UC Berkeley

Italian radio was politicized from the first broadcast of a speech by Mussolini in 1925. The dictator’s thunderous voice may have sought domination over the airwaves, but in the only Western nation where radio broadcasting evolved under a totalitarian government, the vast majority of broadcasting hours was devoted to entertainment. Far from being apolitical, radio transmissions of music and theater were central players in fascism’s culture industry, shaped both by the profit-driven strategies of media enterprises and by the emotional investment and listening habits of consumers. In this dissertation, through analysis of musical scores, recordings, films and unpublished archival materials, I demonstrate that radio during fascism sought to immerse listeners within a statist fantasy, and that cultural broadcasts were not only political, but themselves generated fascist ideas and discourse. I argue that we cannot understand either fascism’s historical role or its lingering presence in global politics and culture without understanding the ways in which it was mediated by and through radio.