Language and lineage of the Etruscans in Fascist Italy and National socialist Germany

This article studies the case of the Etruscan language, which was spoken in western central Italy, from the eighth century to the first century BCE, but whose lengthy texts we do not yet well understand. It shows that, as the origins of the Etruscan language and people are unknown, the Etruscan language offered totalitarian regimes a space for creating myths about the lineage from the Etruscan people to 1920s and 1930s Italian people. The article looks especially at the political uses of Etruscan in Fascist Italy and in a different way in Nazi Germany. It explains how the Italian and German authorities encouraged linguists and archaeologists to shape myths about the origins of the Etruscan language through publications and excavations. Even today the French journal Nouvelle École, one of the most significant media outlets of the Nouvelle Droite (New Right) political approach in France, still continues to recycle these old myths.