Issue of the antisemitic biweekly La Difesa della Razza – “The Defense of the Race.” August 5, 1938 – throughout, it is filled with racist and antisemitic articles, leading its readers from “theory” – the superiority of the Aryan race and the origin of the Italian race in the Aryan race – to “practice, ” the persecution of the Jews, portrayed as the source of the world’s ills.
The racial image displayed on the newspaper’s cover reveals its content – three figures: a Greek, an ancient Italian, and a Jew with a long nose and stereotypical facial features, alongside an Ethiopian, with a sword raised over the Jew’s head. At the opening of the issue appears the “Ten Commandments” of racial doctrine, in the words of “professors at Italian universities”: “There exist human races; the existence of human races is not an abstraction of our minds, but corresponds to a phenomenal and material reality perceptible to our senses… The present-day population of Italy is of Aryan origin, and its civilization is Aryan… The time has come for Italians to openly declare themselves to be racists. Everything the regime has achieved in Italy so far is, in the end, racist… The Jews represent the only population that has never assimilated in Italy, as they are composed of non-European racial elements, completely different from those from which the Italians originated…”.
The issue, in all its pages without exception, is filled with articles of racist and antisemitic content – warning against contact and closeness with non-Italian races. It features a table claiming that the number of negative phenomena among Jews is the highest in the countries of Europe – forgery of documents, extortion, refusal to fulfill military duties, usury, etc. There is an article encouraging Italian antisemitism, accompanied throughout by quotations from the works of German racial propagandists such as Alfred Rosenberg and others. A lengthy piece attempts to demonstrate that the Italians are of Aryan origin. Another article discusses the dangers of mixing “superior” races with “inferior” races – including horrifying examples of “race mongrelization” – and warns of the danger to the Italian population from intermixing with the Jewish race. Other articles address the influence of heredity, accuse the Jews of being responsible for the sense of loss of Italian nationality, and revive the antisemitic libel from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (accompanied by caricatures of Jews with stereotypical features). There is an antisemitic article on Jewish hygiene habits – illustrated with a photograph from the Krakow Ghetto showing a Jew sneezing in the street – as well as a piece on the inferiority of Jewish culture, urging Italians to learn from Nazi Germany how to exclude Jews, and more.
La Difesa della Razza [The Defense of the Race], an Italian biweekly published between August 1938 and June 20, 1943 by Telesio Interlandi through Tumminelli Publishing in Rome (five years, during which a total of 117 issues were released), initiated by Benito Mussolini, who believed in the power of the written word to instill antisemitic and racist ideas among the Italian population. The issues served as the primary antisemitic tool of the Fascist regime, intended to promote the Fascist racial laws in Italy.
Its purpose was to disseminate a “scientific” doctrine of racial theory and to persuade Italians that colonialism, a ban on mixed marriages, and racial laws were political objectives anchored in the laws of nature. The magazine promoted baseless ideas supporting the superiority of the Aryan race, to which Italians, it claimed, ought to belong, and warned against the “biological contamination” that could occur if Italians intermingled with “inferior races.” In its so-called “scientific” sections, racism and antisemitism were given legitimacy from a medical and biological perspective, focusing on the presentation of false “genetic” theories. The magazine also frequently addressed demographics, attempting to present statistical forecasts showing the “non-Aryan” races in constant decline compared to the Aryan races.
As Italy became more deeply involved in the war as a member of the Axis powers, the publication intensified its antisemitic propaganda, blaming the Jews for the war and warning of the “dangers” of mixing with Jews, which could lead to “social contamination.”
39 [1] pp. Good condition.
