Berlusconi, beatified
Plus, a few sort-of-obituaries that are actually worth reading
Berlusconi e' morto. Berlusconi is dead. Berlusconi ist tot. Muerto. Mort. Since Monday morning, when the news first broke, I’ve been confronted with these words, or combinations of them, in multiple languages, virtually non-stop in my email, whatsapp and face-to-face conversations. Whatever you thought of the man, his politics, his personal and public ethics, Berlusconi is - or was - one of the defining figures of the past three decades of Italian culture. Rightly or wrongly, he was perceived around the world as a symbolic figurehead of the nation itself. And this alone is worth considering seriously.
Speaking personally: Berlusconi was always there in the background (and occasionally in the foreground) during my own journey towards Italy. As a teenager growing up in the UK in the mid-00s - long before the Trump era - I found myself perversely interested in this grotesque, clownish, ill-mannered, maverick. I was appalled, disgusted, and fascinated in equal measure. It's easy to forget now, when populism has become a household word, how singular Berlusconi once appeared. From The Economist’s media-war against his nepotistic, clientalist administrations to The Telegraph’s quasi-approving stance that "at least he wasn’t going to let the Germans push him around," Berlusconi was omnipresent in Europe’s public imagination. He transcended what 'politics' seemed to mean. He seemed to write the script anew even as he displayed the most archaic of traits: patriarchy, greed, the will to power.
Today, in the eyes of most international observers, any residual astonishment has gone. After limping from scandal to scandal to scandal for ten years, Berlusconi’s antics have been eclipsed by those of a new generation of right-wing populists. As “sovereignism” surges around the world, the Bunga Bunga jokes have gotten old, Italy’s economy has worsened, the moral crisis degraded even further. Today, Italy is utterly provincialised. A minor player on the world stage. In his last days, as he sat in the backbenches of Meloni’s government, all that was left of “Il Cavaliere” was a sad, increasingly isolated old man, struggling to cover up his irrelevance; a megalomaniac, obsessed with securing his legacy. A pretty boring, pretty predictable end - if you ask me.
Until this week, the moment came. Berlusconi is - finally - dead. And for the past few days Italians have been time-warped to a kind of back-to-the-future 2003. Yesterday, as the ex-PM’s coffin was marched in and out of Milan cathedral, crowds of Forza Italia devotees and AC Milan football fans sang the national anthem together. There were tears, costumes and melodramatic gestures. The newspapers, including sometimes critical publications, were filled with gushing tributes to the man. From headlines like “Ciao Cavaliere” (La Stampa) to “superstar” (Gazzetta dello Sport), to “the Italian dream” (Il messaggero) to the frankly baffling “he won” (La verita’), sentimental, conservative myopia is the name of the game right now.
This kind of revisionism is, clearly, nonsensical. Berlusconi was a misogynistic, racist, homophobic opportunist who courted fascists and sustained power thanks in part to the support of organized crime. He embodied the worst of Italy in just about every regard. I think these facts need to be confronted head on, and especially at a time of “national mourning” such as this. And yet, alas, as is so often the case, international coverage has been almost as misleading as the domestic stuff. POLITICO, for one, just ran a particularly irresponsible headline “The man who seduced an entire country” negating to mention that, for all the hype, Berlusconi actually never enjoyed a stable majority on his own terms but was entirely dependent on complex coalition politics to stay in power. Or how about The Washington Post? While the authors of “Berlusconi’s testosterone politics have been overtaken by women in Italy” are correct in asserting that, in quantitative terms, women’s access to employment actually increased during the Berlusconi years, they fail to seriously confront the qualitative nature of much of that work and the regressive cultural expectations that came with it.
And so on, and so on. I could go on. And while I’m tempted to list yet more pedantic correctives, I think it is probably useful, and more opportune to use this space to draw attention to a handful of pieces that have actually done a good job in evaluating what Berlusconi’s life and politics mean for Italy’s past, present and future. Because, whatever else one might say, there’s no denying Berlusconi’s spirit endures in ways that are complex and important to understand for anyone who is concerned with the current decline of liberal democracy in the West. Having read 30+ op-eds on this topic (you’re welcome) the few listed below are, to my mind, some of the most nuanced. The quotes, by the way, are for my own notebook and don’t necessarily reflect my opinion or overall analysis. Nevertheless, if you’re at all interested in gaining some knowledge beyond the mainstream obituaries, and in understanding some of the deeper issues at play: the links below are a great place to start.
