2009/06/01 by Matthew Feldman · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Italian Fascism and Post-war Society
paper · doi:10.1080/17504902.2009.11087226
openalex publication_date 2009/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The American poet Ezra Pound’s wartime broadcasts for Italian Fascism between 1941 and 1943 earned him the reputation as an antisemitic propagandist for Benito Mussolini’s Italy. But how far back into the interwar period does Pound’s antisemitism extend, and what character did his prejudice against Jews take? Although these questions continue to be debated by Pound scholars, a number of extant texts have been omitted from discussion. In reviewing these publications — particularly Pound’s little-known work for the British Union of Fascists in the years leading up to the outbreak of World War II — this study will consider the antisemitic propaganda Pound simultaneously advanced in Britain and Italy. In combining the two movements Pound wrote for by analysing fascism as a political ideology, this study finds that Pound’s fascist publications cover fully a decade in time, between 1935 and 1945, and show him gravitating toward ever more extreme — yet all too representative — forms of fascist antiscmitism.