By: P.S.
Exactly fifteen years ago, on September 15th, 2006, Oriana Fallaci died. We miss her. We (all) lack her. Her insights. And the lucidity with which she saw where the danger lay for Western civilisation. And what is promised to us.
What we are experiencing with the refugee invasion of Europe today was her prophecy. Crystal clear forecast. She uttered it directly and unambiguously, in rather harsh words. For her, the threat of Islamic fundamentalism was never merely hypothetical, but real.
Oriana Fallaci. Journalist, writer and lady. And a fighter for freedom of speech. All with a capital letter.
She always said it the way she thought. Nothing different. After 9/11, this insidious Muslim crime against the United States and humanity, she spoke out and dedicated the rest of her life to the fight against Islamisation, especially to her beloved Europe and native Florence. In her book The Power of Reason, she wrote, among other things, that “Europe is changing day by day into an Islamic landscape, an Islamic colony” and that “thinking that there is good and bad Islam is at odds with reason”.
She devoted her early youth to the fight against totalitarianism. She joined the Italian resistance movement led by the Communists against fascism. “I was a little girl fighting Nazism and fascism,” she wrote many years later. Soon after World War II, she realised that leftists were no better than fascists: they want to control an individual’s life, to direct it to their interests, to suppress freedom of speech. So she turned her back on them. She became known to the public half a century ago when she interviewed almost all important world personalities. Among them were Henry Kissinger, Ayatollah Khomeini, Lech Walens, Willy Brandt, Indira Ghandi, Yasser Arafat, and Haile Selassie.
She annoyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, better known as Ayatollah Khomeini, an Iranian religious and political leader, during a 1979 interview when she called him a tyrant and managed to reveal herself while wearing a chador. It went like this:
Oriana Fallaci: “I still have a lot of things to ask you. About the chador, for example, that I had to wear to come to you for an interview and that Iranian women must wear. (…) I do not just mean the dress, but also what it represents, I mean the apartheid of Iranian women, that they cannot work together with women, they cannot swim in the sea or in the pool together with men. They have to do everything specially dressed in a “chador”. By the way, how can you swim in a “chador”?
Ruhulah Khomeini: “None of this concerns you, our habits do not concern you. If you do not like an Islamic dress, you do not have to wear it because it is for young girls and respected ladies.”
Oriana Fallaci: “That is very nice of you, Imam, because you told me that, I am going to take off this medieval rag right away. Right here!”
Fallaci saw the danger of Islam and Muslims very early on, but remained silent until September 11th, 2001. “I chose silence,” she wrote in the introduction to her first book, Anger and Pride (2001), which is actually an extended long commentary which she wrote for the Italian daily Corriere della Sera. It was extremely sharp and critical of Islam, and she concluded it with words: “What I wanted to say, I said it. Anger and pride dictated this to me, and a clear conscience and my age allowed me to fulfil my duty.” With this book and two others (The Power of Reason – 2004 and Apocalypse – 2005), she caused quite a stir, especially among Muslims, whom she uncovered and unmasked inside out. According to her, the division into good and bad Islam resists common sense. There is only one Islam, and that is aggressive, especially towards Europe: “Europe is no longer Europe, it is Eurabia, a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion takes place not only physically but also mentally and culturally.” About her much-loved Italy: “Europe is becoming more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam. And Italy is the outpost of this province, the fortress of this colony.”
She was also disliked by leftists who, along with Muslims, openly celebrated her death in September 2006. Also because in the last years of her life (although she was an atheist) she resorted to the Catholic faith, she was also received in a personal audience by Pope Benedict XVI. One of the first letters when she broke the silence can be read here.
She called Muslims “camel hunters” and described Islam as an aggressive religion: “The only art in which the sons of Allah have always proved themselves is the art of possession, conquest and subjugation.” A lawsuit was filed against her in Italy, and the Swiss demanded that she be extradited because the Muslim community in that Alpine country recognised hostility in her books. Fortunately, the then Italian Minister of Justice, Roberto Castelli, was reasonable enough to reject the Swiss request, saying that freedom of speech applies in Italy. “The increased presence of Muslims in Italy and in Europe is directly linked to the loss of our freedom,” she wrote.
