Oriana Fallaci


Oriana Fallaci was an Italian journalist and author. A member of the Italian resistance movement during World War II, she had a long and successful journalistic career. Fallaci became famous worldwide for her coverage of war and revolution, and her "long, aggressive and revealing interviews" with many world leaders during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
Fallaci's book Interview with History contains interviews with Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Yasser Arafat, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Willy Brandt, Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Ruhollah Khomeini, Henry Kissinger, South Vietnamese president Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, and North Vietnamese general Võ Nguyên Giáp during the Vietnam War. The interview with Kissinger was published in The New Republic, with Kissinger describing himself as "the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse." Kissinger later wrote that it was "the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press".
Fallaci also interviewed Deng Xiaoping, Andreas Papandreou, Haile Selassie, Lech Wałęsa, Muammar Gaddafi, Mário Soares, George Habash, and Alfred Hitchcock, among others. After retirement, she returned to the spotlight after writing a series of controversial articles and books critical of Islam that aroused condemnation for Islamophobia as well as popular support.

Early life

Fallaci was born in Florence, Italy, on 29 June 1929. Her father Edoardo Fallaci, a cabinet maker in Florence, was a political activist struggling to put an end to the dictatorship of Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini. During World War II she joined the Italian anti-fascist resistance movement Giustizia e Libertà. She later received a certificate for valour from the Italian army. In a 1976 retrospective collection of her works, she remarked:

Career

Beginning as a journalist

After attaining her secondary school diploma, Fallaci briefly attended the University of Florence where she studied medicine and chemistry. She later transferred to literature but soon dropped out and never finished her studies. Her uncle Bruno Fallaci, himself a journalist, suggested that Fallaci pursue a career in journalism. Fallaci began her career in journalism during her teens, becoming a special correspondent for the Italian paper Il mattino dell'Italia centrale in 1946. Beginning in 1967, she worked as a war correspondent covering the Vietnam War, the Indo-Pakistani War, the Middle East, and in South America.

1960s

For many years, Fallaci was a special correspondent for the political magazine L'Europeo, and wrote for a number of leading newspapers and the magazine Epoca. In Mexico City, during the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, Fallaci was shot three times by Mexican soldiers, dragged downstairs by her hair, and left for dead. Her eyewitness account became important evidence disproving the Mexican government's denials that a massacre had taken place.
In the 1960s she began conducting interviews, first with people in the world of literature and cinema and later with world leaders, which have led some to describe her as "during the 1970s and 80s the most famous – and feared – interviewer in the world".

1970s

In the early 1970s, Fallaci had a relationship with the subject of one of her interviews, Alexandros Panagoulis, who had been a solitary figure in the Greek resistance against the military dictatorship known as the Regime of the Colonels. Panagoulis had been captured, heavily tortured and imprisoned for his unsuccessful assassination attempt on dictator and former Hellenic Army colonel Georgios Papadopoulos. Panagoulis died in 1976, under controversial circumstances, in a road accident. Fallaci maintained that Panagoulis' "accident" had been arranged by remnants of the Greek military junta despite the transition to a democracy, and her novel A Man was inspired by his life.
During her 1972 interview with Henry Kissinger, Kissinger stated that the Vietnam War was a "useless war" and compared himself to "the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse". Kissinger later claimed that it was "the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press". In 1973, she interviewed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. She later stated, "He considers women simply as graceful ornaments, incapable of thinking like a man, and then strives to give them complete equality of rights and duties". After interviewing the Bangladeshi statesman Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, she described him as "One of the most stupid men I've ever met in my life, maybe the most stupid".
During her 1979 interview with Ayatollah Khomeini, she addressed him as a "tyrant", and managed to unveil herself from the chador:

1980s

In 1980 Fallaci interviewed Deng Xiaoping. Michael Rank described this interview as the "most revealing ever of any Chinese leader by any western journalist", during which Deng spoke about Mao "extraordinarily frankly by Chinese standards" whereas most Western interviews with Chinese leaders have been "bland and dull".

