“There is little to gain, there is much to risk. Let’s go on an adventure, get on board and leave“. With these words, addressed to the journalists he chose individually and knew personally, Indro Montanelli effectively consecrated the departure of the long journey of “The newspaper”, who turned fifty today. While many smart and flexible politicians and intellectuals in the mid-1970s raised their voices by praising the fashions carried along by the long wave of 1968 and the protests, the “silent” majority of Italians, who were moderate, had no home. It was the brilliant master of Fucecchio who gave it to him: and he did it with a different daily by everyone else, against everyone else.
When Montanelli founded the Giornale he began to wage a battle against that part of Italy that believed theadvance of communism, flirted with street protests – when not with terrorism – fanned the flames of trade union struggles, denied the market economy, justified the violence of the class struggle. And so it was that, after Indro’s immediate dismissal from Corriere della Sera by Piero Ottone who had now moved inexorably to the left, that “adventure” which lasted (but only for the moment) half a century began. Vittorio Macioce thus moderated the last panel of this one-day event at the IBM Studios in Milan dedicated to exactly five decades of our daily newspaper: “That damned 1974” is the title of the public debate which featured Michele Brambilla, editorialist of Il Giornale, the journalist Domizia Carafoli, the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiulianoand our Quirinalist Massimiliano Scafi.
Carafoli was involved in judicial matters at the time and was at the newspaper for 28 years: from 1980 to 2008. “In my memory, ’74 was the year in which we moved from slogans to facts and we got used to having blood on our sidewalks“, he says about the years of lead, when the mainstream press didn’t notice the phenomenon that was happening and tried to hide it by talking about “self-styled Red Brigades” or “internal feuds“In a certain sense we lived in a very strange era pretending that everything was normal, but that it wasn’t normal.” In that context “that newspaper found the strength to carry on and absolutely smelled of freedom”. Montanelli was a “director-non-director”: there was a lot of confidence with the editors, so much so that Indro once invited Domitia to dress better.
According to Michele Brambilla, what happened fifty years ago was a “masterpiece of non-conformism and courage to go against the grain“. The wave of protest rises and the whole great bourgeois conservative liberal press “pursues this revolution in an uncritical manner that goes back in time to Marxism Leninism. Many intellectuals signed appeals in favor of revolution and armed struggle such as Umberto Eco“. Montanelli is not willing to follow this wave and decides to found a “newspaper of great freedom and of extraordinary level“. An in-depth vertical newspaper that didn’t copy and paste the agencies, but carried out investigations or in-depth analysis. But how did the farewell to the Corriere come about?”That newspaper was no longer himself, and Ottone saw in Montanelli a cumbersome personality who could no longer remain inside that house: he discussed it with the publisher, he was kicked out without even granting him the farewell editorial“. It was a great disgrace.
Scafi began in ’74 as a shop boy writing a six-line piece. “I never remember having an indication of what I should write“, he says. As much as many might think that Montanelli could have a cold area, but in reality he was very easygoing.” He also made jokes: “He once proposed that I become a Vatican correspondent because ‘the cardinals might like a blond guy like you’“. It was exactly the opposite of what you might think: “A very affectionate man“, generous and not at all attached to money or unkind”. Now a sort of nostalgia for that atrocious decade seems to have returned – especially in universities: Scafi does not believe that we can move from words to facts: “The world has literally changed since then“. But Carafoli warns: “Be careful, it’s not that conceivable cross that thin red line“.
Minister Sangiuliano, who feels part of the existential-cultural community of the Giornale, recalls other moments in which Montanelli had taken other uncomfortable positions: like when he was the only one to praise the president Ronald Reagan. “The newspaper was the only one that reported the genocide in Cambodia perpetrated by Khmer Rouge“, states government representative Meloni. “He was a anarchist-conservative exactly as his teacher Giuseppe Prezzolini was – he adds -. La Voce at the beginning of the 20th century represented a true avant-garde as the world wars were approaching and Il Giornale took up that legacy, representing a real continuity. An irreverent imaginary spirit that comes from afar and which then also involved Feltri, Belpietro and Sallusti“.
That same anarchist-conservative spirit is also present in the current national executive: “I think of the exhibition on Tolkien for which the left attacked me, but then some of their mayors secretly called me to get information“. “Who is a representative of the newspaper that you particularly liked, besides Montanelli?“, asks Macioce. San Giuliano has no doubts: Enzo Bettizza.
