Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Indro Montanelli
Indro Alessandro Raffaello Schizogene Montanelli (22 April 1909 – 22 July 2001) was an Italian journalist, historian, and writer.
A volunteer for the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and an admirer of Benito Mussolini's dictatorship, Montanelli had a change of heart in 1943, and joined the liberal resistance group Giustizia e Libertà, but was discovered and arrested by Nazi authorities in 1944 along with his wife. Sentenced to death, he was able to flee to Switzerland the day before his scheduled execution by firing squad, thanks to a secret service double agent.
After World War II, Montanelli continued his work at Corriere della Sera, where he started working in 1938, and distinguished himself as a liberal-conservative columnist for many decades. As an intransigent, anti-conformist, and anti-communist, he defended the idea of another political right, which was sober, cultured, pessimistic, and distrustful of mass society. In 1977, the Red Brigades terrorist group kneecapped him; years later, he forgave them. He was also a novelist and historian, especially remembered for his Storia d'Italia (History of Italy) in volumes.
After leaving the Corriere della Sera in 1973, due to a perceived turn to the left, Montanelli worked as the editor-in-chief of Silvio Berlusconi-owned newspaper il Giornale for many years. Being opposed to Berlusconi's political ambitions, he quit as editor of il Giornale, and founded il Giornale nuovo in 1974. Berlusconi officially entered politics in 1994, after which he returned to the Corriere della Sera in 1995, and worked there until his death. Both the Italian centre-left and centre-right tried to reclaim his figure; the former, which overlooked his conservatism and anti-communism, emphasized his anti-Berlusconist militancy, while the latter, after having portrayed him as a useful idiot of the post-communist left, underplayed his opposition to Berlusconi.
Montanelli was born in Fucecchio, near Florence, on 22 April, 1909. His father, Sestilio Montanelli, was a high-school philosophy teacher and his mother, Maddalena Doddoli, was the daughter of a rich cotton merchant. The name Indro was chosen by his father after the Hindu god Indra.
Montanelli obtained a law degree from the University of Florence in 1930, with a thesis on the electoral reform of Benito Mussolini's Italian fascist regime. Allegedly, in this thesis, he maintained that, rather than a reform, it amounted to the abolition of elections. According to him, it was during his stay in Grenoble, while taking language lessons, that he realized that his true vocation was journalism.
Montanelli began his journalistic career by writing for the fascist newspaper Il Selvaggio ("The Savage"), then directed by Mino Maccari, and in 1932 for the Universale, a magazine published once every fortnight, offering no pay. Montanelli admitted that in those days he saw in fascism the hope of a movement that could potentially create an Italian national conscience that would have resolved the social and economic differences between the north and the south. This enthusiasm for the fascist movement began to wane in 1935 when Mussolini ordered the suppression of the Universale along with other magazines and newspapers that expressed critical opinions on the nature of fascism. It was in 1934 in Paris that Montanelli began to write for the crime pages of the daily newspaper Paris-Soir as a foreign correspondent in Norway where he briefly worked fishing for cod, and later in Canada, where he ended up working on a farm in Alberta.
From there, Montanelli began a collaboration with Webb Miller of the United Press in New York. While working for the United Press, he learned to write for the lay public in a style that would distinguish him within the realm of Italian journalism. One lesson he took to heart from Miller was to "always write as if writing to a milkman from Ohio". This open and approachable style was something he never forgot and he had often recalled that very quote during his life. Another anecdote from Montanelli's time in the United States occurred while he was teaching a course. One of his students asked him to explain the meaning of the essay that he had read and Montanelli told him he would repeat it since he clearly did not understand. Hitting the table, the student cut him off and told him that as a matter of fact, if he had not understood Montanelli's essay, then it was Montanelli who was the imbecile and needed to change it. It was then that Montanelli realized that he, who had come from the authoritarian regime of Fascist Italy, had just had a confrontation with democracy.
