Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power and Patrimony [Hardcover ed.] 1844670007, 9781844670000

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^' PAUL

GINSBORG I

Television,

Power and Patrimo

$25/£16/$37CAN

head of

Silvio Berlusconi,

Italy's

government since

2001, has an unenviable reputation: his dubbing by

The Economist as 'Burlesquoni' met with knowing among disdainful Europeans and Americans.

approval

None

the less Paul Ginsborg, one of contemporary

Italy's

foremost historians, thinks that the Berlusconi

phenomenon Italy.

merits serious attention,

and not only

in

While acknowledging that Berlusconi might well

fail - his record in government has so far been dismal - he argues that many aspects of the present Italian experience reflect crucial trends in contemporary lolitics and mass culture. His book combines classic biographical traits - Berlusconi's childhood in Milan during and after the Second World War, his strict religious schooling, his dynamic working life - with

acute

political

picture of a

and

and

man

willing to

social analysis. There

emerges the

of insatiable appetites, bull-headed

take considerable

deeply attuned

risks,

dominant values and to the sophisticated communication techniques of modernity.

to the

Ginsborg

illustrates brilliantly

the peculiar

Berlusconi's trajectory, but also argues that

many

italianita it

of

illuminates

international tendencies: the personalisation of

politics at

a time of

crisis in

representative democracy,

the distorted relationship between the media system and politics,

the construction of dependencies by the binding

of families to

goods. as

far

commercial

In all this,

television

and the world

of

Ginsborg suggests, Berlusconi has got

as he has thanks to the wide-open space

the strategic weaknesses of

modern

left

by

left-wing politics.

K.W*#

m\ H

3int Bdio.org 3 frn

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

SILVIO BERLUSCONI POWER AND PATRIMONY

TELEVISION,

PAUL GINSBORG

V

VERSO London

•

New York

First published

©

by Verso 2004

Paul Ginsborg 2004

All rights reserved

The moral

rights of the author have

3 5

1

79 108

been asserted

42

6

Verso

UK:

6

Meard

USA: 180 Varick Verso

is

Street,

Street,

London

New

an imprint of

York,

New

W1F 0EG NY 10014-4606

Left

Books

ISBN 1-84467-000-7 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Ginsborg, Paul Silvio Berlusconi 1.

Italy

television,

power and patrimony

1936-

-

Television and politics

2.

Television in politics

3.

broadcasting I.

:

Berlusconi, Silvio,

—

4.

Italy

-

Television

Italy

Title

302.

2

'345 '0945

ISBN 1844670007 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ginsborg, Paul Silvio Berlusconi

:

television,

power and patrimony

ISBN 1-84467-000-7 (hardcover 1.

Berlusconi, Silvio,

century. aspects

/ Paul

Ginsborg.

cm

p.

—

1936-

2.

alk.

:

Italy

Television and politics

3.

Italy.

I.

—

paper)

—

Politics

Italy.

4.

and government

Mass media

—

—

21st

Political

Title.

DG583.8.B47G56 2004

945.093'092^c22 2003027792 Typeset in Perpetua by SetSy stems, Saffron Walden, Essex Printed in the

USA

bv R.R. Donnellev

&

Sons

For

my

friends and colleagues of the Florentine

'Laboratorio per

la

democrazia'.

1

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

ix

Glossary

xi

List

of Presidents of the Council of Ministers

xvii

Prologue

1

1

Buildings

2

The Making of

3

Into Politics

57

4

Right and Left: 1996-2001

81

5

Berlusconi's Project

6

In

Power

132

7

Resistances

162

Postscript

1

Index

185

1

a Television

Empire

28

102

75

Acknowledgements

My

heartfelt thanks to Silvia Alessandri

their help in the preparation of this text.

and Christian

De

Vito for

Glossary

What

follows below

is

a list of the

which appear most frequently vast majority of

in the

official

book. For ease of reading, the

terms appear throughout

Chief Procurator

terms and institutions

in English.

Procuratore capo,

the senior magistrate

directs the Office of Public Prosecution in every assigns cases

same

major

city,

and

who who

and responsibilities to the investigating magistrates of the

Office.

