Manifesto of Race

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Front page of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on 11 November 1938: the fascist regime has approved the Racial Laws.

The Manifesto of Race (Italian: Manifesto della razza), sometimes known as the Charter of Race or Racial Manifesto, was a manifesto published on 14 July 1938 which prepared the enactment, in October 1938, of the Racial Laws in the Kingdom of Italy. The antisemitic laws stripped the Jews of Italian citizenship and governmental and professional positions. The manifesto demonstrated the enormous influence Adolf Hitler had over Benito Mussolini since Italy had become allied with Nazi Germany.[1]


In the sixteen years of Benito Mussolini's dictatorship prior to this, there had not been any race laws; Mussolini had held the view that a small contingent of Italian Jews had lived in Italy "since the days of the Kings of Rome" (a reference to the Benè Romi) and should "remain undisturbed".[1] There were even some Jews in the National Fascist Party, such as Ettore Ovazza who in 1935 founded the Jewish Fascist paper La Nostra Bandiera.[2] The German influence on Italian policy upset the established balance in Fascist Italy and proved highly unpopular to most Italians; however, under a secret pact between the Vatican and Mussolini's regime, the Catholic church agreed not to criticise the anti-semitic measures.

Among the 42 signers of the "Manifesto of Race" were two medical doctors (S. Visco and N. Fende), an anthropologist (L. Cipriani), a zoologist (E. Zavattari) and a statistician (F. Savorgnan).[3]

The Manifesto of Race, published in July 1938, declared the Italians to be descendants of the "Aryan race". It targeted races that were seen as inferior (i.e. not of Aryan descent). In particular, Jews were banned from many professions and could have their property confiscated. Under the Racial Laws, sexual relations and marriages between Italians and Jews and Africans were prohibited, Jews were banned from positions in banking, government, and education, and their properties were confiscated.[4][5]

The Kingdom of Italy, shortly after the passing of the racial laws, embraced a publication titled "Manifesto of the Racial Scientists" which mixed biological racism with history; it declared that Italy was a country populated by people of Aryan origin, Italians belonged to the Aryan race, Jews did not belong to the Italian race and that it was necessary to distinguish between Europeans and Jews, Africans and other non-Europeans.[6] The manifesto encouraged Italians to be racist.[7] Fascist Italy often published material that showed caricatures of Jews and Africans.[8]

Even after the passing of the racial laws, Mussolini continued to make contradictory statements about race.[9]


According to the historian Renzo De Felice, the influence of the Nazis and of Germany was significant, but not the sole factor in the generation of these racial concerns and decrees. From the Nazi side there had not been pressure, because Italy allied itself even in this subject of race with Germany, and Mussolini had been himself ideologically expounding upon the need to preserve the stock of the "European Aryan" race for years.[citation needed]

The strong Italian and German alliance was greatly bound by the common political philosophy of fascism as a form of "progressive reaction"—both Mussolini and Hitler despised modern-style liberal humanist democracy, but lauded their own ideas of fascism as paradoxically the fulfillment of true, anti-Marxist, "organized, centralized, authoritarian democracy" or "folk-socialist democracy". Mussolini was greatly admired by Adolf Hitler, and in one of his conversations Hitler opened up emotionally, declaring the Duce was his "only real friend". Hitler was captivated and personally inspired by the 1922 March on Rome and envisioned himself at the head of a similar march on Berlin.[10] Thus, Mussolini increasingly decided to harmonize Italian Fascism with the National Socialists by introducing anti-Semitic legislation in Italy as evidence of his good faith. He conceived it, at least partially and tactically, as an offering calculated to solidify the Italo-German Alliance. In Fascist literature and periodicals, a shift toward a less refined racism, accentuating the biological, Indo-European element occurred, emphasizing the original Latin Romans as a nucleus of warlike Aryans closely related to Celtic and paleo-Iranian ethnic groups (see Italo-Celtic) and more and more Italian Fascist nationalism merged with Aryan racism doctrinally.

After considerable resistance, Nazi influence began to penetrate some circles in the Kingdom of Italy. The individualistic maverick thinker Julius Evola was key in introducing Aryan racism and antisemitism into Fascist Italy.[citation needed] In general, however, there was a concerted effort to distinguish Fascist "racism", allegedly of "culturalist" variety, from that emanating from the Germanic realm. Giovanni Gentile, for example, despised the introduction of biological racism into Fascism, and the same can be said of the majority of the early theoreticians of intellectual Fascism. Yet a concern for corporate group national identity, as opposed to what Gentile called the "solipsist ego" enshrined by demo-liberal politics, was always part of the Fascist worldview. In any case, it was not unusual, before the outbreak of Second World War, for Fascist intellectuals to oppose themselves to the more excessive and irrational components of Ariosophy-descended National Socialist racism.[11]

For the most part, the racial laws were met with disapproval from not just ordinary Italian citizens but members of the Fascist party. On one occasion, a Fascist scholar questioned Mussolini over the treatment his Jewish friends were receiving which prompted Mussolini to say "I agree with you entirely. I don't believe a bit in the stupid anti-Semitic theory. I am carrying out my policy entirely for political reasons."[12]

See also


  1. ^ a b Hollander, Ethan J. Italian Fascism and the Jews (PDF). University of California. ISBN 0-8039-4648-1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-05-15. 
  2. ^ "The Italian Holocaust: The Story of an Assimilated Jewish Community". 8 January 2008. 
  3. ^ Giovanni Sale (2009). Le leggi razziali in Italia e il Vaticano. Editoriale Jaca Book. p. 72. 
  4. ^ Philip Morgan (10 November 2003). Italian Fascism, 1915-1945. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 202. ISBN 978-0-230-80267-4. 
  5. ^ Davide Rodogno (3 August 2006). Fascism's European Empire: Italian Occupation During the Second World War. Cambridge University Press. p. 65. ISBN 978-0-521-84515-1. 
  6. ^ Joshua D. Zimmerman, Jews in Italy Under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922-1945, pp. 119-120
  7. ^ Michael A. Livingston, The Fascists and the Jews of Italy: Mussolini's Race Laws, 1938-1943, p. 17
  8. ^ Livingston, p. 67
  9. ^ Joshua D. Zimmerman (27 June 2005). Jews in Italy Under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922-1945. Cambridge University Press. p. 160. ISBN 978-0-521-84101-6. 
  10. ^ Axelrod, 180
  11. ^ Gregor, 56
  12. ^ Christopher Hibbert, Benito Mussolini, p. 110

External links

  • Gregor, A. James; The Search for Neofascism, New York, Cambridge University Press (2006). ISBN 978-0-521-85920-2
  • Gregor, A. James; Mussolini's Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought, Princeton, Princeton University Press (2005).
  • Axelrod, Alan; Benito Mussolini, Indianapolis, Alpha Books (2002). ISBN 0-02-864214-7
  • Wiskemann, Elizabeth; Fascism in Italy: Its Development and Influence, New York, St. Martins Press (1969).
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