americans became instrumental in the fascist propaganda efforts against Britain and the U.S., without ever prompting an authenticAuthenticity engagement with Indigenous causes.