Hub AI
Indro Montanelli AI simulator
(@Indro Montanelli_simulator)
Indro Montanelli
Indro Alessandro Raffaello Schizogene Montanelli (22 April 1909 – 22 July 2001) was an Italian journalist, historian, and writer.
A volunteer for the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and an admirer of Benito Mussolini's dictatorship, Montanelli had a change of heart in 1943, and joined the liberal resistance group Giustizia e Libertà, but was discovered and arrested by Nazi authorities in 1944 along with his wife. Sentenced to death, he was able to flee to Switzerland the day before his scheduled execution by firing squad, thanks to a secret service double agent.
After World War II, Montanelli continued his work at Corriere della Sera, where he started working in 1938, and distinguished himself as a liberal-conservative columnist for many decades. As an intransigent, anti-conformist, and anti-communist, he defended the idea of another political right, which was sober, cultured, pessimistic, and distrustful of mass society. In 1977, the Red Brigades terrorist group kneecapped him; years later, he forgave them. He was also a novelist and historian, especially remembered for his Storia d'Italia (History of Italy) in volumes.
After leaving the Corriere della Sera in 1973, due to a perceived turn to the left, Montanelli worked as the editor-in-chief of Silvio Berlusconi-owned newspaper il Giornale for many years. Being opposed to Berlusconi's political ambitions, he quit as editor of il Giornale, and founded il Giornale nuovo in 1974. Berlusconi officially entered politics in 1994, after which he returned to the Corriere della Sera in 1995, and worked there until his death. Both the Italian centre-left and centre-right tried to reclaim his figure; the former, which overlooked his conservatism and anti-communism, emphasized his anti-Berlusconist militancy, while the latter, after having portrayed him as a useful idiot of the post-communist left, underplayed his opposition to Berlusconi.
Montanelli was born in Fucecchio, near Florence, on 22 April, 1909. His father, Sestilio Montanelli, was a high-school philosophy teacher and his mother, Maddalena Doddoli, was the daughter of a rich cotton merchant. The name Indro was chosen by his father after the Hindu god Indra.
Montanelli obtained a law degree from the University of Florence in 1930, with a thesis on the electoral reform of Benito Mussolini's Italian fascist regime. Allegedly, in this thesis, he maintained that, rather than a reform, it amounted to the abolition of elections. According to him, it was during his stay in Grenoble, while taking language lessons, that he realized that his true vocation was journalism.
Montanelli began his journalistic career by writing for the fascist newspaper Il Selvaggio ("The Savage"), then directed by Mino Maccari, and in 1932 for the Universale, a magazine published once every fortnight, offering no pay. Montanelli admitted that in those days he saw in fascism the hope of a movement that could potentially create an Italian national conscience that would have resolved the social and economic differences between the north and the south. This enthusiasm for the fascist movement began to wane in 1935 when Mussolini ordered the suppression of the Universale along with other magazines and newspapers that expressed critical opinions on the nature of fascism. It was in 1934 in Paris that Montanelli began to write for the crime pages of the daily newspaper Paris-Soir as a foreign correspondent in Norway where he briefly worked fishing for cod, and later in Canada, where he ended up working on a farm in Alberta.
From there, Montanelli began a collaboration with Webb Miller of the United Press in New York. While working for the United Press, he learned to write for the lay public in a style that would distinguish him within the realm of Italian journalism. One lesson he took to heart from Miller was to "always write as if writing to a milkman from Ohio". This open and approachable style was something he never forgot and he had often recalled that very quote during his life. Another anecdote from Montanelli's time in the United States occurred while he was teaching a course. One of his students asked him to explain the meaning of the essay that he had read and Montanelli told him he would repeat it since he clearly did not understand. Hitting the table, the student cut him off and told him that as a matter of fact, if he had not understood Montanelli's essay, then it was Montanelli who was the imbecile and needed to change it. It was then that Montanelli realized that he, who had come from the authoritarian regime of Fascist Italy, had just had a confrontation with democracy.