How Silvio Berlusconi’s sleazy populism paved the way for Trump and Johnson
Silvio Berlusconi was a cruise-ship crooner turned media billionaire mogul who rose to become one of Italy’s richest men, and gained infamy around the world for his bunga bunga parties, not to mention a long list of corruption charges.
But the biggest legacy of Berlusconi, the former three-time prime minister who died aged 86 today, was to pioneer a new style of sleazy populist politics that was subsequently adopted by the likes of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump.
“Berlusconi was an absolute innovator,” Lorenzo Catellani, professor of political science at Rome’s LUISS university, tells i. “He broke the old political order, opening the way for something the political world had never seen before.”
“Berlusconi won so often because of his charisma,” he says. “He resembled Trump in two ways: by battling the political and intellectual establishment, and by presenting himself as the extraordinary representative of the people.”
Key to his political survival was to depict judicial trials as plots by political enemies, thus foreshadowing Mr Trump’s and Mr Johnson’s blistering attacks on US and UK courts and attempts to undermine democracy.
The court cases stacked up over the years, with Mr Berlusconi variously being accused of crimes including embezzlement, extortion, tax fraud, money laundering, mafia collusion and underage prostitution. He reportedly paid millions of euros over the years to silence those involved in his bunga bunga sex parties – notorious erotic gatherings held at his villa in Milan, in which young women stripped off, gave lapdances, sometimes in private, and took part in the “bunga bunga” ritual.
He paved the way to Italy’s current right-wing government, Vittorio Sgarbi, the art critic turned politician and veteran Berlusconi ally, tells i. “Without Berlusconi, today we would not have [Italian Prime Minister] Giorgia Meloni,” he says.
After a spell singing on cruise ships, Berlusconi made his money in construction, going on to buy the right-wing newspaper Il Giornale in 1977, and the AC Milan football club in 1986, before launching the Mediaset television company, which gained popularity with its scantily clad show girls, in 1994.
The mogul entered politics later that year, capitalising on “Tangentopoli” – the nationwide judicial corruption investigation that decimated the Christian Democracy and Communist parties – to win over disillusioned voters with his fresh vision.
Berlusconi soared to victory in elections in 1994, becoming prime minister of a right-wing coalition that also included the National Alliance, the precursor to Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.
His pro-free trade effectively reshaped Italy’s shattered political terrain, opening the way in Italy for a new kind of right-wing politics. “Berlusconi brought Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan’s liberal democratic vision after a lapse of ten years,” Professor Castellani says.
“The trials against Berlusconi were grotesque and unprecedented,” claims Mr Sgarbi. “Berlusconi waged war in the political trenches against the violent criminals in the magistrature. What they had done amounted to a coup.”
However, the shadow of Mr Berlusconi’s close relationship with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, hung over the Italian politician following the escalation of the Ukraine War. On Monday, Mr Putin honoured Mr Berlusconi in a post on the Kremlin’s website as “a true friend”.
Throughout his political career, Mr Berlusconi pushed for closer economic ties between Russia and Europe, especially through the gas trade. “Berlusconi and Angela Merkel had few things in common, ” Castellani says. “But on their strategic vision with Russia they were quite close.”
