Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power and Patrimony: NEW UPDATED EDITION [Paperback]

Italian politics since 1945 has often seemed too unstable and esoteric for most Americans. Paul Ginsborg's short polemic about Silvio Berlusconi shows why people should pay attention. The Berlusconi phenomenon is an amazing, and quite appalling, one. From 1992 to 1994, it was revealed that the conservative Christian Democratic party, which had held uninterrupted power since the war, was deeply, deeply corrupt. So corrupt in fact, that the revelation caused its disintergration. But instead of the Right losing the next elections, a wealthy businessman came along and simply bought a new political party. Silvio Berlusconi's "Forza Italia" was not a party devoted to political debate and discussion. It was staffed by his cronies and devoted to his political cult. With it he won the elections of 1994, even though he was himself deeply compromised by the old regime. Serious allegations of corruption soon led to his loss of power and his electoral defeated in 1996. But he returned to power in 2001. Now in point of fact, the charges against him are more than just "allegations", as that infamous left-wing rag, The Economist, has pointed out. Berlusconi has perjured himself about his membership in a conspiratorial, anti-democratic, quasi-fascist masonic lodge. (He benefited from an amnesty). In the seventies his keeper of one his (one-horse) stables was a notorious mafioso. His personal lawyer, Cesare Preveti, has been convicted of 11 year and 5 year sentences for corrupting judges, though he remains free on appeal. Berlusconi delays his trials to run up against the limitations laws. He amends the limitations laws to render himself immune. He changes the rules of evidence so that trials will be further delayed. And when all that fails, he passes laws giving himself immunity, while seeking to undermine the independence of the magistrates.

This is bad. And it gets worse. For as Ginsborg notes Berlusconi is still backed by more than 40% of Italians. His defeat in 2006 is by no means a sure thing. Indeed he plans to become a powerful President of the Republic. This despite his judical troubles, an anaemic economy, and support for a massively unpopular war. This despite his failure to simplify administrative procedures, or start promised infrastructure projects, though he has reduced the penalties for accounting fraud. Ginsborg himself is one of the leading historians of modern Italy, and he points out Berlusconi's origins in the Milan building trade. He points out how Berlusconi benefited from the intervention of the infamously corrupt Bettino Craxi, who in 1984 ignored the courts and constitutional mandates for a proper broadcasting law to pass a decree without which Berlusconi could not maintain his broadcasting monopoly. (He also points out how Craxi was the godfather of Berlusconi's child out of wedlock, and how Berlusconi comically elides his adultery in discussing the end of his first marriage.) Although Ginsborg tries to be fair, there is not much to be said about about Berlusconi's media: the absence of proper news coverage and documentaries, rampant bias in Berlusconi's favor, more advertisements than the rest of Europe combined, two-hour documentaries about stigmatic priests, a sexism that sometimes seems to have come out of Lolita.

Berlusconi is not a fascist, but he is a threat to democracy. To be exact, he wishes to make democracy safe for the Right and for wealthy people like himself. One should be wary of a man who claims "Better fascism than the bureaucratic tyranny of the judiciary." The party euphemizes the fascist past, with public places and spaces named after "acceptable" fascists and with Berlusconi claiming that Mussolini didn't murder anyone. Whether it is the Bank of Italy, the civil service, public broadcasting, magistrates or the public health system, all have their independence and integrity threatened by Berlusconi. Meanwhile he deals with Murdoch and his own media empire as if conflict of interest laws don't exist, which in Italy they don't. His model polity is a world in which mass apathy is punctuated by his biased media and his political image, where people consent, but do not choose. Ginsborg points out how this project is encouraged by the weaknesses of a centre-left which, purged of its Marxist past, cannot seek to mobilize support, which seeks to compromise and which cannot inspire with its technocratic biases, and which, for one reason or another, cannot attack Berlusconi's venality. Ginsborg's book is not perfect (a law undermining magisterial independence is not made clear, while Ginsborg overestimates the influence of the late Canadian media lord Izzy Aspser). But in an era with declining voter turnout and declining independent media, where media monopoly advances with partisan and unscrupulous conservative politics, and where the left, the centre, and the right-centre are too nervous and exhausted to resist, there are good reasons to fear that Berlusconi's Italy could soon be our world.

