Pictured: ‘A route within the Soluch (Soluk) concentration camp, which had circa 20.123 Libyan prisoners by 1931.’ (Source.)

Quoting Ali Abdullatif Ahmida’s Genocide in Libya: Shar, a Hidden Colonial History, pages 138–141:

Recently, I had a discussion with one of my political science undergraduate students at the University of New England, in southern Maine, about her image of Italian culture and society. […] She admitted to knowing nothing about Italian Fascism, and certainly nothing about the internment in Libya.

The view of Fascist Italy was impacted by geographical distance, the Red Scare, the view of Italian Fascism as a modern and developmental ideology, and American society’s acceptance of the dominant view of moderate fascism after World War II and the start of the Cold War. Critical scholarship of Fascist Italy shows strong positive views of the régime.

David Schmitz, a leading historian, investigated the American National Archives and interviews with State Department officials conducted between 1922 and 1940, and concluded that American leaders perceived the rise of Italian Fascism “as meeting of qualifications for supporting political stability, anti‐Bolshevism, and promised increases in trade³⁹.”

Thus, Washington welcomed Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922 and established policies that aided his régime because it believed that fascism would bring equilibrium and strong government to Italy, work against Bolshevism, aid Italy’s economic recovery along acceptable lines, and provide American businesses with favorable investment opportunities. And he added that Mussolini was viewed as a “moderate” leading a progressive administration that would help modernize Italy.⁴⁰

There was silence about the war crimes and no critique of the war crimes in Libya. However, the American Archives on the American Embassy reports from Rome show a different view and clear understanding and documentation of the repressive policies in Libya, which clearly did not persuade the Roosevelt administration to rethink its moderate image of the régime even after it invaded Ethiopia in 1935. The archives show that the American government stayed neutral and refused to condemn the fascist régime’s aggression that led to the end of the League of Nations.

If the American state in the 1920 and 1930s supported and engaged the fascist régime, it follows that the view of the American public was not much different. I examined The New York Times coverage of Italy and colonial Libya between 1911 and 1940 and found only one vague reference to pacification of the rebels and the capture of ʻUmar al‐Mukhtar. Not only did The Times take the fascist side and language it did not even mention the concentration camps. Here is the only reference to the resistance on January 24, 1930:

The rebellion really was crushed last year when General Graziani Stretched 180 miles of barbwire across the weeping sands separating Egypt and Libya and blocked off tribesmen from food and water. After unsuccessful attempt to pierce the barrier, Jusuf Bu Rahil [Yusuf Bu Rahil] chief aide of the rebel leader ʻUmar al‐Mukhtar and his band were pressured into the desert and virtually wiped out.⁴¹

Furthermore, the coverage was short and uncritical of the [Fascist] colonial and orientalist language representation of the native people, such as “Bedouins,” motivated by “religious fanaticism,” and “holy war.” The reporting accepted uncritically the colonial claims and policies, such as the use of “pacification” or the positive reporting of the big fascist celebration of shipping 20,000 settlers to the colony on October 31, 1938: “sixteen ships carrying 1,800 families of agricultural workers to the Italian colony of Libya.”

In short, the reporting did not question the colonial claims, its violence, atrocities, or the genocide in concentration camps up to 1934.⁴² There is one exception to this historical silence and amnesia; the only well‐informed reports came from the American Embassy in Rome, but even this reporting took the [Fascist] side for granted. This is striking if one keeps in mind that the American Embassy in Rome was informed about the camps.

One can conclude from this investigation that the leading American paper, The New York Times, not only did even mention the camps, accepted the colonial fascist narrative, and contributed to the making of moderate or benign Italian Fascism.⁴³

The National Geographic Magazine, which was founded in 1888, had close ties to the American government, as many diplomats and businessmen contributed articles to it. It is the third most popular magazine in the USA and had a high subscription of 37 million readers in 1989.⁴⁴ I discovered 24 articles on Italy and Libya between 1922 and 1940. The magazine published three main articles on Libya. All three accept fascist claims and even the myth of reviving the Roman past by linking it to long‐ago Libya.

Furthermore, the articles are silent on the brutal Italian history of the internment and the military and cultural atrocities including the genocide. Instead, the articles suggested that the régime’s colonial policies helped modernize Libya and developed and civilized the fanatical and savage “Bedouin” natives. The first article was written by Gordon Casserly in 1925 and titled “Tripolitania Where Rome Resumes Sway.” The author takes for granted and supports the [Fascist] claim of a Roman past as justification for invading Tripoli. He had no words for the resistance.

The second article was written by Harriet Chalmers Adams in 1930 and titled “Cyrenaica, Eastern Wing of Italian Libya.[”] It is another apology for [Fascist] colonialism. The author repeated orientalist gazes such as “a primitive land” inhabited by “fanatical Muslims.” The third article was authored by John Patric in 1937 with a propaganda title of “Imperial Rome Reborn.”

He celebrated the great fascist celebration of the rebirth of the new “L’impero Italiano.” No moral or critical question was raised but the right for empire and conquest by fascism was taken for granted.⁴⁵ This coverage by National Geographic Magazine was silent about the concentration camps and the mass killing. Instead, the three articles constructed well‐produced, edited photos and exotic images which contributed to a positive image of fascism and colonialism and the absurd myth that it was benign and modernizing.

Thus, Italian Fascism and its genocidal policies in Libya was accepted and even viewed as a modernization period. This myth of moderate and modernizing Italian Fascism became an influential interpretation among some American social scientists who accepted the claims of pro‐fascist Italian historian De Felice, whose defense of fascism became a well‐respected view and was defended by his students, and the American Journal of Historical Studies.⁴⁶

In addition, American political scientist James Gregor made a career for himself teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, in the department of Political Science. There, he advocated Italian Fascism as an aid to development during most of the 1980s. His book Italian Fascism and Developmental Dictatorship (1979), published by the Princeton University Press, supports his view of fascism.⁴⁷

Even the eminent political theorist Hannah Arendt and many German academic refugees from [the Third Reich] advocated this myth of moderate Italian Fascism, as compared with the genocidal [Third Reich].

Perhaps Arendt did not know what was going on in Libya; we know she was very early on in her career, writing her second book on totalitarianism in which she took a moral stand against imperialism and even argued that the route to the German genocide, including the Holocaust, originated in the European genocides in the colonies, especially the Congo and German East Africa.

Arendt was clear about the impact of genocide, but not so for fascist practices in Libya, or the Native American genocide in North and South America between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries[.] She was also wrong about Fascist Italy when arguing that there was no Jewish question and no anti‐feminism in Italy, and also silent about Libya, Ethiopia, and Yugoslavia, to the point that she repeated time and time again that Italian Fascism was just an ordinary dictatorship under fascism.⁴⁸

Popular American culture also portrayed a positive view of Fascist Italy, and one should not forget that some American icons were supporters of Mussolini and his régime, such as American businessman Henry Ford and the American poet Ezra Pound, who not only lived in Italy but worked in fascist Italian Radio, advocating for fascism and Mussolini.⁴⁹

It should be surprising that the Italian election in March 2018 witnessed not only the continued neo‐fascist movement, but also many small fascist parties including one called Casa Pound, in reference to the pro‐fascist American poet Ezra Pound.⁵⁰

Historical and geographical distances, as well as lack of knowledge and awareness, allowed certain policy makers and mass media such as The New York Times and the third‐most widely read magazine, National Geographic Magazine, with its 37 million readers, to reproduce the myth that Italian Fascism was not genocidal but was a moderate, positive force aiming to modernize.

(Emphasis added.)