In his recent book on Berlusconi (translated as Mamma mia!) Beppe Severgnini (who, like all journalists, does not want to alienate anyone's sympathies) omits a fundamental feature of the Italian former premier's supporters: they often recur to violence. Giuliano Ferrara, Vittorio Sgarbi, Maurizio Belpietro, Maurizio Gasparri, and all other journalists or members of the Italian parliament in substantial agreement with Mr. B, often talk on to other people, always patronize, and at times vehemently disrespect the rules of civil conversation. I always wondered whether such ways would not be counterproductive; lack of manners usually grants reproach.
In Italy, it is quite the opposite: violence is a major asset. Italians always try to be on the bully's side. The stronger the bully, the better and safer they feel. Once they understand that might makes right, they immediately submit to it, and accept all power as self-legitimating. Whenever Berlusconi makes a fool of himself in international meetings, he obviously does not care for any international audience: it's his supporters at home that will like his idiotic jokes, and suppose that, when it is the time to talk turkey, Mr. B. will eventually be efficient, as much as he was in building his empire.
Shortsightedness? Tunnel vision? Indeed. Yet... Italy was fascist for twenty years, and switched sides only after three years of war losses, allied bombing, and, probably most important, food cards. Had Mussolini not decided to intervene in the war, Fascism would have lasted at least some twenty years longer; it did in Spain and in Portugal, after all.
Giorgio Gaber said that he was not afraid for Berlusconi, but for what he represented for the Italian nation, for the kernel of Berlusconianism that, according to him (and to Severgnini), all Italians have. I admit I do not have one ounce of it, and I have worked so that Mr. B could be voted out of power. But I lost, and he won.
An escort declares: "Women would walk all their way to Arcore to be in front of Berlusconi... Beauty has a price that deserves to be paid." It reminded me of a line in Marco Bellocchio's film Vincere, about Mussolini's supposedly ignored wife Ida Valser, later committed to a mental asylum. One of the nuns-nurses says to her: "You have slept with the man that all women would like as husband and lover: that is enough of a boon." I heard similar words from many Italian good-looking women and, more frequently and indicatively, from their mothers. To a young woman who asked how she could have enough to have a family, Berlusconi replied that she should consider marrying a rich man, possibly his son. The young woman felt disgusted, or so it seemed. I wondered if her mother would have been equally disgusted. (Now an even younger woman seems to be cuddling the old guy, so...)
Italy is a conservative country, Catholic and God-fearing, like Spain and Portugal. In 1929, Pope Pius XI said that Mussolini was sent from God. Many local curates have recently expressed the same judgment about Berlusconi. The post-WWII conservative way to democracy was, in Italy, the Democrazia Cristiana, however internally diversified. The opposition found expression in the arts, about which no one really cared: "Young man, that's only a movie..."
Nowadays the Holy See accepts anything from Mr. B: "He is a sinner, like all of us." Italian conservatives feel relieved, if not forgiven, and have dismissed all moral scruples. Everything is on sale: bodies, souls, promises... The country is theirs, and it will be at least until Italy will be in such dire straits that people will need food cards. Since Italians are currently saving on Christmas gifts to pay their household bills, it might actually happen soon.
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