Author:
Publication: Defend The Modern World
Date: April 2, 2013
URL:   https://defendthemodernworld.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/she-told-us-so-the-brilliance-of-oriana-fallaci/

“Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam. And Italy is an outpost of that province, a stronghold of that colony…In each of our cities lies a second city: a Muslim city, a city run by the Quran. A stage of Islamic expansion.”

The most beautiful, talented and inspiring political writer of the millennial age was an Italian named Oriana Fallaci.

Her name, so musically pleasant to hear and say, unlocks a reputation of beauty, courage and indefatigability (let’s not allow that last word to be forever tarnished by Mr Galloway).

Fallaci wrote, before most of us had found our bearings on the issue, the two greatest books about the Islamisation of Europe ever written – “The Rage and the Pride” and “The Force of Reason”.

These volumes are not like any other book on the subject published before or since. They are written not by an academic, or a soapbox agitator, but by a witness to history of the first rank. The language used in the expression of their content is so passionate, well-chosen and spiritual, it easily ascends to poetry. While the books aren’t particularly complex, they reward slow and thoughtful reading and settle eventually more as philosophy than journalism.

Praise for Ms Fallaci (particularly in her native Italy) often takes on a tone reminiscent of Saint-worship. This is easily explained. As a polemicist, she wrote with an emotional, Latin urgency which tends to either greatly repel or greatly endear.

When her writing repels, it shocks. When it endears, it turns one from an admirer into a devotee.

Fallaci’s prematurity created a strong and strange mystique, much like that which attaches to George Orwell and his lonely stand against prevailing orthodoxies. Fallaci like Orwell, got to the point of the era before the intellectuals. She had the correct answer before the question was widely known. To protest against Muslim immigration now is common-sense, but when Fallaci wrote those books, it was regarded as outrageous racism. Her willingness to be misunderstood in this respect truly deserves the epithet ‘heroic’.

Fallaci was instrumental in waking up the Western intellect to the horror of Muslim immigration (and not just terrorism). Her books predate those which made the anti-Islamisation position easy and fashionable. Her volumes never topped the bestseller stands either here or in Europe. She tragically died of cancer before her opinions were vindicated or broadly accepted. As terrible as such facts are, they have served to embalm her reputation from the arrows of her (numerous) critics.

Fallaci’s physical beauty greatly amplifies the effect of her writing. This brilliant, beautiful, empowered Italian woman when compared against the house-bound wretches of the Islamic World adds great emphasis to our struggle. How could we give up the cultural foundations which allow for this superior kind of womanhood?

 Age and ill-health never completely diminished Fallaci’s appearance. At 75, she still looked like a film star. The fight for liberty never looked so dignified.

Leftists – of course – continue to despise her. For as long as they do this, I will despise Leftists. On dozens of occasions liberals have trotted out the same Fallaci quote in which she complains that Muslim immigrants ‘breed like rats’ and held it up as if it was a bleeding knife, hard evidence of some kind of nascent National Socialism in her personality.

But this is ridiculous. As a metaphor, it is nicely to the point and entirely correct. Muslim immigrants are breeding like rats. Rats, rabbits, bacteria…whatever you might want to compare it to, that is what they are doing, and should it continue, we will end up with a continent burning with hatred and war.

Fallaci’s tone was often furious, even – some say – ‘fanatical’, but since our enemies are so easily enlivened by the dictats of Sharia law, we could do worse than become fanatical about our own beliefs and virtues. The Muslims are fanatical about the need for women to be veiled. We can (and should) match that fanaticism with a desire that they should remain free. Let’s not be afraid of anger, even less of passion.

As we go forward in the struggle to avoid the destiny she forewarned us of, Fallaci’s books must be our manifesto. I will continue to read her and take encouragement from her words. I hope that she will not be forgotten now that her views have become widespread. No-one has yet matched her tone of moral anger, her poetry, her cruel exactness. Her words still perfectly define our challenge….

“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.”