Whoever is born round cannot die square. The Italian proverb defines well the profile of Silvio Berlusconi Bossi (Milan, September 29, 1936-June 12, 2023). The leader who began singing ballads on the first Mediterranean cruises and ended up playing chess with the world’s all-powerful. In the middle, “a man, a desire for life, love and joy & rdquor ;, in the funeral words of the Archbishop of Milan who summed up with this sentence everything he could say. Gone was the Vatican warning about his private vices when they became a public allegory. But Berlusconi is yesterday. He has returned to the dust that he was. Today he is ash.
A friend of his friends, even if they were hardly recommended, ‘Il Cavaliere’ has dragged the controversies that illustrated his life to his coffin. In front of the Duomo where the state funeral was held, chants of support for what he was mixed with criticism of what he founded. The ‘hooligans’ of Milan were confused with the ‘mama chicho’ chanting their endless party broadcast live. This inspired Berlusconi to an important part of Italian society. A permanent carnival air that more than anticipating Lent urged an endless Easter. That of the resurrection of a country that resignedly abandoned black and white to address the essential color with which to enjoy life. It has been written by Antonio Scurati, the author of ‘M. The son of the century ‘, the best study on Mussolini, the great Italian influence of the 20th century, whose witness, he says, Berlusconi picked up to be the country’s most prominent figure from the early stages of the 21st century to the present day.
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A trump before trump, it was said when the North American tycoon broke into politics and antecedents were sought for his way of proceeding. A referent for the liar Boris Johnson, as he wrote in 2003 despite corruption charges already hanging over the populist billionaire owner of fininvest. An empire valued at 6,000 million euros built thanks to vision, persistence, daring, seduction, threat and the buying of wills. Elements that he brought together in a sea of crossed interests that today is seen as the compass of authoritarian leaders whom justice is not always able to subdue. Except that in the case of Silvio Berlusconi, his people skills, his personal sympathy, his habitual impudence, his paternalism, his homophobia and his innate security forged a archetype turned into funny image of Italy for decades. For better and for worse. Concita De Gregorio, a journalist for ‘La Repubblica’, concludes that this is no longer the time for a single person to want to solve everyone’s problems. But the victorious Berlusconi wanted to do it. In his first term, he signed a contract with Italy, forcing himself to review his compliance annually before the cameras. He introduced himself, yes, but he hid the deception. In the range of excuses, imaginative justifications coexisted with the guilt of the old and sad political, business and intellectual elite for resisting letting in the fresh and cheerful air that he represented.
Seen now, and although it hurts his opponents, he succeeded. He turned advertising into political language and replaced the citizen with the client. And this is the trend of the European right. All.