Whatever the "level" of Italian fascist racism, a greater degree of racism doesn't make some entity less fascist. So, the fact that the U.S. Jim Crow-KKK regime was arch-racist, that its fascism was especially racist focussed, doesn't make an argument that it was _not_ fascistic. Or the fact that at the same time there was a system of racist, genocidal reservations for indigenous Americans doesn't make that system non-fascistic.
So, with the U.S. war on Iraq or the U.S. prison system: the fact that they are racist doesn't detract from considering them fascistic.
The Italian Fascists were very chauvinist, very jingoist and nationalistic. They went back to Rome for the symbols and name as a extreme nationalism. Racism is an aggravated form of extreme nationalism.
All saying that fascism need not be racist does is _expand_ the applicability of the term "fascist". Requiring racism as part of the definition narrows the use of the term.
Charles
^^^^^^
Chris Doss The Italians enacted anti-Jewish legislation in 1938, in order to please Hitler. For the almost 2-year history of fascism prior, there were no such laws. There were Jews in the Fascist Party.
They did look down on Ethiopians and other Africans, but so did the Brits at the same time. (I'd say race was actually more central to the ideology of the British Empire than that of Fascist Italy.) They also looked back at a mythologized national heritage, but ethnicity was not the main thing. In the Doctine of Fascism (the text of which I posted a while ago) by Il Duce, race just does not appear.
Italy actually had one of the best records in Europe during the Holocaust, with 80% of Italian Jews surviving. By the way, according to Nazi ideology, aren't Italians something near to Untermenschen?