Between ‘Spirit’ and ‘Science’: The Emergence of Italian Fascist Antisemitism through the...

Between ‘Spirit’ and ‘Science’: TheEmergence of Italian Fascist Antisemitism

through the 1920s and 1930s

SALVATORE GARAU

While antisemitism has always been seen as lying at the heart ofNational Socialist ideology, the racism espoused by Italian Fascism hastraditionally been downplayed by scholars. This is largely for tworeasons: the number of Jews killed as a result of fascist antisemitismwas much smaller than the six million victims of the Holocaust; andfascist racism is often seen as a mere imitation of the Nazi Germanparadigm.According to Renzo De Felice, who published his Storia degli ebrei

italiani sotto il fascismo in 1961, fascist antisemitism was mainly thecorollary of an opportunistic foreign policy. Indeed, De Felice arguedthat it had no serious roots in Mussolini’s thought, and couldtherefore not be considered a genuine element of fascist ideology.1

Consequently, his book devotes minimal space to the Holocaust andthe Salò Republic, whose antisemitism he believes was shaped by theGermans. In other words, what happened to the Jews after 1943should be considered Jewish history under Nazism rather than Jewishhistory under fascism. According to this view, which has remaineddominant for decades, fascist antisemitism was really a pathologicalphenomenon firmly linked to the decadence of a puppet regime, theSalò Republic, which had no choice but to accept Nazi diktats. Theresult of this view is that fascist antisemitism has become associatedwith the Salò Republic, and hence is studied as if only this contextcould fully explain it.2

The Anglophone historiography has incorporated a substantiallysimilar view. In 1980 George Mosse, for instance, described ItalianFascist antisemitism as relatively moderate and unimportant, and Italy asa country that had generally protected the Jews, not only at the level ofthe general population but even at governmental level.3 More recently,A. James Gregor, has written that ‘Fascist antisemitism was the unhappyconsequence of Mussolini’s alliance with Hitler. It was never a centralconviction of the ideology, and was almost applied with bad conscience’.

He also argued that ‘there is very good reason to believe that racism isnot even necessary to “fascism” as a concept’.4

Admittedly, other theorists on fascism, such as Roger Griffin andStanley Payne, have granted racism greater importance, with theformer arguing that fascism is ‘essentially racist’ and the latterdefining it as ‘highly ethnicist’.5 Neither, however, has acknowledgedany real internal development of antisemitism or successfully tracedthe advance of racism before the mid-1930s from an ideologicalperspective. In addition to the neglect of antisemitism’s developmentas an element of fascist ideology, scant attention has been paid to itspractical effects upon the Italian Jewish community. As JoshuaZimmerman notes in his 2005 The Jews in Italy under Fascist andNazi Rule, the impression of a mild fascist antisemitism is stillprevalent, as is the idea that most Italians in the 1930s opposed theracial laws.6

Attempting to challenge this trend, the most recent research inItaly has initiated a significant transformation in the perception offascist racism, with several books published over the last decaderadically questioning De Felice’s and Mosse’s views on the topic. Theemergence of new primary sources has convinced a number ofscholars to take fascist antisemitism much more seriously, with thedevelopment of racism and antisemitism in Italy viewed more as aresult of extant racist theories, which intellectuals, scientists andpoliticians had developed well before the implementation of the raciallaws in 1938.Books such Scienza e razza nell’Italia fascista by Giorgio Israel and

Pietro Nastasi, Scienza italiana e razzismo fascista by RobertoMaiocchi, Nel nome della razza, edited by Alberto Burgio, and Studisul razzismo italiano, edited by Alberto Burgio and Luciano Casali,have all re-evaluated the domestic development of Italian racism,coming to see it as more than a mere import.7 Giovanni Miccoli’swork on Catholic antisemitism from the nineteenth century onwards,meanwhile, has demonstrated its enormous importance as aprecondition for the wider development of antisemitism in Italy.Michele Sarfatti has offered the most comprehensive challenge to

the view that the introduction of the racial laws represented a suddenand anomalous departure from the respect that the regime hadpreviously shown towards Jews. Instead, he argues that the pathtowards state antisemitism was a three-phase phenomenon whichstarted at the very beginning of the fascist regime: the first phase was

42 FASCISM AND THE JEWS

to attack Jewish equality; the second to attack Jewish rights; and thethird culminated in the assault on Jewish lives.8 Giorgio Fabre goeseven further, tracing Mussolini’s antisemitism back to the 1920s andeven 1910s, depicting the Duce as an important theorist of Europeanantisemitism.9

As well as questioning the traditional perception of Italian racismas trivial and imitative, these works have also helped dismiss the‘Italiani brava gente’ myth, used self-vindicatingly for decades topresent the Italians as intrinsically ‘good’, in comparison to the ‘bad’Germans. By and large, these new Italian studies have been publishedonly in recent years, and their impact outside Italy has so far beenlimited. There are signs, however, that research within theAnglophone historiography has started to incorporate this newperspective (for example, The Civilization of the Holocaust in Italy byWiley Feinstein and Robert Paxton’s Anatomy of Fascism).10However,despite these and other encouraging signals, Zimmerman’s assertionthat there remains a long delay in the reception of new Italianresearch into the Anglophone historiography still largely holds true.The purpose of this study is to go some way towards bridging this

gap, as well as to build further upon the nascent research indicating thatfascist antisemitism must be taken far more seriously and itsdevelopment analysed within a native, rather than imitative, context. Itaims to show that, within some sectors of Italian Fascism, certainmarked racist and antisemitic tendencies began appearing as early as the1920s. It will also focus on the development of state antisemitism in the1930s, looking in particular at the fierce discord that arose withinfascism between those whose racism was based on biologicalfoundations and those who were more culturally or spiritually inspired.

The Twin Roots of Italian Antisemitism

Pre-fascist Italian antisemitism grew from two different sources. Inthe nineteenth century it existed on a primarily theological andreligious basis, and although by the end of the century it would startincorporating more political themes, their premises were still mainlyreligious. Then, at the beginning of the twentieth century,antisemitism began to emerge independently in certain cultural andpolitical circles. Here it was essentially political, a product of oneparticularly racist form of ultra-nationalism that did not depend onany religious justification.

EMERGENCE OF ITALIAN FASCIST ANTISEMITISM 43

The leading exponent of Italian religious antisemitism was theJesuit journal Civiltà Cattolica. Founded in 1850 and quicklybecoming one of the most important journals of the Catholic Church,it mounted an increasingly virulent anti-Jewish campaign, which wasto reach its climax in 1890 with three ferocious articles, published thefollowing year as a book entitled Della questione giudaica in Europa(On the Jewish Question in Europe).Initially, this campaign was built largely on religious foundations.

