Italian #58: Oriana Fallaci

Oriana was primarily a journalist who was famous for getting some really spectacular interviews, experiencing some History firsthand and writing numerous books which allows me to give her the final author slot for this month. Her life was also a series of contradictions at the end; happens to us all when we age. I personally hope I don’t drift so rightward as John Cleese has (Pro-Brexit? Really, then why is he in LA?) and I’m confident some relatives I admired did as well. The latter concern came through the good ol’ September 11th attacks as you will read on.

Mrs. Fallaci was born in 1929, during the early years of Mussolini’s disastrous, oppressive and murderous reign. She was automatically a member of the opposition since her father was already a political activist fighting the Fascists. Oriana joined the resistance when WWII came to Italy and a couple decades later, the Italian army finally recognized her participation with a certificate of valor. Upon receiving it, she was quoted as saying (translated obviously):

Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon … I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born.

After the war, Oriana attended the University of Florence to study Science, switched to Literature then dropped out. Through her uncle Bruno’s encouragement, she became a journalist. By the late Sixties, she graduated to being a war correspondent covering the Vietnam War, India and Pakistan’s little wars and the turbulence in the Middle East.

I think these experiences braced her for the horrors to come because Oriana got assigned to write about the unrest in Mexico while the country was hosting the 1968 Olympics. Unfortunately, she was a little too close to what would be known as the Tlatelolco Massacre; this is when the Mexican Army fired on peaceful protestors, killing hundreds, ten days before Opening Ceremony. We all know this story very well in America via our over-militarized police forces: the protestors provoked the soldiers (bullshit) so they had to use force and/or denied anyone was killed (also bullshit). She was amongst the protestors, getting the scoop, and got hit by three military bullets. Then the soldiers dragged her by her hair to throw her into the pile of corpses and left her for dead. Oriana survived, gave pretty damning testimony, foiling the Mexican government and its CIA-backed sponsors trying to just sweep the whole thing under the rug.

Most sane people would’ve probably quit and try to live out a quiet life afflicted with horrendous PTSD. She chose to keep going yet moved her focus to interviewing. This wasn’t exactly new. Before the Seventies, her coverage was primarily talking to literary and cinematic figures. Now Oriana was going after the big fish…political figures on the world stage. This led to her gaining a reputation of being formidable and instilling fear in a few famous people. I’m impressed by her courage to tell Ayatollah Khomeni where he could stick the chador his inhuman, sexist regime imposed on Iranian women as she removed it in front of him calling it “…stupid medieval rag.” The old bastard thought he could shame her by saying it’s for “respectable ladies.”

Oriana did make at least one major journalistic mistake. She got romantically involved with a former interviewee, Alexandros Panagoulis. Panagoulis belonged to the resistance fighting the Greek dictatorship called the Regime of the Colonels which came to power via a coup in 1967. Although “democracy” was restored in 1974, he was murdered by right-wing thugs in 1976 through a “car accident.” Oriana’s book A Man was inspired by Panagoulis’ life.

She retired by the late Eighties and went on to lecture at the heavy hitters for Trust-Fund-Baby Reporters (their alum Nate Silver, Galen Druke and Eric Alterman if you need an idea): Yale, Harvard, Columbia and the University of Chicago. All while Shuttling between her home in NYC and Florence.

Sadly, the terrorist attacks on NYC and DC that fateful day brought out some shitty things in Oriana, namely three books criticizing Islamic extremists (nobody’s a fan) and Islam overall. She mainly compared the uglier movements’ behaviors to what she endured under Mussolini. Given all the documented horrors under the Iranian Republic, ISIS-ISIL-Daesh and the Taliban, those are worthy and valid concerns. However, it wasn’t fair nor right to paint the other billion-some followers with the same brush. The average Muslim isn’t terribly different than any other adherent, Agnostic or Atheist after you remove the superficial things…all are trying to just get through the daily grind known as life. Blowing up buildings, killing non-believers and arguing the minutiae of scriptures aren’t part of the agenda. This tainted her legacy, got her accolades from the political parties she wouldn’t want to be associated with and if there’s a branch of thin-skinned cancelers in Italy, I’m confident they put her on the chopping block.

Oriana died in 2006 from cancer. I’ll take a wild guess and say from smoking so we can no longer ask what was in her heart or mind then or now or would she dial back those ugly generalizations 15 years later. I will say this in her defense. She survived an actual Fascist regime which brought ruin upon her home country and then witnessed more slaughter in the name of public order (Mexico), defeating Communism (Greece, Vietnam) or Divine Sky Cake (take your pick). All three are part of the blueprint to establishing Fascist dictatorships and it put her danger sense at an oversensitive level.

This person did more to make the world a better, more transparent place to compensate for her latter years. Ergo, Oriana Fallaci deserves praise, respect and her rewards while we remember how all our heroes have feet of clay.

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