THE RACIALIZATION OF PUBLIC DISCOURSE Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Italian society

The objective of this research is to understand the nature and diffusion of antisemitism and Islamophobia in Italy. It is based on 1528 interviews among a representative sample of the Italian population stratified according to age, gender, and residence. The questionnaire used was built by a set of different scales: antisemitic, Islamophobic, and three others scales to take into account authoritarian, ethnocentric, and anomic attitudes. To test assumptions regarding the impact of these predictors of antisemitic and Islamophobic prejudice, it was decided to adopt the statistical technique of path analysis. Outcomes of our research draw attention on the distribution of antisemitism and Islamophobia among Italian people, their nature as a combination of old and new prejudices, and their linking with broader sets of attitudes such as anomie, ethnocentrism, and authoritarianism.