Cassandra Plays with Fire Again
Italy's former star journalist, Oriana Fallaci, lashed out at Islam in the wake of 11 September 2001. The bomb attacks in Madrid have triggered a similar tirade of abuse from the same quarter. While Fallaci's most recent book is selling well, it has not prompted a debate in Italy.
In September 2001, it took Italian author Oriana Fallaci only two weeks to write The Rage and Pride; an instant book for the emotions of the post 9/11 occidental masses and a vicious call for a holy war against Islam. Three years on, the 75-year-old former star journalist is once again riding on the crest of a wave of fear at breathtaking speed so soon after the Madrid bomb attacks.
April saw the publication of her latest diatribe: La forza della ragione (English: The Force of Reason), a vulgar, delirious tirade about "the sons of Allah" in Europe, who are "multiplying like rats".
At the heart of this unspeakable book of hate is the theory of a political conspiracy that has "sold Europe to the sultan like a whore". There is only one interesting thing about this book: it is a weather vane for the political climate in Italy.
No debate
Oriana Fallaci's latest crusade is being disseminated by Berlusconi's weekly magazine Panorama and by Corriere della Sera, the one-time independent conservative liberal daily newspaper that has recently completed a distinct political U-turn. An entire two-and-a-half pages of the broadsheet were dedicated to the preprinting of Fallaci's invective.
Every day since then, Corriere has featured a half-page advertisement for the book from its own publishing company, Rizzoli. All of this publicity is obviously financially worthwhile: according to Rizzoli, three editions of 50,000 copies apiece were sold in only a few days.
But while Fallaci's invective on the 11 September attacks unleashed weeks of debate (and a legal epilogue in France and Switzerland for racist remarks), a strange silence now hangs over the opinion columns of Italy's newspapers. No reputable newspaper worth its salt has discussed the book. In fact, irate Catholics and Muslims have berated each other only once on a television talk show. There is still no sign of even the slightest scandal; not one single lawsuit at a provincial court.
Oriana Fallaci presents herself in the guise of Cassandra: a clairvoyant speaking out alone "against the wind" while "Troy burns"; while Europe has already degenerated into an Arab province called "Eurabia"; while "Islamic arrogance" spreads around the world. In reality, however, Fallaci is playing with fire with the wind of European feeling at her back.
Shrouded in populist pathos, she passes off truisms as her major conclusions: Islamic fundamentalism is disconcerting Europe; Islamic women are at a disadvantage; the system of Islamic justice in many Islamic countries is incredible; the West's political correctness is utterly naïve.
Other renowned and justifiably concerned intellectuals are now also writing in a similar vein, albeit with more sophistication and without offering a proper solution. In Fallaci's case, however, the solution is tangible and the message no more than thinly disguised: Use the military might of the marines against the rubber dinghies of illegal immigrants! Rid our Europe of its twenty million Muslims! A grisly appeal to be found between the lines of a book sixty years after the last major European genocide.
(Almost) no-one is spared a thrashing
It is not easy to summarise Fallaci's contradictory and primitive theories. On the one hand, she claims that the "triple alliance" of the Catholic Church, the political left, and the political right are to blame for the sell-out of Europe to Islam; on the other, she claims that there hasn't been a political right wing in Italy for the past eighty years (Mussolini, after all, was a closet communist). The "b***** intellectuals" are also flatly to blame, as are the "Islam-friendly filth of the UN" and Switzerland's complicity with Bin Laden (a theory Fallaci does not bother to explain).
Almost no-one is spared a verbal thrashing by this fire-spewing author: the pope, Tony Blair, the cowardly French, the opportunistic Germans, the left-wing Italian opposition, the right-wing Alleanza Nazionale's lax policy towards foreigners, and the bishop of Caserta (the pacifist "anti-globalisation street urchin" who preached against a political exploitation of the war in Iraq).
But it is Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, who is known to want to return to Italian politics as Berlusconi's opponent, who bears the brunt of Fallaci's anger. Because Prodi is calling for foreigners in Europe to be given the vote, Fallaci is particularly abusive towards him. One would not have expected verbal derailments such as hers to be published by a discerning publishing company like Rizzoli and a distinguished newspaper like Corriere della Sera.
The salvation of the entire western world is obviously only one of the aims of this book, which is set to delight the masses over the coming months (1 million copies of the book are expected to be printed). It is also a sign that the Italian election campaign is already underway. Upon closer examination it becomes apparent that only two Italian parties – two lonely pillars of righteousness and truth – are spared Fallaci's tirade against countless rogues: Lega Nord and Forza Italia. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that these are the only two to praise the aggressive author.
The Lega Nord newspaper La Padania sings the praises of this verbal warrior's "force of reason" alongside its usual xenophobic bawlings, as does Libero, the daily newspaper that does Berlusconi's dirty work and rattles its sabres not only at Romano Prodi, but also at its own, right-wing coalition partner, Gianfranco Fini, who – whether for tactical or reasonable motives – also calls for foreigners to be given the vote. In this respect, Oriana Fallaci's vehement diatribe is a first confused road map through the cold civil war of ideas that Italy will face in the near future.
Franz Haas
Originally published in Neue Zürcher Zeitung on 16 April 2004
Translation from German: Aingeal Flanagan