Italy was the first European country to use radio as a propaganda instrument towards the Arab world. Radio Bari transmissions in Arabic (news, music, talk shows) started in 1934 and progressively intensified until 1943, when the radio was shut down by the Americans. My paper intends to analyse the transcriptions of Radio Bari programs in order to reconstruct the almost totally neglected experience of the radio. More specifically, the paper intends to shed light on the main contradiction that characterised the radio. Theoretically, according to the Fascist regime, the radio was meant to increase Italy’s political, strategic and economic presence in the Arab world. Practically, it ended by conveying a message that was incompatible with Fascist imperialistic politics. In fact, the radio programs became increasingly anti-British and anti-French, as it was intended to challenge the British and French policy in the North Africa and the Middle East, and openly supported Arab nationalism in the region. How could Italy be at the same time a colonial power and an anti-colonial movements supporter? Was Radio Bari aware of such a deep contradiction? How did the radio programs overcome such a problem? The British and French presence in the area was constantly depicted by the radio programs in highly negative tones -as the main cause for the region underdevelopment- while Italy was presented in a completely different way. In particular, the Italian conquest of Ethiopia in 1936 was described as an intervention aimed at protecting the Muslim minority from the Christian majority violations and abuses. At the same time, the situation in Libya was portrayed in terms of the classical Orientalist stereotype of “civilising mission”, which Fascism allegedly inherited from the Roman Empire. Therefore, my paper also intends to evaluate to what extent Radio Bari conveyed an Orientalist discourse, both in terms of its contents and its feature, i.e. adapting the programs to the supposedly existing Arabic “taste” and “cultural level”, thus engaging with Arab culture with a clear colonialist approach. In terms of sources, apart from the few existing bibliography and some published material (mainly the Italian, British, and French diplomatic documents), my paper will be based on the extensive unpublished documentation that I have been able to identify in several archives, including the Italian, Vatican, British, French, Moroccan and American ones.