Fascist anti-Jewish laws were promulgated in Italy beginning in September 1938 and were signed by the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, and the Head of Government, Benito Mussolini.
The figure and role of Mussolini were central as he actively participated in defining the nature of the “Jewish problem” and, above all, in identifying the legal means to remedy it. In addition, he engaged in the definition of an original model of persecution of the Jews. Italian racism was born much earlier than the anti-Jewish laws. It was based on the concept which: race has no religious, but only biological character. A characteristic feature of Italian racism was the tendency to elevate the nation, of which only members belonging to the generations that had inhabited Italy for centuries could be part.
According to the racist theories of Fascism, all those who were defined as racially and biologically “inferior,” e.g., Jews, Gypsies, Africans, and the mentally ill, endangered the purity of the Italian race.
Before the enactment of the anti-Jewish laws, through racist leaflets, posters, and magazines such as La difesa della razza, Italians were encouraged through propaganda to consider themselves racist.
The science section of the magazine La difesa della razza aimed to treat racism and anti-Semitism from a medical and biological perspective, dwelling mainly on genetics, all carried out through exclusively pseudoscientific reasoning based on prejudice and stereotypes.