The various calumnies against Jews included accusations of theirhaving deviated from Mosaic law to embrace the Talmud, which tocontemporary Catholic audiences represented a perversion of theJewish religion and the negation of Christian morality.11 The Talmud,declared Civiltà Cattolica, pursued the ‘oppression and spoliation’ ofthe peoples that offered ‘hospitable residence’ to the Jews; it preachedhatred against all non-Jews,12 who were regarded as nothing morethan ‘brute animals’.13 The Jews were also accused of committingdeicide,14 as well as carrying out ritual murders of Christian children.Both these crimes were presented as intrinsically linked to TalmudicJudaism.15

Civiltà Cattolica’s anti-Jewish campaign, however, was not fuelledsolely by religious motives for long. As the journal broadened its areaof activity to embrace secular politics, the tone of its anti-Jewishattacks shifted: articles began not only to treat the Jews in terms oftheir religion, but also to define them as a people, nation and race,16

and associate them with many new social and political theories.Since the eighteenth century, Judaism had occasionally been

portrayed as a source of various controversial theories andmovements.17 However, it was at the end of the nineteenth centurythat this tendency began to gain real strength. In 1864 Pope Pius IXissued a controversial document named Syllabus of Errors, whichcondemned a series of modern ideas and ideologies, such asrationalism, parliamentarism, socialism, freedom of religion, theseparation of church and state, progress, liberalism and moderncivilisation. In an ecclesiastical climate hostile to modernity, Jewsbegan to be increasingly associated with the theories that Catholicsperceived as the most threatening. The presumption was that increating these new philosophies, Jews hoped to sow disorder andanarchy in Christian society, and thereby enlarge their own politicaland economic influence. In fact, Della questione giudaica in Europaargued that the idea of human rights was itself a Jewish invention, a


subtle scheme to let Jews gain the same civil rights as Christians inorder to expand their own political influence and, ultimately, gaindomination.18 It further claimed that the Jews were usingFreemasonry, with ‘diabolic subtlety’, to take control of Christiancountries.19

Not only did the three 1890 articles in Civiltà Cattolica offeranalysis of the ‘Jewish question’; the last also proposed specificremedies. In particular, it advocated anti-Jewish laws to bring aboutexpropriation of property and forcible deportation, and demandedthe revocation of all legal measures that assured political and civilequality to Jews.20

Civiltà Cattolica’s stance led it to actively support politicalantisemitism, applauding Karl Lueger in Vienna and backing theCatholic anti-Jewish campaign in France during the Dreyfus Affair.21

In this phase, other important Catholic journals and newspapers alsosharpened their anti-Jewish tones and moved from a purely religiousantisemitism to embrace a new, ‘modern’ and political antisemitism.22

Civiltà Cattolica, although at the forefront of this campaign, wasjoined by many other publications, such as Osservatore Romano,Osservatore Cattolico, La chiosa, Il Cittadino and La voce della verità,demonstrating the wide extent of anti-Jewish prejudices within theCatholic world.23 And, as Miccoli has shown, such views wereconfined not just to the Catholic press, but were approved by theChurch itself.24

The beginning of the new century witnessed the development ofanother kind of antisemitism in Italy, one that no longer relied onreligious premises. This new antisemitism, built on socio-cultural andracial grounds, expressed itself in political forms and developedwithin the Italian nationalist movement. The radicalisation ofnationalism in some sectors of Italian culture and politics,25 a result ofthe Italian army’s disastrous defeat at Adowa in 1896, had led to theestablishment of the Italian Nationalist Association (ANI) in 1910.Within four years of its founding, the ANI had rejected liberalism anddemocracy, and, under the influence of its leading ideologue, thejurist Alfredo Rocco, it began to advocate increased domesticproduction and military imperialism as a solution to Italy’s politicalweakness.26 Rocco would later come to propose the authoritariancorporate state as a definitive antidote to liberal parliamentarism.The radicalisation of nationalist feelings brought two major

consequences: the concept of race began to be applied to the Italian


people, and the idea of a hierarchy of races started to establish itself.In Rocco’s writings, for instance, the concept of race defined themovement’s ultra-nationalism, while at the same time justifyingmilitary expansionism.27 Rocco argued that nationalism’s final aimwas to ‘protect the interests of the Italian race’28 and avoid itsextinction,29 while the nation itself was defined as a ‘social aggregate,constituted by men of the same race’.30

According to Rocco, nationalism could have either an ‘internal’ oran ‘external’ character, depending on the status of the race.31 Forinstance, French nationalism had an ‘internal’ character because itsmain goal was to ‘reinvigorate’ a declining race that was suffering afalling birth rate. The character of Italian nationalism, on the otherhand, reflected a race whose strength was indicated by a high birthrate and could directly focus on the second, ‘external’ step, namelymilitary expansion.The definition of a race as declining or expanding was not

determined, in Rocco’s view, on biological grounds, but rather byhistorical, political and cultural factors. At the same time, however, hedid not see race as merely a synonym for nation; instead it was aqualitative attribute describing the nation, for it was linked to factorssuch as the physical strength of the people, birth rate, and historicaland cultural homogeneity.The notion of race also offered the premise for military

expansionism. Rocco argued that in order to find new territories toconquer, Italy should focus its attention specifically on decliningraces.32 Theories on the superiority of the Italian race and theinferiority of others, such as the Slavs, began to appear in workswritten by nationalists in the 1910s. Ruggero Fauro (Timeus) andAttilio Tamaro were forerunners of these visions,33 which came to beaccepted and promoted by other leading nationalists, such as CorradoGini and Francesco Coppola. The former argued that Italians wereracially superior to the Slavs,34 while the latter went on to advocateItalian domination over these peoples: ‘those of inferior civilisation,the Slavs’, should ‘be subordinated to those of superior civilisation,namely the Italians’.35

However, the racist positions expressed by some of the leadingmembers of the ANI did not necessarily imply antisemitism. Indeed,as Rocco pointed out in 1914, the ANI’s official policy did notcontain antisemitism, thereby distinguishing itself from Frenchnationalism.36 In spite of this, though, leading exponents of


nationalism, as well as some journals, began to exhibit anti-Jewishpositions. As early as 1912, for example, at the time of the Libyan warbetween Italy and the Ottoman Empire, the ANI journal IdeaNazionale accused Jews of aiding the enemy. In particular, they wereheld responsible for financially supporting the Turks, a charge basedon the loans offered to the Ottoman Empire by two Jewish-directedbanks in France and Germany. On this occasion, anti-Jewishsentiment was aroused not only in the nationalist press, but also inmainstream journals such as the Corriere della Sera. Such attitudeswere independent of religious prejudices, and grew primarily frompolitical concerns, with the Jews seen as a group with interestsessentially distinct from the Italian nation. For one thing, they wereseen to lack patriotism, as their identification with Italy wassupposedly subordinate to their identification with their own faith.For another, they displayed a penchant for pacificism and a markedinclination towards internationalism, which was on several levelsincompatible with the centrality of the nation as defined by thenationalists.In this situation, despite Rocco’s reassurances regarding the ANI’s

position towards the Jews, some leading figures in the movementexpressed explicit anti-Jewish sentiment. Coppola, for example, madeoutspoken attacks on a number of occasions,37 while Enrico Corradinicriticised the Jews in his La vita nazionale (1907) and L’Ombra dellavita (1908).38 Paolo Orano, whose 1937 Gli Ebrei in Italia would bewidely circulated, had been calling attention to a supposed lack ofJewish patriotism since 1914.39

In short, it is apparent that nationalist groups had been developingracist and antisemitic tendencies from at least the 1910s. When theANI merged with Fascism in 1923, therefore, it would bring with ittwo things. It provided several leading personalities, most notablyRocco, who, as minister of justice, came to play a significant role inconstructing the fascist corporate state. But it also brought anintrinsically racist vision of the nation and imperialism, which wouldhave a considerable impact on fascism.

