Italian associationism and fascism outside Italy: rethinking their relationship from Bahia Blanca’s case

Abstract

The relationship between fascism’s outer projection and the wide network of associative institutions of different kinds developed in the Italian communities around the world has been an object to detailed studies, that have continuously laid out associationism as one of the goals of Italian government for the fascistization of its con-nationals residing abroad. Though the appropriateness of that relationship is ratified in studies developed in various countries, we propose, on the basis of our investigation for the case of Bahía Blanca (Argentina), that the referred relationship shouldn’t be considered on an unidirectional way, but that it might also be taken into account its opposite direction, in order to complement the idea of the fascist action over the Italian associative framework with that one of the influence that associacionist culture had on fascism outside Italy