I was talking with my dad the other day. He’s a Neapolitan who immigrated in the late 80s, so I don’t really consider myself italian American as I learned everything directly from him. We were talking about the 1946 referendum to determine whether Italy would remain a monarchy or become a republic. The republic won 12m votes to 10m. However, this was because overseas Italians, who were descended from the southerners of the time, weren’t allowed to vote. If they had been allowed to vote Italy would still be a monarchy. Basically the overseas Italians were broadly fascist enablers. Those same Italians are the ancestors of the modern day It*lian *mericans. So technically it is praxis to hate Italian Americans as they are pretty much descended from fascists.

As a side note, according to my dad, they changed the overseas voting law after the demographics shifted. By the time he immigrated the community he immigrated to was first generation Italians who were university educated, which accounts for a lot of our family and family friends. Interesting food for thought.

  • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    It's the same with greek americans, a lot of immigrants were from the absolute poverty in the islands after the british set up the greek monarchy and it promptly started engaging in commodity production at the expense of all of the actual people. However they all showed up in america in time to eventually become landlords, cops and pizza shop owners. Like they still celebrate greek independence from the ottomans but will stare blankly at you when you talk about the coup against greek democracy in the 60s that the american government was complicit in. Like this isn't even ancient history, it's literally childhood memories from our parents.