Mussolini the fascist was NOT an anti-semite.
You can call him a bully etc., but he was not an anti-semite. Only i 1938 when Mussolini became dependent on Nazi Germany did that political opportunist try to implement racial laws - Leggi Razziali — and these were opposed by leading members of the National Fascist Party (PNF), such as Dino Grandi and Italo Balbo. Jews were a small minority in Italy and had integrated deeply into Italian society and culture over the course of several centuries.
There had not been any race laws promulgated in the Kingdom of Italy prior to 1938. The Racial Laws were introduced at the same time as Fascist Italy began to ally itself with Nazi Germany, and mere months before Fascist Italy would form the Pact of Steel, which signed the military alliance between the two countries. William Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich suggests that Mussolini enacted the Racial Laws in order to appease his German allies, rather than to satisfy any genuine antisemitic sentiment among the Italian people.
Many early supporters of Italian fascism, including Mussolini’s mistress, the writer and socialite Margherita Sarfatti, were in fact middle-class or upper middle-class Italian Jews. Nordicism and biological racism were often considered incompatible with the early ideology of Italian fascism; Nordicism inherently subordinated the Italians themselves and other Mediterranean peoples beneath the Germans and Northwestern Europeans in its proposed racial hierarchy.
In an interview conducted in 1932 at the Palazzo di Venezia in Rome, Mussolini 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”
Interesting
[Mussolini the fascist was NOT an anti-semite.]
Now NBC News (for whatever that is worth) says just the opposite:
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna33973018
Lover’s diary: Mussolini wanted to destroy Jews
Benito Mussolini was a fierce anti-Semite, who proudly said that his hatred for Jews preceded Adolf Hitler’s and vowed to “destroy them all,” according to previously unpublished diaries.
Historians said the diaries appeared to be convincing and reinforced the image that Mussolini was strongly anti-Semitic. The Italian leader and his mistress were shot by partisans on April 28, 1945, and their bodies were displayed to a jeering crowd hanging upside-down from a gas station in a Milan square. AP
(excerpt)
Benito Mussolini was a fierce anti-Semite, who proudly said that his hatred for Jews preceded Adolf Hitler’s and vowed to “destroy them all,” according to previously unpublished diaries by the Fascist dictator’s longtime mistress.
According to the diaries, Mussolini also talked about the warm reception he received from Hitler at the 1938 Munich conference — he called the German leader a “softy” — and attacked Pope Pius XI for his criticism of Nazism and Fascism.
On a more intimate note, Mussolini was explicit about his sexual appetites for his mistress and said he regretted having affairs with several other women.
The dairies kept by Claretta Petacci, Mussolini’s mistress, between 1932 and 1938 are the subject of a book coming out this week entitled “Secret Mussolini.” Excerpts were published Monday by Italy’s leading daily Corriere della Sera and confirmed by publisher Rizzoli.
Historians said the diaries appeared to be convincing and reinforced the image that Mussolini was strongly anti-Semitic, even though early on there was some Jewish support for his Fascist movement. But they cautioned that these are the diaries of the dictator’s lover — not Mussolini himself — and therefore must be taken with an extra grain of salt.
Corriere said the diaries shed new light on Mussolini, who had been seen as more obsequious toward the pope and “dubious” over Italy’s racial laws, which led to widespread persecution of Italian Jews.
In 1943, German troops occupied northern and central Italy, and thousands of Jews were deported. According to some researchers, there were 32,000 Jews in 1943 in Italy, of whom over 8,000 were deported to Nazi concentration camps.
“These disgusting Jews, I must destroy them all,” Mussolini was quoted as saying by his lover in October 1938. At another point he calls them “enemies” and “reptiles,” according to the excerpts.