It all started with television. Without her, there would have been neither Donald Trump, nor Boris Johnson, nor especially Silvio Berlusconi. The youngest cannot imagine what television was like for their parents or their grandparents, that of Bernard Pivot or Fernand Seguin. They imagine it boring, austere and uninteresting. Perhaps it was precisely because she had been in black and white that she felt compelled to speak to the intelligence of the spectators.
Then came Berlusconi and the social democratic left. The exuberant Berlusconi, whom the whole of Italy mourns today, would never have existed without this left which, after May 68, came to power in Europe in the 1980s. ) public television lock. This privatization will make the glory of the one who had until then been only a seller of vacuum cleaners recycled in real estate.
In Italy, the time seemed ripe for a break after the leaden years that culminated in the assassination of the Christian Democrat Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades. Socialist Bettino Craxi will never stop supporting the growing television empire of his friend Berlusconi. He will even be a witness at his wedding before being prosecuted for corruption and taking refuge in Tunisia. In France, it was François Mitterrand who was persuaded to entrust Berlusconi the country’s second private channel, La Cinq. A literature that dubs “Coca-Cola TV”, which fuels American series, celebrities and sparkling blondes. Tonton was not close to a contradiction.
The source of populism, which is less an ideology than a political style, is not elsewhere. It will take years for old-line politicians accustomed to serious interviews with seasoned journalists to agree to turn themselves into variety stars and clown around. Everybody talks about it. But they will. And some better than others.
Berlusconi then signs the entry of politics into the world of entertainment, football and easy money. Before him, we did not see self-made man like Bernard Tapie (or François Legault) to seek the supreme functions. The new mode of political communication often combines simplism, vulgarity and rants. It’s the tweet before tweet. He will influence Nicolas Sarkozy and Donald Trump as well as Emmanuel Macron and Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
No matter the political family. A true precursor in this field, Italy will be one of the very first countries to see the great parties of the classic right and left collapse to make way for new political forces that are often very personalized and that defy traditional divisions. (like Beppe Grillo’s 5 Star Movement).
A sign of the times, when Berlusconi leaves the stage, Donald Trump is charged by American justice and Boris Johnson resigns from his seat as deputy. As if Berlusconi-style populism was about to bow out or migrate to something else. Some are already talking about “post-populism”.
With the return of tragedy, inflation, wars and epidemics—not to mention European decline—Berlusconi appeared more and more like the ghost of another age. His friendship with Vladimir Putin bears witness to those carefree years when, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO seemed doomed to disappear and Europe to expand as far as the Urals. The tycoon probably knew he was overwhelmed, but he took care until the last moment to consolidate a real right-wing bloc in the Chamber of Deputies, of which the nationalist group of Georgia Meloni has become the flagship, Forza Italia now representing only one meager 8% at the polls.
Although Meloni owes Berlusconi his first ministry (at the age of 31) and has designs on his legacy, she did not inherit the globalist and ultraliberal ideology of the Cavaliere, and even less of his quickdraw. If Berlusconism has little chance of surviving its founder, this alliance of rights which he was one of the first to practice has never been so popular in Europe.
It has been emulated in Sweden, the former kingdom of social democracy, where the current prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, from the classic right, governs with the support of the nationalists of the Sweden Democrats party. Same thing in Finland, where the right-wing Prime Minister, Petteri Orpo, has formed a coalition with the Party of Finns, a formation radically opposed to immigration. Since the last regional and municipal elections, everything seems to indicate that Spain is also about to take this path. After the legislative elections on 23rd July next, the traditional right could govern, as it already does in certain regions, with the support of the young Vox party, representative of the radical right.
In these countries, the more the problem of mass immigration became obvious, the more the anti-fascist rhetoric appeared above ground and the more the proximity of power pushed this radical right to more pragmatism. This is what we have seen in France for a few years and what we see today in Italy. A country which remains, even without Berlusconi, the political laboratory of Europe.