Classical period The term
barbarian, derived from
Ancient Greek, referred to aggressive, brutal, cruel, and warlike tribes or individuals. In
ancient Rome, the Romans adapted and applied the term
barbarian to non-Roman tribes such as the Germans, Celts, Iberians, Helvetii, Thracians, Illyrians, and Sarmatians. Later, with the inclusion of new territories, the previously barbarian populations became citizens of Rome. This happened first during the
Roman Republic with the
Italic tribes annexed and then gradually over the centuries throughout the
Mediterranean and part of
Northern Europe and forming the
Roman Empire. The term
barbarian still has a negative and derogatory meaning in contemporary Italy.
Ethnic stereotypes among the Romans included the belief that
Asiatic Greeks,
Jews, and
Syrians were by nature more susceptible to living as
slaves.
Asia Minor was such an important source of slaves that the typical slave was stereotyped as a
Cappadocian or
Phrygian. In practice, Jews were "both slaves and slaveholders. They were the slaves of Jews and non-Jews and owned both Jewish and non-Jewish slaves" throughout the Classical period. Other perceived traits against Syrians and other Asiatic people included
greed,
gluttony,
effeminacy,
homosexuality,
libertinism, and a tendency towards luxurious lifestyles and perverse cults. These qualities directly contrasted with the Roman ideal of robust and strong masculinity. The Romans firmly believed that interaction with these groups would pervert and corrupt their manly nature, while the Syrians would remain unchanged. When the
Vandals, a barbarian tribe,
conquered Rome in 455, the term
vandalic took on the derogatory meaning it still has today, due to the extreme devastation,
massacres and thefts committed in Rome. In
Roman Italy there was no concept of
racism in the modern sense; there was
discrimination between
Roman citizens and
barbarians, between
pagans and
christians, between free Roman citizens and
slaves, which led to conflicts, wars and massacres.
Middle Ages In medieval Italy,
slavery was widespread, but was justified more often on religious rather than racial grounds. Although there was already a wealth of Italian works engaging in racially motivated research on some groups, such as those pertaining to the "
Oriental" character of ethnic
Sardinians living under
Savoyard rule, or their supposedly malevolent and "degenerated" nature,
scientific racism as a proper discipline began to impose itself at the national level only through the works of the criminologist
Cesare Lombroso, himself a Jew. Lombroso's theory of
atavism compared the "white civilization" among the other races with the "primitive" or "savage" societies. Lombroso would publish his thesis in the wake of the
Italian unification, thus providing an explanation for
the unrest developing immediately thereafter in the
recently annexed portion of the new country; the people inhabiting the
formerly Bourbon Kingdom were in fact racially stereotyped, thereby fostering feelings of northern Italian supremacy over the southeners, while being paradoxically integrated in the nation's broad collective imaginary; as the southeners were collectively constructed for the first time as an "anti-nation" within the new country, they were deemed "atavistic" alongside criminals and prostitutes. Lombroso's theories connecting
physiognomy to criminal behavior explicitly blamed higher homicide rates in
Calabria,
Sicily, and once again the overseas Savoyard dominion of
Sardinia, upon some residual influence of "
Negroid" and "
Mongoloid" blood amongst their populations. Lombroso explicitly stated his belief in
white supremacy: «It's a question of knowing if we whites, who haughtily tower over the summit of civilization, ought one day to bow down before the
prognathous muzzle of the black, and the yellow, and to the frightful face of the Mongol; if, in the end, we owe our primacy to our biological organism or to the accidents of chance. (...) Only we whites have achieved the most perfect symmetry in the forms of the body [...] possess a true musical art [...] have proclaimed the freedom of the slave [...] have procured the liberty of thought». , according to the physical
anthropologist Renato Biasutti (1941) Lombroso, who also wrote extensively on the topic of anti-Semitism in Europe and attacked anti-Semitic racial theory, distinguished between European Jews, whom he considered generally "Aryan", and traditionalist Jews whose religious practices he excoriated. Other Italian anthropologists and sociologists also expanded on the theories previously set by Lombroso. The anthropologist
Alfredo Niceforo, himself a southerner and more specifically a Sicilian, followed Lombroso's physiognomical approach, and postulated that certain ethnic groups were genetically predisposed to commit heinous crimes. The people Niceforo made initially reference to were originally the Sardinians; according to Niceforo, the reason as to why criminal behaviour was so entrenched in inner Sardinia firmly lay in the racial inferiority of the native Sardinian population, more specifically stating that it was due to latter's historical isolation and the resulting «quality of the race that populated those areas, a race absolutely lacking the plasticity which causes the social conscience to change and evolve». However, Niceforo would later broaden the field of study to include also his Sicilian compatriots, as well as the whole population of the
Mezzogiorno, in his theorisation of a particular "accursed race" that ought to be "treated equally with iron and fire and damned to death, like the inferior races of Africa and Australia". Alfredo Niceforo believed that Italy's regional divisions found their explanation in the fact that the country harboured two distinct races, the