In her books, Fallaci revealed a conspiracy in which European politicians were also involved. According to her, it all started with the Strasbourg resolution, which was adopted in July 1975 at the initiative of the Parliamentary Association for European-Arab Cooperation within the European Economic Community (now the EU). “My God, it was not a conspiracy waged in the dark by strangers or hangmen known only to police stations and Interpol. It was a conspiracy carried out in broad daylight, in front of everyone, in front of television cameras, and it was carried out by famous leaders,” says Oriana Fallaci in her book. The resolution was dictated by Muslims, whom Fallaci hated similarly to other immigrants who, as street traffickers, harassed and destroyed her Florence. It is a pleasure to read descriptions of her encounters with them and verbal duels, for which she was accused of racism, xenophobia and much more. In her memoirs, she describes a meeting with a black man who wanted to sell her stolen goods in any way and openly harassed her. She wrote that she kicked him in the crotch so hard that he collapsed on the floor like a sack, curled up into a ball, shook and moaned. From what has been written, it is clear that she was very enthusiastic about her action and that she always laughs when she reminds herself that her harasser down there was still shaking and hurting for a long time.
Although she spent her last years in New York, she wanted to die in Tuscany. Already seriously ill, she returned to Florence, where on September 15th, 2006, her heart stopped beating in a private hospital. “We will gather in a small circle, after all, we are no more. She herself did not want the public to know how her health was deteriorating,” said one of her nephews at the time of her death, and the chairman of the regional committee, Riccardo Nencini, said: “She was a very combative woman. She confided in me last February that she wanted to die in Florence, and that is what happened.”
Oriana Fallaci is (was) an exceptional woman. Her patriotism is admirable, her patriotism inspiring, her faith in freedom very fanatical, although she hated the Italians, whom she divided into red and black fascists, in her own way. Not really them, but their hypocrisy, Pharisaism. Nevertheless, for her, Italy has always been the first and only country in this world, and her Florence its holy place with many great men in history: from Dante, Machiavelli and Michelangelo through Mazzini and Garibaldi to Primo Levi and Marco Travaglio. This is the Italy I love, she wrote, though she suffered greatly when she saw the capital of Tuscany, the birthplace of the Renaissance, Michelangelo’s David and Da Vinci’s masterpieces, sink into a multiculturalism that has nothing to do with glorious history. “The moment you give up your principles and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilisation is dead,” she wrote.
Fallaci believed that Muslims would have an easy job with indecisive Europeans. “Instead of teaching young people, we have donkeys with a university education. Instead of being future leaders, we have sissies with expensive blue jeans and fake revolutionaries with ski masks. And you know what? Maybe this is another reason why our Muslim invaders have such an easy job,” Fallaci said.
The vampire leftists in alliance with Muslims attributed her hostility, stubbornness, no compassion, racism and more, that is, everything they attribute today to those who are critical of Muslim refugees who are stubbornly occupying Europe and Islamising it. And they would love to see her books burned at the stakes. Namely, Oriana Fallaci has left a lot to humanity. The question is whether we understand her thoughts enough and whether we will take them into account in a timely manner. For Fallaci in essence did not hate, but loved.
“He who loves life never knows how to adapt, to submit, to be patient,” she once wrote, but:
“He who loves life always stands with a rifle at the window to defend it.”
When she died, Oriana Fallaci was 77 years old. She was buried with the highest state honours. “Life is a death penalty,” once said one of the most influential women of the 20th and early 21st centuries.
“An Italian journalist who loved freedom and truth more than popularity is gone,” wrote Tomaž Štih, known as blogger and tweeter Tomaž Štih, at the time of her death.
First published on the Kavarna Hayek blog on September 15th, 2015