Fascist Racism and Antisemitism in the 1920s

As we have seen, Italian antisemitism was not created by fascism.Fascist antisemitism, as it appeared in some strands of Mussolini’smovement from the early 1920s, was in many respects an


amalgamation of the anti-Jewish tendencies that had developed inItaly over the preceding decades. Fascism did, however, play a part inlaunching a new political class very different from the one that haddominated the liberal regime. Combining strong nationalist,provincial and Catholic leanings, this new class was far more likelyboth to embrace a form of ultra-nationalism that contained racistelements, and to absorb and promote old antisemitic prejudices andstereotypes.Before addressing racism, it is important to underline that even

though the fascist racial laws were implemented only from 1938, theuse of the word ‘race’ dates back to the earliest years of Fascism.Fascism was the ‘vigilant spirit on the watch of the Italian race’ 40 andaimed to unify people ‘in the same racial pride’41 the strength ofMussolini’s movement lay ‘in the sanity of the race’, and the Ducehimself was the ‘expression of a healthy race’.42

Sometimes the word ‘race’ was related to physical characteristicsof the people. In La sconfitta dell’Europa, for instance, MassimoRocca wrote that ‘the Duce sometimes used in his speeches thephysical notion of race, but in a generic sense; he was pleased, forinstance, because the regime’s provisions for sport and the improvedliving standards of Italians had raised the average height by onecentimetre’.43 However, more often it was used to underline theuniqueness of the Italian people in a much broader sense. A documentpublished by Mussolini’s National Fascist Party (PNF) in the early1920s stated that ‘Italy is a nation because from the Alps to Sicilythere is a fundamental unity of our race; there is a fundamental unityof our dress, of our language, of our religion’.44 As this quotationindicates, the inimitability of the Italian ‘race’ was typically notdefined in terms of biology but rather by history, culture and religion.The term ‘race’ was also used with a more negative connotation,

especially in reference to the Slavs. There were relatively frequentmentions of the ‘Slavic race’ in Mussolini’s personal journalGerarchia, and the Duce himself labelled Slavs as ‘inferior andbarbaric’ in a speech made in September 1920.45 The implications ofsuch an attitude quickly became clear. Gerarchia claimed as early as1922 that the improvement of the race was an ‘unavoidable necessity’because Italy could create ‘a superior people’. The ‘improvement ofhereditary characteristics’ could be gained ‘even through laws andrestrictions which stop, as much as is possible, the problem of peoplebeing affected by hereditary taint’.46 As Claudio Pogliano has shown,


eugenic theories had been circulating in Italy since the 1910s;47 it issignificant that they were not only known to, but were endorsed by,the main theoretical journal of fascism.Lastly, the racial and imperial problem had been foreboded in the

fascist press since the mid-1920s. Africa Italiana, a journal publishedby the Ministry for the Colonies, pointed out that colonisation shouldbe ‘conceived in a collective, national, and racial sense’ because if therace became impure through the ‘leprosy of mixed marriages, itwould lose both its prestige and its future’.48

It is important to avoid a teleological interpretation of suchstatements. It would be too simplistic to assume a straightforwardcause–effect relationship between them and the racial laws of 1938.These publications do, however, indicate that fascist ultra-nationalismassumed: 1) that races could be differentiated from one another; 2)that certain other peoples and races were inferior to the Italians (forinstance, the Slavs); and 3) that a race could be improved throughappropriate legislation.Together with these general views on race, some individuals and

factions within fascism exhibited specifically anti-Jewish attitudes.The most notorious was Giovanni Preziosi, who presents aninteresting case in that the two abovementioned forces, religious andpolitical antisemitism, merged together in his person. He had been apriest until the beginning of the 1910s, when he became increasinglyinvolved with the nationalist movement. In 1920, through his journalVita Italiana, he initiated an antisemitic campaign that would soonmake him the most important and coherent Italian antisemite. Hisfirst anti-Jewish article, ‘Jewish International’, appeared on 15August, 1920, and aimed to outline the pervasive influence of theJews in international politics and the economy.49 Although hisposition was extreme, it was still in keeping with the antisemiticattacks emerging from nationalist circles. What would differentiatePreziosi’s antisemitism was his discovery of The Protocols of the Eldersof Zion.This bogus document, actually compiled by the Russian tsarist

police, purportedly revealed a Jewish plan for world domination.Preziosi translated it into Italian and published it in La Vita Italiana inFebruary 1921. Mainly on the evidence of this document, he came togenuinely believe in a Jewish conspiracy to control the world; heinterpreted both the international financial power of the Jews and therise of Bolshevism as an expression of the same cause, namely


international Judaism. From 1922 antisemitism became the dominanttheme in Preziosi’s thought, an ideological tool which he used to linktogether the series of forces – Freemasonry, communism, anarchism,and socialist syndicates – that he believed were threatening thenation.50 Inspired by his belief in this conspiracy, Preziosi endeavouredto illustrate the enormous power that the Jews had supposedlyacquired in the most important fields of political, social and economiclife. One such area was banking; he openly decried the subordinationof Italian banks to ‘Jewish international high finance’.51 Jews did,indeed, hold eminent positions in public companies, the publicadministration, universities, and political institutions, such as thechambers of deputies and the senate. To Preziosi, and others, thisconstituted clear support for his theory.After the March on Rome, Preziosi was promoted to the position

of editor of the Neapolitan journal Il Mattino, and became directlyinvolved in the politics of the gruppi di competenza, the technocraticbodies formed of experts in key fields such as economics and law. Healso began to associate with Roberto Farinacci, the most importantleader of the radical wing of Italian Fascism. Shortly after the Marchon Rome, Farinacci and the radicals began pressuring Mussolini intosuppressing political opposition and establishing a totalitariandictatorship, with the aim of bringing about the fascist revolutiondesired by the agrarian and radical branches of fascism. Radicalfascism totally rejected normalisation, the peaceful transition fromthe liberal to the fascist regime, and instead envisioned an all-powerful party in control of a monolithic state, which would be ledby an uncompromising elite. In order to realise this vision, and todestroy opposition, the radicals wanted special measures to end thefree press, control banks, reorganise the bureaucracy along fascistlines and abolish all secret societies. An authentically fascist syndicatewould also be created by absorbing all the trade unions into the fascisttrade union, which would be completely controlled by the party.The radicals’ plan for a complete restructuring of the nation

coincided neatly with Preziosi’s political agenda. A successful attackagainst high finance and banking, the suppression of Freemasonry andstricter controls over culture and universities were all necessary, inPreziosi’s view, before Italy could finally be freed from perniciousJewish influence.Antisemitism was no longer a characteristic only of Preziosi’s La

