Reviewing Identity and Racism in Historical Context
Panel: Beyond Borders: Transnational Italy | Q&A: Wed April 13 @ 6pm
Alex Liu (Math and Physics)
Abstract and Author Bio
Abstract: The far-right forces in Italy justify their anti-immigrant movement as a protection of their identity. Particularly, they believe that the purity in Italian blood, culture and religion is “contaminated” by immigrants. Nevertheless, it is problematic to assert an artificial concept is “pure” in racial and cultural senses. Especially when we talk about nationalism, nothing is naturally pure unless they are defined to be so. Therefore, it is important to ask: was Italy a pure Italy since the foundation of the nation? When did Italy become a “pure” Italy? Why does “purity” matter? What are some actions taken to make Italy “pure” and what are the consequences of these actions? And what are some connections between Italy’s past in forging an identity and current racism in Italy?
To answer these questions, I will examine the forging of Italy as a nation and Italian as a people as a dynamic process. The presentation will focus on forging Italian self from the narration of history from Aryanism and Mediterraneanism perspectives; the racism that was and is imposed by Italian governments on African and Jewish people to exclude others; and the propagation of the racial ideology through mass media.
Author Bio: Alex Liu is a sophomore and a double major in Math and Physics. During his second semester at NYU Shanghai, he learned a lot about the formation of Chinese national identity in a course called The Concept of China. This semester, he took the course Black Italia, in which students discussed the identity of those who are considered as "others" in the Italian society. Alex saw this course as a good opportunity to apply his previous knowledge about national identity to analyze the formation of Italian identities.
Introduction
Seldom in nature can you find a pure object. Even for a natural diamond, a symbolism for purity, it has some tiny rift within its inner structure. However, artificial diamonds manufactured by human beings can reach an absolute purity. The same argument about purity can be extended to the discussion of nationalism, where national identity is constantly defined and redefined by scientific hypotheses, ideologies and policies. In particular, the studies of Italian identity during Colonial and Fascist Era triggered intense debates on whether the Italian people is a pure race. Moreover, the issue exceeds the scope of simple academic discussion, since the topic is also closely associated with diplomacy, citizenship, and most importantly, the scientific racism which became the oppression for the colonized people in Italian colonies. To better understand this topic, it is essential to examine how Italian identity was forged in the framework of Aryanism (or in some other contexts, Nordism) and Mediterraneanism. It would be equivalently important to understand how the concepts of Italian as selves and the concepts of non-Italian others are included and excluded under these frameworks by policies made by the Italian government. Lastly, it is crucial to demonstrate the consequences caused by these policies and how they differ from each other in different frameworks.
Map of the Italian Peninsula around 400 BC. (Wikipedia)
A map of Aryan migration (Author: Rohan Venkataramakrishnan )
To begin with, we need to understand why and how Italian scholars and politicians sought to forge a unified identity for Italian people. Though Italy was unified during the 19th century, the ethnic components of Italy were diverse. In the northern part of Italy, the land was more occupied by Germanic people. In the southern part of Italy, there lived more ethnic groups including Sardinians, Saracens, and many other peoples across the entire Mediterranean, who arrived there prior to Risorgimento. The complex ethnic components of Italy were to a large extent controversial to the notion of a modern nation-state, which can be summarized as “one nation, one people, one language”. Such inconsistency led to scrutiny and questions from foreign intellectuals who held an Aryanism perspective on the origin of European people. Under the framework of Aryanism, according to Fabrizio De Donno’s La Razza Ario-Mediterranea, it is believed that “in modern Italy the Aryans were prevalently in the north, while in the south there was a strong Mediterranean and Semitic element” (De Donno, 396). Together with this notice of racial difference was a statement with racial ideology: “the miscegenation between Romans and the African and Asian subjects of the empire had caused the degeneration of the Latin race and the collapse of the empire.” (De Donno, 396) The idea of Latin degeneration triggered two different responses from Italian scholars. Some anthropologists held an Aryanism point of view, while the others believed in Mediterraneanism, which argued that Italian people originated from Africa rather than India or Iran as what Aryanism describes.
