Racism in Italy
[17] A 2020 Eurispes report revealed that 15.6% of Italians contend that the Holocaust never happened, and that 23.9% of the population adhere to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories which claim that Jews control their economy.
[33] Over the course of the Early Medieval period, however, Steven Epstein states that people "from regions like the Balkans, Sardinia, and across the Alps" were brought over to the peninsula by Italian merchants, who thus "replenished the stock of slaves".
[38] Lombroso would publish his thesis in the wake of the Italian unification, thus providing an explanation for the unrest developing immediately thereafter in the recently annexed portion of the new country; the people inhabiting the formerly Bourbon Kingdom were in fact racially stereotyped, thereby fostering feelings of northern Italian supremacy over the southeners,[33] while being paradoxically integrated in the nation's broad collective imaginary;[39] as the southeners were collectively constructed for the first time as an "anti-nation" within the new country,[40] they were deemed "atavistic" alongside criminals and prostitutes.
[41] Lombroso's theories connecting physiognomy to criminal behavior explicitly blamed higher homicide rates in Calabria, Sicily, and once again the overseas Savoyard dominion of Sardinia, upon some residual influence of "Negroid" and "Mongoloid" blood amongst their populations.
[33] According to Lombroso, facial features such as black hair, slight beard, bigger lips and longer nose were signs of such foreign "contamination" and directly correlated with a natural predisposition to delinquency.
The anthropologist Alfredo Niceforo, himself a southener and more specifically a Sicilian, followed Lombroso's physiognomical approach, and postulated that certain ethnic groups were genetically predisposed to commit heinous crimes.
The people Niceforo made initially reference to were originally the Sardinians; according to Niceforo, the reason as to why criminal behaviour was so entrenched in inner Sardinia firmly lay in the racial inferiority of the native Sardinian population,[48] more specifically stating that it was due to latter's historical isolation and the resulting «quality of the race that populated those areas, a race absolutely lacking the plasticity which causes the social conscience to change and evolve».
[56] In 1906, Niceforo published a racial theory wherein blond pigmentation of hair and dark skin were both considered signs of foreign degeneration, while the "Italian race" was situated in a positive middle ground.
[43] Jews fervently supported the Risorgimento, identified themselves as Italian nationalists, proved valiant as soldiers in World War I, and, in terms of their relatively small numerical presence within the general population, they later went on to form a disproportionate part of the Fascist Party from its beginnings down to 1938.
[62] In 1932 during a conversation with Emil Ludwig, Mussolini described antisemitism as a "German vice" and stated, "There was 'no Jewish Question' in Italy and could not be one in a country with a healthy system of government.
[76] Mussolini originally held the view that a small contingent of Italian Jews had lived in Italy "since the days of the Kings of Rome" (a reference to the Bené Roma) and as a result, they should "remain undisturbed".
The Manifesto was reprinted in August in the first issue of the scientific racist magazine La Difesa della Razza ('The Defense of Race'), endorsed by Mussolini at the direction of Telesio Interlandi.
[99] A 2020 Eurispes report revealed that 15.6% of Italians contend that the Holocaust never happened, and that 23.9% of the population adhere to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories which claim that Jews control their economy.
[110] On June 18, 2018, Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini announced the government would conduct a census of Romani people in Italy for the purpose of deporting all who are not in the country legally.
[132] Following the 2013 nomination of Cécile Kyenge, a Congolese-born Italian immigrant, as Minister of Integration in the government of Enrico Letta, she became subject to several racial slurs by local and national politicians.
[140]: 5–26 [141][142][143][144][145] Among migrant populations in Italy, environmental inequality has been documented in relation to agricultural labor through exposure to pesticides, low wages, and poor working conditions.
[146]: 7 Illuzzi argues that as a result of the "state of exception", contemporary Romani communities in Italy become easily subjected to criminalization, denial of citizenship or national status, and social exclusion, notably in places such as government-implemented Nomad Camps.
[146]: 7 In Italy today, many Romani settlements (including Nomad Camps) exist within segregated contexts where both environmental concerns (such as lack of clean water access, toxic waste exposure, and proximity to highways and industrial areas) and issues of criminalization are present.
[150]: 7 In Milan, the Social Emergency Shelter (SES) housed predominantly Romani residents in via Lombroso 99 district until 2016, located in an "old industrial area, alongside a busy railway track".
[149] According to ex-Camorra member Carmine Schiavone, millions of tons of waste from factories in northern Italy have been illegally disposed of in the region north of Naples for decades, allegedly with Mafia and Camorra involvement and the complicity of government authorities and police.
[149] Campania has since shifted from being a dumping destination and is now a transit point for the export of hazardous waste to China,[148] and, according to Gen. Sergio Costa, commander of the Naples region for Italy's environmental police, the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
[147]: 74–75 [149][153][142][143] According to Los Angeles Times journalist Tracy Wilkinson, Romani boys in 2008 were hired throughout the region by the Camorra to set fires to piles of waste, creating significant quantities of toxic smoke over vast swathes of land.
[147]: 74–75 Built in 1991 and home to 85 families, it was documented in 2010 as a series of camps located "northwest of Naples, at the outer limits of the urban centre, on the external ring-road following the State Highway 162", surrounded by industrial lands.
[142] In the words of Der Spiegel journalist Walter Mayr, "500 Roma live in shacks and caravans at the foot of what is probably Europe's nastiest landfill, stuffed with, among other things, toxic sludge and dioxin.
[141] According to human rights observers, the secluded site, which is surrounded by wild vegetation on three sides and a wall, is contaminated with what appears to be asbestos and unidentified potentially explosive substances, and is littered with sharp objects that pose a danger to children.
[141] In both southern[145]: 11 and northern[154]: 17 Italy, large numbers of migrant workers from Africa and Asia produce agricultural goods within a context of severe social and environmental marginalization, lacking access to clean water, utilities, housing,[144] and wage security[145]: 26 while facing exposure to harsh working conditions and harmful pesticides.
[144] As of 2015, the Italian Association for Legal Studies on Immigration (ASGI) estimated that there were probably close to 500,000 regular and irregular foreign agricultural workers in Italy,[155][154]: 10 of whom 100,000 were believed to be at risk of severe marginalization with regards to living conditions and social mobility.
[155][154]: 15 According to a report by Amnesty International, there is "a causal link between labour exploitation of migrant workers and the measures adopted by the Italian government with the stated view of controlling and regulating migration flows".
[145]: 7 The report focused on the Latina and the Caserta areas[145]: 11 where large numbers of workers are of Indian (mostly Punjabi) and African origin respectively,[145]: 11 the latter of whom are mostly from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia.
[144]According to Nino Quaranta, founder of agricultural rights advocacy group SosRosarno, an underlying issue for low wages is the economic challenge confronting many smaller-scale farmers.
