Fascism in Europe - Racism

Racism

Nazism differed from Italian fascism in that it had a stronger emphasis on race, in terms of social and economic policies. Though both ideologies denied the significance of the individual, Italian fascism saw the individual as subservient to the state, whereas Nazism saw the individual, as well as the state, as ultimately subservient to the race. But subservience to the Nazi state was also a requirement on the population. Mussolini's Fascism held that cultural factors existed to serve the state, and that it was not necessarily in the state's interest to interfere in cultural aspects of society. The only purpose of government in Mussolini's fascism was to uphold the state as supreme above all else, a concept which can be described as statolatry.

Unlike Hitler, Mussolini repeatedly changed his views on the issue of race according to the circumstances of the time. In 1921, Mussolini promoted the development of the Italian race such as when he said:

The nation is not simply the sum of living individuals, nor the instrument of parties for their own ends, but an organism comprised of the infinite series of generations of which the individuals are only transient elements; it is the supreme synthesis of all the material and immaterial values of the race. —Benito Mussolini, 1921

Like Hitler, Mussolini publicly declared his support of a eugenics policy to improve the status of Italians in 1926 to the people of Reggio Emilia:

We need to create ourselves; we of this epoch and this generation, because it is up to us, I tell you, to make the face of this country unrecognizable in the next ten years. In ten years comrades, Italy will be unrecognizable! We will create a new Italian, an Italian that does not recognize the Italian of yesterday...we will create them according to our own imagination and likeness. —Benito Mussolini, 1926

In a 1921 speech in Bologna, Mussolini stated that "Fascism was born... out of a profound, perennial need of this our Aryan and Mediterranean race". In this speech Mussolini was referring to Italians as being the Mediterranean branch of the Aryan Race, Aryan in the meaning of people of an Indo-European language and culture. However Italian Fascism initially strongly rejected the common Nordicist conception of the Aryan Race that idealized "pure" Aryans as having certain physical traits that were defined as Nordic such as blond hair and blue eyes. The antipathy by Mussolini and other Italian Fascists to Nordicism was over the existence of the Mediterranean inferiority complex that had been instilled into Mediterraneans by the propagation of such theories by German and Anglo-Saxon Nordicists that viewed Mediterranean peoples as racially degenerate and thus in their view inferior. Mussolini refused to allow Italy to return again to this inferiority complex.

In private, in a conversation with Emil Ludwig in 1932, Mussolini derided the concept of a biologically superior race and denounced racism as being a foolish concept. Mussolini did not believe that race alone was that significant. Mussolini viewed himself as a modern day Roman Emperor, a cultural elite and wished to "Italianise" the parts of the Italian Empire he had desired to build. A cultural superiority of Italians, rather than a view of racialism. Mussolini believed that the development of a race was insignificant in comparison to the development of culture, but did believe that a race could be improved through moral development, but does not say that this will make a superior race:

Race! It is a feeling, not a reality: ninety-five percent, at least, is a feeling. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today. National pride has no need of the delirium of race. Only a revolution and a decisive leader can improve a race, even if this is more a sentiment than a reality. But I repeat that a race can change itself and improve itself. I say that it is possible to change not only the somatic lines, the height, but really also the character. Influence of moral pressure can act deterministically also in the biological sense. —Benito Mussolini, 1932.;

Mussolini believed that a biologically superior race was not possible, but that more developed culture's superiority over the less developed ones warrants the destruction of the latter such as Ethiopian and the neighboring Slavic, such as Slovene and Croatian. He took advantage of the fact that no undertaking about the rights of minorities in either the Treaty of Rapallo or the Treaty of Rome was given in Istria and Trieste's surroundings, and after 1924 Treaty of Rome in Rijeka; Croatian, Slovene, German and French toponyms were systematically Italianized.