In the Aryanism framework, the Italian identity is defined from a historical perspective. In Maria Sophia Quine’s Making Italian: Aryanism and Anthropology in Italy during the Risorgimento, according to Giustiniano Nicolucci, who was an Italian anthropologist and ethnologist, Italian people were descendants of Aryan race who has either and Indian or Iranian origin. Nicolucci argues that these Aryan people entered the Apennine Peninsula and established settlements with aboriginal people on the peninsula, which accounts for the diverse ethnic components of modern Italy. Nicolucci also includes Aryan supremacy in his narration of Italian anthropological history in both physiological and psychological levels. Nicolucci describes Aryans as “tall”, “muscular”, “strong-jawed” (Quine, 138) people. In particular, among these Italo-Aryan people, Nicolucci asserted that Liguarian people were “‘the most vigorous, robust and industrious’ of all Italians.” (Quine, 139) In supplement, he stated that “Quite different in character from sub-Alpine Italians’, Ligurians ‘loved order and stability’ and were ‘a most sober and energetic people.” (Quine, 139) From there Nicolucci concluded that the Liguarian people gradually became the ruling class of Italy, who were “capable of constructing a cohesive Italian ethnos and nation.” (Quine, 139) Furthermore, Nicolucci inscribes the catholic and patriarchal social structure with nucleus family, which he esteemed so much in his narrative:
[T]hey (Italo-Aryans) advanced to the stage where the family was considered the main unit of society ; the father of the family was master over his household; families united together to form villages governed by a chief “father” or patriarch and a council of elders; and, they evolved a religious belief system based on worship of a single heavenly father.In this way, Nicolucci justified the unity of Italian people by referring to a common origin and accounted for the diversity as a result of assimilation of Aryans by different local Aborigines. In addition, he defined the characteristics of Italian people and the social structure of by claiming these traits were a heredity from the Italo-Aryan ancestors who possessed them.
Giustiniano Nicolucci (Photo author: Unknown)
Patriarchal Cathedral Basilica of St. Mark is cathedral church of Archdiocese of Venice, Italy. (photo: Kiev.Victor/Shutterstock)
Giuseppe Sergi (Photo author: Unknown)
The Mediterraneanism scholars, on the other hand, offered an alternative way to define the Italian identity. The Mediterranean origin theory was proposed in response to the “Latin degeneration” theory. Instead of admitting that Italian people were a derivation of the Indo-European common Aryan ancestor, Mediterraneanism scholars argued that Italian people have an African origin. This proposal was made by another Italian anthropologist, Giuseppe Sergi. Indo-European people as a common ancestor was replaced by Eurafricans (homo eurafricus) in this theory, who were the origin of the African, the Mediterranean, and the Nordic. According to Sergi, the Italic people fit within the category of the Mediterranean. Sergi refuted the “Latin degeneration” claim by Aryanism by labeled the Aryan people as “barbarians” (De Donno, 398), in contrast to the civilized Roman people. The Italian identity under the framework of Mediterraneanism is closely associated with the glory of Rome in the past, which Sergi described as universal, united and civilized. Moreover, to promote the Italian identity, Sergi proposed “Latin regeneration”, in which he “claimed that it was through science, culture and the arts that this regeneration must be carried out.” (De Donno, 399) Such a promotion would restore Italy’s position as the center of arts and science as it had been during the Renaissance. Therefore, Sergi defined Italianness to be “universal”, “assimilating” and “civilized” (De Donno, 398).