Alpine or "Aryan" in the north and the "Eurafrican" or
Mediterranean in the south, and encouraged a statewide policy of race-mixing to properly civilize and dilute the most negative traits of the latter; the best example of such mixing, according to Niceforo, was historically provided by the
Tuscans in
central Italy. He also reasoned that the best course of action for Italy was to have it split into two different forms of government, which must be liberal in the north and authoritarian in the south. Dictatorship in the south would have to be applied by the central government, in line with the reasoning of the
white man's burden that a "lesser" race would not be capable of self rule. In 1906, Niceforo published a racial theory wherein blond pigmentation of hair and dark skin were both considered signs of foreign degeneration, while the "Italian race" was situated in a positive middle ground. Until
Benito Mussolini's alliance with
Adolf Hitler, he had always denied any antisemitism within the
National Fascist Party (PNF). In 1929, Mussolini acknowledged the contributions which Italian Jews had made to Italian society, despite their minority status, and he also believed that
Jewish culture was Mediterranean, aligning his early opinion of Italian Jews with his early
Mediterraneanist perspective. He also argued that
Jews were natives of Italy, after living on the Italian Peninsula for a long period of time. In the early 1930s, Mussolini held discussions with
Zionist leadership figures over proposals to encourage the emigration of Italian Jews to the mandate of Palestine, as Mussolini hoped that the presence of pro-Italian Jews in the region would weaken pro-British sentiment and potentially overturn the British mandate. In the early 1920s, Mussolini wrote an article which stated that Fascism would never elevate a "
Jewish question" and that "Italy knows no antisemitism and we believe that it will never know it" and then elaborated "let us hope that Italian Jews will continue to be sensible enough so as not to give rise to antisemitism in the only country where it has never existed". In 1932 during a conversation with
Emil Ludwig, Mussolini described antisemitism as a "German vice" and stated, "There was 'no Jewish Question' in Italy and could not be one in a country with a healthy system of government." On several occasions, Mussolini spoke positively about Jews and the Zionist movement. Mussolini had initially rejected Nazi racism, especially the idea of a
master race, as "arrant nonsense, stupid and idiotic". Mussolini originally distinguished his position from
Hitler's fanatical racism. More broadly, he even proposed building a mosque in Rome as a sign that Italy was the Protector of Islam, a move blocked by a horrified Pope. German propagandists often derided what they called Italy's "Kosher Fascism". There were however some Fascists,
Roberto Farinacci and
Giovanni Preziosi being prime examples, who held fringe and extremely racist views before
Fascist Italy formed its alliance with
Nazi Germany. Preziosi was the first to publish an Italian edition of the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in 1921, which was published almost simultaneously with a version issued by
Umberto Benigni in supplements to
Fede e Ragione. However, the book had little impact until the mid-1930s. Mussolini attempted to reconcile the divisive racial discourse which had developed within the nation by asserting that he had already resolved the
southern question and as a result, he asserted that all Italians, not just northerners, belonged to the "
dominant race" which was the
Aryan race. Mussolini originally held the view that a small contingent of
Italian Jews had lived in Italy "since the days of the
Kings of Rome" (a reference to the
Bené Roma) and as a result, they should "remain undisturbed". One of Mussolini's mistresses,
Margherita Sarfatti, was Jewish. There were even some Jews in the
National Fascist Party, such as
Ettore Ovazza who founded the Jewish Fascist paper
La Nostra Bandiera in 1935. Mussolini once declared, "Anti-Semitism does not exist in Italy... Italians of Jewish birth have shown themselves good citizens and they fought bravely in [World War I]." Despite the presence of a Fascist regime, some Jewish refugees considered Italy a safe haven in the first half of the 1930s. During that period, the country hosted up to 11,000 persecuted Jews, including 2,806 Jews who were of German descent. However, as early as 1934, Jewish personnel were removed from institutions and state organizations. These were the laws against
madamato—that is, the concubinage between Italians and African women in occupied territories. The penalty for
madamato was a prison sentence which could range from one to five years. However, at the same time, a campaign against the putative dangers of
miscegenation was launched in Italy. On 5 August 1938, Mussolini issued another press release, unlike the previous press release, this press release stated that restrictions would be imposed upon Jews. The press release noted that "
segregating does not mean persecuting", but in fact, the persecution had already begun. Not all Italian Fascists supported discrimination: while the pro-German, anti-Jewish
Roberto Farinacci and
Giovanni Preziosi strongly pushed for them,
Italo Balbo and
Dino Grandi strongly opposed the Racial Laws. Balbo regarded antisemitism as having nothing to do with fascism, and asked Mussolini to mitigate somewhat the effect of the laws on Libyan Jews, not out of sympathy for he argued that the Jews were 'already dead' as a people, but rather because their presence there was advantageous to Italy's Libyan colony.