Retirement

Living in New York City and in a house she owned in Tuscany, Fallaci lectured at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Harvard University and Columbia University.

After 9/11

After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, Fallaci wrote three books critical of Islamic extremists and Islam in general, and in both writing and interviews warned that Europe was "too tolerant of Muslims". The first book was The Rage and the Pride. In this book, she calls for the destruction of what is now called Islam.
She wrote that the "sons of Allah breed like rats", and in a Wall Street Journal interview in 2005, she said that Europe was no longer Europe but "Eurabia". The Rage and the Pride and The Force of Reason both became bestsellers, the former selling over one million copies in Italy and 500,000 in the rest of Europe, and are considered part of the "Eurabia genre". Her third book in the same vein, Oriana Fallaci intervista sé stessa – L'Apocalisse, sold some two million copies globally, the three books together selling four million copies in Italy.

Personal life and death

On 27 August 2005, Fallaci had a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo. Although an atheist, Fallaci reportedly had great respect for the Pope and expressed admiration for his 2004 essay titled "If Europe Hates Itself". In The Force of Reason, she described herself as a "Christian atheist". Fallaci was a vocal critic of Islam, especially after the Iranian Revolution and the September 11 attacks in 2001. When rumours of the construction of an Islamic centre in the city of Siena intensified, Fallaci told The New Yorker, "If the Muslims build this Islamic center, she will blow it up with the help of her friends".
Fallaci died on 15 September 2006, in her native Florence, from cancer. She was buried in the Cimitero Evangelico degli Allori in the southern suburb of Florence, Galluzzo, alongside her family members and a stone memorial to Alexandros Panagoulis, her late companion.

Legacy

As of 2018, streets or squares have been renamed after her in Pisa, Arezzo, and Genoa. A public garden has also been dedicated to her in Sesto San Giovanni, an industrial town close to Milan.
In July 2019, the lower chamber of the Italian Parliament approved the creation of low-denomination treasury bills that could also be used as a de facto parallel currency to the euro. According to the plan's main proponent, the League's MP Claudio Borghi, the 20-euro bill should bear a picture of Fallaci.
An Italian television series was created about her life, titled Miss Fallaci.
In 2024, a biographical novel, Oriana: A Novel of Oriana Fallaci, was published by author Anastasia Rubis based on the true story of Fallaci's career and personal life.
Thanks to her journalistic efforts, Fallaci is referenced by name as an inspiration for the journalist in Abbas Kiarostami's film, Close-Up.

Awards

Fallaci twice received the St. Vincent Prize for journalism. She also received the Bancarella Prize for Nothing, and So Be It; Viareggio Prize, for A Man; and Prix Antibes, 1993, for Inshallah. She received a D.Litt. from Columbia College .
On 30 November 2005, in New York City, Fallaci received the Annie Taylor Award for courage from the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. She was honoured for the "heroism and the values" that rendered her "a symbol of the fight against Islamic fascism and a knight of the freedom of humankind". The Annie Taylor Award is annually awarded to people who have demonstrated unusual courage in adverse conditions and great danger. David Horowitz, founder of the center, described Fallaci as "a General in the fight for freedom". On 8 December 2005, Fallaci was awarded the Ambrogino d'oro, the highest recognition of the city of Milan. She also received the Jan Karski Eagle Award.
Acting on a proposal by the Minister of Education Letizia Moratti, on 14 December 2005, the president of the Italian Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, awarded Fallaci a gold medal for her cultural contributions. The state of her health prevented her from attending the ceremony. She wrote in a speech: "This gold medal moves me because it gratifies my efforts as writer and journalist, my front line engagement to defend our culture, love for my country and for freedom. My current well-known health situation prevents me from travelling and receiving in person this gift that for me, a woman not used to medals and not too keen on trophies, has an intense ethical and moral significance."
On 12 February 2006, the president of Tuscany, Riccardo Nencini, awarded Fallaci a gold medal from the Council of Tuscany. Nencini reported that the prize was awarded as Fallaci was During the award ceremony, held in New York City on February 21, 2006, the writer talked about her attempt to create a caricature of Mohammed, following the polemic relating to similar caricatures that had appeared in French and Dutch newspapers. She declared: "I will draw Mohammed with his 9 wives, including the little baby he married when 70 years old, the 16 concubines, and a female camel wearing a Burqa. So far my pencil stopped at the image of the camel, but my next attempt will surely be better."
She received the America Award of the Italy–USA Foundation in 2010.

