The Politics of Blame

Abstract

Historian Paolo Favero argues that the “brava gente” myth, which promotes an image of Italians as intrinsically benevolent, “good folk,” has become a cleansing agent used to remove all the stains of Italy’s past.¹ The myth first came into existence during Italy’s era of colonization and has since been applied to whitewash evidence of Italian racism, imperialism, xenophobia, Fascism, antisemitism, and war crimes.²