The Italian Issue

The Presidency is a truly unique position. Scarcely anyone outside the 34 individuals who have seen the office from the inside could imagine the sheer breadth and depth of the issues which cross the Resolute Desk on a daily basis, constant problems at local, national, and global scales which the President is expected to have an answer to right away, or at least know who COULD have such an answer. President Walt Disney, despite his enthusiasm for ascending to the nation's highest office, was quickly realizing that it was a far different animal than simply directing a large business. Perhaps he had even been too hard on Truman - surely the Oval Office would drive a lesser man to madness, so a few bumps here and there could be forgiven as coming with the job.

One issue, however, that Disney truly loathed Truman for leaving him was that of Italy. The nation itself may have genuinely been at more peace during the War - there have seemingly been more governments than years since the peace treaty was signed, as the boot of Europe swung from Christian conservatives to a deadlocked government to a monarchist coup to another deadlocked government to a neutral left government. And now, with elections on the horizon, Italy seemed poised to move once again, not only to a full socialist republic, but an outright Soviet-aligned Communist state. This was unacceptable for a Europe already embroiled in conflict, especially one in which Soviet action has become more and more bold.

Disney was determined not to let such a disaster occur so soon into his Presidency, and as such called together members of his cabinet for an emergency planning meeting to develop a strategy to counter leftist influence in the Italian Peninsula. Key to these discussions would be Secretary of State Dulles, Secretary of Arts, Culture, and Information Stanton, Counselor to the President Rockefeller, Communications Director Peet, and Director of Public Engagement Cummings. After three days of strategy meetings, on which all manner of solutions were discussed, a plan was finally put together on a coordinated propaganda campaign both at home and abroad to try and weaken the Italian Left. The plan, while covering multiple bases, would focus primarily on three pillars - Radio, Relatives, and Religion.

Radio

The most standard of the three pillars would be the targeting of pop culture propaganda that Disney was already so familiar with. Having been on the Radio Free Europe Committee, the President was well aware of the power of radio ads on a population as dispersed as Italy, who may not all see the same posters but COULD all hear the same radio programming. Radio Free Europe programming was thus to be expanded to a 24-7 broadcast schedule across the Italian peninsula. New programming would include a number of Italian guests speaking about their negative experiences with Communism and Socialism, reports from Greece on the "horrors" and "destruction" ravaged by the Greek Communist insurgents, stories from Sicilians extoling the money, jobs, and opportunity created by American capitalist investment around Camp Cesnola, and tales from Czechoslovakians who have had to flee their country since the Red Army marched into Prague to overthrow their democratically-elected government. All of this would be in an attempt to showcase Communism (and the general leftist tendencies that foster it) as a force that only brings autocracy, destruction, and subservience to Moscow, while American capitalism brings progress, opportunity, safety, and independence.

However, this type of direct propaganda would not exist alone. President Disney also had a wealth of experience personally developing propaganda films for the US military during the War, and as such would work closely with Secretary Stanton of the new Department of Arts, Culture, and Entertainment (DACI) to develop a series of informative cartoons that would sell the above messages using humor and relatable characters. These would obviously feature the staple characters of Mickey, Goofy, Donald, and Pluto (who's intellectual property Disney granted to the US government as his final act before resigning as President of Walt Disney Productions), but also characters that Roy suggested were most popular in Italy - namely Dumbo the Elephant and the Seven Dwarves from Snow White. These cartoons would be distributed free of cost by DACI to any and all broadcasters in Italy, and their broadcast would be fully subsidized (and overcompensated for the more often the broadcasters agreed to show them).

