Fascist Italy was not officially racist, unlike its World War II Axis partner Nazi Germany. Italy's Fascist Party leader, Benito Mussolini, expressed different views on the importance of race in the course of his career: at times he spoke of alarm about the possible extinction of “white people”, while at other times he denied the theory of race. By 1938 Mussolini supported racism, as evidenced by his endorsement of the "Manifesto of Race", the seventh point of which states that "it is time that Italians proclaim themselves to be openly racist", with racial persecution intensifying and becoming an increasingly important hallmark of Fascist ideology.