Vita Italiana; it also featured in some of the most important journals


of radical fascism, such as Cremona Nuova and Regime Fascista, bothedited by Farinacci.52 Before long, the radical fascist wing waspervaded by antisemitism.53 In fact, the ideological proximity betweenPreziosi and Farinacci would lead in 1931 to the fusion betweenRegime Fascista and La Vita Italiana. The latter became the monthlysupplement of the former in what Farinacci described as a ‘lovemarriage’, for the two journals had shared an almost identicalpolitical line for quite some time.It is interesting to note that the development of antisemitism in the

fascist press was first reported by Jews. In 1926 the Chief Rabbi inRome, Angelo Sacerdoti, wrote to Mussolini to complain about thegravity of such attacks. The growth of antisemitism was alsohighlighted by other elements within fascism, and in this respectGiuseppe Bottai’s Critica Fascista is particularly significant. Bottai wasthe most important representative of the revisionist, moderate,technocratic wing of fascism, and his journal firmly opposedFarinacci’s radicals. In 1924, for example, an article in Critica Fascistacondemned the ‘fresh upsurge of antisemitism’ that ‘in the last fewyears’ had been taking place in Italy.54 Along with the courageouscriticism of Italian antisemitism, there is one aspect which makes thisarticle especially interesting. An editor’s note explains that only therecent amicable meeting between Mussolini and Sacerdoti hadconvinced the journal to overcome its hesitation to publish an articlethat was likely to arouse ‘malicious arguments’ from the radicals.This, published in a journal that had shown itself ready and able toengage in violent disputes with the fascist radicals, indicates just howsensitive a topic antisemitism was.As was observed above, anti-Jewish feeling was not confined to

radical fascism, but also permeated nationalist and Catholic groups.During the 1920s, for example, the nationalist journal La Tribunadistinguished itself for its antisemitic attacks.55 Anti-Jewish positionsalso emerged among clerico-fascist writers in the mid-1920s, duringthe period when the regime’s laws against Freemasonry were being setin place. These writers took advantage of laws dissolving Freemasonryto again point to the alleged proximity and overlapping interestsbetween the Jews and the Freemasons. An example of such anti-Jewish sentiment can be found in Maraglia’s Massoneria ed ebraismonella vita e nella storia contemporanea, published in 1926.56

Catholic anti-Jewish prejudice was also expressed outside thepress. Under pressure from the clerico-fascists and the Catholic forces


within fascism,57 after the March on Rome Mussolini acknowledgedthe Catholic religion as dominant. According to Sarfatti, it wasprecisely in these first measures towards reinforcing Catholicism as astate religion that the fascist regime moved towards the very first‘attacks on Jewish equality’.In the 1920s, therefore, many antisemitic factors were already at

work: Preziosi and his violent antisemitism, anti-Jewish feeling amongFarinacci’s radicals, the nationalists’ attacks on the Jews, and thetraditional hostility of some Catholic elements of fascism. Whendiscussing the ideology of fascism and its various component strands,we must understand that antisemitism, and certainly racism, werealready present.However, neither antisemitism nor racism represented a key

motivation behind the regime’s policies and activity at this stage; in the1920s, Italian Fascism had to solve the huge problem of thereorganisation of the state, and for all the main internal strands offascism (notably the national syndicalists, normalisers, radicals andnationalists) this was the ideological battlefield. For the nationalists,racial issues were mainly connected to their desire for an expansionistforeign policy. But in the 1920s this remained an impossibility givenItaly’s intrinsic weaknesses; Italian Fascism should first concentrate ongiving Italy a new authoritarian state before embarking on any imperialadventures. The Catholic strand and the clerico-fascists aimed first atsolving the problem of the relationship between the new fascist stateand the church, which in 1929 was settled with the concordato.Furthermore, until early 1925 the radicals were held back by themoderates; while from 1926 the key influence in the establishment ofthe fascist corporate state was exerted by the nationalists.Therefore, because of the primary need to create a fascist state

(particularly after the murder of the communist deputy GiacomoMatteotti in 1924, when the fascist government faced the real possibilityof being brought down by the reaction of the opposition), all theenergies of fascism’s main internal currents were addressed towards theestablishment of new political institutions and the implementation ofother reforms. In the face of these political problems, which threatenedthe existence of the fascist regime itself, debates over issues of race oreugenics were to be marginal, because they could not have anyimmediate political impact. In the 1930s, however, the situation was tochange, for reasons of both domestic and foreign policy.


Fascist Racism and Antisemitism in the 1930s

Although this study focuses on the ideological aspects of fascist racismand antisemitism, it is important to stress that ideology alone cannotfully explain the eventual introduction of the racial laws. The adoptionof antisemitism as official state policy ought, therefore, to beapproached not only from an ideological point of view, but also with anawareness of the specific factors and circumstances that facilitated it.After more than a decade of existence, by the 1930s fascism had

become a highly debated concept in Europe; Mussolini himselfpromoted the idea that fascism, although a typically Italianphenomenon, nonetheless could be spiritually and politically appliedto other countries.58 Moreover, he showed an interest not only in thefounding of other fascist movements in Europe, but also in financiallysupporting some of them to encourage their growth.59 In so doing, heapplied the concept of ‘spiritual’ imperialism: attempting to makeItaly’s political and cultural influence felt all over the world, andthereby regaining Italy’s Renaissance-era status and influence.However, while for years Italian Fascism had represented the only

successful fascist paradigm, Hitler’s seizure of power in January 1933offered an alternative model to European fascists. As a consequence,most non-Italian fascist movements found themselves dividedbetween admirers of Italy and admirers of Germany – so deeply, infact, that frequently these divisions led to internal conflicts and rifts.Often, what the national socialist strands of these fascist movementscriticised about fascism was the lack of an official and overtpersecutory policy against the Jews in Italy, and therefore theperceived moderation of Mussolini’s regime.The Fascist International held in Montreux in December 1934,

which was organised by the Comitati d’Azione per l’Universalità diRoma (Action Committees for the Universality of Rome), wasattended by representatives from fascist movements in 13 countriesand revealed the significance of these divisions. The participants metto discuss the concept of ‘universal fascism’, or the essential featuresthat a movement should exhibit in order to qualify as fascist.However, the issues of racism and antisemitism generateddisagreement, and in the end no shared ‘fascist minimum’ was agreedon. Although National Socialist representatives did not attend theconference, the ideological influence of Nazism doomed the meetingfrom the start. It was clear that there were now two models of fascismin Europe, and the German one was gaining strength.60


As is well known, Italian Fascism had originally opposed GermanNational Socialism. This hostility had little to do with morality,stemming instead from strictly political considerations. For one thing,Italian Fascism, in its struggle for cultural dominance in Europe, wasdetermined to retain its status as the paradigmatic form of fascism; foranother, Mussolini feared Hitler’s expansionist aims in Austria andwanted to protect the pro-fascist Austrian government of EngelbertDollfuß.Mussolini publicly denounced Nazi ideology as semi-barbarian,

and the Italian press tended to fall in with his judgement. Accordingto Il Nuovo Stato, a journal which ran from 1932 to 1943 andanalysed political and doctrinal issues from a corporatist andtotalitarian perspective, Germany’s concept of the nation was‘materialistic and primitive’, unlike Italian Fascism’s ‘idealistic andcivil’ model. ‘Blood’, which was central to National Socialist ideology,was just ‘a liquid material composed of red corpuscles’, while thenation was ‘an ideal reality’.61 In other words, Nazi racism, with itsbiological basis, appeared too materialistic and spiritually deficient.It is important to point out that even the radical fringes of fascism,

which were later to admire Nazism, at first opposed Hitler. Forinstance, only in May 1935, after Nazi Germany had decided not tooppose Italy’s war in Ethiopia, did Farinacci change his views onNational Socialism and begin to support it. Indeed, the fact that hehad maintained antisemitic views throughout the period in which heopposed Nazi Germany makes it clear that fascist antisemitism washardly the result of admiration for Nazi Germany, but rather a totallyindependent feature.62

