The “Cavaliere” departs

Nicknamed ‘Il Cavaliere’ (The Knight) after receiving the Order of Merit for Labour, Silvio Berlusconi, three times Prime Minister, symbol and face of Italian capitalism – controlling the country’s largest private TV network, newspapers, publishing houses, advertising, and cinema – was a fixture of Italy’s political landscape for over thirty years.

During this period, he led Italy from one political crisis to the next, embodying a new (but no better) model of democracy built on personality, marketing, not-so-soft power, conflicts of interest and arrangements of dubious legality, which earned him a record number of trials (from many of which he was acquitted).

In 1994 Berlusconi founded the political party Forza Italia – a perfect name for a football team or a pizza – and introducing the country – as well as Europe – to a form of politics driven by the logic of marketing. This opened the stage to other politicians who knew how to play with images, words, hyperbole, and off-colour humour. Berlusconi may not have invented anything – certainly not populism – but he did demonstrate a neophyte’s knack in showing that, yes, whatever is said, even if it is grotesque and borderline illegal, can eventually be accepted, and, indeed, become popular. Trump and Bolsonaro certainly owe something to Berlusconi – as do all the movements trying to give or return meaning to the word ‘politics’.

As a cultural phenomenon, Berlusconi has certainly lengthened the list of Italian clichés (“pizza, spaghetti, mandolin, mafia, mamma”). Italians abroad and at home – often strongly opposed to the system he represents – have been haunted by the sordid revelations of bunga-bunga and corruption, the habitual reliance on plastic surgery, and other aberrations that have now entered the political lexicon, not to mention the nation-wide resurgence of homophobia and gender stereotypes, impacting the population as a whole.

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