The following passages are taken from Giancarlo Bosetti’s book entitled “Cattiva Maestra. La rabbia di Oriana Fallaci e il suo contagio”, published by Marsilio in November 2005.
The idea of addressing the subject of “orianism”, inspired by the name of the famous Florentine author with strong civil passions and more, would never have occurred to me if I had not one day been confronted with the question: «Pourquoi les Italiens lisent-ils Oriana Fallaci?». Why do so many Italians read the Lady’s books? This was the question that led me to change my perspective with regards to this problem. The French headline had impressed me, with its dry style, that of a ethnographic review; let us analyse the habits, customs and practices of these people. The Italians. Why do Berbers ride camels so well, why do the French eat a lot of cheese, why do the Russians adore vodka? And the Italians? Why do they read the books by the lady? And why above all since they usually read so little? That article with two signatures impressed me also because I came across it in a very good reflective, well-informed and fair magazine, «La vie des idées», a magazine that rarely addresses Italian issues. It was the name of our famous author that attracted my attention. But I observed the article more carefully and above the title there was another line, a “subheading”: «Quand le racisme se fait best-seller». When racism becomes a best-seller. Were the two authors extremists? Partisans? Angry Muslims? Anti-Americans? Friends of the wrong Italians and enemies of the right ones as at times happens with the French (see the Cesare Battisti case)? No, only two sociology researchers, one French and the other Italian, professionally attempting to understand this mass phenomenology.
Racism? Well what kind of illness are we Italians suffering from then? That was why, with greater attention than previously, I started to once again read this author’s recent books: the “Islamist cycle”. And now that I have done this – and I am satisfied about this because I cannot say that I was bored – I realise in re-reading the quotation by the two authors of the Pourquoi?, that I cannot find much to correct in their diagnosis. I myself might have perhaps been a little less peremptory and final, but this is not the point. The point is that it is a legitimate question, that the diagnosis on these books is a difficult one, while their diagnosis on the Italians needs a significant supplement.
The two scholars who made the ferocious diagnosis hit us where it hurts, precisely while we are trying to take our minds off it and change the subject. This because they insist: we Italians have a problem, a syndrome, a fishbone stuck in our throats. You see, they say, the size of the editorial event, the astonishing number of sales, more than the Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter, are a good indication, a symptom of the problem, do you not agree? And how is it that this has happened? Why do you not try and answer? And what about us? Are we really incapable of an in-depth analysis of what this publishing event might “reveal with regard to the state of the public debate?”
Well, we should avoid reproaching one another about the list of Italians we do not like and find explanations that do not resemble brawls between soccer fans. And, pay attention, we might also discover some syndrome that does not only concern our provinces. There is a growing divide within Italian society, but why am I only referring to Italy? This is a divide that concerns the whole of European society as well as America, among those who find the recipes and language of traditional politicians, especially those who are progressive or liberals, too sophisticated, cold, incomprehensible and distant, and those who entrust their fears to noisier speeches, filled with values, tradition and religion. Easier speeches that are easier to make for right-wing politicians, but are also used by the left. Within this divide those who speak of an Enemy without splitting hairs excessively, those who have an Enemy and observe it with the certain mystical clarity of preachers, have a better chance of being greeted with applause. And if one can identify this Enemy, down on the street, in the immigrant who belongs to the same religion invoked by suicide terrorists who kill employees in New York and girls on holiday in Sharm el Sheik, then this sermon will have an overwhelming success, especially if well put together by a good author.
What is essentialism
Essentialism too must be taken into account within the heavy burden of the language used in the trilogy, a sophisticated word for a very common, ancient and dangerous vice, that of considering individuals the emanation of an essence, the representatives of a group – Jews, Muslims, Christians, but also bankers, bank employees, waiters, journalists, parish priests – individual projections of a presumed substance with its own characteristics. A little vice that neglects many providential individual nuances, which make us all different, we who are individual human beings, thanks to many personal characteristics, merits and defects that at time contradict such claimed essences. Essentialism, for example, means that Muslims are taken en masse as being one, just as happens for some of their enemies such as Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the Chinese or whoever you want. Many monoliths. You will have to agree that this method is certainly not a good one. Rejection of ever-present «political correctness», with its linguistic tyranny, cannot justify everything; at times it is necessary, but here it is not only a linguistic scruple. One can succumb to excessive rejection or at least be driven insane, because essentialism is capable of producing defective and highly dangerous syllogisms, although they appear positive to the very simpleminded when presented as follows. If the terrorists-who-decapitate-hostages are Muslims and invoke Allah’s protection, this means that they represent Islam. So the Islam and the terrorists-who-decapitate-hostages in the name of Islam are exactly the same thing. End of the debate. This is not good. It does not work. It does not provide an explanation. Just as it was wrong to identify the Red Brigades with the whole of Marxism, communism, socialism, trade-unionism, the left and the opposition. Just as it is wrong to indentify the mafia with the whole of Sicily (and the whole of Italy as certain American scriptwriters do). Do you agree? Or is someone still doubtful?
