Oriana Fallaci

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. Kissinger later wrote that it was "the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press". She grew up during WWII in Italy and much of her career was focused on reporting from war zones, with the associated dangers. In 1968 Mexican soldiers shot her three times, and left her for dead. But she continued to go and report from zones of conflict. After retirement in New York, following the September 11th incidents in 2001, she wrote some articles and books critical of Islam that gained popular support but also led to accusations of Islamophobia.

Oriana Fallaci studied at University of Florence and Liceo classico statale Galileo. The recorded working language is Italian. The field of work recorded is journalist. Distinctions recorded are Gold medal for merit in school, culture and art, Ambrogino d'oro and Bancarella Literary Prize.

• Name — Oriana Fallaci • Born — 29 June 1929 • Birthplace — Florence, Italy • Died — 15 September 2006 • Place of death — Florence, Italy • Resting Place — Cimitero degli Allori, Florence • Occupation — * Journalist • author • interviewer

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. In 1944 he was arrested and tortured at the so called Villa Triste (the sad villa) in Florence. During World War II she joined the Italian anti-fascist resistance movement Giustizia e Libertà. At age 12 she became a clandestine carrier of both messages and munitions across the river Arno in Florence, given that all bridges (except Ponte vecchio) on the river had been destroyed by the Germans and a teenager was not seen as a suspect. She also assisted her father in helping people escape from the Nazis. She later received a certificate for valour from the Italian army. Her views on power were formed during those early years, and in a 1976 retrospective collection of her works, she remarked: 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. And she felt that speaking against oppression and injustice was not a choice, but an obligation: There are moments in life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape.

• Illustration — A young Oriana with her tape recorder 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 did not finish her studies. She began writing as a means of supporting herself during her studies, not expecting that it would become her lifelong endeavor. But her uncle Bruno Fallaci, himself a journalist, suggested that she should pursue a career in journalism. She later became 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.

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 following student demonstrations, Fallaci was shot three times by Mexican soldiers, twice in the back, dragged downstairs by her hair, and left for dead. She was driven to the morgue but unexpectedly regained consciousness. 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 (published in book form in 1963 as Gli antipatici) and later with world leaders (published in the 1973 book Intervista con la storia), which have led some to describe her as "during the 1970s and 80s the most famous – and feared – interviewer in the world".

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, she made him admit that the Vietnam War was a "useless war". He then 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:

• Illustration — Oriana Fallaci in 1987 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".

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 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 (initially a four-page article in Corriere della Sera, the major national newspaper in Italy). 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 ("The Apocalypse"), sold some two million copies globally, the three books together selling four million copies in Italy.

• Illustration — Cimitero degli Allori, Oriana Fallaci's grave with a stone memorial to Alexandros Panagoulis on the left. As a teenager during WWII Fallaci supported the Italian resistance, and took pride in her physical courage despite her small stature. Cristina De Stefano wrote that, in Bangladesh, Fallaci separated from the other journalists and took a small boat to Dhaka and arrived alone to witness the dictator’s troops killing prisoners and burying them in common graves. Fallaci lived with Alexandros Panagoulis in Florence from 1973 until his death in 1976. Fallaci wrote A Man, a book inspired by his life and claimed that his death was not an accident but had been arranged. Fallaci had stated that during her life she had only three friends who were women: Ingrid Bergman, Anna Magnani and Maria Callas, all of whom had initially sought her friendship. Fallaci had strong views about the mistreatment of women, and spoke out against the Taliban and the status of women in Afghanistan. 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 she would "blow it up with the help of her friends". In 2005, she read an interview with Rino Fisichella in Corriere della Sera and contacted him. Over time they grew close and he introduced her to Pope Benedict XVI. He said that she had grown to doubt her atheism, but her strong character continued to question the authority of the Church. He was with her during her last days and arranged her funeral. 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 dedicated to Panagoulis.

