This text is the introduction of the book by Giancarlo Bosetti entitled “A Bad Teacher. Oriana Fallaci’s rage and its contagious effect”, published by Marsilio in November 2005.

In this story there is a before and an after September 11th 2001. The before, the genre that brought world success to Fallaci was that of new journalism, the same used by Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer. It has also been described as “subjective” journalism. And the Lady – this is the name we will use, the name she indicated she liked in her books – interprets this genre in a very original manner. She pushed the use of the first person singular to make readers fully identify with the author, offering them her own intimacy both in her joy and her pain. Her skills brought her fame, in the way that usually only happens to television personalities and very rarely to journalists and authors loved by millions of people.

Let us re-read some of her reports from Vietnam in 1968, in which a young American tells the story of the death of his friend Bob, “ cut in half” by a nearby explosion, and confides to her his happiness and also his shame for having survived the event. Or her description of the face of a dead Vietcong. Inspired by that face her brilliant portrayal in her reportage made famous a country that knew no peace. Or also the famous reportage about the in-flight refuelling of American Phantoms during the 1991 Gulf War. Readers felt they were there with her, in an uncomfortable position on a refuelling plane with its “boom” hanging out, and beyond the window an unknown pilot looking into their eyes and asking “Who are you? What do you want?” These were memorable encounters – for everyone, for many readers – with a writing style that has the fundamental virtue of seducing and enchanting.

As an expert journalist with the gift of being ironical about this job and about his colleagues once observed: If one does not have this gift it is pointless to complain about someone else having it, as if this were not fair, just as it is pointless to complain about war diaries about Crimea written by one of our ancestors that are less successful than diaries written by Tolstoy. Yes it was always Crimea, but the author was different. Let us call this the “Crimea-Tolstoy factor”. The Lady’s literary qualities will continue to be discussed and everyone will be free to express an opinion, whatever they may think, people who are jealous and those who are not, literary critics, publishing historians and admirers. This however is not really a subject that concerns me. If it does concern me, it is because there is instead an “after September 11th”. After those events the Lady abandoned her previous literary projects, her novel, her “child”, to devote herself body and soul to a personal campaign against terrorism, a campaign that is basically a declaration of war against Muslims, as such, against Islam as such, and against a religion as such. Against the Enemy, the Dragon, the Monster.

She began this campaign, using her capital of popularity and all her qualities as an author, in an enterprise I consider sad, insolent and an accessory to the mental laziness that always nourishes stereotypes. Her books, her articles and her interviews in the course of these years, all contain a mixture of ingredients that approximately correspond to a complete list of the abstractness and mistakes that should be avoided if one really wishes to defeat jihadist terrorism, if one wishes to weaken it and isolate the rogues that promote it. These are the same mistakes that can result in achieving the opposite result; new more serious and extended conflicts, new violence; a genre of disasters that belong to the category of prophecies that are self-fulfilled. If I will have managed to explain to someone how and why, in relationships between religions, cultures and races, it is up to us human beings to ensure that the most inauspicious predictions come true, as well as how and why it is also up to us to prevent them from happening, then I will experience the joy of feeling humble.

I do not agree with the many commentators who support the idea that there is no point in debating the Lady’s theses because they are states of the mind and not real subject-matters. I do not agree with this because rage and pride are bad counsellors, they suggest bad subject-matters and are not without consequences. Very often they identify and attack the wrong targets, they broaden conflicts and open new fronts, depleting the sense of moderation that is nearly always a decisive factor in finding solutions for difficult cases. Rage and pride, even before causing practical mistakes, lead to cognitive confusion, portraying an Enemy even when there is only extreme difficulty present. They lead one to attribute to the enemy, often present, accomplices and allies that do not exist. The books of the Trilogy are the authentic expression of a “negative” form of thought, of a way of reasoning that manages to present the problem only within the framework of conflict, the expression of powerful and exasperated polarisation that leaves no way out, with us or against us. Any idea, objection, any event can be favourable either to one side or the other and “ who does this favour” and “who is it useful to?”. It is a form of absolute omnivorous relativism that always refers to conflict and returns everything to the conflict. One is then obliged to deny the evidence, that Arabic numbers are numbers and that Aristotle came to Christians thanks to Arabic translations.

This disease is actually a very well-known one, one we used to call Ideology and one that celebrates its return in grand style in the form of Identity. Hence the Lady’s books are not an unusual phenomenon and their success marks not only the lasting “Crimea-Tolstoy effect” (lucky those who suffer from it) but also assumes the form of an epidemic. The friend-enemy polarisation is the specific essence of politics according to Carl Schmitt, but this is precisely an idea that appeared in the days (1927) of a powerful and catastrophic ideological conflict. I suggest one should continue to believe that politics contain within their specific essence also the duty of solving problems. Politics must also look to the increased intensity of conflicts concerning politics, ethics and identity, both in Italy, in Europe and in America, everywhere, as a contagion that should be kept under control, like an inflammation to be chilled with ice compresses. Politics should also cultivating appropriate knowledge with regards to facts.

Thinking-based-on-enemies – this is how I wish to refer to it – can leave indifferent all those not involved, can cause laughter in those not included in the circle of what Pascal call the Illusio, just as those who are not in love find excessive, foolish or ridiculous the behaviour of those involved in love stories. Only those on the “outside” find them excessive, because those “within” perceive their reality in the greatest detail and experience all the insuperable evidence. The same also applies to evil events filled with hatred and resentment. Plunging into feelings of hatred is very similar to falling in love, it changes the manner in which one interprets the world. When one’s mind contains an Enemy so powerful that it deserves a capital letter, it seems that almost everything (all that is evil) can be explained starting from this enemy.

I have not wished to leave space for indifference, nor for a “negative” conflicting idea. In reading the Lady’s books devoted to the Enemy, I tried to experience sympathy, let us say a methodological form of sympathy; I tried to the extent that this was possible to enter her state of mind, her Illusio, and above all that of her readers. I did not wish to simply register my No to “orianism”, adding it to that of many others. I wanted to better understand its familiarity with one of the greatest and most insidious problems of our times.

Translation by Francesca Simmons