The discourse over the Italian identity under the frames of Mediterraneanism and Aryanism offered flexible rhetoric for political purposes. Even though there wasn’t an agreement among the academia, the Italian government favored one framework over other for a specific time period. Sometimes, the interchange between these two frameworks granted the Italian government reflexibility in changing its policies and diplomacy towards others, such as British, Semitic and African people. The Mediterraneanism Ideology that Italian people was a mixed race was once favored by Mussolini himself, as he once stated in his speech,
No pure race exists any longer and even the Jews have mixed with other races. It is precisely thanks to harmonious race-mixing that the strength and beauty of a Nation have often been derived. Race: it is a feeling, not a reality. I will never believe that one race can be shown to be biologically purer than another. (Mussolini, cited in Pende 1933: 227)The opposition between Mediterraneanism between Aryanism help Mussolini government justified their denunciation of the British Empire, which favored the diplomat attitudes of Italy. According to De Donno’s Ario-Mediterranea, “these concepts of ethnic fusion, spiritual harmony (or feeling) and Mediterranean regeneration constituted fascist racial (but anti-racist) ideology, and were used to support both domestic and foreign policies.” (De Donno, 402) In this antitheses of Italian Mediterraneanism and British, Germanic Aryanism (or Anglo-Saxon Nordism), the British and Germany were depicted as the oppressors of people in Africa and Asia with a racist and exclusionary attitudes towards the local people, while Italy established itself as a supporter for the rising Egyptian, Indian and some other Mediterranean colonized countries. Furthermore, universal inclusive and assimilating nature of Mediterraneanism helped justify Mussolini’s project of expanding the territory to that of the Roman Empire at its apex.
Colonial Africa On The Eve of World War I (Created by reddit user whiplashoo21 )
The Roman Empire at its height, 117 A.D. (From Huffington Post Oct. 12, 2015)
Nevertheless, the attitude of the Mussolini government shifted when the government decided to align with the Nazi Germany and probably after the initiation of the invasion of Ethiopia. The shift in attitude can also be found in one of Mussolini’s speech, where he claimed:
We are not Hamites, Semites, or Mongols. And if we are none of these races, we are evidently Aryans, and we came from the Alps, from the North. We are therefore Aryans of the pure Mediterranean type. (Mussolini, cited in Ben-Ghiat 2001: 157)After the Mussolini government shifted its racial ideology to Aryanism, the claims about so-called “degeneration” caused by interracial sexual interaction between Italo-Aryan people and others (mainly Semitic and African people) started to regain its popularity among Italian scholars and politicians. Such claims were based on the racial hierarchy of superior Aryanism and inferior others in the Aryanism framework. In the Mediterraneanism framework, Semitic people were considered oppressed by the British government. Though in Italian Aryanism framework, Semitic people are also considered as a branch of the Aryans, Italian Aryanists, Nicolucci, claimed natural superiority in culture and religious aspects of Italo-Aryan people over Semitic people:
Jewish and Arabic Semites did not, for example, have the highly developed aesthetic senses of Indo-European Aryans, who were the ‘supreme masters of all the fine arts’ and ‘took poetry, architecture, painting and sculpture beyond the frontiers of perfection’. Lacking ‘artistic genius’, he argued, Semitic Aryans also differed in their understanding and construction of morality and religion. While Europeans created God in their own image, and invested in him human traits, Semites believed in a supreme being who was ‘separate from the world and was unlike any other’. The ‘God of the Sinai, Jerusalem, and Mecca’ was ‘sublime and perfect’ and his laws were absolute. Unlike their western kin, Semitic Aryans were hostage to a religious belief system which disempowered them and, thereby, hampered the advance of civilization. (Quine, 135)Similarly, Fascist Italy changed its attitude towards African people in Ethiopia, who were originally part of the Eurafrican people. After Second Italian Invasion of Ethiopia that offended the sovereignty of the country, a massacre occurred in addis ababa, following an attempted assassination of Rodolfo Graziani, who was the Viceroy of Italian East African colonies. The massacre lasted for several days, and according to Ian Campbell’s The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy’s National Shame, around 20,000 Ethiopians died in the massacre. During the invasion of Ethiopia, the Fascist government of Italy also committed atrocities including but not limited to bombarding Ethiopia Red Cross hospitals and using poisonous gas, as mentioned in Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Italian Colonialism. (Ben-Ghiat, 50)
Such a shift in racial ideology also led to a shift in policies regarding citizenship. The most significant date marking such a shifting was 14th of July, 1938, when Racial Manifesto (Manifesto della razza) was published when Mussolini declared the alliance between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.Prior to the date that Mussolini announced that Italy would become an openly racist nation, Afro-Italian and Semite-Italian people could gain Italian citizenship.