• Illustration — Fallaci with Giovanni Leone, the president of Italy in 1973 Antonio Socci, a Catholic journalist, admired Fallaci, and wrote "Oriana Fallaci is not only a great journalist: for me she is 'the' journalism." He stated that Fallaci's work would remain the best school of journalism for long and a "vaccine against all idiots, variously placed in the hierarchies of power". Although Fallaci was an atheist, she respected and was received by Pope Benedict XVI. Along with Msgr Fisichella, who was close to her, she went to Castel Gandolfo to visit the pope. She respected the pope for his advice that Europe should go back to its roots and resist change. She met the pope alone. She gave him a copy of one of her books and he gave her some of his writings. Sylvia Poggioli, a reporter for National Public Radio stated that she had followed Fallaci's writings for long, and considered Fallaci a pioneer for a later generation of women journalists. Poggioli asked Fallaci why all those world leaders had agreed to talk to her, and Fallaci giggled and said: "They all looked at this small little woman and thought they could manipulate me at will." Australian journalist David Leser wrote that Fallaci was internationally known and admired for her impassioned approach and her fearless style of dealing with subjects. He said that she had been a personal hero to him for much of his career, and that she often inspired other journalists to follow her style or actions. As an example he mentioned that upon entering Vietnam Fallaci was given a standard form to fill, and in response to the question "where should your body be sent if you are killed in action?" she wrote: The White House. Many other journalists then started using the same response. In 2011 the "Oriana Fallaci Award" for young journalists was established in Tuscani, in her memory.

• Illustration — Fallaci signing her book in Amsterdam, 1980 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 millions of copies. During the first year of its release her Inshallah book had 45 printings and sold 700,000 copies in Italy. The Force of Reason sold 800,000 copies in Italy. 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 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" ("We cannibals and Medea's offspring"), 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[s] 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".

• "Combative Writer Oriana Fallaci Dies" by Alexandra Rizzo, Associated Press, 15 September 2006. • "Eulogy: Oriana Fallaci and the Art of the Interview" by Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair, December 2006. • Oriana Fallaci, Daily Telegraph, 16 September 2006. • "Oriana" by Michael Ledeen

• "E a Oriana diceva: voi ci massacrate", Corriere della Sera, 2 December 1979 - interview (in Italian) with Muammar Gaddafi • Rage & Pride by Oriana Fallaci, English translation by Letizia Grasso, from the four-page essay "La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio", that appeared in Italy's leading newspaper Corriere della Sera on 29 September 2001. (Note that the official edition by Rizzoli is translated by Fallaci herself) • Rage and Pride, as translated by Chris Knipp • On Jew-Hatred in Europe, by columnist Oriana Fallaci, IMRA – 25 April 2002 (Originally published in Italian in the Panorama magazine, 17 April 2002). • Oriana Fallaci audio interview, with Stephen Banker circa 1972

• "The Life of Oriana Fallaci, Guerrilla Journalist" by Dwight Garner, The New York Times, 16 October 2017. • The "Interview that Became Henry Kissinger's 'Most Disastrous Decision': How Oriana Fallaci Became the Most Feared Political Interviewer in the World" by Cristina De Stefano. 20 October 2017. • "Oriana Fallaci: The last diva journalist" by Pieter Colpaert, womenintheworld.com, 16 October 2017. • "Golda and Oriana: A Romance", in: The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership by Yehuda Avner (2010). • The Slow Suicide of the West, by Jorge Majfud • Rage and Pride Ignites a Firestorm – On the reception of "Rage and Pride" By Michael San Filippo, guide to Italian Language at about.com. • "Prophet of Decline: An interview with Oriana Fallaci" by Tunku Varadarajan in The Wall Street Journal • "The Agitator: Oriana Fallaci directs her fury toward Islam" by Margaret Talbot in The New Yorker, 29 May 2006 • Oriana Fallaci—The Enjoyment of Hate by Judy Harris in ZNet, 17 September 2006 • Review of Santo L. Arico's Oriana Fallaci: The Woman and the Myth by Linda Steiner, H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online, February 2003. • "The Rage of Oriana Fallaci" by George Gurley, The New York Observer, 27 January 2003. • "Oriana Fallaci, an Interviewer Who Goes for the Jugular in Four Languages" by Judy Klemesrud, The New York Times, 25 January 1973.