Against ethnic Slovenes he was running especially violent kind of Fascist Italianization policy. To Italianize ethnic Slovene and Croatian children, Fascist Italy brought Italian teachers from South Italy to the ex-Austro-Hungarian territories given to Italy in exchange for joining Great Britain in First World War, such as Slovene Littoral and a big part of western Slovenia, while the Slovene and Croatian teachers, poets, writers, artists and clergy were exiled to Sardinia and elsewhere to South Italy. Acts of Fascist violence were not hampered by the authorities, such as the burning down of the Narodni dom (Community Hall of ethnic Slovenes in Trieste) in Trieste, carried out at night by Fascists with the connivance of the police on 13 July 1920.

After complete destruction of all Slovene minority cultural, financial and other organizations, and continuation of violent Fascist Italianization policies of ethnic cleansing, one of the first anti-Fascist organizations in Europe TIGR emerged in 1927, co-ordinating the Slovene resistance against Fascist Italy until its dismantlement by the Fascist secret police in 1941, after which some of TIGR ex-members joined Slovene Partisans.

For Mussolini, inclusion of people in a fascist society depended on their loyalty to the state. Meetings between Mussolini and Arab dignitaries from the colony of Libya convinced Mussolini that the Arab population was worthy to be given extensive civil rights, and allowed Muslims to join a Muslim section of the Fascist Party - the Muslim Association of the Lictor. However under pressure from Nazi Germany, the Fascist regime eventually did take on racist ideology, such as promoting the concept of Italy settling Africa to create a white civilization in Africa and handing out five-year criminal sentences for Italians caught in a sexual or marital relationship with native Africans. For those colonial peoples who were not loyal, vicious repression was used, such as in Ethiopia, where in 1937, native Ethiopian settlements were burned to the ground by Italian armed forces. Under Fascism, native Africans were allowed to join the Italian armed forces as colonial forces and appeared in Fascist propaganda.

The Nazi movement, at least in its overt ideology, spoke of class-based society as the enemy, and wanted to unify the racial element above established classes; however, the Italian fascist movement sought to preserve the class system and uphold it as the foundation of established and desirable culture. Nevertheless, the Italian fascists did not reject the concept of social mobility, and a central tenet of the fascist state was meritocracy. Yet, fascism also heavily based itself on corporatism, which was supposed to supersede class conflicts. Despite these differences, Kevin Passmore (2002 p. 62) observes:

There are sufficient similarities between Fascism and Nazism to make it worthwhile applying the concept of fascism to both. In Italy and Germany a movement came to power that sought to create national unity through the repression of national enemies and the incorporation of all classes and both genders into a permanently mobilized nation.

Nazi ideologues such as Alfred Rosenburg were highly skeptical about the Italian race and Fascism but saw an improvement of the Italian race as possible if major changes were made to convert it into an acceptable "Aryan" race, and said that the Italian Fascist movement would only succeed if it purified the Italian race into an Aryan one. Nazi theorists believed that the downfall of the Roman Empire was due to interbreeding of different races which created a "polluted" Italian race which was inferior.

Hitler believed this, but saw Mussolini as representing the attempt to revive the pure elements of the former Roman civilization, such as the desire to create a strong and aggressive Italian people, but Hitler was still audacious enough when meeting Mussolini for the first time in 1934 to tell him that all Mediterranean peoples were "tainted" by "Negro blood" and thus in his racist view, they were degenerate.

As relations were initially poor, things grew worse after the assassination of Austria's fascist chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss by Austrian Nazis in 1934. Austria under Dollfuss was a key ally to Mussolini and Mussolini was deeply angered by Hitler's attempt to take over Austria, and angrily mocked Hitler's earlier remark on the impurity of the Italian race by declaring that a "Germanic" race did not exist and notes how Hitler's society's repression of Jews indicates that Germany did not have a pure race:

But which race? Does there exist a German race. Has it ever existed? Will it ever exist? Reality, myth, or hoax of theorists? (Another parenthesis: the theoretician of racism is a 100 percent Frenchman: Gobineau) Ah well, we respond, a Germanic race does not exist. Various movements. Curiosity. Stupor. We repeat. Does not exist. We don't say so. Scientists say so. Hitler says so. —Benito Mussolini, 1934