166 cultural programs, such as language courses. 27 To this end, the Fascists exported the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (OND, National Afterwork Organization) to communities throughout North America. The aim of the Dopolavoro was to unify and oversee the operation of Italian social clubs and provide members and their families with popular forms of entertainment such as sporting events and movies. In addition, the Fascists created a separate organization – Gioventù Italiana del Littorio all’Estero (Italian Youths of the Lictor Abroad) – aimed specifically at children.28 Fascists also sought to influence Italian communities in Canada and the United States by taking control of the benevolent society known as the Ordine Figli d’Italia (OFI – Order of the Sons of Italy) and through Italian language programs that would instill fascist values. 29 The Fascists‟ emphasis on nation and their perception of migrant settlements abroad as Italian colonies in some ways set the tone for antifascist responses to Italian identity.30 Leftists may not have identified as Italians in the past, but with the fascists claiming to speak in the interests of Italians regardless of where they lived, antifascists, anarchists among them, also at times couched their alternative vision in nationalist terms. For example, on 20 March 1923, anarchists in New Haven, Connecticut, prevented Carlo Cattapane, a local Fascist, from speaking at the Town Hall. Forced to leave the stage due to the hostility of the mostly antifascist crowd, Cattapane was afterwards asked why he 27
Robert F. Harney, “Toronto‟s Little Italy, 1885-1945,” Little Italies in North America, eds. Robert F. Harney and J. Vincenza Scarpaci (Toronto: The Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1981) 55. 28 Philip Morgan, Italian Fascism, 1915-1945 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) 135-136, 147; Luigi G. Pennacchio, “Exporting Fascism to Canada: Toronto‟s Little Italy,” Enemies Within: Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad, eds. Franca Iacovetta, Roberto Perin, and Angelo Principe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000) 56-57, 61. 29 Attilio Bortolotti, “Guardian of the Dream: A [sic] Oral History with Art Berthelot,” Kick It Over 17 (Winter 1986/1987): 2; Avrich, Anarchist Voices 186; Susan Petkovic, “Italians in Windsor: The Development of the Erie Street Community from Ghetto to Via Italia,” MA Thesis, Queen‟s University, 1992, 84. 30 Bruno Ramirez, The Italians in Canada (Ottawa: The Canadian Historical Association, 1989) 16-18; Robert F. Harney, From the Shores of Hardship: Italians in Canada (Welland: Éditions Soleil, 1993) 116.