And of course, the classics of physical poster propaganda pieces would not be ignored either. Immediately, DACI and State Department officials would assist the further distribution of Giovannio Guareschi's popular anti-Communist media, including his famous voting booth advertisement. In addition, multiple other Italian-language anti-Communist posters are to be commissioned from Guareschi, building on the anti-Soviet sentiment organized by the radio and television campaigns to showcase Communism and leftism as tools of Soviet imperial control, the virtue of voting in local elections to oppose Communism, and even the image of the Soviet Hammer and Sickle as a trap ensnaring innocent Italians. Perhaps most clever, however, was an easily-distributable card showcasing the well-known visage of Garibaldi, initially appearing to be an advertisement for the leftist unity coalition that uses his image. However, on closer inspection, the text reads "Long live the Popular Democratic Front? Turn upside down to spot the deceit!" When reversed, the image of Garibaldi would instead show the features of Josef Stalin, implying that the revolutionary zeal of the Italian hero had been taken over and corrupted by the machinations of the Communist PDF.

Relatives

Perhaps most innovative of the three pillars would be a combined American-Italian campaign first recommended by Counselor to the President Nelson Rockefeller, who suggested the utilization of the nearly million families of Italian descent currently living in the United States. Believing that the key to genuinely changing the hearts and minds of Italians would lie in their core connection to family members, a campaign would be organized by DACI within the US to have families with Italian relatives to write personal letters to their family members in Italy, imploring them to vote against the Communists and secure the freedom of their country. This campaign was to be supported by radio and cartoon messages orchestrated by DACI in major US cities with large Italian-American populations, and would be bolstered by the "Mouseketeers" of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, a pro-Disney network of local activist groups formed during the election cycle that the President had kept in contact with to help with domestic political messaging. Italian-Americans were encouraged to send up to a letter a week, catching up with relatives and sharing their stories about the benefits of American capitalism and the horrors of Soviet Communism and sending private donations to anti-Communist groups in Italy. This would be supported by an order issued by Disney and propagated by Postmaster General Summerfield to allow distribution of free postage stamps for Italian campaign-related letters, as well as to expedite the processing of any mail bearing these stamps. The scale of this campaign would also be used to hide direct US monetary support for opposition parties to the PDF, allowing the covert transmission of millions of dollars to these political groups in order to subsidize their campaigns.

Within the US, the program itself was a massive popular success, with millions of Americans feeling that they could, for once, be personally involved in advancing the positive moral interests of anti-Communism abroad simply by sharing stories and money. By June, it was estimated that the Post Office had processed over ten million letters for the campaign, though what impact they would have in Italy was yet to be seen...

Religion

And closest to home for many Italians would be the pillar of religious messaging, utilizing the significant anti-Communist leanings of Pope Pius XII, an Italian who was much revered by the heavily Catholic Italy. Pious XII saw Communism, which often pushed messages of state atheism, as the largest global danger to the Church, and as such had already pushed anti-Communist messages as early as 1947. But this year, with the Communist-aligned PDF threatening to win outright, the Pope decided that more direct and drastic measures would need to be taken. On his April 5th Easter Mass speech in St. Peter's Square, Pope Pious XII declared that "the global war against Communism was a Holy War on a scale not seen since the Crusades" and extoled the "Christly virtues of all those with the courage to shake off the Communist snare." Most controversially, however, was his closing remark. Establishing Communism as a "fundamentally anti-Catholic and heretical ideology," the Pope proceeded to announce the excommunication of anyone who votes for a Communist or Communist-aligned party in a democratic election. "He who accepts the evils of Communism into his heart," Pious remarked, "has rejected the very teachings of Christ, and we wholeheartedly reject such apostates from our Holy and Apostolic Church."

Disney fully supported such messaging privately, though he understood the controversy of excommunicating all Communist voters outright. Nevertheless, DACI and the State Department would work in unison with the Church, developing additional propaganda films, cartoons, and radio broadcasts lamenting how "Godless Communists" were threatening to destroy the Church, and that seeing them elected would surely see the downfall of Rome, and of God's House on Earth. It was hoped that this connection of the anti-Communist campaign to one of the pillars of Italian life would be enough to help Italians fully internalize the threat of Soviet Communism, and oppose them in the voting booth on June 7th. Now, with all the pieces in place, only time would tell if the Italians would choose the path of reason, or the path of destruction.