Matteo Tiratelli – “Berlusconi Didn’t Pave the Way for Italian Fascism, Liberal Technocrats Did” (Novara Media) LINK
[Berlusconi] campaigned as an old-fashioned anti-communist but also as a moderniser whose only interest was material success. He described himself as an outsider – despite his billions, his ties to Craxi and his reliance on Christian Democrat politicians to bulk out his new party. He depicted himself as a martyr “persecuted by the judges”, but also as a winner who could get things done. Somehow, it worked.
David Broder – “Silvio Berlusconi Was the Iconic Political Figure of Our Times” (Jacobin) LINK
A focus on Berlusconi’s self-interested agenda and eccentric public persona can […] obscure his more specific effect on the party system. He shed light on this in a 2019 speech in which — already past his political prime — he boasted of his historical role in building the right-wing coalition. “It was us who legitimized and constitutionalized the Lega and the fascists,” he insisted, making a government with these forces in 1994 where previous parties had refused them as potential allies.
Leonardo Bianchi – “What Berlusconi really did to Italy: portrait of a tycoon who privatized a democracy” (Valigia Blu, ITA only) LINK
[Berlusconi’s] "million more jobs" actually resulted in the "Biagi law" which condemned entire generations to precarious employment. His "new Italian miracle" consisted of years of economic stagnation and culminated in the sovereign debt crisis of 2011. His much-vaunted celebration of "meritocracy" in fact consisted of drastic top-down cuts to research, schools and universities.
Phillip Ther – “Berlusconi: populist pioneer who rode Italy into the sand” (Social Europe) LINK
Aside from Lombardy, Piedmont and parts of Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany, Italy was a poor and structurally weak country even into the 1960s. Its wealth grew rapidly in the following three decades, especially in the northeast and central Italy. But this means that only a single generation has enjoyed the high standard of living largely taken for granted in Germany and the Netherlands, for instance. This might be one of the reasons Italians fell back into old behavioural patterns after the boom ended. [Under Berlusconi] family ties and clientelism grew more important again, and the role models for men and women became more regressive.
Non una di meno feminist collective – “𝐎𝐆𝐆𝐈 𝐍𝐎𝐍 𝐒𝐈𝐀𝐌𝐎 𝐈𝐍 𝐋𝐔𝐓𝐓𝐎, 𝐒𝐈𝐀𝐌𝐎 𝐈𝐍 𝐋𝐎𝐓𝐓𝐀!” (Facebook press release, ITA only) LINK
Today a state of “National mourning” has been proclaimed to remember a white, straight, cis, very rich man who has always flaunted sexism, homophobia, racism with which he has contributed to the cultural violence that has been poisoning our society for years. A man who personified hegemonic toxic masculinity, who was contemptuous of all bodies that were not within the norm and privileged. A man who has demonstrated to the country that this kind of masculinity is a “winning model”, that one can acquire power, that one can dispose of anything and anyone. Today we are not mourning, we are fighting!
Hannah Roberts – “Why Berlusconi’s death makes Meloni stronger” (POLITICO) LINK
Berlusconi’s death has the potential to strengthen Meloni. There are few other political homes available to Forza Italia MPs, or their voters, now the party’s future without its founding leader is uncertain […] while Meloni is seen as far more right-wing than Berlusconi, the pool of voters they competed for is the same. Many supporters of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia moved to Meloni’s Brothers of Italy last year […] The center-right voters in Italy share a fundamental set of values on most issues and on world view.
About Me
My name is Jamie Mackay (@JacMackay) and I’m an author, editor and translator based in Florence. I’ve been writing about Italy for a decade for international media including The Guardian, The Economist, Frieze, and Art Review. I launched ‘The Week in Italy’ to share a more direct and regular overview of the debates and dilemmas, innovations and crises that sometimes pass under the radar of our overcrowded news feeds.
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