Silvio Berlusconi Wasn't A Showman, Rebel, Or Even The Guy From 'Succession.' He Was A Real-Life Scumbag

C'mon, media!

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi died Monday at the age of 86, and if you want a preview of how the mainstream media might cover Donald Trump's demise, check out this headline from the New York Times : "Silvio Berlusconi, a Showman Who Upended Italian Politics and Culture, Dies at 86."

The sub-hed gushes, "He introduced sex and glamour to Italian TV and then brought the same formula to politics, dominating the country and its culture for more than 20 years."

Berlusconi wasn't some daring performer who constantly surprised us. He was a creep who was buddies with Vladimir Putin and once gifted the Russian dictator a set of bedsheets bearing the image of the two men shaking hands. Berlusconi played a key role in helping the far Right enter mainstream politics. He aligned himself with the separatist party Northern League and with the post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale party, which eventually produced the Brothers of Italy — the far-right party that glam fascist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni leads. (She served as the minister of youth in the last Berlusconi government.)

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 Italian fascism is demonstrably bad. However, the Guardian claims "the years that followed Berlusconi’s exit from office vindicated his political style, which combined extreme personality politics, a skillful use of visual media and an unashamed demagogy." See, Donald Trump is a lot like Berlusconi, so apparently if you're a terrible leader who inspires worse leaders, you're some kid of trendsetter.

C'mon, guys The Hollywood Reporter 

Well before Trump, Berlusconi presented himself as a "self-made entrepreneur” and not a career politician. He claimed he'd only entered politics in the first place to save his beloved country from leftism. He would make Italy great again. He was a master media manipulator like Trump, but that was easier for him because he owned most of the country'sprivate TV channels. He sought attention through gross and sensationalist stunts, and his "sense of humor" was also proto-Trumpian. Speaking to the New York Stock Exchange in 2003, he "joked" that a "another reason to invest in Italy is that we have beautiful secretaries." Some other famous bits include his comparing a German legislator to a Nazi concentration camp guard and suggesting that Italian dictator Benito Mussolini never actually killed anyone (he killed a lot of people) but merely sent his political opponents on "holidays."

Like Trump, Berlusconi's "billionaire populism" was a big sham. Oh, there was plenty of bluster, "culture war rhetoric," and shameless demagoguery but his actual domestic policies were just more tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation of labor.

The Guardian almost raves over how Berlusconi upended political norms — again very much like Trump — and ignored "institutional courtesy and politeness." He claimed he was a constant victim of biased judges and electoral authorities who were out to get him. He wasn't some rock star politician, though. His nine years in office (1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011) were mostly scandal-ridden.

He was accused of defamation, bribery, and soliciting sex from minors. He reportedly had sex orgies with young women (some were way too young) at his Villa San Martino in Arcore on the outskirts of Milan. They were known as "bunga bunga" parties, apparently in reference to a joke Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi once told Berlusconi. They were were close friends before Gaddafi was deposed and killed in 2011. Berlusconi had quite the bromances with brutal dictators.

Berlusconi was charged with paying for sex with a 17-year-old Moroccan nightclub dancer and later charged with paying 24 people to lie for him in that case. An Italian court acquitted him this February. There were more than 35 criminal court cases involving him, but the only trial that ended in a conviction was for tax fraud, false accounting and embezzlement. He was sentenced to four years in prison, but three years was covered by a pardon and the other was covered by "community service."

This paragraph from a 2013 New York Times article, regarding his one-year sentence for wiretapping a political opponent, seems eerily prescient today:

Mr. Berlusconi has been parrying prosecutors for decades, saying that the many criminal cases brought against him were just political attacks. “It is really impossible to tolerate a judicial persecution that has lasted 20 years and starts up again every time there are particularly complex moments in the country’s political life,” Mr. Berlusconi said in a note posted on his party’s Web site on Thursday afternoon, which reiterated calls for a reform of the judicial system.

If history is the only true justice leaders like Berlusconi will ever face, the media is not doing a great job holding him accountable.

[ Reuters / Guardian / New York Times ]

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