The Defense of the Race in Italy
Spiritual Heritage of the People, Fundamental Basis of the State,
Security Foundation for the Empire

“To Discriminate Is Not to Persecute”

(August 6, 1938)

The Fascist Problem
Rome, August 5, 1938

The today edition of the “Informazione Diplomatica,” number 18, notifies that:

Among the authority in charge in Rome we draw our attention to the fact that most of the impressions and deductions of the foreign countries on the subject of Italian racism find their basis in a very superficial knowledge of the facts and in some cases even in bad faith.

In reality, Italian racism, as can be proved by documents, dates as 1919. Mussolini, in his November 1919 speech to the Congress of the Party in Rome, and again in 1921, clearly stressed that: "I mean to say that Fascism has to deal with the race problem. The Fascists have to take care of the health of the race that will make history".

If the problem was left without solution for some years, it was because there were other problems that had to be solved and taken care of before that. But the conquest of the Empire had made relevant all those problems, that are in a general way called racial, and its unknown knowledge had caused bloody consequences which today is not the time to analyze.

Other countries send in the lands of their Empire a few and chosen officials; we will send in Libya and A.O.I., with the passing of the time and for absolute necessity of life, millions of men.

Now, to avoid the catastrophic plague of the crossbred, the creation indeed of a hybrid race, not European, not African, that will stir up disintegration and revolt, the strict laws promulgated and enforced by Fascism are not enough: we need also a strong feeling, a strong pride, a clear omnipresent knowledge of the race.

To discriminate is not to persecute. This has to be told to the too many Jews of Italy and of the other countries that complain of their troubles, going quickly from intrusiveness and arrogance to a feeling of depression and foolish panic fear.

As it has been already clearly said in the note number 14 of the “Informazione Diplomatica” and as we repeat today, the Fascist Government has no special persecuting plan of the Jews, as Jews themselves.

We are dealing with another problem. The Jews in Italy in the metropolitan areas, according to the Jewish statistics, are 44,000 and they will have to be checked by a near future special census. The proportion would be indeed of a Jew every 100 Italians. It is clear that from today on, the participation of the Jews in the global life of the State will be regulated according to this percentage. No one would dispute this right of the Fascist State and not even all the Jews that, as it is also clear from the most recent Manifest of the Italian rabbis, had been always and everywhere the apostles of the most total, intransigent, cruel, and under a certain point of view even admirable, racism; they always thought of themselves as the “chosen people” and they have always given proof of their racial solidarity beyond territorial frontiers.

And here we do not want to discuss the historic equation, clearly known in this past twenty years, between Judaism, Bolshevism and Masonry.

No doubts, indeed, that this is the right time for Italian racism and moreover that it will become, through the coordinated and determined actions of all the members of the Regime, the spiritual heritage of the people, the fundamental basis of the State and the security foundation for our Empire.

Source: Corriere della Sera Newspaper, Milan, August 6, 1938

Source: Yad Vashem