As was recently
reported by Breitbart London, Albania has asked for Italian military support to deal with the continuing flow of illegal aliens from North Africa and the Middle East into southern Europe. The Italian Interior Minister is set to sign an agreement next week to send Italian troops to Albania to help that country secure their border and, Rome hopes, to prevent the infiltration of Islamic terrorists into Europe. Obviously, one cannot help but take notice of this considering the history involved with Italian military personnel being deployed, once again, to Albania. It shows how reality often conflicts with idealistic talk. In the past, there was much bluster and denunciations about the notion that Albania was a "protectorate" of the Kingdom of Italy (and that long before the Italian occupation of Albania during the Fascist Era). However, if Albania is unable to enforce its own borders and requires, as is now the case, Italian forces to come in to "protect" Albania from these waves of illegal immigrants passing through the country, then surely Albania is declaring itself to be, de facto, an Italian "protectorate"? One cannot, after all, be "independent" and at the same time "depend" on another country for protection or secure borders. And, if Italy is going to extend this protection to Albania, to take responsibility for the security of Albanian borders, surely it is not unreasonable to expect that Italy should be given something in compensation? People of any era can denounce the idea of "imperialism" all they please but the fact is that it continues to occur and reoccur throughout history because reality intrudes on idealism and the facts of the situation result in the same sort of system coming back into being time and time again. We should simply be honest and not in denial about the facts of reality.
Hello MadMonarchist, I've been following you for a few years now and really enjoy your work. Anyway what is your opinion on some European Nationalists who say that Italians, Sicilians specifically, are not white and should be viewed as less than Nordic Europeans? I've encountered it on the web more than once and it's irritating.
ReplyDeleteIf someone believes that there's not much you can say as obvious facts don't seem to have any impact on them. Of course they are White people. They were forced to mix somewhat with other races over the centuries but then so have the people in northern Europe (one reason why blonde hair will soon be found only in bottles). As for viewing them as "less than Nordic Europeans" -that is just stupid. Sicily was a civilized society when the Nordic Europeans were still wearing animal skins and banging rocks together to make fire.
DeleteEvery people has high points and low points based on their own actions or inactions.
All European countries (yes, all, including England, Germany and the Scandinavian countries) have very low frequencies of Sub-Saharan African DNA ranging from .1-3%. This is most likely due to pre-historic migrations. In various studies, around 2% Sub-Saharan DNA markers were found in Italy, which is a very low frequency and consistent with the European average.
DeleteThere is a common misconception that Italians, especially Sicilians, must have a high frequency of black African blood due to the Moorish occupation of Sicily. However, an even greater misconception is the erroneous belief that the Moors were "black", when in fact they were mostly Caucasian Berbers (the most famous Berber today is soccer player Zinedine Zidane, who no one would ever confuse with a black African). The Moors were a small minority, i.e. a small political elite, and the Moorish settlers were physically segregated from Sicilian Christians. By the 13th century, all the Moors (which included both actual Moors and Sicilian apostates to Islam) were expelled from Sicily by the Christians, and over 300,000 Italians from the mainland settled in Italy (most of them from Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria, Reggio-Emilia, Campania and Calabria).
And in any case, the Moors - whether Caucasoid or Negroid - did not leave any significant genetic traces. In a sample of 465 Sicilians from all over the island, only 3 sub-Saharan L sequences were found, which is equal to 0.65%. Note that Richards et al. in 1998 found white Britons to have 1% black mtDNA. To date, no sub-Saharan Y-chromosomes have been discovered in Sicily. (See: Romano et al., Ann Hum Genet, 2003)
Two subclades of North African Y-chromosome haplogroup E (labeled E-M81 and E-M78β) have been given an estimated age of ~5000 years, making them useful in detecting historical admixture from Berbers. These markers exist at combined frequencies of 1.5% in Northern Italians, 2.2% in Central Italians, 0% in Southern Italians, 1.4% in Sardinians and 1.4% in Sicilians, suggesting that gene flow from Carthaginian and Moorish colonists was minimal. (See: Cruciani et al., Am J Hum Genet, 2004)
Note that the above findings does not mean that all Sicilians have 1.4% of Berber admixture. It only means that the marker was found in 1.4% of the tested people (which means, in a group of 100, less than 2 people have a Berber marker). Again this is all on par with the European average found in northern countries, who also have miniscule trace amounts of foreign markers.
Genetics and history disproves the "Sicilians are Black-African-Arab-Moors" myth.
It is my genuine question as to what your opinion on the exiled Ethiopian monarchy is, since I've been unable to find an article about it in your blogs. Especially interesting, since there is a religion based around in it in the form of Rastafarianism (which, contrary to popular belief, is a very right-wing and romanticist group which just happens to advocate for marijuana use.) I figured this would be the best place to ask, as Italy used to rule Ethiopia as a colony.
ReplyDeleteYou must not be looking very hard. On the main blog I have written numerous articles about Ethiopia, one fairly recently, several bios of emperors and empresses, the battle of Adwa etc.
DeleteI am curious as to your opinion on the Ethiopian monarchy? I've been unable to find reference to it on your blogs, which is a shame seeing as how it was one of the only monarchies in Africa to survive the invasions of Europe until the 1900's. As well as the fact it is also one of the only Orthodox monarchies in Africa.
ReplyDelete