3. Italian fascism initially opposed antisemitism and resisted Nazi antisemitism
Mussolini many times in the 1920s and early 1930s denied there was a problem with antisemitism in Italy, and considered German racial superiority theories to be “nonsense, stupid and idiotic”. Yet over time, due to political issues and other complications, Il Duce began to adopt policies which on paper resembled those of the Nazis. By 1938, Mussolini adopted antisemitic laws which proved to be unpopular with the Italian people generally, as well as among party officials. Mussolini admitted to senior party officials that he personally did not agree with the antisemitic stance of the party.
When Mussolini heard a complaint from a Fascist party member regarding the sufferings of Jewish colleagues he replied, “I agree with you completely…I am carrying out my policy entirely for political reasons”. One of the political leaders Mussolini sought to pacify was Roberto Farinacci, a powerful Fascist party leader who was anticlerical, antisemitic, and thoroughly pro-Nazi. Farinacci first pushed and then enforced the antisemitic laws enacted by Mussolini in 1938, known as the Racial Laws. The first of those laws restricted the civil rights of Jews in Italy, banned books by Jewish authors, and banned them from many jobs and positions in schools and hospitals.