Even while hostile towards Nazism, Mussolini was well aware thatmost European movements were not only split between those whosupported fascism and those who supported Nazism, but also that thenational socialist wings of these movements were becomingdominant. He reacted to this shift from the fascist to Nazi model, inthe first place, by immediately breaking off any existing support tothose fascist movements whose allegiance had apparently changed.This was the case, for instance, with Mosley’s British Union of Fascistsand Quisling’s National Samling in Norway. However, a morecomprehensive response was needed.By the mid-1930s it had become clear to the fascist regime that the

‘spiritual’ expansion of fascism in Europe was being arrested by acompeting model. If Italian Fascism wanted to bolster its role as the


dominant fascist paradigm in the face of a growing emulation ofNazism, which presented antisemitism as the core of its ideology, ithad two choices: either oppose Nazism politically and ideologically,or encourage the antisemitic tendencies already present in its ownradical fringes. The latter option would fill the gap between ItalianFascism and the other fascist movements abroad, silencing foreigncriticism and reinforcing Italian Fascism as the authoritative model offascism.In 1935, when Mussolini challenged the League of Nations and

decided to invade Ethiopia, a set of circumstances arose that offered asolution to this problem. While Britain and France condemned this actof aggression and issued economic sanctions against Italy, Germanyrefrained from any opposition. This was the prelude to theGerman–Italian alliance, bringing the two regimes politically andideologically closer.Independently of the relationship with Germany, however, the

conquest of Ethiopia and the creation of the empire made thequestion of race, which until that point had only concerned certainsectors of fascism, suddenly urgent. The issue was pressing not onlyfrom an ideological point of view, but also from a very practicalpolitical perspective. The need to make a clear distinction betweenthe Italian and other (in particular African) races became an essentialfeature of the fascist political agenda. When in 1938 the racial lawswere introduced, fascist journals and leading fascist personalitiesunderlined the creation of the empire as a key step towards theintroduction of racial discriminations. Dottrina Fascista argued that‘the linchpin of a healthy colonial policy’ was an effective ‘racialpolicy’ because it was necessary to ‘state the clear, evident, andincontestable superiority of the European race, particularly over theAfrican race’.63 According to the journal, a ‘reliable increase in thevalue of the African territories’ could be achieved ‘only through a firmseparation of the races, and a widespread acknowledgment of theinferiority of the African race’.At a 1938 conference on the relationship between the Church and

the Jews, Farinacci explained that ‘the conquest of an empire imposedthe need to deal with the problem of the integrity of our race’.64 Atthe same time, Achille Starace, the secretary of the PNF, pointed outthat by the end of 1938 the policy of the party should be inspired bythree fundamental words: ‘Empire, Race, and Autarchy’.65

So, the racial question gained increasing urgency both because of


the creation of the Empire, which increased contact between whiteItalians and black Africans, and because of the tendency towards‘spiritual’ imperialism in Europe. However, certain internal policyissues also led to an escalation of racist propaganda. The groups andindividuals outlined above that were most influenced by racism andantisemitism had played an enormous role in the establishment of theregime. The nationalists, for one, had provided the regime with manyof its leading personalities, most notably Luigi Federzoni and AlfredoRocco. Rocco, indeed, provided the very legal framework on whichto build the corporate state and dictatorship. The impact ofnationalist ideology on fascism was so strong that some leadinghistorians have gone as far as to argue that the ANI ideologicallyconquered fascism.66

The role of the Catholic right was notable too, with Mussolinipushed ever closer to an agreement with the church, which was finallymade official in 1929. At the same time, the presence of clerico-fascists and Catholics in the fascist ranks made fascism appealing tothe Vatican authorities, elements of which had supported fascism evenbefore the March on Rome.67 Lastly, radical fascism contributedheavily to the dissolution of political opposition in the 1920s and theradicalisation of the regime in the 1930s.In other words, the very strands of fascism that were most likely to

harbour antisemitic prejudices and racist views were precisely thosethat had the greatest influence. In addition, Mussolini was himselfbecoming increasingly convinced of significant Jewish involvement inantifascist activity, both in Italy and abroad. In March 1934 a groupof dissidents was arrested, the majority of whom turned out to beJewish; at Mussolini’s command, the press announced in headlinesthat Jews had been arrested for conspiracy against the regime. Thesituation was complicated further by the fact that by the mid-1930s,Italian Jews had shown open support for their German co-religionists.To the fascist regime, this looked suspiciously like an independent andsubversive foreign policy that could not be tolerated, especially afterGermany had supported Italy’s war in Ethiopia.The final straw for the regime was the failure of fascist Jews to gain

control of the Unione delle Comunità Israelitiche Italiane, which wasthe Jewish representative body. To mainstream fascists, this confirmedtheir suspicion that, although many Jews had joined the PNF, therewas still broad Jewish resistance to the regime, or at least a reluctanceto comply with its totalitarian project to homogenise the Italian people.68


This, it was suspected, was something that the Jews, if they wanted toprotect their religious and cultural identity, would have to oppose.

The Manifesto

The combination of all these factors, of domestic and foreign policy,led to an intensification of anti-Jewish propaganda. No longer was itconfined to radical fascist journals, increasingly appearing in themainstream press, too. The extraordinary success of Orano’s GliEbrei in Italia, which was published in 1937 and received glowingreviews in all the most important journals, and the intellectualdiscussions it generated, demonstrated how the ‘Jewish question’ hadbecome a topic central to public discourse.69

Ultimately, this escalation culminated in the regime’s official turn toantisemitism. On 14 July 1938, the Giornale d’Italia, which beforeItalian Fascism’s rise to power had been the voice of monarchicliberalism, published a manifesto that officially marked the birth ofItalian racism. Among other things, it redefined the concept of race.Whereas Mussolini had previously described race as a feeling, themanifesto declared that ‘the existence of human races is no longer anabstraction of our spirit, but corresponds to a reality that is materialand perceptible with our senses’.70

Along with this new ‘material’ concept of race, the 1938 manifestoalso introduced biological determinism as a racial theory, which itendorsed with the signatures of many intellectuals and scientists. ‘Theconcept of race’, it claimed, ‘is a purely biological one. It is thereforebased on considerations other than the concepts of a people and of anation, founded essentially on historic, linguistic, and religiousconsiderations.’ As a result, ‘the question of racism in Italy ought tobe treated from a purely biological point of view, withoutphilosophical or religious intentions’. The manifesto also linked racewith blood and stated that:

there exists by now a pure ‘Italian race’. This premise is notbased on a confusion of the biological concept of race as thehistorical-linguistic concept of a people and of a nation, but onthe purest kinship of blood which unites the Italians of today tothe generations which have populated Italy for millennia. Thisancient purity of blood is the greatest title of the nobility of theItalian Nation.


