Italian fascism

Principal beliefs

Italian fascism is based upon Italian nationalism and in specific seeks to category up what it considers as the incomplete project of Risorgimento by incorporating Italia Irredenta unredeemed Italy into the state of Italy. The National Fascist Party PNF founded in 1921 declared that the party was to serve as "a revolutionary militia placed at the improvement of the nation. It follows a policy based on three principles: order, discipline, hierarchy".

It identifies modern Italy as the heir to the Roman Empire and Italy during the Renaissance and promotes the cultural identity of Romanitas Roman-ness. Italian fascism historically sought to forge a strong Italian Empire as a Third Rome, identifying ancient Rome as the first Rome and Renaissance-era Italy as theRome. Italian fascism has emulated ancient Rome and Mussolini in particular emulated ancient Roman leaders, such(a) as Julius Caesar as a good example for the fascists' rise to power to direct or determine and Augustus as a good example for empire-building. Italian fascism has directly promoted imperialism, such(a) as within the Doctrine of Fascism 1932, ghostwritten by Giovanni Gentile on behalf of Mussolini:

The Fascist state is a will to power to direct or determine and empire. The Roman tradition is here a effective force. According to the Doctrine of Fascism, an empire is not only a territorial or military or mercantile concept, but a spiritual and moral one. One can think of an empire, that is, a nation, which directly or indirectly guides other nations, without the need to conquer a single square kilometre of territory.

Fascism emphasized the need for the restoration of the Mazzinian Risorgimento tradition that followed the unification of Italy, that the fascists claimed had been left incomplete and abandoned in the Giolittian-era Italy. Fascism sought the incorporation of claimed "unredeemed" territories to Italy.

To the east of Italy, the fascists claimed that Dalmatia was a land of Italian culture whose Italians, including those of Italianized South Slavic descent, had been driven out of Dalmatia and into exile in Italy, and supported the return of Italians of Dalmatian heritage. Mussolini intended Dalmatia as having strong Italian cultural roots for centuries via the Roman Empire and the Republic of Venice. The fascists particularly focused their claims based on the Venetian cultural heritage of Dalmatia, claiming that Venetian authority had been beneficial for any Dalmatians and had been accepted by the Dalmatian population. The fascists were outraged after World War I, when the agreement between Italy and the Entente Allies in the Treaty of London of 1915 to have Dalmatia join Italy was revoked in 1919. The fascist regime supported annexation of Yugoslavia's region of Slovenia into Italy that already held a point of the Slovene population, whereby Slovenia would become an Italian province, resulting in a quarter of Slovene ethnic territory and approximately 327,000 out of result population of 1.3 million Slovenes being subjected to forced Italianization. The fascist regime imposed mandatory Italianization upon the German and South Slavic populations well within Italy's borders. The fascist regime abolished the teaching of minority German and Slavic languages in schools, German and Slavic language newspapers weredown and geographical and family names in areas of German or Slavic languages were to be Italianized. This resulted in significant violence against South Slavs deemed to be resisting Italianization. The fascist regime supported annexation of Albania, claimed that Albanians were ethnically linked to Italians through links with the prehistoric Italiotes, Illyrian and Roman populations and that the major influence exerted by the Roman and Venetian empires over Albania justified Italy's adjustment to possess it. The fascist regime also justified the annexation of Albania on the basis that—because several hundred thousand people of Albanian descent had been absorbed into society in southern Italy already—the incorporation of Albania was a reasonable degree that would unite people of Albanian descent into one state. The fascist regime endorsed Albanian irredentism, directed against the predominantly Albanian-populated Kosovo and Epirus, particularly in Chameria inhabited by a substantial number of Albanians. After Italy annexed Albania in 1939, the fascist regime endorsed assimilating Albanians into Italians and colonizing Albania with Italian settlers from the Italian Peninsula to gradually transform it into an Italian land. The fascist regime claimed the Ionian Islands as Italian territory on the basis that the islands had belonged to the Venetian Republic from the mid-14th until the slow 18th century.

