Gianpaolo Pansa, a journalist who went against the grain, dies

A writer, polemicist, and commentator, Giampaolo Pansa, who died in Rome at the age of 84, chronicled Italian society and politics with acumen, exposing the vices of the ruling class and, above all, offering a counter-current perspective that always stimulated debate and reflection. Just think of the journalistic and historiographical controversies that have always accompanied his books dedicated to the Resistance, above all Il sangue dei vinti, the 2003 essay on the crimes of partisans committed after 1945 that earned him accusations of revisionism. His numerous scoops, for example on the Lockheed scandal, but also expressions that have entered history such as the 'White Whale', that is, the Christian Democracy, or the 'Bestiary', the title of one of his very famous columns. A Piedmontese from Casale Monferrato and a student of Alessandro Galante Garrone, Pansa began his journalism career with La Stampa, covering, among other things, the Vajont disaster. He then moved on to Il Giorno, Il Messaggero di Roma, Il Corriere della Sera (a daily newspaper with which he had recently returned to work), and again to Repubblica and L'Espresso, with which he collaborated from 1977 to 2008, when he controversially left the Espresso Group, in disagreement with its editorial line. Since then he has written for Il Riformista, Libero, Panorama and The Post Internazionale. A passion for the years of fascism and the Resistance that developed since his degree thesis, Pansa has signed countless novels and historical essays. In 2001 he published Le notti dei fuochi, about the Italian civil war fought between 1919 and 1922, as well as I figli dell'Aquila, the story of a volunteer soldier in the army of the Italian Social Republic. He then signed the cycle of the vanquished, books dedicated to the violence committed by partisans against fascists during and after the Second World War: The Blood of the Vanquished (winner of the Cimitile Prize 2005), Unknown 1945, The Big Lie and The Vanquished Do Not Forget (2010). In 2011 he signed Poco o niente. We were poor. We'll Be Poor Again, in which he portrays the Italy of the humble between the late 19th and early 20th centuries through the stories of his grandparents and parents. And also The Dirty War of the Partisans and Fascists (2012) and Blood, Sex and Money. A counter-history of Italy from 1946 to today. A provocateur to the very end, his most recent books include a self-portrait entitled Quel fascista di Pansa (That Fascist Pansa) and a pamphlet on Salvini entitled “Irreverent Portrait of an Authoritarian Seducer.” Pansa died in Rome, attended by his wife, the writer Adele Grisendi. In 2016 he lost his son Alessandro, former CEO of Finmeccanica who died of illness at the age of 55. A pain from which he had never recovered.