1st Edition
Racism and Antisemitism in Fascist Italy The Politics, Ideology, and Imagery of ‘La Difesa della razza’
The racism and antisemitism of Fascist Italy have often been described as ‘mild’, ‘cultural’, ‘spiritual’, and essentially non-violent, especially in comparison with the racial ideology of Nazi Germany. This book challenges this simplistic interpretation with a thorough analysis of the texts and images of the magazine La Difesa della razza (Defence of the race), the principal public voice of Fascist biological racism, which appeared fortnightly between 1938 and 1943 under the editorship of Telesio Interlandi, Mussolini’s ‘unofficial mouthpiece’, with governmental financial support.
A negative icon of the propaganda of Fascist racism, La Difesa della razza first appeared in August 1938 shortly before the passing of Italy’s Racial Laws, but had a long gestation. It was the expression of a Fascist cultural milieu – journalists, writers, artists, and architects – headed by Interlandi, whose racism and antisemitism dated back to the end of the First World War.
By placing the magazine’s emergence in this longer timescale, and exploring the interrelationships of political action, ideological discourse, and imagery, this book also demonstrates how the project of ‘anthropological revolution’ – building the New Man – was a central element of Italian Fascism, from the very beginning to the deportation of Italian Jews.
This new English edition has been thoroughly revised and updated.
Introduction Part 1: Politics 1. The regime's extremist 2. In the name of the 'Race Manifesto' Part 2: Ideology 3. Contra Judaeos: antisemitism and conspiracy theory 4. Nature or Nurture? La Difesa della razza and eugenics 5. Racial theory, black Africans, and colonialism: the hegemony of Lidio Cipriani Part 3: Aesthetics 6. The arts and race: painting, music, and architecture 7. The readers' column and the racialization of Leopardi 8. The art of hatred Conclusion: Afterlives
Biography
Francesco Cassata is Full Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Genoa. He has published extensively on the history of eugenics, on Cold War science and the history of the ‘Lysenko controversy’ in Italy, and on the history of molecular biology in Italy and Europe.
