Fascists at the Fair: Political Resistance at the 1933–1934 Chicago World's Fair
Corresponding Author
Andrew C. Herman
Andrew C. Herman is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The author is very grateful for the valuable feedback given by Rebecca Emigh, Don Levine, Stefan Bargheer, and Lauren Duquette-Rury.Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Andrew C. Herman
Andrew C. Herman is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The author is very grateful for the valuable feedback given by Rebecca Emigh, Don Levine, Stefan Bargheer, and Lauren Duquette-Rury.Search for more papers by this authorAndrew C. Herman is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Abstract
At the 1933–1934 World's Fair in Chicago the local German American population was able to organize some resistance to minimize the Nazi presence on the fairgrounds, while Italian Americans, for their part, were held in check by the close oversight of Fascist Italy's representatives at the Fair. Neither the Fairs organizing committee nor the U.S. State Department offered any objection to either governments presence. The history of the event shows that these differences were fundamentally due to international regulations surrounding international expositions, suggesting that our existing approaches toward meaning-making and political action at mega-events need to take better account of larger regulatory structures.
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