Talk:Mediterranean race

Surplus

Perhaps Mussolini's first negative encounter with the realities of "scientific" Nordicism occurred in 1903, while a vagabond in Berne. Years later Emil Ludwig questioned Mussolini about this episode:

"I have been told that at the age of twenty you were arrested by the police in Zurich and subjected to anthropometrical examination."

"In Berne."

"Is it true that you were so angry thay you exclaimed in fury: "The day of vengeance will come!'"

"'Yes, it is true,' he replied, 'this contumelious treatment struck sledge-hammer blows which were more useful to me than my adversaries supposed!'"

Even as early as 962, Bishop Liutprand of Cremona wrote: "We Lombards, Saxons, Franks, Lotharingians, Bavarians, Swabians, and Burgundians have such utter contempt for the Romans that when we try to express our indignation we can find no term with which to insult our enemies more damaging than that of Romans. This single word means for us all that is ignoble, cowardly, sordid, obscene."
- Aaron Gillette, Racial Theories in Fascist Italy p 10-11