These mistakes made by “essentialism” are a politically incorrect genre that we should acknowledge and avoid.. These are simply idiocies. And they cost dear, because they result in what is hoped for precisely by the Enemy one intends to fight. And all this is very helpful to the Bin Ladens of today. For them it is a dream come true to appear, at least to some, precisely as they wish; an avant-garde that leads the whole of Islam in the religious war, in the Jihad against the West. This how the Lady sees things. This is how Al Qaida sees things in their proclamations. This was how Mohammed Atta, the suicide pilot in the attack on the Twin Towers, saw things when he left detailed instructions with regards to his funeral, so that his death might adhere perfectly to the rules of the Koran, to the omnipotence of Allah and the dispositions of his prophet. A perfect correspondence, that he, like many other kamikazes see in slaughter, in the massacres of ordinary people, children included. The more people die the more the will of the Omnipotent is obeyed. It is this perfect correspondence that, I believe, deserves the paradoxical attribute of “Islamist” as in the collection of books by the Lady, since these adopt that same correspondence, embracing in an indissoluble bond violent practices and a religion.
What is ‘orianism’
What is orianism? Orianism means thinking-in-terms-of-enemies, cogitare-per-inimicos, thinking through enemies, using enemies as a means of knowledge, like some special kind of lamp bulb, or electric torch that lights up in its own slanting way the reality it is addressed at. It means developing a vision of the problem using an Enemy, using the Enemy as a compass. One thinks per inimicos, transferring the centre of attention from the issue faced in its objective specific dimension, to what the Enemy is doing or thinking, or to what the Enemy might do or think of it is to gain an advantage.
Why the Italians ? Pourquoi les Italiens?
There is a strong family-like relationship between the nature of the Lady’s angry book and the national one (remember the question: Pourquoi les Italiens lisent-ils Oriana Fallaci?), in spite of her presenting herself as anti-Italian, like party members, to whom her personal history has been linked ever since the war with events that belong to the source of her prestige. That relationship between the author and Italian moods is a powerful one; hers are not anti-Italian feelings, but rather very Italian “anti” feelings; anti-the-former-PCI (the Italian Communist Party), the left that ill-treated her ever since the days of Vietnam, anti-Triple (Left, Right, Church), anti-collaborationists (with Islam compared to occupying Nazism), anti-Islam. These are enemy poles that clarify, these are the centre of attraction for thoughts, for arrows raining down on a target and in every way on an imaginary headquarters where our problems are drafted, planned and placed in circulation, like many Muslim immigrants and many freely circulating kamikazes.
In spite of all this bitterness, the Lady’s books were for me at the centre of a discovery of why so many Italians reason as she does, adopting her same thoughts – as some of them say – without managing to express them in such a clear way. Thanks to her work, many of them have discovered themselves, their own intimate feelings, their own unmentioned reasoning. And this unspoken element is a thinking-in-terms-of-an-enemy, it is a polarisation “against”, a short cut; it is the facilitator, the guide that takes one by the hand and shows one everything that one seems unable to express alone.
Orianism however works not only for the fear and the not-said of middle-high class and lower class people, who usually do not read and only watch television. It also works for intellectuals. Orianism develops its own recognisable hegemony among intellectuals, even though the word is inevitably – and mistakenly – together with left-wing culture; it develops this because with a small part of intellectuality – that of the right – it shares an Enemy and its offshoots: the Monster and with it the “famous” multiculturalism, pacifism, good feelings, secularism, the politically correct, as well as many other characters from the cortege of enemies mentioned above. The custom of debating, even in a sophisticated manner, with opposing theses, rendering them extreme, taking them to absurd limits, theses that often have no supporters in the field, but that are simply targeted since it is convenient to broaden one’s own. I am grateful to the Lady for having shown me in an extreme, heated, inflammatory manner, a small vice, harboured at lower temperatures in the more reflective editorials, expressed in a softer tone, in a regime of real or simulated moderation. But in this way too, with engines running softly, it is not hard to notice in the crucial passage of the debate, the echo of tonalities, chords and gestures that remind one of the manner in which the Monster is placed on the shoulders of the opponent, be this opponent real or imaginary. Touched upon and branded forever.
Translation by Francesca Simmons