Books by Oriana Fallaci
Reviewed by: T.J. Nelson
The Force of Reason
by Oriana Fallaci
Rizzoli International Publications, 2006, 307 pages
t is only a myth that lemmings, when their population gets too high,
stampede themselves off a cliff and commit mass suicide. But it is
scarcely an exaggeration to say that Europeans have
somehow acquired a lemming gene of their own, and are in the process
of driving themselves off a cliff for the third time in less than a
century. And just as the appeasers before 1938 reassured us that
our adversaries could be reasoned with, and
that to do otherwise was warmongering, so do today's appeasers and
peaceniks attack those few Europeans like Oriana Fallaci who have
the courage to speak the terrible truth to a continent that
refuses to admit that it is in a war for its very survival. There
are no guarantees that Europe, in its current state, will find the
strength to survive the demographic invasion that it is now
facing.
Oriana Fallaci wrote The Force of Reason to wake up her fellow Europeans who refuse to believe the invasion is real. Unfortunately, Europeans today suffer not only from the same political correctness that makes life miserable here in the States, but they also suffer from ever-tightening restrictions on freedom of speech. The laws enacted by the EC against "racism", "xenophobia", and "instigation to hate" have mainly served to prevent discussion of the problem and suppress the opinions of people like Oriana Fallaci. But this has only pissed her off even more.
Oriana Fallaci is not only absolutely fearless, but intensely passionate. Her previous book, The Rage and the Pride, written immediately after the 9/11 attacks, demonstrated with white-hot prose that Oriana Fallaci would not participate in the Schadenfreude that so many of her compatriots expressed about the slaughter. These elites are not just anti-American; they sneer at the idea of defending any aspect of Western society. In their eyes, the West is evil and the sooner their countries are conquered by barbarians and their heads put on pikes, the better. According to Oriana Fallaci, to facilitate this takeover, these intellectual terrorists (as she calls them) advocate giving illegal Muslim immigrants automatic voting rights, and they ally themselves with the terrorists, calling them "resistance fighters". Oriana blasts the hypocrisy of the European Left for claiming to stand for secularism and progress, while in reality supporting the medieval religious ideology of the Ayatollahs and the Sheikhs. She asks, "How can [the Left] possibly identify with a world in which you have to be told that marrying your mother and eating the sheep you keep as your mistress is a sin?" The reason is that the Left is "a Church similar to Islam. Like Islam it considers itself sanctified by a God who is the custodian of the Truth." The Right is equally culpable, says Oriana, because it has been complicit with the Left in sanctioning the invasion of her homeland.
Oriana Fallaci reminds Europeans of the bloody invasions of Europe by Muslims throughout history. "Today's Islamic invasion of Europe," she says, "is nothing else than a revival of its centuries-old expansionism, of its centuries-old imperialism, of its centuries-old colonialism." Europe has succumbed to the disease of fear, says Oriana: "A disease which, fed by opportunism and conformism, hence cowardice, leads to more deaths than cancer." The result is that Europe is becoming unrecognizable. Marseilles is "no longer a French city, it is a Mahgrebin city," where 95 percent of the students in the Collège Edgard Quinet are now Muslims. Europe, because of its weakness, its fear of thinking independently, and its obsequiousness toward Islam, is the first battleground for Muslims who intend to conquer and subjugate the globe.
Some will protest that surely things can't really be that bad in Europe. Our news media assure us that Europe is doing just fine, and we should emulate the Europeans and their love of big government, noble but meaningless gestures, and grandiose international law. And indeed, to the average European, life probably seems almost normal. If you visit Europe, you will still find the same sometimes snobbish and eccentric people, the little streets clogged with tiny cars about the size of American golf carts, and everywhere monuments to their old genius. But you can also smell the aroma of burning Citroens in the distance, a sort of modern-day auto-da-fé of the modern world. Slowly a noose is tightening around the Europeans' necks as their freedoms are imperceptibly swallowed up, one by one, by giant bureaucracies. The Muslims have been unambiguously clear about their intention of taking over Europe and making it part of the Dar-al-Islam. Maybe Europeans will wake up. More likely, they will remain paralyzed by fear and political correctness, and the trend will only continue. This book is one last cry of defiance by one of the few remaining true Europeans against the looming destruction of Europe and its once-great culture.
April 9, 2006
Oriana Fallaci intervista sé stessa / L'Apocalisse
by Oriana Fallaci
Rizzoli International Publications, 2004, 262 pages
ho better to interview Oriana Fallaci than Oriana
Fallaci? The Italian journalist, known for her utter fearlessness,
knows exactly what questions to ask. Her expert interviewer, who
has experienced the consequences of insulting dictators to their
face, is uniquely able to put up with Oriana's famous temper. It
would be difficult to imagine a more evenly-matched battle.
Oriana Fallaci uses the cancer from which she is suffering as a metaphor for the cancer of Islamo-fascism that is sweeping her continent; just as she waited too long to have it treated, so, Oriana says, Europe is waiting too long to deal with the evil that surrounds it but refuses to recognize. The disease is, of course, the Islamist invasion of her country. Oriana Fallaci's harsh view of radical Islam makes her a target of the socialist Left, which is a powerful force in Europe, and whom she castigates as being de facto allies of the terrorists. She makes no apologies for her view that Europe and her beloved Italy are headed for catastrophe unless they wake up to the danger, which Oriana Fallaci sees as no different from the danger from Hitler and Mussolini that she remembers as a child. This is the voice, expressed in passionate and often profane language, of one of the few remaining individualistic spirits that still survives in the increasingly colorless and conformist landscape of 21st century Europe.
The book has already been translated into Spanish. Sadly, it will now fall on someone else to translate this book into English as Oriana Fallaci had done with her previous books ( Force of Reason and The Rage and the Pride). But in my opinion, this book should first be translated into French, German, Norwegian, and Dutch--the languages of those who most desperately need to hear her wake-up call.
May 22, 2006; Updated Sept 15, 2006
