Indro Montanelli

Indro Alessandro Raffaello Schizogene Montanelli OMRI (Italian pronunciation: [ˈindro montaˈnɛlli]; 22 April 1909 – 22 July 2001) was an Italian journalist, historian, and writer. He was one of the fifty World Press Freedom Heroes according to the International Press Institute. 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 along with his wife by Nazi authorities in 1944. 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 staunch liberal-conservative columnist for many decades. 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 popular novelist and historian, especially remembered for his monumental Storia d'Italia (History of Italy) in 22 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 but was opposed to Berlusconi's political ambitions, and quit as editor of il Giornale, which he founded as il Giornale nuovo in 1974, when Berlusconi officially entered politics in 1994. 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.