Loren, as a personal friend of Fallaci’s and as an actress, can be forgiven for sidestepping the question. It’s not her job. The hacks who have penned endless column inches (6 pages alone in today’s Corriere della Sera – that’s almost up there with the late JPII) analyzing the career of one of Italy and the world’s most famous journalists should not be let off the hook so lightly. With precious few exceptions, Fallaci is remembered in glowing terms, and where her post 9/11 work is discussed the emphasis is firmly placed on its popularity, as if selling millions of copies of the work automatically gives it validity. There is no discussion in the Corriere della Sera as to whether the charges of racism and incitement to hatred leveled at Fallaci by critics, for the most part outside of Italy, were/are valid.

Ironic that the difficult questions should be avoided, given that Fallaci was one of the finest interviewers her generation produced. The woman who took on Kissinger, Khomeini, Gheddafi, Meir, and Arafat, amongst countless others, would scarcely appreciate the fawning tributes that have characterized the Italian press reaction to her death.

A perfect example is the column by Lucia Annunziata in today’s La Stampa. Annunziata, who perhaps sees herself as a kindred spirit to Fallaci, having asked some difficult questions to Berlusconi during this year’s election campaign*, paints what has become the stereotypical picture of the Florentine journalist in recent years: an outcast figure, rejected by the establishment and criticized by those jealous of her talent. A voice in the wilderness who was brave enough to tell it as it is, without ifs and buts. “The traditional conflict that her work aroused – between huge popular sales and the cultural establishment – repeated itself but in a more dramatic way after the 11th of September, with her last works, rough, aggressive, brazen. They sold as usual millions of copies, but provoked criticism also in a section of the public, that of the left and the young, that had always looked to her as a model”.

The picture, constructed as much by Fallaci during her life, makes for wonderful heroic reading, even if it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Fallaci was anything but rejected by the Italian establishment, with elements ranging from political parties through to the newspapers, publishing houses, and TV repeatedly attempting to cosy up to her (to her credit she rejected all attempts to co-opt her name). Her American exile was a self-imposed and largely ideological choice, while she continued to own a home in her native Florence. The suggestion that she was a lone voice in the post 9/11 wilderness, the only one brave enough to attack Islam in print is laughable: a whole new publishing industry sprang up overnight after the terror attacks. Fallaci, perhaps the best polemicist, was certainly not the only one putting pen to paper about the supposed clash of civilizations. Her books, as pointed out in a wonderful analysis by Giancarlo Bosetti in Cattiva Maestra – La Rabbia di Oriana Fallaci, received massive pre-publicity from Italy’s two biggest media groups – RCS and Mondadori-Mediaset. The fact that she sold so many copies of her polemics, rather than being a surprise, is a simple illustration of the power of marketing.

Annunziata’s misplaced eulogy though is symptomatic of the press reaction to Fallaci’s work during her last years. Seizing upon the snappy image of ‘Eurabia’, a Europe overtaken by Muslim hordes, the Italian media, chose to talk primarily about how many copies had been sold and how the book had obviously touched a popular chord, rather than examining the arguments in the book. For example, nobody deemed it opportune to point out that two out of every three of the immigrants coming to Italy to work are not ‘Sons of Allah’ but rather migrant workers from an impoverished eastern Europe. Launching a hate-filled polemic against hordes of invading Polish plum pickers might not have sold as many books in John Paul II’s Italy.

Alessandro Cannavo, who worked with Fallaci, describes in today’s Corriere della Sera how Fallaci would “search without surrender for the least banal vocabulary, the most appropriate word”, but he makes no analysis of her use of language in phrases like “barbarians that instead of working and contributing to the betterment of humanity stay with their backsides in the air, that is praying five times a day”. Eloquent analysis the like of which one would expect to hear from a local barstool bigot rather than the most gifted journalist of her era.

Indeed if you want a succinct criticism of her post 9/11 work, better to head outside of the Italian media to the work of two sociologists, one French, one Italian, who described her work thus:
“Attempting to foment an ancestral hatred towards Muslims, she who was once amongst the most respected journalists/writers in the republic of letters, uses devices that we believed had disappeared from Europe over sixty years ago: systematic falsification of facts, conspiracy theories, bestialisation and the description of adversaries as sexual perverts, crude racism, and calls to violence. All brought together in a form that has more invective than reason”.

The tributes for her earlier groundbreaking work are to be welcomed. The glossing over of her racism and threadbare thesis of Eurabia do her memory a disservice. Oriana Fallaci’s best work was done face to face, confronting power. When 9/11 happened she had already retreated from public life to fight her cancer. Her writing in this period, full of rage and pride as the title of her first polemic suggests, is shadow boxing in a grotesque black and white fantasy land. It’s a true shame that Fallaci was not more youthful, healthy, and engaged with the world when those planes hit the towers. Her instinct then might have been to ask questions, questions to the Bin Ladens, and the Al-Zarqawis, but also to the Bushes and Blairs in this global war on terror, not to provide the crazed, apocalyptic, hate-filled answers that have sold millions.

*In truth there’s little comparison between Fallaci’s encounters and Annunziata’s moment of journalistic glory encountering Berlusconi. True, Berlusconi did walk out mid interview causing an uproar, but it was less the severity of Annunziata’s questions than the fact that Italian politicians aren’t used to being asked any difficult questions. Fallaci’s great skill lay both in asking difficult questions, but also in persuading the powerful and potent to answer them.