Rei publicae hostis civis esse non potest: la legislazione razziale del 1938 fra propaganda, retorica e diritto

The conquest of Ethiopia in 1936 realized Fascism’s expansionist aims and paved the way for the first racist legislation in the Italian colonies. It was only in his speech in Trieste in September 1938, however, that Mussolini publicly and explicitly linked the racial problem to the ‘conquest of the empire’, thus evoking the idea of a race called upon to reassert its superiority in connection with the cult of ancient Rome. In presenting Judaism as its own ‘irreconcilable enemy’, fascism smuggled in the 1938 racial laws as a means of defending itself against an ‘enemy race’ and thus protecting the security of the new empire. On pseudo-scientific grounds, the regime propaganda mobilized to portray Italian Jews as enemies to be deprived of the rights due to other citizens, based on a rhetorical device with ancient roots. In fact, the idea that hostes rei publicae could not be considered citizens and that, precisely because they were enemies, they could be deprived of any legal protection dates back already to Cicero.