Transatlantic Fascism investigates how Mussolini’s propaganda endeavors included the fascist rethinking of Argentine history, fascist transatlantic flights and the extensive use of radio, cinema, cartoons and bribes.However, if the Italians were selling fascism, the Argentines were not simply buying. Interpretative appropriation was central to this reception. Argentine fascists developed an original appropriation of fascism that they understood as a generic version of their own political movement. They saw European fascism as an example and not as a prefabricated model that simply needed to be assembled.In chapter 3, for example, I address the question of Argentine fascist self-understanding.This chapter pays special attention to the different fascist efforts to create a political doctrine. Without the presence of a leader and a regime such as those of fascist Italy, Argentine fascists had a greater autonomy in conceiving an ideological canon and defining their political culture in doctrinal and “sacred” terms.Argentine fascists understood their fascism as a more complete ideology than their ideological counterparts in Europe. They saw their political movement as a Christian army participating in a “crusade” against their conceived enemies.The book deals with the strong political and ideological legacy of Argentine fascism. And it also deals with this fascism’s central role in the birth of Peronism.Transatlantic Fascism also traces the political and conceptual legacies of Argentine fascism after Peronism, especially the nacionalista idea of the internal enemy, which represents the intellectual genealogy of the last Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983).Argentine fascist ideology was at the service of the discourse of the sacred (the “holy” violence of the Cross and the Sword), and occasionally manifested itself in specific acts of violence, torture and repression.But in the concentration camps of the dictatorship, ideology ceased to be a moment of reality; in them, rather, ideology became reality itself.