It’s the ‘Second Coming’ of Berlusconi

The former Italy prime minister is presenting himself as a moderating force, because he has realised that his country’s politics has changed

he political career of former Italy prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has always been marked by the surreal, but perhaps never more so than now. With Italy’s national elections looming on March 4, the 81-year-old former prime minister — the man who more or less invented modern populism in the West — is now presenting himself as the consummate moderate.

He’s not just been anti-populist, but also loudly pro-European; not just a socially conscious liberal, but also a lambhugging animal lover. And far from being finished — a status conferred on him many times before — he is now seen as the favourite for victory in Italy’s coming election.

All this might seem absurd to anyone who has studied this man’s political and business career over the last 25 years or so. Didn’t he essentially write the crude anti-establishment playbook now being followed by United States President Donald Trump? Berlusconi created a party from nothing in 1994, and he based a series of election campaigns around a norm-defying, post-political, anti-party message linked to his personal success as a businessman and sporting entrepreneur, and his genius as a TV personality. He preached a diet of low taxes and less state, but also personal charisma and power.

The Berlusconi era, which divided Italians and baffled foreigners from 1994 until 2011, was anything but moderate. That was reflected in the many political scandals and legal travails he faced, with allegations ranging from corruption to sex with minors. (The resulting trials have thus far ended in only one final conviction, for tax evasion, in 2013.) It was also clear in his strained relations with his peers in Europe, who weren’t enamoured by his economic stewardship after the financial crisis of 2008. When Berlusconi was forced out of office in 2011 in the middle of the euro crisis, most commentators saw it as a move engineered from Brussels, with strong support in Paris and Berlin, due to his refusal to vigilantly abide by the European Union’s economic rules.

Berlusconi’s transformation is perhaps, in part, a late-life conversion to political propriety; he may have finally aged out of some aspects of his wild, fiery persona. But it’s also the latest expression of his strategic acumen. He once benefited from flouting the EU establishment, but now it’s an advantage to be seen wooing Eurocrats in Brussels. The Five Star Movement has stolen Berlusconi’s populist methods and modernised his tactics. Berlusconi rode to power as a master of television, while the movement treats the internet as the primary means of organising politics. (Berlusconi — or his team — is just beginning to see the potential of Twitter, but nobody could claim it’s his most natural medium.) The Five Star Movement is also more intensely anti-political than Berlusconi ever was. It claims to be neither on the Left nor Right (though its messaging is increasingly anti-immigrant), and it refuses all political alliances.

Berlusconi is now telling all and sundry that he is the only real bulwark against a Five Star Movement victory that would worry the rest of Europe, given the long record of anti-European pronouncements by Grillo’s movement.

A familiar face

But Berlusconi can also present himself as a moderating force within his own loose centre-right coalition. In part, that’s simply by virtue of his longevity — everyone in Italy can agree that he is a familiar face. But his moderate image also comes by way of comparison with his own partners.

The most dynamic, and frightening, figure in Italian politics today is Matteo Salvini, leader of the Lega Nord. Salvini has nationalised the Lega’s previously regionalist message, with a focus on strident and extreme anti-immigration propaganda. This has struck a chord with the many Italians who are frustrated that their country, given its long border on the Mediterranean Sea, has been bearing the brunt of the ongoing migration crisis linked to Syria and Africa. Moreover, neo-fascism, which has never gone away in the country since the Mussolini era, is making increased headway among many Italians.

That Berlusconi is now benefiting by comparison with the rise of neo-fascists is ironic, given that he was the first postwar mainstream leader to rehabilitate them during the 1990s. But the former prime minister seems to have rightly calculated that the Italian public would forget (or at least forgive) his own previous positions — from tensions with European leaders, to flirtations with xenophobia — if provided with a sufficient volume of new images on their television sets suggesting a strenuous commitment to contrary positions.

Will he be able to deliver? Of course not. He never has. But, in an important sense, it doesn’t matter. For Berlusconi, and the wider Italian political class, the important thing has long been to hang on to power; power for power’s sake has been the consummate ambition. In this aim, at least, Italian politicians have proved extremely efficient over the years. 2018 will be no exception.

— Washington Post