There’s one thing you can’t say about Silvio Berlusconi: that he was boring. He was considered the “father of all populists”, who was admired and loved in his country to the end, but also hated. It goes without saying that he considered himself a gifted politician.
The positive voices outweigh the Italian newspapers. writes like this La Republica “The arch-Italian leader who invented populism”: He had sought immortality in every gesture of his life and above all in the cult of himself, as if the ruler’s myth could produce it and the exercise of commands could guarantee it. And yet Silvio Berlusconi also had to give up and ended his spectacular life in the hospital, outside the only true theater he had chosen to portray his existence. That villa in Arcore that had become the scene of Italian politics for twenty years. Castle of its diversity, the eccentric scenario of an anomaly transformed into leadership.
The Corriere della Sera highlights the “true achievement of Berlusconi”: Berlusconi’s real achievement was getting the majority of Italians to identify with him. (…) But the average Italian believed him; and not because – as one of his most famous maxims says – he was like a twelve-year-old boy who didn’t even sit at the school’s reception desk. He believed him because he found things in Berlusconi that he considered his own: mistrust of the left, of the state, of the tax authorities, of the judiciary, of the parties. And the establishment that Berlusconi, despite his wealth and success, did not belong to, at least initially. (…) At the same time, Berlusconi also represented the restlessness, the energy, the Italians’ impatience with rules (…) and the ability to transform themselves into entrepreneurs. Other leaders – obviously Mussolini, but not only him – wanted to change the Italians. Berlusconi liked the Italians the way they are.
Also commented positively Il Messagero the work of the Cavaliere: he talked as long as he could about politics. And that could only be so, because Berlusconi, in his own way, was the man who changed Italy. With politics, of course, but also with commercial television. “I brought this city into a new era, I made it bright and modern,” Silvio always boasted. And he’s not wrong. Il Cavaliere changed Italy by demonstrating that the old parties were no longer needed.
The standard explains Berlusconi’s populism: After 1994, the basically rather apolitical Berlusconi absorbed everything that was looking for a new political home between the center and the extreme right of the spectrum like a political vacuum cleaner: he recycled run-down socialists and Christian democrats in his Forza Italia; he made the post-fascists, then led by Gianfranco Fini, socially acceptable; he brought the managers of his advertising company Publitalia and the show stars of his private broadcasters into government. He promised the electorate that he would run the country like a stock corporation, of which you, the citizens, would be the shareholders. A catchy slogan – but in truth Berlusconi only ever thought about his own dividends: he governed Italy as if it were a family business and self-service shop.
Picture explains how much Berlusconi polarized the country, but also how vain and self-absorbed Berlusconi was: Italy mourns the loss of Silvio Berlusconi, one of the most influential figures in post-war Italy. About an incredibly successful media entrepreneur and football president. But also about the most controversial politician of his generation, who was accused of corruption until he resigned as prime minister. Whose understanding of Kremlin friend Vladimir Putin (70) and whose aggressive war cost him a lot of sympathy in the last months of his life. (…) Which man wears heels in his shoes to appear taller, can be lifted and hair transplanted? The desire to be admired is Berlusconi’s most obvious characteristic, his drive, his life force. Every two sentences he speaks of achievements, merits, of all the victories against his supposedly hate-driven enemies of the “left”, none of whom can hold a candle to him. He speaks of himself like his own fan club president.