Fascist racism also impacted French, German, and Slavic minorities, the most notable manifestations of it were the Italian Fascist government's attempts to fully Italianize the
Balkans' territories that were annexed after
World War I.
World War II During
World War II, Italians engaged in
ethnic cleansing. In the summer and autumn of 1942, as many as 65,000 Italian soldiers destroyed several areas of occupied
Slovenia. Many areas were left almost depopulated after the killing and arrest of the residents. Between 1941 and the Grand Council's deposing of Benito Mussolini on
25 July 1943, 25,000 Slovenians (roughly 8% of the population in the
Ljubljana area) were put in Italian detention camps. The Vatican, convents, monasteries and other Catholic homes and institutions had taken pre-emptive actions days prior to hide Jews, resulting in over four thousand escaping deportation. Mussolini also played upon long-standing racist attitudes against Sicilians, enacting a number of laws and measures directed at anyone born in Sicily/of Sicilian descent. Regarding the treatment of Sicilians under Mussolini's regime,
Count Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law, wrote in his diaries on 4 October 1941: "The internal situation – coming apart in various places – is becoming grave in Sicily...So, then is it worse to be Sicilian than to be Jewish?".
Julius Evola Julius Evola was a prominent intellectual during World War II as well as during the post-war period, and was the main Italian theoretician of racism during the 20th century. Evola published two systematic works on racism, including
The Blood Myth (1937) and
Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race (1941). Furthermore, Evola discussed the subject in a substantial number of articles in several Italian journals and magazines. Evola also introduced the 1937 edition of the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, published by Giovanni Preziosi. Evola wrote: While
The Blood Myth aimed at being an impartial review of the history and latest developments of racism theories in Europe,
Synthesis of the Doctrine of the Race introduced the concept of
spiritual racism. For Evola, the Jewish race was not meant to be discriminated for mere biological reasons. In fact, Jewishness was essentially instead a "race of the soul, an unmistakable and hereditary style of action and attitude to life". Article 3 of the 1948 Constitution of Italy states:
21st century Antisemitism The ongoing political conflict between Israel and Palestine has played an important role in the development and expression of
antisemitism in the 21st century, and in Italy as well. The
Second Intifada, which began in late September 2000, has set in motion unexpected mechanisms, whereby traditional anti-Jewish prejudices were mixed with politically-based stereotypes. In this belief-system, Israeli Jews were charged with full responsibility for the fate of the peace process and with the conflict presented as embodying the struggle between good (the Palestinians) and evil (the Israeli Jews).
Holocaust denial has become a recurrent phenomenon in those years, and a movement for reaffirming values more consistent with traditional theology has been noted in the
Catholic Church. A 2020 Eurispes report revealed that 15.6% of Italians contend that the
Holocaust never happened, and that 23.9% of the population adhere to the
anti-Semitic conspiracy theories which claim that
Jews control their economy. National and local leaders announced their plans to expel Roma from settlements which were located both in and around major cities as well as their plans to deport illegal immigrants. In May 2007, the mayors of Rome and Milan signed "Security Pacts" which "envisaged the forcible eviction of up to 10,000 Romani people". In October 2007, an extraordinarily high level of anti-immigrant sentiment exploded into violence which was generally directed against Romanian immigrants and was specifically directed against Roma immigrants. The violence was triggered by the murder of 47-year-old Giovanna Reggiani, a naval captain's wife, which was attributed to a Romanian immigrant of
Roma origin. Reggiani was raped, beaten, left in a ditch, and died the following week. The Italian government responded by rounding up Romanian immigrants and summarily expelling some two hundred of them, mostly Roma, in defiance of E.U. immigration rules. According to the then Mayor of Rome Walter Veltroni, Romanians of Roma origin made up 75 percent of those who raped, stole and killed in the first seven months of the year. According to Romanian MEP and former ITS deputy chairman Eugen Mihaescu the final straw was the "unacceptable amalgam" Mussolini made between criminal gypsies and the entire Romanian population. After that mobs in several areas around Naples attacked Roma communities, setting homes alight, and forcing hundreds of Roma to flee. The camp in Ponticelli was set on fire each month between May and July 2008. According to a May 2008 poll, 68% of Italians wanted to see all of the country's approximately 150,000 Gypsies, many of whom were Italian citizens, expelled. The survey, published as mobs in Naples burned down Gypsy camps that month, revealed that the majority also wanted all Gypsy camps in Italy to be demolished. The 2019 poll of the same think-tank found that still 83% of Italians have negative views of Romani people, the highest percentage of European countries surveyed. On June 18, 2018, Minister of the Interior
