The article analyzes Niccolò Zapponi’s interpretation of the nature, the spread and the roots of the seduction of racist and anti-Semitic myths in contemporary Europe. The author underlines how, thanks to the influence of several scholars’ works, Zapponi considered the myths of the race and the myths and prejudices against the Jews as tools able to clarify broader tendencies in contemporary age. In his opinion, they revealed the rootedness in modern culture of a general mentality pervaded by a deep sense of religious and apocalyptical myth, both needed by the Europeans in order to give a sense and an accurate order to the upsetting transformations produced by modernity. In this way, the author argues that Zapponi was able to connect his work with some of the most original historiographical tendencies oriented to analyze and understand the myths with the emergence of mass politics and to show the palingenetic and ambivalent nature of modernity.
Keywords: Niccolò Zapponi, racism, anti-Semitism, modernity, historiography, mass politics