from the Germanic realm. Giovanni Gentile, for example, despised the introduction of biological racism into Italian Fascism, and the same can be said of the majority of the early theoreticians of intellectual Fascism. Yet the concern for a corporate national identity, as opposed to what Gentile called the "solipsist ego" enshrined by demo-liberal politics, was always part of the Italian Fascist worldview. In any case, it was not unusual for Fascist intellectuals to oppose themselves to the more excessive and irrational components of Ariosophy, before the outbreak of World War II. Criticism and unpopularity For the most part, the Racial Laws were met with disapproval from not just ordinary Italian citizens but also members of the National Fascist Party themselves. On one occasion, an Italian Fascist scholar questioned Mussolini over the treatment his Jewish friends were receiving after the promulgation of the Racial Laws, which prompted Mussolini to say: "I agree with you entirely. I don't believe a bit in the stupid anti-Semitic theory. I am carrying out my policy entirely for political reasons." William Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich suggests that Mussolini enacted the Racial Laws in order to appease his German allies, rather than to satisfy any genuine anti-Semitic sentiment among the Italian people. Indeed, prior to 1938 and the Pact of Steel alliance, Mussolini and many notable Italian Fascists had been highly critical of Nordicism, biological racism, and anti-Semitism, especially the virulent and violent anti-Semitism and biological racism that could be found in the ideology of Nazi Germany. Many early supporters of Italian fascism, including Mussolini's mistress, the writer and socialite Margherita Sarfatti, were in fact middle-class or upper middle-class Italian Jews. Nordicism and biological racism were often considered incompatible with the early ideology of Italian fascism; Nordicism inherently subordinated the Italians themselves and other Mediterranean peoples beneath the Germans and Northwestern Europeans in its proposed racial hierarchy, and early Italian Fascists, including Mussolini, viewed race as a cultural and political invention rather than a biological reality. In 1929, Mussolini noted that Italian Jews had been a demographically small yet culturally integral part of Italian society since Ancient Rome. His views on Italian Jews were consistent with his early Mediterraneanist perspective, which suggested that all Mediterranean cultures, including the Jewish culture, shared a common bond. He further argued that Italian Jews had truly become "Italians" or natives to Italy after living for