How Silvio Berlusconi changed Italy, for better or for worse
Silvio Berlusconi’s death on Monday ended one of the longest, most profound and colorful eras in Italian politics, with ardent admirers and die-hard critics alike marking a lifetime of outrageous influence as something that split contemporary Italian history in the past. and after that.
From his origins as a real estate and media mogul, Mr. Berlusconi, who was 86 when he died, became the most dominant personality in the theatrical Italian landscape. He revolutionized not only Italian politics, but also sports, everyday life, the image of himself and popular culture – all through his private television channels – leaving an imprint or a bruise on almost everything he touched.
“Goodbye Silvio,” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a statement about her coalition partner, calling him “one of the most influential men in Italian history.” He will receive a state funeral in Milan Cathedral on Wednesday.
Even after his death, Mr. Berlusconi had the power to potentially destabilize Ms. Meloni’s political universe and governing coalition, of which his party, Forza Italia, is a part. small but critical pivot.
Mr. Berlusconi, who thought very highly of himself, seemed to believe, like much of Italy, that he would live forever. He recently gave his “biological age” as in his 50s, never anointing an heir to his centre-right Forza Italia party.
As a result, political analysts believe one of his children will act to keep the party, and possibly the coalition, together, or that it will fall apart without him, leaving Ms Meloni’s government at the start of a five-year term appears. , in doubt.
Such an outcome would be just the latest tremor that sent Berlusconi through the political system. While his health and political clout have declined in recent years, it can be argued that everything around him is products of his making, fashioned in support of or against the man commonly known as “The Knight.”
That included the political allies who eclipsed him, like Mrs. Meloni; the Machiavellian political operators who tried to co-opt him; even the anti-establishment opposition that tried – but never quite succeeded – to get rid of him.
His fans, who sang for years:Fortunately, there is Silvio”, saying he was a force of nature who modernized Italian politics, matured democracy and added capitalist dynamism to a creaking economy that was too dependent on government.
His detractors saw him as the personification of the country’s political and cultural decline, a corrupt businessman who entered politics to protect his business interests, a womanizing caricature of the Italian libertine who associated with despicable strongmen of Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya to Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
He embodied countless conflicting personas: the reformer who promised to liberalize the country, but then ruled as a populist. The family man whose long list of young companions, especially among so-called Bunga Bunga bacchanals, both scandalized the country and endeared him to aspiring Lotharios. America’s devoted ally and lover who became an apologist for Mr. Putin and his invasion of Ukraine. The candidate who, in a clear conflict of interest, used his television channels as a political cudgel.
Whether he changed Italy for better or for worse “was a very, very complicated question to answer,” says Giovanni Orsina, dean of the Luiss School of Government in Rome and the author of “Berlusconism and Italy: A Historical Interpretation.” It will probably be debated for at least as long as the three decades Mr Berlusconi has imprinted on the Italian imagination. What is certain is that he has changed Italy.
“The impact he had through television goes much deeper than an election cycle,” said Christian Rocca, the editor of Linkiesta, an Italian news outlet. Mr Rocca said Mr Berlusconi transformed the determined Italian programming “which was in color but could have been in black and white”, with American sports, soap operas, movies and a new Italian style of variety show adorned with beautiful women.
That cultural shift towards the spectacular and tawdry has not only remained on the air, but critics have argued that it has permeated all of Italian society, transforming the way people look and the aspirations and dreams of a generation of Italians who craved wealth and trust have changed. what Mr. Berlusconi, transactional and ambitious and ostentatious, stood for.
After the fall of communism, which had been the main dividing line in Italian politics for half a century, Mr Berlusconi took advantage of the collapse of the political establishment in a bribery scandal to “enter the field” of politics, as he famously called it. it said. Mr Berlusconi thus became Italy’s new dividing line.
“This was his great innovation,” said Mr. Rocca, “you were for or against, you couldn’t be indifferent.”
Mr. Berlusconi’s polarizing style has not remained confined to Italy, but has become a global trend, seen most clearly with Donald J. Trump in the United States, which in many ways mirrors his bombast.
Mr Berlusconi “modernized the tools of politics, that is leadership, television, communication,” Mr Orsina said. “He changed the political language.”
And he started doing just that, said Enrico Letta, the former Italian prime minister and center-left opponent of Berlusconi, by “changing Italians’ daily lives with commercial television,” giving them more choice. In return, those viewers gave Berlusconi “a huge reserve of votes”.
He also changed the way Italian politicians sounded. He exuded optimism, took advantage of exaggerated demonization by his critics, and perfected victimization. He painted all his critics red as communists, ushering in a belligerent campaigning style and delegitimization of institutions that would be distilled into the poisonous messages his enemies and acolytes flooded social media with over the past decade.
But even as Italian politicians across the spectrum paid tribute to Berlusconi on Monday, they began plotting next steps.
In recent months, Mr Berlusconi’s loyalists have been jousting to take over. They included Italy’s current foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, as well as Licia Ronzulli, a senator, who acted as Mr Berlusconi’s de facto nurse, and Marta Fascina, a girlfriend more than 50 years his junior, with whom he celebrated a wedding but officially did not. to marry.
“We have a duty, as Forza Italia, to keep going even if we are hurt,” said Mr. Tajani, adding that Mr. Berlusconi wanted the party to remain compact and in government. “To honor him and continue his project, we must look to the future. Forza Italia will be there.”
The former centre-left prime minister, Matteo Renzi, who apparently once saw Mr Berlusconi as a potential successor before he was cheated (after Mr Renzi cheated him), has tried to regain relevance by positioning himself as the heir to the moderate Italian center that Mr Berlusconi once controlled.
Many consider it an impossible mission. But Mr Renzi, a consummate political operator, has licked his chops at the chance to suck up Mr Berlusconi’s MPs and regain enough support to become vital in Italian politics, whether to overthrow Mrs. support or overthrow Meloni.
Ms Meloni said in a recent interview that Mr Berlusconi put her in a difficult situation with his womanizing reputation when she was a young minister in one of his governments. And Mr. Berlusconi’s clear support for Mr. Putin in the war in Ukraine became a political headache for her. (“For me, Silvio was a dear person, a true friend,” Putin said in a statement Monday.)
But now Mrs. Meloni, who honored his memory, had to keep his supporters in the fold.
The stability of the Italian government, analysts said, may depend on the decisions of Mr Berlusconi’s daughter, Marina, widely regarded as the sharpest in a family that has had succession feuds of its own.
“The question is whether Marina Berlusconi will intervene?” said Roberto D’Alimonte, a political scientist at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome. “The party will dissolve without the Berlusconi brand.”
“If she intervenes,” he said, or makes it clear that she’s running things behind the scenes, “the party has a chance to survive and the Meloni government won’t be particularly affected,” as the two would. synchronize. If Ms. Berlusconi, an executive in her father’s empire who apparently dislikes politics, stays away, he said, “the consequences will be greater.”
Her father did little without consequence.
Mr Rocca said that one story about Mr Berlusconi summed him up.
When he started out as a real estate magnate in Milan, he said, Mr Berlusconi wanted to build a housing complex that resembles a suburb and market it as an oasis of peace and tranquility.
But planes flying in and out of the nearby airport made that a hard sell. To divert the planes, Mr. Berlusconi built a hospital they couldn’t fly over, smearing more than a few palms. The hospital, San Raffaele, became a center of expertise and there he died Monday morning.
“That’s Berlusconi – entrepreneur, outlaw, politician,” he said. “But somehow it ended up being a good thing.”
Elisabetta Povoledo And Gaia Pianigiani reporting contributed.