FrontPage Magazine's Woman of the Year: Oriana Fallaci

Front Page Magazine ^ | 30 December 2005 | FrontPage Magazine

[unionblue83]

After spending most of the last century fighting against fascism, Oriana Fallaci continues to demonstrate the enduring grip of Orwellianism: she is to be tried in Italy for thought-crime. For spending her childhood fighting Hitler and Mussolini, and for dedicating the last four years of her life to rousing the West to the danger posed by Islamofascism, she more than merits designation as FrontPage Magazine’s Woman of the Year.

Oriana Fallaci has rebelled against fascism most of her life. She is not an ideologue, bound to implement any given ideology. Hers is a defensive mission. She is, by her own designation, neither a conservative nor a leftist, finding defects with both. Like FrontPage Magazine, her main concern is fighting encroaching totalitarianism, not advancing a narrow partisan agenda ruled by either orthodoxy.

[Thorin]

>>>>>So it's a version of Islamic "anti-religious everything that isn't Islam fascism", totalitarianism, or whatever other word you would prefer to use.

How about "Islam?" I object to labelling everything we dislike "fascist," because it is a trick started by the Commies, for Commie reasons. By perpetuating it, we implicitly endorse the view that fascism was worse than Communism, even though Communism had a much higher body count.

[unionblue83]

Communism, fascism and Islamic fundamentalism are all bad for the world, any way that you slice it. I don't think that the semantics argument makes any one of them "better" than the others. We destroyed the Hitler-Mussolini versions of fascism, we destroyed Communism on a grand scale thanks to Reaganus Maximus, and God willing we will destroy the Islamo fanatics the same way; terminology is irrelevant as long as the end-game is the same.

[goldstategop]

Her new book, "The Force Of Reason," is a wonderful tribute to reason. I am eagerly awaiting the final installment of her trilogy, "The Apocalypse" to make its appearing in English. Oriana is fluent in both languages but she prefers her native Italian for the same reason Dante and Petrarch did. The Italians call the Tuscan dialect "God's language." As for her beliefs, she's a Christian atheist. It sounds like a contradiction but she can't conceive of God creating such a cruel world. And how about something as backward as Islam? So I can understand why she doesn't think much of religion. She is a devout rationalist who doesn't care much for ideological straitjackets and can't be pigeonholed either as a leftist or a conservative. Oriana though, is an intellectual who writes with passion and moral clarity. That's rare for a European these days. And yes, she loves her adopted country as much as her native Italy.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")