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Published on: July 26, 2019
The 1918 Influenza Pandemic and the Rise of Italian Fascism: A Cross-City Quantitative and Historical Text
Gregori Galofré-Vilà1, Martin McKee1, María Gómez-León1
1Gregori Galofré-Vilà is with the Department of Economics, Universidad Pública de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain. Martin McKee is with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK. María Gómez-León is with the Department of Economic Analysis, Universitat de València, València, Spain. David Stuckler is with the Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy.
Abstract:
Evidence linking past experiences of worsening health with support for radical political views has generated concerns about the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The influenza pandemic that began in 1918 had a devastating health impact: 4.1 million Italians contracted influenza and about 500 000 died. We tested the hypothesis that deaths from the 1918 influenza pandemic contributed to the rise of Fascism in Italy. To provide a "thicker" interpretation of these patterns, we applied historical text mining to the newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia (Mussolini's newspaper). Our observations were consistent with evidence from other contexts that worsening mortality rates can fuel radical politics. Unequal impacts of pandemics may contribute to political polarization. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(2):242-247. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306574).
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