Matteo Salvini announced the government would conduct a census of
Romani people in Italy for the purpose of deporting all who are not in the country legally. However this measure was criticized as unconstitutional and was opposed by all the oppositions and also by some members of the M5S. In 2023, the Italian chant of "attenzione pickpocket" has become an international viral sensation. Monica Poli, a city councilor representing the
right-wing Lega party in Venice, alerted people by calling out pickpockets in the streets of the city; however, some social media users did not believe that the subjects of the videos were committing crimes every time she observed them and they also accused her of
ethnically profiling Romani people based on stereotypes. Southern Italians, in turn, call Italians from the northern regions
polentoni. The
epithets
terroni and
polentoni have anti-ethnic connotations, aimed at pointing out an alleged ethnic and cultural inferiority, even if often used only in a joking way. The term
terroni certainly originates from the word (), with developments that are not always clear, and was perhaps linked in the past by the denominations of southern areas such as the
Terra di Lavoro (in
Campania) or the
Terra di Bari and the
Terra d'Otranto (in
Apulia). The word
terroni was recorded for the first time in 1950 by
Bruno Migliorini, as an appendix to
Alfredo Panzini's
Dizionario moderno ('Modern dictionary') in 1950. Italians protested the murder of Burkina Faso native, Abdul Salam Guibre, along with racism in Italy on 20 September 2008. ''
L'Osservatore Romano'', the semi-official newspaper for the
Holy See, indicated that racism played an important role in the riot in
Rosarno. According to a Eurobarometer study, Italians had the third lowest level of "comfort with person of Gypsy origin as neighbour", after Austrians and
Czechs. Contemporary Italian football fans, of lower-league and top-flight teams, have been noted by foreign media for racist behaviour. Following the 2013 nomination of
Cécile Kyenge, a Congolese-born Italian immigrant, as Minister of Integration in the
government of
Enrico Letta, she became subject to several racial slurs by local and national politicians. One of these slurs was made by
Roberto Calderoli, a prominent figure of the Lega Nord. He claimed that whenever he saw Minister Kyenge, an
orangutan came to his mind. During a speech by Kyenge at a meeting of the
Democratic Party a few days after Calderoli's slur, some members of the far-right and
neo-fascist New Force threw a clump of bananas at the minister. Another example is the packages containing a pig's head that were sent to Rome's Synagogue, the Israeli embassy and a museum showing an exhibition on the Holocaust in January 2014.
Environmental racism Romani and migrant populations in Italy experience documented practices of racism and segregation within a context of environmental concerns and environmental inequality. Among migrant populations in Italy, environmental inequality has been documented in relation to agricultural labor through exposure to pesticides, low wages, and poor working conditions. Illuzzi argues that as a result of the "state of exception", contemporary Romani communities in Italy become easily subjected to criminalization, denial of citizenship or national status, and social exclusion, notably in places such as government-implemented Nomad Camps. and have been housed in extreme proximity to a
hazardous waste site that has been likened by one government official to
Chernobyl in terms of cleanup requirements and risk to human health.
Nomad Camps and related sites In
Rome, over 4,000 Romani persons (not to be confused with Romans) live in encampments authorized by the Italian national and
Roman municipal governments. Prior to its closure in 2016,
Hazardous waste in Campania and exposure to Romani settlements In
Italy, an estimated 11.6 million tons of waste are illegally disposed of each year. As of 2014, 5,281 contaminated sites and suspected waste dumps have been located by American military investigators. Italy, large numbers of migrant workers from Africa and Asia produce agricultural goods within a context of severe social and environmental marginalization, lacking access to clean water, utilities, housing, and welcomed as economic contributors for helping fill jobs that established Italians are often reluctant to perform, Most are small independent operators who are often unable to recover costs due to the current price of oranges, which has been affected by international competition and a price crash, thereby compelling them to seek the cheapest labor possible. Contributing to this pressure, market
monopolization has been identified by local agriculture advocates as an aggravating factor. According to Pietro Molinaro of the Calabrian Organisation of Producers, "The problem this area has faced for some years is that the big multinational drinks companies underpay for the juice. They put pressure on the small local processing plants that press the juice." ==Notes==