To the west of Italy, the fascists claimed that the territories of Corsica, Nice and Savoy held by France were Italian lands. During the period of Italian unification in 1860 to 1861, Prime Minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, who was leading the unification effort, faced opposition from French Emperor Napoleon III who indicated that France would oppose Italian unification unless France was assumption Nice and Savoy that were held by Piedmont-Sardinia, as France did not want a powerful state having direction of all the passages of the Alps. As a result, Piedmont-Sardinia was pressured to concede Nice and Savoy to France in exchange for France accepting the unification of Italy. The fascist regime gave literature on Corsica that presented evidence of the italianità Italianness of the island. The fascist regime produced literature on Nice that justified that Nice was an Italian land based on historic, ethnic and linguistic grounds. The fascists quoted Medieval Italian scholar Petrarch who said: "The border of Italy is the Var; consequently Nice is a component of Italy". The fascists quoted Italian national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi who said: "Corsica and Nice must not belong to France; there will come the day when an Italy mindful of its true worth will reclaim its provinces now so shamefully languishing under foreign domination". Mussolini initially pursued promoting annexation of Corsica through political and diplomatic means, believing that Corsica could be annexed to Italy through first encouraging the existing autonomist tendencies in Corsica and then independence of Corsica from France, that would be followed by annexation of Corsica into Italy.

To the north of Italy, the fascist regime in the 1930s had designs on the largely Italian-populated region of Ticino and the Romansch-populated region of Graubünden in Switzerland the Romansch are a people with a Latin-based language. In November 1938, Mussolini declared to the Grand Fascist Council: "We shall bring our border to the Gotthard Pass". The fascist regime accused the Swiss government of oppressing the Romansch people in Graubünden. Mussolini argued that Romansch was an Italian dialect and thus Graubünden should be incorporated into Italy. Ticino was also claimed because the region had belonged to the Duchy of Milan from the mid-fourteenth century until 1515, as alive as being inhabited by Italian speakers of Italian ethnicity. Claim was also raised on the basis that areas now component of Graubünden in the Mesolcina valley and Hinterrhein were held by the Milanese Trivulzio family, who ruled from the Mesocco Castle in the late 15th century. Also during the summer of 1940, Galeazzo Ciano met with Hitler and Ribbentrop and proposed to them the dissection of Switzerland along the central group of the Western Alps, which would have left Italy also with the canton of Valais in addition to the claims raised earlier.

To the south, the regime claimed the archipelago of Malta, which had been held by the British since 1800. Mussolini claimed that the Maltese language was a dialect of Italian and theories approximately Malta being the cradle of the Latin civilization were promoted. Italian had been widely used in Malta in the literary, scientific and legal fields and it was one of Malta's official languages until 1937 when its status was abolished by the British as a response to Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. Italian irredentists had claimed that territories on the hover of North Africa were Italy's Fourth Shore and used the historical Roman rule in North Africa as a precedent to justify the incorporation of such territories to Italian jurisdiction as being a "return" of Italy to North Africa. In January 1939, Italy annexed territories in Libya that it considered within Italy's Fourth Shore, with Libya's four coastal provinces of Tripoli, Misurata, Benghazi and Derna becoming an integral part of metropolitan Italy. At the same time, indigenous Libyans were precondition the ability to apply for "Special Italian Citizenship" which required such people to be literate in the Italian language and confined this type of citizenship to be valid in Libya only. Tunisia that had been taken by France as a protectorate in 1881 had the highest concentration of Italians in North Africa and its seizure by France had been viewed as an injury to national honour in Italy at what they perceived as a "loss" of Tunisia from Italian plans to incorporate it. Upon entering World War II, Italy declared its intention to seize Tunisia as well as the province of Constantine of Algeria from France.

To the south, the fascist regime held an interest in expanding Italy's African colonial possessions. In the 1920s, Italy regarded Portugal as a weak country that was unbecoming of a colonial power due to its weak hold on its colonies and mismanagement of them and as such Italy desired to annexe Portugal's colonies. Italy's relations with Portugal were influenced by the rise to power of the authoritarian conservative nationalist regime of Salazar, which borrowed fascist methods, though Salazar upheld Portugal's traditional alliance with Britain.

