Silvio Berlusconi



I don't need to go into office for the power. I have houses all over the world, stupendous boats... beautiful airplanes, a beautiful wife, a beautiful family... I am making a sacrifice.

Silvio "Bunga Bunga" Berlusconi, a.k.a "Il Cavaliere", was an Italian lounge singer, media mogul, and career criminal politician, having served three terms as Prime Minister. He was the leader of Forza Italia (literally Let's Go, Italy!), a party made in the image and likeness of the founder, which is currently tied with Salvini's Northern League (Lega Nord) and Meloni's Brothers Of Italy (Fratelli D'Italia). Silvio held his country hostage for 25 years and did this because he had a and enough money to throw at any problem.

He paved the way for "outsider" rabble-rousing in Italy before being emulated on a grander scale by Trump in America. Both were unqualified for the jobs they sought or held, never shut up, had head-scratching support, and would ultimately fail miserably, What, Trump won? but they were such a trainwreck that you couln’t help but tune in. Didn't matter, it was just 4 years. Wait, Bunga Man was one of their longest-serving leaders? Damn. Strangely, he also owned Italian soccer giants AC Milan, and his particular brand of extravagance saw them win 8 Italian Championships (scudetto) and five European Cups/UEFA Champions Leagues He would later on (in 2018) own AC Monza, which was promoted twice from Serie C to Serie A in only 2 seasons.

Zombie King
He's had so many face-lifts, his face has moved to the top of his head, you have to get on a step-ladder to watch him lie.

Umberto Eco wrote an essay on the success of Mike Bongiorno, one of Italy's most famous personalities. Berlusconi was no different: the manifestation of a proud and widespread mediocrity which made Mike the god of Italian television. (The pair in the eighties.)

What was behind Berlusconi? The failure of the Italian First Republic in the first place. Then, the implosion of the center-left who could neither put forward a coherent labor stance nor move firmly into a pseudo-Blairite pro-business orbit. Silvio began to steal parliamentarians from the League and other right-wing parties, attracting them to FI. He offered a change from the endless coalition collapses and deadlocked and short-lived governments and campaigned on a popular distaste for politicians. Of course, he had to say it after.

Since B. looked into Italian politics, they have stopped having a center-right worthy of the name. This is demonstrated by the fact that FI failed to cultivate a person worthy of taking the reins from him. So much of this is the fault of Berlusconi and of his lacchè: if you create a party in which mutual benefit is the catalyst, then you can not expect anything else.

Can't shear the Cavalier?


Italians need someone like him because he is just like them. Everybody has a mistress. Everybody cheats on taxes. Everybody does something illegal because it’s impossible to live legally.

He re-united the Right under his banner while the Left was shattered into a thousand pieces and built a house of cards to justify his crimes and avoid prison.


 * He was at one point the richest man in Italy, though we still don't know how and by whose investments he became so successful. He still controlled one of the worst broadcast panoramas in all of Italy: Mediaset, technically owned by his son.


 * The opposition had no chance against him alone because his ability to reach the electorate was vastly superior to theirs. He owned 3 of the 7 most-viewed TV channels, with 3 of those being state-owned, so in effect when he was running the government he controlled 6 out of the 7.  There was a lot of subtle advertising on his channels (reality TV mostly); he perpetuated the idea that anyone can become a star, which is the subject of a documentary about his reign, Videocracy.


 * In addition, he controlled two newspapers, Libero and Il Giornale, which fully supported him and printed all kinds of defamations. Il Giornale is run by his somehow-sleazier brother, Paolo.


 * His membership with . You can't imagine how much dirt was discovered about other candidates pre-election, and yet magically he appeared like Jesus Christ Superstar, without a whisper about his past (and there was a lot to cover). He even hosted a mob hitman in his villa for years, either as a mandatory favor to someone or, according to others, for Berlusconi's own safety. Mangano "tended the stables", but he was put there as Silvio's bodyguard.
 * He saved AC Milan from bankruptcy and, in his tenure as owner, won five European Cup/Champions Leagues including the only back-to-back winners for over 25 years (his appropriation of "Forza Italia" is analogous to "Go, Bears!"). In 2012, he bought Balotelli, a football superstar—implying that if their dying team could experience rebirth, Italy could too. Some polls reported that signing Balotelli got him 400,000 votes.
 * According to Alexander Stille, Berlusconi crafted an image for himself as an idealized Italian everyman. Young men admired him for being a clever fox. Old people knew he was rich and was therefore resistant to bribery. A successful businessman should be a good steward of the economy. Even his age was an asset, as the median age in Italy is 50.


