Initially, Fascist Italy did not enact comprehensive racist policies like those policies which were enacted by its World War II Axis partner Nazi Germany. Italy's National Fascist Party leader, Benito Mussolini, expressed different views on the subject of race over the course of his career.

In the 1920s, Mussolini stated concern over low birth rates of people of the white race across the world and warned that if the birth rates of whites were not improved that high birth rates among non-whites could lead to the white race being defeated in conflicts with non-white races.Griffin, Roger (ed.): Fascism. Oxford University Press. September 1995. p. 59. . After the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, the Italian Fascist government implemented strict racial segregation between whites and blacks in Ethiopia.

In 1938, Fascist Italy enacted a set of comprehensive racial laws, that endorsed the Fascist "Manifesto of Race", the seventh point of which stated that "it is time that Italians proclaim themselves to be openly racist", although Mussolini privately said that the Manifesto was endorsed "entirely for political reasons" in deference to Nazi German wishes. The "Manifesto of Race", which was published on 14 July 1938, paved the way for the enactment of the Racial Laws. Leading members of the National Fascist Party (PNF), such as Dino Grandi and Italo Balbo, reportedly opposed the Racial Laws. Balbo, in particular, regarded antisemitism as having nothing to do with fascism and he staunchly opposed the antisemitic laws.

After 1938, discrimination and persecution intensified and became an increasingly important hallmark of Italian Fascist ideology and policies. Nevertheless, Mussolini and the Italian military did not consistently apply the laws adopted in the Manifesto of Race.Kroener, Bernhard R.; Muller, Rolf-Dieter; Umbreit, Hans (2003). Germany and the Second World War Organization and Mobilization in the German Sphere of Power. Vol. VII. New York: Oxford University Press p. 247 In 1943, Mussolini expressed regret for the endorsement, saying that it could have been avoided.

Italian race and scientific racism

Mussolini had initially rejected Nazi racism, especially the idea of a master race, as "arrant nonsense, stupid and idiotic".Hibbert, p. 98 Initially, Fascist Italy did not enact comprehensive racist policies like those policies which were enacted by its World War II Axis partner Nazi Germany. Italy's National Fascist Party leader, Benito Mussolini, expressed different views on the subject of race over the course of his career. In an interview conducted in 1932 at the Palazzo di Venezia in Rome, he said "Race? It is a feeling, not a reality: ninety-five percent, at least, is a feeling. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today".Talks with Mussolini It has also been indicated that Benito Mussolini had his own, if somewhat different from Nazism, brand of racist views.Racial theories in Fascist Italy by Aaron GiletteDictating Demography: The Problem of Population in Fascist Italy by Carl Ipsen, pg 187 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.

In a 1921 speech in Bologna, Mussolini stated that "Fascism was born ... out of a profound, perennial need of this our Aryan and Mediterranean race".Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London; New York: Routledge, 2001. p. 11. Neocleous, Mark. Fascism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. p. 35. In this speech, Mussolini referred to the Italians as people who constituted the Mediterranean branch of the Aryan Race; Aryan here meant people whose language and culture were both Indo-European.Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London; New York: Routledge, 2001. p. 39. Unlike National Socialism's biological racism, Italian fascism emphasized the belief that race was bound by spiritual and cultural foundations, and it divided peoples into a racial hierarchy which was based on spiritual and cultural factors. While Italian fascism based its conception of race on spiritual and cultural factors, Mussolini explicitly rejected the belief that biologically "pure" races were still considered a relevant factor in racial classifications.Glenda Sluga. The Problem of Trieste and the Italo-Yugoslav Border: Difference, Identity, and Sovereignty in Twentieth-Century. SUNY Press, 2001. p. 52. He claimed that italianità had assimilatory capacity. It used spiritual and cultural conceptions of race to make land claims on Istria and Dalmatia, and to justify an Italian sphere of influence in the Balkans based on then-present and historical Italian cultural influence in the Balkan Peninsula.Glenda Sluga. The Problem of Trieste and the Italo-Yugoslav Border: Difference, Identity, and Sovereignty in Twentieth-Century. SUNY Press, 2001. pp. 52–53. The Italian Fascist regime justified colonial efforts in Africa by claiming that the spiritual and cultural superiority of Italians as part of the white race justified the right for the Fascist Italy and other European Powers to rule over the black race, while asserting the racial segregation of whites and blacks in its colonies.Aristotle A. Kallis. Fascist Ideology: Expansionism in Italy and Germany 1922–1945. London; New York: Routledge, 2000. p. 45. 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 harm the intellectual qualities of the white race. It claimed that the white race needed to increase its natality in order to avoid being overtaken by the black and yellow races that were multiplying at a faster rate than whites.Aaron Gillette. Racial theories in fascist Italy. London; New York: Routledge, 2001. 43.