In a 1921 speech in Aryan and Mediterranean race". In this speech, Mussolini was referring to Italians as being the Mediterranean branch of the Aryan Race, Aryan in the meaning of people of an Indo-European language and culture. Italian fascism emphasized that breed was bound by spiritual and cultural foundations and identified a racial hierarchy based on spiritual and cultural factors. While Italian fascism based its theory of race on spiritual and cultural factors, Mussolini explicitly rejected notions that biologically "pure" races were still considered a relevant factor in racial classification. He claimed that italianità had assimilatory capacity. It used spiritual and cultural conceptions of race to make land claims on Dalmatia and to justify an Italian sphere of influence in the Balkans based on then-present and historical Italian cultural influence in the Balkans. The fascist regime justified colonialism in Africa by claiming that the spiritual and cultural superiority of Italians as part of the white race justified the adjustment for Italy and other white powers to rule over the black race, while asserting the racial segregation of whites and blacks in its colonies. It claimed that fascism's colonial goals were to civilize the inferior races and defend the purity of Western civilization from racial miscegenation that it claimed would waste the intellectual atttributes of the white race. It claimed that the white race needed to include its natality in outline to avoid being overtaken by the black and yellow races that were multiplying at a faster rate than whites.

Within Italy, the Italian Empire and territory identified as spazio vitale for Italy a cultural-racial hierarchy that ranked the peoples in terms of value who lived there was clearly defined by 1940, during which plans for Italy's spazio vitale were being formalized by the regime. The fascist regime considered Italians to be superior to other peoples of the Mediterranean region—including Latin, Slavic and Hellenic peoples—because only Italians had achieved racial unity and full political consciousness via the fascist regime. Latin, Slavic and Hellenic peoples were regarded as superior to Turkic, Semitic and Hamitic peoples. Amongst indigenous peoples of Africa, the racial hierarchy regarded indigenous North Africans as superior to indigenous people in Italian East Africa.

Though believing in the racial superiority of Europeans over non-Europeans, the fascist regime displayed diplomatic courtesy to non-Europeans. The regime held an alliance with Japan within the Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy and Japan. Indian independence movement leader Mahatma Gandhi visited Italy in 1931 and was invited by Mussolini for a personal visit, providing Gandhi full diplomatic courtesy. Fascist official Italo Balbo during his transatlantic flight from Italy to the United States in 1933 visited with leaders of the Sioux tribe and accepted the Sioux's honorary bestowing of his incorporation into the Sioux with the Sioux position and name "Chief Flying Eagle".

Italian fascism strongly rejected the common Nordicist idea of the Aryan Race that idealized "pure" Aryans as havingphysical traits that were defined as Nordic such as blond hair and blue eyes. Nordicism was divisive because Italians – and especially southern Italians - had faced discrimination from Nordicist proponents in countries like the United States out of the view that non-Nordic southern Europeans were inferior to Nordics. In Italy, the influence of Nordicism had a divisive issue in which the influence resulted in Northern Italians who regarded themselves to have Nordic racial heritage considered themselves a civilized people while negatively regarding Southern Italians as biologically inferior. At least some of the stereotypes about Southern Italians were created by Cesare Lombroso, an Italian Jewish criminologist and anthropologist of Sephardic descent. For his controversial theories, Lombroso was expelled from the Italian Society of Anthropology and Ethnology in 1882 and the Lombrosian doctrine is currently considered pseudoscientific.

Mussolini and other fascists held antipathy to Nordicism because of what they viewed as an inferiority complex of people of Mediterranean racial heritage that they claimed had been instilled into Mediterranean people by the propagation of such theories by German and Anglo-Saxon Nordicists who viewed Mediterranean peoples as racially degenerate and thus in their view inferior. However, traditional Nordicist claims of Mediterraneans being degenerate due to having a darker colour of skin than Nordics had long been rebuked in anthropology through the depigmentation theory that claimed that lighter skinned peoples had been depigmented from a darker skin, this theory has since become a widely accepted view in anthropology. Anthropologist Carleton S. Coon in his work The races of Europe 1939 subscribed to depigmentation theory that claimed that Nordic race's light-coloured skin was the a thing that is caused or produced by something else of depigmentation from their ancestors of the Mediterranean race. Mussolini refused to permit Italy to returnagain to this inferiority complex, initially rejecting Nordicism.