This article contributes to the debate about authoritarian diffusion by examining the case study of Iranian state propaganda in Italy, with a special attention to anti-feminist and anti-gender ideology initiatives. The article foregrounds historical and contextual factors in the analysis, as well as the development of the relations between Iranian state propagandists and Italian recipients, focusing on far-right and neo-fascist organisations. The article re-assesses the strength and success of Iran’s diffusion initiatives, demonstrating that authoritarian states try to create and engage an audience in democratic states even when they have a small chance of influencing the national public debate; and that they do so out of past trajectories and contextual, unstable interests. In conclusion, the article calls for more attention to the context, history and the actors’ agency when examining authoritarian diffusion, and emphasises that gender and sexual politics are a fertile ground to analyse the contemporary transformations of political regimes.