In order to disseminate this reworked racism, a new journal, La difesadella razza, was created in 1938. The journal gathered some of theintellectuals and scientists who had lent their authority to the idea of‘scientific’ racism, and welcomed the ‘advance of the racist sciences’on which the new fascist policy should be based. In fact, as the secondissue pointed out, so far the demographic policy of Italian Fascismhad mainly concerned quantity, but by 1938 science could providepolitics with new instruments to raise the ‘quality’ of the population.71

In contrast to what some scholarly accounts claim, theintroduction of the racial laws was accepted passively by the Italianpopulation, without any kind of opposition at all. The fascistleadership also accepted them. Although some leading fascistmembers such as Italo Balbo objected, neither he nor any othermember resigned or withdrew. Four days before the publication of theracial manifesto, on 10 July 1938, Bottai briefly described in hispersonal diary a meeting with Mussolini:

I spoke with him ironically about the mysticism of the land andblood that looms in the new German scholastic life. He reacts,with great colour in this face, and says that there is somethingserious in that myth. ‘Perhaps,’ I insist, ‘for some Germanstudents. In our kindergartens it would be a farce’. He justwatches a heap of papers. The audience has ended.72

However, a few months later Bottai would write that ‘all thecharacteristics of fascist corporatism, in its social and politicalfeatures, contrast to the temperament, the mentality, and theprinciples of the Jews’;73 and, as minister of education, he orderedJewish teachers and students to be removed from Italy’s schools anduniversities.Although the racial manifesto was articulated in biological terms,

what is extremely interesting is the reaction within Italian Fascismagainst biological determinism and the emergence of a parallel‘spiritual’ and ‘cultural’ antisemitism that appeared to have a broaderappeal than biological racism. Critica Fascista, for instance, whileembracing antisemitism, made clear its disapproval of biologicaldeterminism. The latter was ‘dangerous’ if raised to the rank ofpolitical justification,74 and fascists should therefore ‘free ourconception of race from any deterministic principle which makes thecreative values of the spirit a blind and fatalistic heredity’.75 LeoneFranzì, a professor at the paediatric clinic of the University of Milan



and one of the ten scientists who had written the racial manifesto,acknowledged the originality of the Nazi eugenic laws but did notdisplay any great enthusiasm for them, mainly because biologicaldeterminism seemed far less inspiring than fascist spirituality.76

Even after 1938, biological determinism found relatively littleroom in fascist publications, despite the fact that the Manifestoofficially structured Italian racism on biological lines. In 1939 theSchool of Fascist Mysticism held a contest for the best monograph onthe mystic nature of fascist racism. The winner was Enzo Leoni’sMysticism of Fascist Racism. In this work Leoni tried to underline theoriginality of Italian racism by rejecting the German approach, whichhe found overly materialistic. Biological racism, he said, was ‘easilyrefutable because the races that were originally pure have nowadaysdisappeared’.77 Leoni pointed out that Nazi racism was anti-Roman,anti-Christian and anti-religious, characteristics which distinguished itfrom fascist racism, which was ‘typically Italian in its conception,methods, aims, and even limits, with natural reference to thetraditional, physical and spiritual values of our millenarian line’.78

There was, in fact, an evident attempt to displace Nazi biologicaldeterminism by stressing features that would appear less materialisticand more spiritual, such as history, tradition and religion. GiovanniMarro, who was a professor of anthropology at the University ofTurin and the founder of the Institute and Museum of Anthropologyand Ethnography, argued, in his Caratteri fisici e spirituali della razzaitaliana, that race was ‘a human community sharing a harmonicwhole of spiritual features and tendencies’ and, in particular, wasdefined by a distinctive ‘mental entity’.79 In La difesa della razza,Julius Evola wrote that a dependence on biological and natural lawsrepresented only the first stage of a fully developed racism; second-level racism defined race as a soul, thus allowing racial theory to enterinto the world of culture. The final level would be an understandingof race as a spirit, and hence as a conception of the world.80

A book entitled L’Antisemitismo Italiano by the Dutch professorHeekelingen de Vries de Heekelingen, founder of a centre for thestudy of fascism, disregarded the theme of biological determinismaltogether and instead focused on a primarily political justification:fascist antisemitism, he said, was simply a reaction against theantifascism of international Jewry, which as an ‘internationalist,egalitarian, anti-Christian assertor of mixed races’, by definition hadto be antifascist. Clearly, then, fascism had to be antisemitic.81

These political accusations were picked up again by a bookpublished in Italy in 1942 by Douglas Reed, an English correspondentfor the London Times and later author of several popular antisemiticbooks. Despite being antisemitic, however, he was also anti-Nazi, apoint highlighted in the book’s preface to underline the supposedneutrality of the author. In his work, political accusations against theJews included the contrast between religion and nationality, whichimplied a stronger loyalty to a religious internationalism than to thenation. He also pointed to the excessive power obtained by Jews inevery field, due more, he claimed, to their powerful network than tothe ability of any individual.82

In their search for an alternative to the German model, theCatholic tradition of antisemitism seemed to many fascists a perfectdevice to support their antisemitism: typically Italian, andindependent of biological determinism. Ebrei Cristianesimo Fascismoby Alfredo Romanini, a member of the Chamber of Deputies,highlighted the traditional anti-Jewish sentiment of the CatholicChurch as a premise of fascist antisemitism.83 The abovementionedL’Antisemitismo Italiano by Vries de Heekelingen stressed the ideathat the Church’s traditional opposition to the Jews legitimised fascistantisemitism.84

In 1938, Farinacci hosted an important conference in Milan whichfocused almost entirely on the relationship between the Church andJews, during which he asserted that the aim of fascist antisemitismwas to finally render concrete the lessons given by the Church over20 centuries. In line with this, Farinacci wanted to make clear thatfascist antisemitism was perfectly consistent with the traditionalantisemitism of the Catholic Church; indeed, that it was a naturaldevelopment of it. In support of this, he cited various ‘forerunners’ offascist antisemitism, including the Jesuits and their journal CiviltàCattolica.In general, then, the Church’s antisemitism appeared to hold more

of an appeal than German biological determinism, which had neverinspired much support, even among antisemitic fascists. Furthermore,while German-inspired biological determinism inevitably soundedforeign, Catholic antisemitism felt truly Italian, which neatlysupported the fascist claim to have developed a genuine and originalantisemitism.Behind all these reactions against biological racism there were, of

course, political motivations. For one thing, the fascist regime had to


answer criticism that its turn to antisemitism was merely an imitationof National Socialism. For another, it hoped to make this turnacceptable to the Church by underlining the centrality of the ‘spirit’over biology. However, the broad rejection of biological determinismalso shows the relevance of the pre-fascist tradition of antisemitism.In fact, as we have seen, the rejection of biological determinism wasaccompanied by the re-emergence of themes that had been present inpre-fascist antisemitism. They had to be adapted to a differentsituation, of course, but were substantially the same, showing‘spiritual’ racism’s general lack of ideological innovation, with theexception perhaps of Julius Evola’s works. However, the violentcollision between the ‘new’ biological racism and the ‘old’ spiritualracism within Italian Fascism led to a major internal struggle, one sogreat that, at the beginning of 1943, La Difesa della Razza declaredthat that Italian racism was facing a crisis of ‘both its trends and itsmethod’.85

The actual implementation of the antisemitic measures goesbeyond the scope of this study. However, it must be noted that theappearance of the concept of ‘discrimination’ (by which Jews ofexceptional merit could apply for exemption from the racial laws) inthe legislative corpus suggests that although the racial manifesto wascast in biological terms, nonetheless non-biological reasoninginfluenced the formulation of the laws. With this loophole, moral andcultural considerations could theoretically supersede biological ones.There are some documents – some dispositions of the prefect ofNaples, for example – which demonstrate the degree to which moraland political motives were taken into account in deciding whether aJew should be discriminated against.86 It is important to point out thatthese ‘discriminations’ did not save the Jews, but simply retarded theapplication of the laws. After the beginning of the war, the number ofdiscriminations noticeably diminished. However, it would seem that,particularly at the time of the racial laws’ introduction, and especiallyin the case of local authorities, this dichotomy between biological andnon-biological racism affected not only racist theory but also practicaldecisions.