Within the Italian Peninsula, colonies of the Italian Empire, and territories which were collectively identified as spazio vitale ("vital space") for the Italian race, the belief in the existence of a cultural-racial hierarchy in which different peoples were ranked in terms of their values was clearly defined by 1940, during which plans for the acquisition of Italy's spazio vitale were being formalized by the Fascist regime.Davide Rodogno. Fascism's European Empire: Italian Occupation during the Second World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. p. 53. The Fascist regime considered Italians to be superior to other European peoples which inhabited 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 all considered superior to Turkic, Semitic, and Hamitic peoples. According to the racial hierarchy's classification of the indigenous peoples of Africa, the indigenous North Africans were superior to the indigenous people of Italian East Africa.

Even though it believed that Europeans were racially superior to non-Europeans, the Italian Fascist regime treated non-Europeans with diplomatic courtesy. The regime formed an alliance with Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire, which was referred to as the "Tripartite Pact". The Indian independence movement's leader Mahatma Gandhi visited Italy in 1931 and he was invited for a personal visit by Mussolini, who treated him with full diplomatic courtesy.David Fisher (2017). Romain Rolland and the Politics of the Intellectual Engagement. Taylor & Francis, p.134 During his transatlantic flight from Italy to the United States in 1933, the fascist official Italo Balbo visited leaders of the Sioux tribe and he accepted the Sioux's honorary bestowing of his incorporation into the Sioux people, with the Sioux position and name "Chief Flying Eagle".Piers Brendon. The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2000. p. 145.

Italian fascism strongly rejected the common Nordicist conception of the Aryan Race that idealized "pure" Aryans as having certain physical traits that were defined as "Nordic", such as blond hair and blue eyes.Aaron Gillette. Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London; New York: Routledge, 2001. p. 188. Nordicism was divisive because Italians—and especially Southern Italians—had been subjected to racial discrimination by Nordicist proponents in countries like the United States based on the belief that non-Nordic Southern Europeans were inferior to Nordics.Gerald R. Gems. Sport and the Shaping of Italian American Identity. Syracuse University Press, 2013. pp. 57, 66. In Italy, the influence of Nordicism had a divisive effect because Northern Italians who were influenced by Nordicism considered themselves a civilized people, in contrast to Southern Italians, who they considered biologically inferior to Northern Italians.Gerald R. Gems. Sport and the Shaping of Italian American Identity. Syracuse University Press, 2013. p 57. At least some of the stereotypes of Southern Italians were created by Cesare Lombroso, a 19th-century criminologist and anthropologist.Gian Antonio Stella, , 28 aprile 2009 Duccio Canestrini, dicembre 2009, George L. Mosse, Il razzismo in Europa. Dalle origini all'olocausto, Editori Laterza, Bari 2003, pp. 92–93. Due to his controversial theories, Lombroso was expelled from the Italian Society of Anthropology and Ethnology in 1882. The Lombrosian doctrine is currently considered pseudo-scientific.

Mussolini and other Italian Fascists viewed Nordicism with antipathy because they believed that peoples of Mediterranean racial heritage had an inferiority complex which had been instilled in them by German and Anglo-Saxon Nordicists, who considered Mediterranean peoples racially degenerate and therefore inferior to Nordic peoples. However, the traditional Nordicist belief that Mediterraneans were degenerate due to the fact that they had a darker skin colour than Nordics had long been rebuked in physical anthropology as a result of the development of the depigmentation theory, a theory which claimed that lighter-skinned peoples had been depigmented from peoples who had a darker skin colour and which, since its development, has become a widely accepted view in anthropology.Alan W. Ertl. Toward an Understanding of Europe: A Political Economic Précis of Continental Integration. Boca Raton, Florida: Universal Publishers, 2008. p. 8. In his work The races of Europe (1939), the anthropologist Carleton S. Coon subscribed to the depigmentation theory, the theory which claimed that the Nordic race's light-coloured skin resulted from the depigmentation of the skin of its ancestors, who were members of the Mediterranean race.Melville Jacobs, Bernhard Joseph Stern. General anthropology. Barnes & Noble, 1963. p. 57. Mussolini refused to allow Italy to return again to this inferiority complex, initially rejecting Nordicism.