From Immigrant Radical to Pro-war Patriot: Onorio Ruotolo and the Italian American Response to World War I

Italian-born Onorio Ruotolo was a well-known sculptor and political activist in New York City on the eve of the First World War.  In 1914, he co-founded Il Fuoco (The Fire), the most popular Italian-American radical publication in the country, and openly condemned both sides of the European conflict.  By 1917, however, Ruotolo fervently supported Italian and American intervention in the war, viewing the Allied cause as an opportunity for cultural renewal and social transformation.

This paper will examine Ruotolo's reversal of positions to gain insight into the largely forgotten response of Italian Americans to the Great War.  As an academically-trained artist and a public intellectual with anarchist sympathies, Ruotolo differed greatly from the millions of other Italians living in the United States.  But in his conflicted feelings about the war he shared many of his fellow immigrants' fears and aspirations, which developed ultimately into a passionate nationalism for Italy and active participation in the American war effort.

As a case study, Ruotolo's experience also offers a unique visual record of these difficult years, as his artistic work moved rapidly from antiwar cartoons in Il Fuoco, to sculptures of suffering Belgian refugees, to heroic busts of Wilson and Mussolini.  His work deepens our understanding of the era's turbulent ethnic politics, which have for so long been interpreted through the experience of German immigrants and the repression of German American culture.  Italy, in contrast, was an ally of the United States, and Italian Americans fought in the U.S. military in large numbers and strongly supported the country's many home front campaigns.  Ruotolo's art captures these immigrants' transcultural concerns, both for the future of Italy and for their own inclusion and political and economic status in American society in the peace to come.