Contagious Prejudice: The Marocchinate

Abstract

During World War II, French Moroccan troops performed numerous acts of (sexual) violence against the Italian population, known in Italy as the Marocchinate. We demonstrate that these events led to contagion in prejudice: They triggered a pronounced shift to the far right following the recent mass influx of migrants from Syria, the Middle East and Northern Africa. Survey results provide no evidence of intergenerational transmission of attitudes but identify selective recall of collective memory as a likely channel.