For the Italo-Eritreans, for example, “in Eritrea and Somalia a law relating to mixed-race children was implemented in 1933, according to which Italian citizenship would be granted also on the basis of cultural and/ or racial features.” (De Donno, 404). Also, as shown in Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Italian Colonialism, “many Italians simultaneously claimed that Italo-Eritreans were Italian and yet inferior to Italians.” (Ben-Ghiat, 100) Despite such a racial hierarchical ideology, according to Ben-Ghiat, “[s]uch a strong cultural identification helps explain why Italo-Eritreans volunteered to serve in World War I, and later on, in the war against Ethiopia. Some became career officers; many joined fascist mass organizations; and some even joined the Fascist Party.” (Ben-Ghiat, 104) One example would be Domenico Mondelli, an Eritrean who fought for Italy in WWI and the Italian Invasion of Libya.
Similarly, Hollander Ethan depicts in his Italian Fascism and the Jews that for the Jewish people, as Mussolini himself once remarked, “The Jews have lived in Rome since the days of Kings [and] shall remain undisturbed.”
Nevertheless, after the enactment of racial law in Italy, many actions were taken by Fascist Italy to prevent a “degeneration” of the Italo-Aryan race, including the prohibition of interracial marriage between Italo-Aryans and “inferior races”, the deprivation of occupations of Jewish people, a segregation between the “rulers and ruled.” (De Donno, 404) etc. Such an inconsistency of racial ideology adapted by the Italian government led to a sudden change in the scope of definition of Italian identity. For one period, the Italian government treated people in the colony as a member of Italian society when they adhered to the assimilating principle under the Mediterranean framework. For another period, they built a racial hierarchy under the Aryan Superiority idea in Aryanism. The sudden shift between these completely opposing racial ideologies led to an abrupt deprivation of Italian citizenship and unprepared allowance of racism, many Jewish, Arabic and African people were rendered targets by right-wing Italians. The Italian identity in this sense was first expanded to include Semitic and African people in the needs of expanding the territory of Italy to restore the glory of Roman Empire, and then these people were excluded from the Italian identity due to the (racially) ideological alliance between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, the Italian identity was partially forged as a response to the questions from outsiders. While scholars under the Aryanism framework considered Italian people as a pure race, the Mediterraneanism scholars accepted the diverse ethnic components of Italy. The Italian Fascist government adapted the assimilation principle in Mediterraneanism ideology to justify the expansion of its territory and diplomacy towards British, French and German Imperial power, which expanded the scope of Italian identity to a universal Eurafrican people that corresponded to its Roman past. However, the Mussolini government later shifted to the Aryanism ideology after it initiated the invasion of Ethiopia and allied with the Third Reich. The sudden shift in racial ideology adapted by the government led to the deprivation of Semitic and African Italian citizenship, which shrinks the scope of Italian identity to an Italo-Aryan people.
Works Cited
De Donno, Fabrizio (2006) La Razza Ario-Mediterranea, Interventions
Pende, Nicola (1933) Bonifica umana razionale e biologia politica, Bologna: Cappelli.
Sophia Quine, Maria. Making Italian: Making Italians: Aryanism and Anthropology in Italy during the Risorgimento.
Ben-Ghiat, R., & Fuller, M. (2008). Italian colonialism. Palgrave Macmillan.
Hollander, Ethan J (1997). Italian Fascism and the Jews . University of California.