The author of this book knows how to dramatizize politics. "...something important is happening in Italy, potentially quite sinister, and the seeming normality of life serves to mask it very well." If only it were just a fiction. "Silvio Berlsconi" is a great book on the current state of democracy in Italy, the kind of "modern democracy" heralded by Berlusconi's media empire. If the dictators of the early 20th century have been characterizes as "charismatic leaders" pied pipering away their cults of personality, then today's dictator can be thought of as the sort of highly tailored, well edited "iconic leader," the guy who just LOOKS RIGHT for the job. (Paul Ginsbourg includes a hilarious anecdote in the post-script about Berlusconi who, at a recent press conference, showed up with a face lift he had gotten over Christmas and then proceeds to make the most unfortunate analogy: "The communists...tried to have a face lift in order to hide their real identity, but theirs failed.")

As relentlessly critical as Ginsbourg is to Berlusconi, it is hard to ignore the facts of his presidency, both rise to and the policies to follow. It is also hard to ignore the remarkable similarity between the current state of Italian politics and those of the U.S. As Ginsbourg writes, "All this will have a familiar ring in Anglo-Saxon ears."

Democracy is becoming increasingly about television and leadership about being televised. What happens to "freedom" in a community connected only by cable? Ginsbourg makes a couple claims of his own, but the exciting aspect of the book is the fact that it raises such questions at all.

There are not enough books about Silvio Berlusconi in English! Basically, I found two. This one, and one called The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi. I was hoping to find an objective biography (ha!) and of the two, I settled on the Ginsborg one thinking that The Sack of Rome, in its title, pretty clearly indicated its bias.

Upon receiving the Ginsborg book, I noticed that it was published by Verso Press, a subdivision of New Left Books. Realizing this, I did some research and it turns out that this one was going to be anti-Berlusconi as well. I was grateful, however, that the author never really tries to hide his bias and does, in fact, give Berlusconi praise where praise is due.

Overall, I think this is a decent book to get a basic picture of who Berlusconi is. While slightly outdated (it was published in 2004, well before Berlusconi's loss in the 2006 Italian elections and his subsequent reclamation of the prime minister's seat in 2008), the book gives a decent recounting of where Berlusconi has come from and what motivates him.

Reading it knowing the leftist stance, I found myself asking "Well, why is that so bad?" or saying "Yeah, I agree with Berlusconi here." Even though I disagreed with the author on many points, it was not so overbearingly liberal to make it unenjoyable to read. I was able to parse through the pieces that I needed to in order to pull out something of a sketch of Berlusconi.

One point of agreement I have with Ginsborg lies in the power of television and mass media. Through his companies like Fininvest and Mediaset, Berlusconi has essentially duopolized the Italian TV market (with Rupert Murdoch and the Italian government). Italians watch a lot of television and as such, greatly inform their worldview based on what they see there. The proliferation of television advertising, which led to the bulk of Berlusconi's wealth, also helps inform people and promotes a sense of hyperconsumerism among Italians, even more so than in other Western nations. Ginsborg has a big problem with this, and so do I. I have more an issue with the hyperconsumerism while Ginsborg extends the argument out to include the image television presents of Berlusconi himself.

On the negative side, I wish it had been a little more in depth. It was a great survey across Berlusconi's life and his business and political career. The book was definitely written as a warning, though, to Italy's left (along with the left of the rest of the world) about Berlusconi. The author says as much in his introduction. Since that was the case, the author did not feel a need to be overly biographical. What I mean by this is that Ginsborg only added pieces of information crucial to his overall thesis, which is this: Berlusconi presents a sort-of soft fascism and Italians need to become aware of this. I'm hoping that if Berlusconi stays in power for a while longer, more English-speaking people will be interested and that it will lead to more books and more balance in what is published.