Berlusconi.. Politics with the logic of show and mobilization
In the world of European politics, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who passed away recently, constitutes an exceptional case in terms of his personal path and experience in public affairs. When he came to power for the first time in 1994, Berlusconi was a stranger to the political scene in this ancient European country whose democratic system was based since 1946 on the rule of the Christian Democratic Party and opposition to the strong communist current that attracted most intellectuals and intellectuals. Berlusconi benefited from the collapse of the traditional political class. At the end of the 1980s, it was subjected to a wide judicial purge, the latest victim of which was the socialist leader Benito Craxi, who spent his last days as a refugee in Tunisia.
Since the end of the eighties, the son of a small bank employee (Berlusconi) has invested his wealth in sports clubs and television channels, becoming the president of Milan Football Club and the owner of the most important Italian private channels.
Thus, he entered the political work through the portals of sports and visual media, and transformed his political practice into a pattern of mobilization and instinctive physical seduction, in the cinematic-sports manner that differs radically from the Italian political traditions. In a book about the Berlusconi phenomenon, the Italian sociologist Vizango Socha shows that the success of the man who is called the knight is mainly due to the fact that he demolished the thick barrier between the “realistic” state, which is made up of civil society, the masses of consumers and TV viewers, and the “legitimate” state that consists of the class. political and public intellectuals bloc. Here we see the huge rift that Italian democracy suffered from between the political system and the social system, between instincts and laws, writing and the image.
In a country where football is the main framework for socialization, Berlusconi turned the sports audience into the base of his political party (“Forward Italia”), while transferring the methods of seduction and emotional mobilization from the space of communication and the media to political action. That is why Socha called him the “manager of the collective imagination,” given that he introduced into the core of the political field the sayings and slogans of sports clubs and television entertainment programs.
In this approach, there are no fundamental differences between the political poles, right and left. In Berlusconi’s coalition governments, the neo-fascist nationalists of the “Italian Social Movement” and the remnants of the Italian Socialist Party and separatist groups in the rich industrial north participate.
Berlusconi’s role was crucial in paving the way for the populist nationalists to come to power from Matteo Salvini to the current Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Berlusconi was also a pioneer in Europe to perpetuate the populist method of governance that rejects liberal institutional media and pluralistic representative systems, and sees in individual subjectivity the actual embodiment of the people’s identity and unilateral spirit, as opposed to the “corruption” of the elite and the “deficit” of politicians. Although the man, who is the richest Italian figure, was referred to the judiciary several times and convicted in some files, and there were many doubts about his conduct of public affairs from the perspective of his direct utilitarian interests, he actually succeeded in symbolizing the popular leader, the bearer of the voices of the oppressed, as reflected in the image of the “knight” and the logic of the adopted tribe.
In an article about Berlusconi’s political path, the well-known Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben wrote that “the ideology of the commercial company, the market and communication” has occupied the voids left by the collapse of traditional political parties. Hence, Agamben considered that Berlusconi’s project cut off any possibility of renewing or rebuilding Italian liberal democracy, by perpetuating a pattern of “communicative tyranny” represented in the falsification of truth, language, manipulation, opinions and ideas.
Despite this harsh ruling, it is inevitable to admit that Berlusconi was indeed able to create a major rupture in the Italian political arena, and the impact of his experience reached the broader European sphere, which became governed, with few exceptions, by populist and conservative nationalist parties.
Berlusconi may be the first businessman and athlete to come to power in democratic countries, but he was not the last. After him, many businessmen were elected, led by former US President Donald Trump (who is similar in his path and political rhetoric to the late Italian leader), and prominent athletes succeeded in Reach the referee like Pakistani cricketer Omar Khan and Liberian footballer George Weah. Thus, we conclude by saying that Berlusconi was simultaneously the first face of the new political life in the West and a pioneer of political transformation in Western liberal democracies.
Mauritanian academic
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