Conclusion

Even though Italian racism was, in terms of its death toll, lessdestructive than Nazi antisemitism, it would be a mistake to take the


former less seriously than the latter. Fascist antisemitism was muchmore than a product of the ideological, social, cultural, and economicstagnation which Mussolini’s regime was facing after the so-calledyears of consensus; nor was it a sterile imitation of German racialpolicy, resulting from an opportunistic foreign policy.Indeed, 1938 marked neither the beginning of fascist racism,

which had in fact started to emerge in the 1920s and was already welldeveloped by the time of the Abyssinian war, nor of fascistantisemitism. Ideologically, antisemitism had been present in sectionsof fascism since the early 1920s. A combination of internal andexternal factors then assisted its spread throughout fascism, until itfinally became part of official ideology. Even then, although itofficially took the form of biological determinism, a strong reactionreaffirmed the fascist intellectuals’ preference for an antisemitismbased on cultural or spiritual factors, no less perverse but qualitativelydifferent, and more in fitting with traditional Italian antisemitism.The new research on antisemitism undertaken in Italy, and its

innovative conclusions, indicate how important it is to conductfurther serious investigation into fascist antisemitism. One can hopethat as a result of such research, we will soon have a much truerpicture of the ideological roots of fascist antisemitism and its effectson Italian Jewry.

NOTES

1. Renzo De Felice, Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo (Torino: Giulio Einaudi, 1972).2. See, for instance, Giuseppe Mayda, Ebrei sotto Salo la persecuzione antisemita 1943–1945(Milano: Feltrinelli, 1978). Here, just 16 pages (in a book of over 250 pages) are devotedto fascist antisemitism in the period preceding the Salò Republic.

3. George L. Mosse, Il razzismo in Europa: dalle origini all’Olocausto (Roma-Bari: Laterza,1980), p.85.

4. James A. Gregor, Phoenix: Fascism in our Time (New Brunswick, NJ: TransactionPublishers, 1999), p.9.

5. Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London: Routledge, 1993), p.48; Stanley G. Payne,A History of Fascism, 1914–1945 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995),p.11.

6. Joshua D. Zimmerman (ed.), Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp.1–10.

7. Alberto Burgio (ed.), Nel nome della razza. Il razzismo nella storia d’Italia 1870–1945(Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999); R. Maiocchi, Scienza italiana e razzismo fascista (Firenze: LaNuova Italia, 1999); Giorgio Israel, Pietro Nastasi, Scienza e razza nell’Italia fascista(Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998); Alberto Burgio and Luciano Casali (eds.), Studi sul razzismoitaliano (Bologna: CLUEB, 1996). See also Enzo Collotti, Il fascismo e gli ebrei: le leggirazziali in Italia (Roma: Laterza, 2003).

8. Michele Safatti, Mussolini contro gli ebrei: cronaca dell’elaborazione delle leggi del 1938(Torino: S. Zamorani editore, 1994); Michele Sarfatti, Gli ebrei nell’Italia fascista: vicende,identita persecuzione (Torino: G. Einaudi, 2000).


9. Giorgio Fabre,Mussolini razzista: dal socialismo al fascismo: la formazione di un antisemita(Milano: Garzanti, 2005).

10. Wiley Feinstein, The Civilization of the Holocaust in Italy: Poets, Artists, Saints, Anti-Semites (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003); Robert O.Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (London: Penguin, 2005), pp.166–7. See also KevinPassmore, Fascism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002),p.108.

11. Raffaele Baallerini, Della Questione Giudaica in Europa (Prato: Contrucci, 1891), pp.1–2.12. Ibid., p.3.13. Ibid., p.13.14. Ibid., pp.19, 77.15. See Francesco Crepaldi, ‘L’omicidio rituale nella “moderna” polemica antigiudaica di Civiltà

Cattolica nella seconda metà del IXI secolo’, in Catherine Brice and Giovanni Miccoli (eds.),Les racines chretiennes de l’antiseitisme politique: fin XIX–XX siecle (Roma: Ecole françaisede Rome, 2003), pp.61–78.

16. Ibid., p.76.17. De Felice, Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo, p.35.18. Ballerini, Della Questione Giudaica in Europa, pp.22, 25.19. Ibid., pp.52–5.20. On the measures advocated by Civiltà Cattolica, see particularly Della Questione Giudaica

in Europa, pp.65–90.21. See Francesco Crepaldi, ‘L’omicidio rituale nella “moderna” polemica antigiudaica di Civiltà

Cattolica nella seconda metà del IXI secolo’, in Brice and Miccoli (eds.), Les racineschretiennes de l’antisemitisme politique, p.75.

22. Annalisa Di Fant, ‘Stampa Cattolica Italiana e antisemitismo alla fine dell’ottocento’, inBrice and Miccoli (eds.), Les racines chretiennes de l’antisemitisme politique, pp.121–36.

23. De Felice, Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo, pp.39–40.24. Giovanni Miccoli, ‘Santa Sede, “questione ebraica” e antisemitismo alla fine

dell’Ottocento’, in Burgio (ed.), Nel nome della razza, pp.215–46.25. Ultra-nationalist positions had been taken in journals such as Leonardo, Hermes and Il

Regno. See Delia Frigessi (ed.), La Cultura Italiana Del ’900 attraverso le riviste: Vol. 1:‘Leonardo’, ‘Hermes’, ‘Il Regno’ (Turin: G. Einaudi, 1960).

26. Alfredo Rocco, Che cosa è il nazionalismo e che cosa vogliono i nazionalisti (Padua: GruppoNazionalista Padovano, 1914), published in Alfredo Rocco, Scritti e discorsi politici, Vol.1(Milano: Giuffré, 1938), see particularly pp.69–73. See also Alfredo Rocco, ‘Il problemaeconomico italiano’, La Tribuna, 14 January 1914.

