Friday 9 March 2012

Catholics and Racialism

(Published in La Rassegna nazionale, January 1939)

By Giulio de' Rossi dell'Arno

The Duce, regarding Italian racism, pointed out clearly and definitively:
"You know and everyone knows that also on the question of race we will shoot straight. To say that Fascism has imitated anyone or anything is simply absurd."
But international anti-Fascism — that is, a world full of people of every physical colour, politics and morality — today marches against triumphant Fascism, which regenerates the civilization of Rome.

The group which has chosen to fight against us has done so "naturally" due to a misunderstanding.

In fact, it is only by such a misunderstanding that individuals whose aims are antithetical to each other, such as between Christians and Bolsheviks, could possibly fight together under the same banner.

The misunderstanding which has been commonly embraced by the heterogeneous jumble of Liberals, Democrats, Masons, Catholics and Communist parties is this: that Italian racism is identical to German racism.

Every clear and honest spirit sees that the opposite is true. Italian racism and German racism are absolutely different from each other, biologically and historically, being expressed by two different Fatherlands.

If, as it is argued, there is nothing different between German and Italian racism, then the principles of racial theory would appear far-fetched.

So then why quibble against Italian racism, which would come to demonstrate the baselessness of that doctrine, to the greater glory of Jewish-Bolshevik cosmopolitanism?

Now it is true that there exists a German racial reality and an Italian racial reality, identical in their particulars, but in many respects very different due to the characteristics of the two peoples. Nor does the common origin of the Aryan stock — the builder of our civilization and therefore of the unifying energy of Europe — which is eagerly seized upon by the opponents of racism — by any means invalidate this truth, as the anti-Fascists wrongly and in bad faith claim.

In fact, the Aryans who settled in the North found a people, an historic environment and a physical climatic condition which was absolutely different from those Aryans who turned to the South, and found in the sunny Italic peninsula an already flourishing industry of peoples.

The two families became differentiated, therefore, under the influence of the environment, so that we have the Aryan-Roman race here, and the Aryan-Germanic to the north.

Two races which location and history have made distinct from one another, but in the course of the centuries always found themselves fighting for the defense of the common European civilization.

If one denies that from a single strain there could arise assorted races which historical events and diverse natural environments differentiate, causing a different development or improvement of the original somatic and intellectual characteristics, then it is not clear how those Catholics who oppose racism can possibly rush to the defense of the Revealed Truth of the common origin of the human race in Adam.

This is a Revealed Truth which Italian racism does not offend and does not deny.

From a single stock created by God, in fact, by Providential and inscrutable design, derived the people who then became differentiated to such an extent, that the same Catholic missionaries spoke of the danger of miscegenation as an ignitor to the decadence of mankind.

Therefore, while deriving from the same Aryan stock, there is the German race on the one side and the Italian race on the other; thus there are two substantially different forms of racism, which the different characteristics of the two races intend to defend, develop and refine.

But the assault against "Italian racism" is intended above all to strike against the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo alliance; a formidable bulwark against Bolshevism and Jewish cosmopolitanism.

In fact, the democratic foreigners are scrambling to prove that our friendship with the Germans is irrational and incite us to hate them. Just what kind of principles of brotherhood these people are engaged in, many of whom claim to be Christians, we do not know; we only know that they speak for anti-Fascist democratic fanaticism. That is all we need to know.

But to say that racism is synonymous with paganism is a patent falsehood, which must be denied. On the contrary, "Italian racism" constitutes a barrier against atheism and pantheism. Italian racial doctrine, in fact, is inspired by the necessity of the integral defense of the physical, spiritual, moral and traditional values of our race, the creator and bearer of civilization. Since our national tradition is Roman and Catholic, it follows that racism safeguards the imperial and Christian romanity of the Italian people.

Although many have found themselves mentally and culturally unprepared to comprehend the current reasons for racism, this does not detract from its essential value as a defense of Roman and Catholic human civilization, which today is renewed in the Fascist synthesis.

In a world that was rushing toward Jewish, Masonic and Bolshevik materialist cosmopolitanism, that is to say, the antithesis of the spirit of Christianity, Fascism has elevated her defense of racism and the spirit of the Italian Fatherland.

It is obvious that Fascism could not pretend to save the whole anti-Roman world with the wave of a magic wand; it felt, however, the human and Christian duty to at least save the Italian people from the threat of chaos.

The Fascist Fatherland is therefore locked in her racist fortress, raising the drawbridge to all the errors of cosmopolitanism, so as not to destroy the material and spiritual energies of our Italianity, which is a perennial source of civil progress in the world.

There is no other way we can save ourselves from the infection of materialism which physically and spiritually kills the people.

The perfidious Bolshevik deception did not become victorious with half-measures. We must not leave doors ajar, through which the enemy can stealthily enter, after having already thrown out all the enemies of the Roman and imperial soul of our race, and first of all the Jews, cosmopolitans par excellence. Italian racism — integrally regenerating the physical and spiritual values of the Roman race — strives to bring her back to the pinnacle of her civil primacy.

There does not exist, therefore, and can not exist, in the doctrine and in the practices of Fascism anything that is irreconcilable with the Christian soul of the Italian people. When the acts of Fascism are examined and evaluated in light of this truth, which the historical event of the Conciliation [with the Vatican] confirmed for all honest men, it becomes clear that nothing can disturb in the conscience and in the heart of the Italian people the harmony between religious sentiment and Fascism.