 * The problem was that the average Italian is like Berlusconi. The average Italian will not pay taxes if they can avoid it and will vote for the party which offers them material gain in the short term. This is due mainly to historical causes (Machiavelli, Borgia, etc.), and it's a reaction to the in-your-face corruption they are confronted with every day. B. had educated Italians to exploit loopholes to survive, because “così fan tutte” (everyone does it). He actually said that.


 * It was always somebody else's fault. His past governments were always raising expenditures to buy consensus, creating huge budget issues, while he would only marginally raise taxes to compensate and blame someone else in the process. The discourse was always about him and how to remove obstacles that were making it difficult for him to make their lives as good as his already was. Obstacles being: opposition parties, immigrants, "elites", free press (he complained that his enemies enjoyed a "media monopoly."), and generally anybody who didn't agree with him, didn't find his jokes funny, didn't find him handsome, etc.  Moreover, he managed to convince many that the the judiciary was not impartial and that he was being persecuted for political reasons.    This allowed many voters to dismiss his trials as part of the political battle. All the sex scandals against him were started either by people jealous of his success or jilted women he rejected.
 * He called himself "liberal." Of course, it was never "liberal" in the context of American politics, and what he called "liberal" may have been a classic version or a form of conservatism. He played on the fear of the Communist Party (as if they still had one) who were coming for your money and to take your home away from you. He used the clever strategy of referring to his party as "us moderates" and everyone else as "communists."
 * Italians didn't vote for him. Forza Italia polled at 20%, and 25% abstained, which left just 15% of the electorate. The problem was an election law—written by him, of course —which split the opposition into many different parties.
 * Berlusconi made up for being a douchebag by giving out tax reductions. He promised to repeal a much-loathed property tax imposed by the Monti government. Unlikely as it may sound, this was a powerful move since most Italians are homeowners. He even went so far as to offer them reimbursement of all property tax (€5 billion) paid in 2012. All this in a country with a public debt of around €2.5 trillion. He pulled stunts like the tax reimbursement letter, promising to pay them out of his own pocket —which was just electoral spam but led lots of clueless seniors into believing they were miraculously getting their tax money back thanks to him. Crowds of people lined up at post offices to demand their "refund forms", even though no such forms existed. It was also written in such a way that implied you had to have voted for Berlusconi to be eligible.
 * Berlusconi knew the tricks to get media attention. The media and public obsession with the guy kept growing uglier as time went on, and the debates for and against were so low and cheap that everyone forgot how to think critically. The culprit was not so much the media but the opposition parties themselves that failed to present people with a solid alternative—or when they did (with Prodi) it didn't last long because the debate was focused entirely around Berlusconi and his supporters until they become deaf even to reasoned arguments. In the end, Italy only got rid of Silvio because Europe helped...a lot.


 * He said Mussolini did good, Then he suggested that the EU was run by Nazis. Merkel riposted with "impotent dwarf" and added "at least I saved my country instead of screwing it", though with more decorum. In the end, she helped see to his downfall.

Slime trail
Apart from the fact that he was still present in the political arena after leaving office (though much weakened), the ruins he left are still there. David Lane's book highlights, among other Berlusconisms, acquiescence to organized crime, official corruption, and a willingness to use the authority of the state to soften restrictions on corporate wrongdoing. Women saw their role in society go back about 30 or 50 years.

He also left behind a system of taxes so unworkable that Italians are leaving the country just because of it. Ironic, given that the Florentines invented banking.

He did make some cosmetic reforms to Italy: harsher prison terms for Mafiosos, boost in infrastructure investment, more work flexibility, ban on smoking inside public spaces, and so on. His public spending on gambling licenses were enormous and unsupported by taxes, as he lowered them. At the same time, his Keynesian approach to the economy acted as a sleep-inducing agent during the debt crisis.

He destroyed Italian academia in order to make left-wing people unemployed, fueling radicalization on both fronts. But it's O.K. because all you really need for teaching is a smock. All that and constant youth unemployment (unless you count pimping out their daughters).

Tangerine sex machine
He's the sort of guy who, if you told him to go fuck himself, would give it a shot.

It's better to like beautiful girls than to be gay.

What sex did go on was with mostly young women: some of them hired, some of them groupies, and some of them looking to move up in the world, i.e. servicing him and his wrinkled old cronies (see his education minister, who's still in office and is terribly unqualified).