27. Rocco, Scritti e discorsi politici, Vol.1, pp.71–3.28. Ibid., p.70.29. Ibid., p.9.30. Quoted in De Felice, Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo, p.28.31. Rocco, Scritti e discorsi politici, Vol.1, p.88.32. Ibid., p.72.33. Giulio Quirino Giglioli (ed.), R. Timeus, Scritti politici 1911–1915 (Trieste: Tipografia del

Lloyd Ttriestino, 1929); Attilio Tamaro, Italiani e Slavi nell’Adriatico (Roma: Athenaeum,1915); Attilio Tamaro, La lotta delle razze nell’Europa danubiana (Bologna: Zanichelli,1923). On the anti-Slav racism see Enzo Collotti, ‘Sul razzismo antislavo’, in Burgio (ed.),Nel nome della razza.

34. Fabre, Mussolini razzista, p.221.35. Francesco Coppola, ‘Problemi della pace. La pace italiana’, Politica, December 1918.36. Rocco, Scritti e discorsi politici, Vol.1, p.88.37. Francesco Coppola, ‘Israele contro l’Italia’, Idea Nazionale, 16 November 1911; Francesco

Coppola, ‘Il mito democratico e l’imperialismo’, Politica, 19 January 1919.38. Enrico Corradini, L’ombra della vita (Napoli: Parrella, 1908); Enrico Corradini, La vita

nazionale (Siena: Lumachi, 1907).39. Emilio Bodrero, Inchiesta sulla Massoneria (Roma: Mondadon, 1925), p.171. Also quoted

by De Felice, Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo, p.44. On Orano’s early antisemitismsee Francesco Germinario, Latinità, antimeridionalismo e antisemitismo negli scrittigiovanili di Paolo Orano (1895–1911), in Burgio (ed.), Nel nome della razza.


40. L’Assalto, 26 February 192141. Popolo d’Italia, 5–6 April 1921.42. G. Manzella Frontini, ‘Il fascismo inglese’, Vita Nova, Vol.2, No.1 (1926).43. Massimo Rocca, La sconfitta dell’Europa: la politica internazionale del Ventennio vista

dall’estero (Milano: ELI, 1960).44. Partito Nazionale Fascista, Le origini e lo sviluppo del fascismo, p.227.45. Giorgio Alberto Chiurco, Storia della rivoluzione fascista, Vol.II (Firenze (Roma: Liberia del

littorio, 1928), 1929), pp.267–71.46. Dino Monari, ‘Il miglioramento della razza e il Fascismo’, in Gerarchia, Vol.1, No.9 (1922).47. Claudio Pogliano, ‘Eugenisti, ma con giudizio’, in Burgio (ed.), Nel nome della razza,

pp.423–42.48. G.M. Sangiorgi, ‘La potenza dell’impero è nella colonizzazione demografica’, Africa

Italiana, Vol.1, No.1 (1927).49. La Vita Italiana, 15 August 1920.50. Ibid., 15 June 1922.51. Ibid., 15 July 1922.52. See Fabre, Mussolini razzista, p.418. See also De Felice, Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il

fascismo, pp.81–2.53. See Umberto F. Banchelli, Le memorie di un fascista: (1919–1922) (Firenze: Officine Tipo-

Litografiche VAM, 1922).54. Herz Joffe, ‘Il Fascismo e gli Ebrei’, Critica Fascista, 1 February 1924.55. See, for instance, ‘Andiamo adagio’, La Tribuna, 30 April 1927.56. Pietro Maraglia, Massoneria ed ebraismo: nella vita e nella storia contemporanea: fatti e

commenti (Pistoia: Arte della Stampa, 1926).57. John F. Pollard, ‘Conservative Catholics and Italian Fascism: The Clerico-Fascists’, in Mar-

tin Blinkhorn (ed.), Fascists and Conservatives: The Radical Right and the Establishment inTwentieth-century Europe (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), pp.31–49.

58. James S. Barnes, The Universal Aspects of Fascism (London: Williams and Norgate, 1928),p.xix.

59. It is indicative of the importance that Mussolini placed in this policy of support that evenmarginal movements in a peripheral countries, such as Vidkun Quisling’s Nasjonal Samlingin Norway, received money from him.

60. Comitati d’Azione per la Universalita di Roma, Miscellaneous Pamphlets, Edited by theComitati d’Azione per la Universalita di Roma, containing Speeches and Documents relatingmainly to the Functions of the Corporations (Roma: CAUR, 1934).

61. Adriano De Cupis, Jr., ‘Nazionalismo e razzismo’, Il Nuovo Stato, 2 July 1933.62. Matteo Di Figlia, Farinacci: il radicalismo fascista al potere (Roma: Donzelli, 2007), p.202.63. Italo Neri, ‘Le basi teoriche della politica di razza nell’Impero’, Dottrina Fascista, October

1938.64. See Roberto Farinacci, La Chiesa e gli Ebrei: conferenza d’inaugurazione tenuta all’Istituto

di cultura fascista di Milano il 7 novembre 1938 (Cremona: Cremona nuova, 1938), p.7. Seealso La Difesa della Razza, Vol.1, No.1 (1938), pp.2–3.

65. Critica Fascista, 15 December 1938.66. Paolo Alatri, Le origini del fascismo (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1971), pp.21–2.67. Pollard, ‘Conservative Catholics and Italian Fascism: The Clerico-Fascists’.68. Emilio Gentile, Il mito dello Stato nuovo: dal radicalismo nazionale al fascismo (Rome:

Laterza, 1999); Emilio Gentile, La Grande Italia (Roma: Laterza, 1999).69. Paolo Orano, Gli Ebrei in Italia (Roma: Pinciana, 1937).70. Giornale d’Italia, 14 July 1938.71. Elio Gasteiner, ‘Un pericolo per la razza’, La Difesa della Razza, Vol.1, No.2 (1938).72. Giuseppe Bottai, Vent’anni e un giorno (Milano: Garzanti, 1977), p.116.73. Giuseppe Bottai, ‘Corporativismo senza Ebrei’, Critica Fascista, 15 December 1938.74. Aldo Airoldi, ‘Il dato razziale nell’ambito della Nazione’, Critica Fascista, 1 February 1939.75. Vincenzo Buonassisi, ‘Etica del razzismo fascista’, Critica Fascista, 1 June 1939.76. Leone Franzì, ‘L’Eugenetica razziale del III Reich’, Critica Fascista, 15 February 1939.77. Enzo Leoni, Mistica del razzismo fascista: monografia vincitrice del concorso bandito dalla

Scuola di mistica fascista (Padova: CEDAM, 1941), p.15.78. Ibid., p.40.



79. Giovanni Marro, Caratteri fisici e spirituali della razza italiana (Roma: Istituto nazionale dicultura fascista, 1939).

80. Julius Evola, ‘I tre gradi del problema della razza’, La Difesa della Razza, 5 January 1939.81. Heekelingen de Vries de Heekelingen, L’Antisemitismo italiano (Firenze: Le Monnier,

1940), p.7.82. Douglas Reed, Gli ebrei visti da un giornalista inglese (Milano: Mondadori, 1944).83. Alfredo Romanini, Ebrei Cristianesimo Fascismo (Empoli: Caparrini, 1939).84. De Heekelingen, L’Antisemitismo italiano, pp.15–20.85. G. Perona, ‘Senza compromessi, Questionario n. 5’, La Difesa della Razza, 5 January 1943.86. The letters are part of the Moscati Collection held at the Imperial War Museum. They are

currently in folder No.38 but, as the collection is being reorganised, may move elsewhere.

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