ABSTRACT
This chapter maintains that in order to understand anti-fascism as a global historical phenomenon, historians should start with reactions to fascism in the 1920s, rather than the 1930s. Italy was the birthplace of the fascist and anti-fascist struggle, but as Copsey shows, this struggle soon had global reach, extending to Italian diasporic communities across several continents. Focusing on four cases from the English-speaking world (US, Canada, Britain, Australia), this chapter reveals how anarchists formed the vanguard of the earliest anti-fascist opposition. Copsey underscores the importance of radical fulcra, key figures emerging as anti-fascist figureheads. In some instances, there was recourse to ‘diasporic nationalism’ (an alternative to proletarian internationalism), and in some cases, to violence. Yet there was also significant variation in this diasporic experience: there was greater nuance to it than is commonly thought.