Knight in shining Teflon
I am without doubt the person who's been the most persecuted in the entire history of the world and the history of man. Berlusconi stood trial for mob collusion, false accounting, tax fraud, bribery of cops/witnesses/judges/senators, embezzlement, drug trafficking, wiretapping, abuse of office, and may or may not have bailed an underage hooker named "Ruby the Heart Stealer" out of prison. According to his own statements, he spent $300 million in legal fees. Now that he's dead, the legal industry in Italy might collapse.

He was found guilty in 1 out of 32 cases, with many cases stopped due to amnesty or change of laws—and he himself changed them.

In 2013, Berlusconi was sentenced to seven years, which was overturned on appeal, and he was banned from holding public office.

Il Douche
"Bunga-bunga" started as a joke between him and Colonel Gadaffi, whom he counted as a friend. Basically, it was people sitting around drinking and snorting coke while he banged on his keyboard and sang. But they were classy dinners!

Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the original, is a member of his party. She rode into power on his coattails and became something of an international celebrity: hot chick on a motorcycle, etc. She once claimed that "fascists are better than faggots".

Vladimir Putin provided Berlusconi with a little of that political leverage that he lost. Silvio provided him with the best bitches, parties, and food. It's understandable why the two were friends.

A man like Berlusconi breeded even more extremist figures. Many of his disillusioned voters probably went on to vote for the League or F5: populists with no feasible plan and contempt for basic manners and basic education, coupled with a strongman attitude. Salvini's party is a leak of Le Pen's worst policies: all statism and sovereignty, and other stuff that was typical of the Roman fascists. Beppe Grillo is head of the Five Star Movement (MS5), who believe in chemtrails and mermaids.

Look who's back, back again
The Centre-Right Coalition was born when Salvini was ahead of Forza Italia in the polls. After a couple of months, the situation was already upside down. Silvio aimed to redo, with Meloni/Salvini in place of Casini/Bossi. He could conceivably have taken power again, together with his fascist allies.

Every word of his campaign was practically a buzzphrase. A vow to deport 600,000 immigrants if elected; the usual call from a man of iron to Take Back Control/Make Italy Great Again; the promise of welfare benefits (wonder what he planned to gut to make that happen); a new flat tax which did not have to finance itself thanks to the incredible Italian entrepreneurial spirit; Salvini cloaking his own fascism with fine words, and B. distancing him from racial violence, qualifying them as people who instead seek chaos.

The Democrats inherited the problem from his unconscionable administration, and now stop the boats was the ladder they used to reelect Forza Italia, who didn't do it when they were in government: When the US and France and Britain were playing Lords of War in Libya, he joined in the bombing  and signed the  It did not take a genius to guess that the migrants would arrive there first, rather than France or Germany.

Berlusconi demonstrates his "technique"
Ok, so that's actually from a low-budget German comedy film entitled Bye Bye Berlusconi made in 2006. The odd part wasn't that Italians were punk'd, so much as they weren't surprised at all; they just thought it was him being himself.

It's worth noting that he never called Angela Merkel an "unfuckable lard arse"; that's an apocryphal quote. It is still widely-circulated, and he had to issue a denial on BBC Newsnight.

Top quotes
He's every Italian's embarrassing uncle!

Another reason to invest in Italy is that we have beautiful secretaries.

As always, I work without interruption and if occasionally I happen to look a beautiful girl in the face, it's better to like beautiful girls than to be gay.

I am taller than Putin and Sarkozy... I don’t understand why all the caricaturists portray me as a dwarf, whereas the others are allowed a normal height.

They should see it like a weekend of camping.

...handsome, young and also suntanned...

Mussolini never killed anyone, Mussolini sent people on holiday as exile.

...Mussolini, in so many other aspects, did good.

According to a survey, when asked if they would like to have sex with me, 30 per cent said, 'Yes,' while the other 70 per cent replied, 'What, again?'.

...I shall put you forward for the role of [a Kapo guard], you would be perfect... for the Germans, concentration camps never existed.

I had to use all my playboy tactics, even if they have not been used for some time.

I'm the most persecuted man in history.

I am the best president in 150 years of Italian history. Nobody has achieved more than I did, thus I have every reason to make this quote.

I said to Sali [Berisha], we'd make exceptions for anyone bringing over beautiful girls. You know, I'm single now.

When we went to the reception room and I did not see a bidet...I said 'I want to teach these African motherfuckers that foreplay is also important.'

Videos

 * Brooker on Berlusconi
 * What Merkozy thought of him
 * His greatest hits