Controversy

Fallaci received much public attention for her controversial writings and statements on Islam and European Muslims. She claimed that Muslims were colonizing Europe through immigration and high fertility rates, in line with the Eurabia concept.
Fallaci received criticism as well as support in Italy, where her books have sold over one million copies. At the first European Social Forum, which was held in Florence in November 2002, Fallaci invited the people of Florence to cease commercial operations and stay home. Furthermore, she compared the ESF to the Nazi occupation of Florence. Protest organizers declared, "We have done it for Oriana, because she hasn't spoken in public for the last 12 years and hasn't been laughing in the last 50".
In 2002, in Switzerland, the Islamic Center and the Somal Association of Geneva, SOS Racisme of Lausanne, along with a private citizen, sued Fallaci for the allegedly racist content of The Rage and the Pride. In November 2002, a Swiss judge issued an arrest warrant for violations of articles 261 and 261 bis of the Swiss criminal code and requested that the Italian government either prosecute or extradite her. Italian Minister of Justice Roberto Castelli rejected the request on the grounds that the Constitution of Italy protects freedom of speech.
In May 2005, Adel Smith, president of the Union of Italian Muslims, launched a lawsuit against Fallaci charging that "some of the things she said in her book The Force of Reason are offensive to Islam". Smith's attorney cited 18 phrases, most notably a reference to Islam as "a pool that never purifies". Consequently, an Italian judge ordered Fallaci to stand trial in Bergamo on charges of "defaming Islam". The preliminary trial began on 12 June, and on 25 June, Judge Beatrice Siccardi decided that Fallaci should indeed stand trial beginning on 18 December. Fallaci accused the judge of having disregarded the fact that Smith had called for her murder and defamed Christianity.
In France, some Arab-Muslim and anti-defamation organisations such as MRAP and League |Ligue des Droits de l'Homme] launched lawsuits against Oriana Fallaci, charging that The Rage and the Pride and The Force of Reason were "offensive to Islam" and "racist". Her lawyer, Gilles William Goldnadel, president of the France-Israel Organization, was also Alexandre del Valle's lawyer during similar lawsuits against del Valle.
On 3 June 2005, Fallaci published on the front page of the Corriere della Sera a highly controversial article titled "Noi Cannibali e i figli di Medea", urging women not to vote for a public referendum about artificial insemination that was held on 12 and 13 June 2006.
In her 2004 book Oriana Fallaci intervista sé stessa – L'Apocalisse, Fallaci expressed her opposition to same-sex marriage, arguing that it "subvert the biological concept of family" and calling it "a fashionable whim, a form of exhibitionism", and also against parenting by same-sex couples, declaring it a "distorted view of life". She also asserted the existence of a "gay lobby", through which "the homosexuals themselves are discriminating against others".
In the June 2006 issue of Reason, American libertarian writer Cathy Young wrote: "Oriana Fallaci's 2002 book The Rage and the Pride makes hardly any distinction between radical Islamic terrorists and Somali street vendors who supposedly urinate on the corners of Italy's great cities." Christopher Hitchens, writing in The Atlantic, called the book "a sort of primer in how not to write about Islam", describing it as "replete with an obsessive interest in excrement, disease, sexual mania, and insect-like reproduction, insofar as these apply to Muslims in general and to Muslim immigrants in Europe in particular".

Obituaries