Nicknamed ‘Il Cavaliere’ (The Knight) after receiving the Order of Benefit for Labour, Silvio Berlusconi, thrice Prime Minister, image and face of Italian capitalism – controlling the nation’s largest personal TV community, newspapers, publishing homes, promoting, and cinema – was a fixture of Italy’s political panorama for over thirty years.
Throughout this era, he led Italy from one political disaster to the subsequent, embodying a brand new (however no higher) mannequin of democracy constructed on persona, advertising and marketing, not-so-soft energy, conflicts of curiosity and preparations of doubtful legality, which earned him a document variety of trials (from a lot of which he was acquitted).
In 1994 Berlusconi based the political celebration Forza Italia – an ideal title for a soccer crew or a pizza – and introducing the nation – in addition to Europe – to a type of politics pushed by the logic of selling. This opened the stage to different politicians who knew how you can play with photographs, phrases, hyperbole, and off-colour humour. Berlusconi might not have invented something – definitely not populism – however he did reveal a neophyte’s knack in displaying that, sure, no matter is claimed, even whether it is grotesque and borderline unlawful, can ultimately be accepted, and, certainly, turn out to be fashionable. Trump and Bolsonaro definitely owe one thing to Berlusconi – as do all of the actions making an attempt to provide or return which means to the phrase ‘politics’.
As a cultural phenomenon, Berlusconi has definitely lengthened the checklist of Italian clichés (“pizza, spaghetti, mandolin, mafia, mamma”). Italians overseas and at dwelling – typically strongly against the system he represents – have been haunted by the sordid revelations of bunga-bunga and corruption, the ordinary reliance on cosmetic surgery, and different aberrations which have now entered the political lexicon, to not point out the nation-wide resurgence of homophobia and gender stereotypes, impacting the inhabitants as an entire.
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