Respectability and Disloyalty: The Competing Obligations of L’Italiano’s Editors

Abstract

Italian Fascism began to exert ideological demands over the communities, businesses, and newspapers of Italian migrants in Australia by the mid-1920s. In the lead up to the Second World War, the Commonwealth government enacted measures to thwart the danger of Fascist propaganda, which impacted profoundly on Italian migrant community networks and newspapers. Tracing the history of the lost Queensland newspaper, L’Italiano (1930–1941), through the official wartime files of its editors, Cesare Baucia and Cristofaro Albanese, this chapter explores how both men navigated the competing business obligations impacting on their roles, readership, and communities. L’Italiano’s anti-Fascist reputation gradually shifted towards appeasing the Fascist authorities, challenging perceptions of Italian migrant respectability and loyalty in a context of nation-building, ethnicity, and race.