Legacy MattersIn her time, she was the most famous journalist in the world, interviewing Henry Kissinger, Willy Brandt, the Ayatollah Khomeni and Yasser Arafat.
Francine du Plessix Gray wrote Fallaci combines "the psychological insight of a great novelist and the irreverence of a bratty quiz kid."
She wrote about herself in the preface to Interview with History
I do not feel myself to be, nor will I ever succeed in feeling like, a cold recorder of what I see and hear, On every professional experience I leave shreds of my heart and soul; and I participate in what I see or hear as though the matter concerned me personally and were one on which I ought to take a stand (in fact I always take one, based on a specific moral choice).
A former Resistance Fighter and war correspondent, she lived for years in New York City but, approaching death, she returned to her beloved Italy where she died in Florence of breast cancer at age 76.
Report from the International Herald Tribune
she broke a decade-long, self-imposed silence with a long, brash essay published in Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading newspaper, shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The essay was turned into a book, "The Rage and The Pride," which sold over 1 million copies in Italy and found a large audience elsewhere in Europe
In her next book, The Force of Reason, she wrote that Europe is "on the verge of becoming a dominion of Islam, and that the people of the West have surrendered themselves fecklessly to the "sons of Allah." For that book, she was indicted and faced jail in Italy for the "vilification" of "any religion admitted by the state," in this case Islam.
From an interview in Opinion Journal by Tunku Varadarahan.
"When I was given the news," Ms. Fallaci says of her recent indictment, "I laughed. Bitterly, of course, but I laughed. No amusement, no surprise, because the trial is nothing else but a demonstration that everything I've written is true." An activist judge in Bergamo, in northern Italy, took it upon himself to admit a complaint against Ms. Fallaci that even the local prosecutors would not touch.
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Ms. Fallaci speaks in a passionate growl: "Europe is no longer Europe, it is 'Eurabia,' a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense. Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty." Such words--"invaders," "invasion," "colony," "Eurabia"--are deeply, immensely, Politically Incorrect; and one is tempted to believe that it is her tone, her vocabulary, and not necessarily her substance or basic message, that has attracted the ire of the judge in Bergamo (and has made her so radioactive in the eyes of Europe's cultural elites).
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Ms. Fallaci speaks in a passionate growl: "Europe is no longer Europe, it is 'Eurabia,' a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense. Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty." Such words--"invaders," "invasion," "colony," "Eurabia"--are deeply, immensely, Politically Incorrect; and one is tempted to believe that it is her tone, her vocabulary, and not necessarily her substance or basic message, that has attracted the ire of the judge in Bergamo (and has made her so radioactive in the eyes of Europe's cultural elites).
Asked whether there was any contemporary leader she admired, she replied,
"I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger." Pope Benedict XVI was evidently a man in whom she reposed some trust. "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion."
On political correctness which she calls the Modern Inquisition that keeps individuals in fear of expressing what they believe.
"If you are a Westerner and you say that your civilization is superior, the most developed that this planet has ever seen, you go to the stake. But if you are a son of Allah or one of their collaborationists and you say that Islam has always been a superior civilization, a ray of light...nobody touches you. Nobody sues you. Nobody condemns you."
She railed against Moslem aggression which threatened her beloved Europe as Lorenzo Vidino writes
Fallaci has her own interpretation of the massive Islamic immigration that is rapidly changing the face of European cities. She sees it as part of the expansionism that has characterized Islam since its birth. After reminding the reader how Islamic armies have aimed for centuries at the heart of Europe (a part of history that is not taught anymore in Europe, since it would offend the sensitivity of Muslim pupils), reaching France, Poland, and Vienna, she lays out her case, claiming that the current flood of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa is part of a carefully planned strategy. Fallaci uses the words of Muslim leaders to support this thesis.
The "sons of Allah," as Fallaci calls them, do not make a secret of their plans. A Catholic bishop recounted that, during an interfaith meeting in Turkey, a respected Muslim cleric told the crowd: "Thanks to your democratic laws we will invade you. Thanks to our Islamic laws we will conquer you." But what really makes Fallaci's blood boil is the West's inability to even acknowledge this aggression
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Proud to honor itself, young and determined, America is perceived by Fallaci as the only hope for the West.
Childless, she wrote Letter to a Child Never Born, which one reviewer considered to be "one of the finest feminist writings about pregnancy, abortion, and emotional torture."
The great love of her life was the martyred poet and Greek resistance leader Alekos Panagoulis about whom she wrote a novel, A Man, which was hailed in Europe as a masterpiece, garnering many prizes.
UPDATE: The best quote I've read: "The darkness came and yet the darkness claimed her not" from the Belmont Club. The full paragraph
.......a warrior in the fullness of her strength. At the time of her death Oriana Fallaci was facing a suit in Italy for daring to suggest that her country and culture were under threat from radical Islam. In her youth she did not bow to Hitler; and in her old age she hurled defiance at yet another tyranny. The darkness came and yet the darkness claimed her not.
UPDATE 2 Her friend, Michael Leeden writes
Hell of a lady....Hell of a writer...Hell of a woman. I only knew her when she was older, and marked with the deep lines of her long fight against the “alien,” but she was still a vivacious and flirtatious gal who delighted in the flow of her powerful pheremones and very much enjoyed being around men who appreciated her considerable charms. Just look at some of those photos from her younger days. Wow.
a freedom fighter to the core.. She was one of the all-time great nonconformists, she fought tyranny wherever she saw it and she challenged evil, especially in the hands of hypocrites, as soon as she detected its rotten odor. She had a rare mixture of that amazing feminine sixth sense for phonies, and a ruthless objectivity that forced her to recognize positive qualities in even the most evil people, as when she spotted a kind of elegance and brilliance in the Ayatollah Khomeini.
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Orianna’s cause was the pursuit of truth, whatever the political and social consequences. Once considered a fashionable leftists, she positively reveled in her ostracism in later years by her old admirers. She immersed herself in the words of her critics much more than in those of her allies, because she wanted to be able to demolish the criticism.
FROM her last interview, published in The New Yorker
You’ve got to get old, because you have nothing to lose,” she said over lunch that afternoon. “You have this respectability that is given to you, more or less. But you don’t give a damn. It is the ne plus ultra of freedom. And things that I didn’t used to say before—you know, there is in each of us a form of timidity, of cautiousness—now I open my big mouth. I say, ‘What are you going to do to me? You go fuck yourself—I say what I want.’ ”
From another friend, Robert Spencer
She was one of the most fearless and courageous defenders Western civilization had in these latter days, and the West rewarded her by hounding, persecuting and vilifying her.
I invite you, then, on this day of sadness and loss, to pay tribute to Oriana. There is no way we can make up for what we have lost in her. But the best way we can pay tribute to Oriana is by becoming Oriana. Let there be a hundred new Orianas today, a thousand new passionate and articulate and absolutely unbowed defenders of Western culture and civilization, with a fine contempt for all the many weapons of physical and psychological intimidation that the jihadists and their non-Muslim allies and tools in the Western media and government establishments use to try to silence and discredit us.
I admired this woman so much for her fierce courage, impassioned writing, total integrity and the bright light she gave. I will miss her voice for years to come, in the same way I have missed Michael Kelly these past few years.