The pro-natalist policy
In 1926, Mussolini instituted the pronatalist policy. Confined to the sole role of having children, women now have the duty to fill the cradles in order to ensure the descendants who will “maintain” the planned empire. These children are future fascists, because they will follow an education dictated by this new ideology. Hitler, who admired Mussolini, trained young Germans in Nazism through the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth).
Italy is introducing new rules, which encourage families to have children. Take for example the taxes imposed on unmarried men over the age of twenty-five. And once they are married, they are offered bonuses for each child they have. Of course, abortion is prohibited and very severely punishable. It is these new laws that materialize the hope of forming an Empire on the model of ancient Rome.
Anti-Semitic policy
Before the roles were reversed and Mussolini imitated Hitler, Italian fascism was not anti-Semitic and did not believe in a racial difference. Italian Jews are well integrated into society, and many adhere to the party, as they too are deeply nationalistic. Italy even welcomed fugitives from Nazism in the early 1930s.
Then began the anti-Semitic persecutions:Jews were dismissed from important positions, public functions, companies. Children are no longer accepted in school, at least not with other Italian and fascist children, as Hitler does in Germany. However, it is not from there that the orders come, but from the one called the Duce. It is from this moment that some feel Jewish, those who are not practicing because in 1861, the State had imposed a secular conception of the nation. The Jews settled in Italy after 1918 were expelled, and from November 1938, they were no longer part of the National Fascist Party. Only war disabled and adherents from before the March on Rome in 1922 are spared certain restrictions.
Indoctrination goes through teaching, with successful caricatures. Anti-Jewish prejudices already existed after the war, but they took a violent form in the mid-1930s. Mussolini began planning concentration camps, both for Jews and those resisting the regime. From 1936, the denunciation of Zionism is the main vector of attacks against the Jews
Racial politics
From 1936, Mussolini affirms loud and clear that there are races between men, and that the white is superior to the others. When Italy lacked white women, it went to look for wives in its colonies, especially in Ethiopia. But now that it is a question of avoiding any "contamination" which would harm the perfect Italian, that is to say 100% Italian nationality and adherent to fascism, we condemn the mix.
The press strives to make the Ethiopians understand that they are part of the inferior race, and that they should no longer "sully" the Italians. In 1936, mixed marriages were banned, and from 1940, mixed-race descendants were stripped of Italian nationality.