Berlusconi’s Italy

Over the past few months, I’ve been making my way through Alexander Stille’s The Sack of Rome: Media + Money + Celebrity = Power = Silvio Berlusconi, which traces Berlusconi’s rise in business to his three stints as Prime Minister. Most of us can agree that the American system of politics is far from perfect, but reading this book gave me an insight into just how broken a system can become.

Rome goes into detail about Berlusconi’s beginnings as a real estate developer in 1960s Milan, which are the beginning of not-so-transparent dealings. From there, Berlusconi enters the fledgling commercialized television industry and continues to build his empire, creating the media group Fininvest in 1978. He added the soccer team AC Milan to his possessions in 1986, which is amongst the most profitable in the world.

A failed system
The book is well-researched and handles the complex legal and social issues so that novices to Italian policy can understand how deeply upsetting Berlusconi’s rule has been. The flaws in the Italian justice and legal system are particularly evident: the huge conflict of interest of a Prime Minister controlling most of the television and newspapers of a country, then getting Parliamentarians elected to create laws effecting this media; the inability of the Italian government to eliminate corruption; the ties between government officials and the Mafia; the statute of limitations in Italian court cases that encourage the accused to drag a trial on for as long as possible to make the statute run out; and the immunity that senators have, causing people to run for political office to avoid trial, just to name a few. It has all the makings of a great political drama once shady alliances and offshore bank accounts come to light (the billions of startup funds for Fininvest have never been identified) and I’m not even going to talk about Berlusconi’s numerous gaffes and a personality that is nowhere near what you would expect from a lead elected official.

Repeat something enough, and it’s true
Television plays an essential role in Berlusconi’s power. He once claimed that, “If something isn’t on TV, it doesn’t exist.” In a country where over 70% of Italians get their “news” from television, this is true. Berlusconi made an effort to turn the public broadcaster RAI into another mouthpiece while expanding his own Mediaset channels to further his agenda. Somehow, this is acceptable.

In the times leading up to one of the elections, opposition figures were faced with a dilemma. Public television is not permitted to show any political advertising, so in order to advertise, they had to give money to Berlusconi’s companies to buy advertising space. They chose not to and were trounced. Technically, public stations are supposed to devote equal amounts of time to the candidates, but the figures were not even close: Berlusconi dominated the airwaves.

In 2001, he also sent “Una Storia Italiana,” to 12 million households, which was a biography mostly in the form of glossy pictures that cost between $25 - $100 million to produce (p. 252). He did this because a law designed to reduce his rule of the media was passed which banned all television advertising for the upcoming political campaign. He circumvented it by publishing and distributing his political history.

Berlusconi is not only active in television but print media, and the book also details how his friends are systematically rewarded and enemies punished using the various arms of his power. Many good editors and news producers have suffered under his tight grasp. Democracy cannot function without a free press, and more and more Italians are rightfully losing their trust in the media because they are told one thing but experience something very different in real life.

Sports and the Collective Consciousness
After Berlusconi bought Milan, the club he followed his whole life, in 1986, the team turned around thanks to huge investments to sign exceptional players. Berlusconi played up the success of his squad and used it for political purposes, indicating that if he could make Milan a successful team, there wasn’t anything else he couldn’t do. He played into cultural narratives that your average Italian could appreciate: a boy buying his childhood team and leading it to glory (oh, did I mention that Berlusconi and his father would bond over their love of AC Milan?), and the power of the national pastime, soccer. Soccer was such a catapult that when Berlusconi formed his political party in the 1990s, he named it “Forza Italia,” which just so happens to be what fans cheering the national team chant. Coincidence? I think not.

That looks familiar
Berlusconi is no isolated political figure. People voted for Berlusconi because of a power vacuum in Italian politics; general disdain for the left; the culture’s general lack of concern for conflict of interest issues and that a large percentage of people are self-employed which sways them to vote conservative (263-265). People voted for him even though he:

“single-handedly derailed the national corruption investigation known as Operation Clean Hands; turned back the clock on the war against the Mafia; set a series of troubling precedents for mixing private and public affairs and created a politicized media that in many ways anticipated developments in the United States and elsewhere” (320).

In a brilliant finish to the book, Skille demonstrates the similarities between Italian life under Berlusconi and American life under Bush and the resurgent right.

Skille’s observations:
1. Because television is critical to political success, money becomes even more necessary. Skille mentions Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, Michael Bloomberg, etc. (328-329). Like Berlusconi, these individuals have money. With enough money political experience is largely irrelevant. This doesn’t seem to create a conflict with voters judging by their choices. Politics is less about being the most qualified and more about having the most money.

2. The role of big business. The US is quick to identify and accuse other governments of corruption, but is it really in a position to judge? Doesn’t it seem strange that the Vice President used to work for Halliburton, the same company that won huge no-bid government contracts? What about the legislators becoming part of the industries they regulated when their political careers are over (340)?

3. Much like Italy, the United States has largely politicized and partisan news media (329). Opinion is repeated enough times to create a fact, combined with all the shouting and fighting disguised as political discourse. No one can agree on what constitute a “fact,” because too many people are busy creating them. John Kerry’s Vietnam record, WMDs in Iraq, whether the US tortures, etc.

4. Noneconomic voters. Inexplicably, white working class voters backed Bush even though they have suffered under Republican presidents. This suggests they are voting on noneconomic issues, such as: “the war on terrorism, gun control legislation, abortion, religion, gay marriage, and the personal appeal of the candidate” (341). It all seems so evident on paper but day-to-day realities are not truly reflected in recent Italian and American elections.

I’d also add that “celebrity” may become the new money. Sarah Palin’s, and to a lesser extent, Christine O’Donnell’s political careers, are dependent upon this celebrity. Palin has done much to keep herself in the spotlight to remain relevant enough when 2012 comes around, but will that matter in terms of actual political experience? Is the American public so enamored with reality TV that they’d elect a president who once had their own show? Perhaps now it’s enough to be a political celebrity to get elected to office. I shudder to think.

And now for something completely different
We can look at immigration patterns and cultural influences and see that Italy and Greece are the focal point of Albanians. Given Greece’s economic problems that they are unwilling to fix, and Italy’s the pervasive corruption and mafia in society and politics, what kind of role models are they for a country that is still developing? And given that the two countries are both in the European Union, how might these factors affect the way Albanians think about their own EU chances?