Christian

Democrat party

Democrazia

cristiana, a political

party of Catholic inspiration, founded in 1942, dominant in Italian politics

from 1946

until

investigations of the

1992. Heavily implicated in the corruption

'Clean Hands' campaign (q.v.), the party dis-

solved in January 1994. Surviving fragments are present in both the coalitions of the centre-left

and the centre-right.

'Clean Hands' campaign

'Mani

pulite',

the

popular

name

given to the series of judicial investigations launched in Milan in 1992,

which uncovered

a

widespread network of corruption and

financing of political parties.

The

illegal

investigations led to charges being

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

xii

brought against many well-known

Italian

businessmen and

politicians,

some of

whom

CGIL

Confederazione generate italiana del lavoro,

est

were eventually sentenced by the

and largest of the

some

five

and

trade-union organisations,

a half million

political orientation

Epifani.

Italian

and

courts.

its

now numbers

it

members. The CGIL

left-wing in

is

present general secretary

the old-

is

Guglielmo

who

held the

Confederazione italiana sindacati lavoratori,

the sec-

The previous

secretary

was Sergio

Cofferati,

post from 1994 to 2002.

CISL ond

largest trade -union organisation in the country, with just over

four million members. general secretary

Moderate and Catholic

Constitutional Court it

in

orientation,

its

Savino Pezzotta.

is

Corte costituzionale.

Instituted in 1956,

has the task of ajudicating disputes relative to the constitutional

legitimacy of laws.

It is

Cassation Court

composed of

fifteen judges.

Corte di Cassazione,

level of the Italian judiciary system,

constitutional

ones.

After the

the third and highest

dealing with

Court of Appeal

all

areas except

(q.v.)

has passed

sentence in a case, both defence and prosecution have the right to appeal to the higher court, which rules on the legitimacy of sentences,

but not on their merit.

Council of Ministers

Consiglio dei ministri, constituted by

the President (q.v.) and ministers,

who

have varied in number in

different phases of the Italian Republic's history.

ment of

Silvio Berlusconi

numbers twenty-three

The present governministers.

.

GLOSSARY Court of Appeal

Corte d'Appello,

the

xiii

second level of the

which either defence or prosecution may

Italian judicial system, to

appeal for revision of a sentence passed by a lower court.

Chamber of Deputies

Camera dei

Deputies and the Senate make up the has

630 deputies, elected

Financial Police

which

armed

is

deputati. The Chamber of

Italian parliament.

The Chamber

for a five-year span.

Guardia di Finanza.

This

dependent upon the Treasury Ministry but

forces of the state.

is is

a special corps

also part of the

principal tasks are the prevention and

Its

discovery of tax evasion, of contraband, and of financial violations of the law.

Fininvest. Since 1984 the overall name for Berlusconi's group of companies.

Forza

Forza

Italia

Italia.

The

by

political party created

Silvio

Berlusconi in 1994, which gained 29.5 percent of the votes for the

Chamber of Deputies thus

emerged

(q.v.) in the national elections of

2001, and

as Italy's largest single political force.

Higher Council of the Magistracy della magistratura. Instituted

in

Consiglio superiore

1958, the Council

is

the organ of

self-government of the judiciary, and was envisaged by the Republican constitution of 1948 as a bulwark and safeguard of judicial autonomy. Its

president

House of

is

the President of the Republic (q.v.).

Liberties

Casa delle liberta,

a coalition of centre-

right forces (Forza Italia, the National Alliance, the

and the Catholic

UDC)

which

won

Northern League,

the national elections of

May 2001

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

xiv

Democrats

Left

of the

left,

Democratici di

formed

Party (PCI) in

sinistra (DS), the major party

after the dissolution of the Italian

1991.

It

national election of 2001.

Its

Communist

16.6 percent of the votes in the

polled

secretary

is

Piero Fassino and president

Massimo D'Alema.

Montecitorio

Palazzo di Montecitorio,

palace in the heart of

Rome, from 1871

a

seventeenth-century

the seat of the

Chamber of

Alleanza Nazionale, right-wing

coalition and

Deputies.

National Alliance

then party, founded in 1994, with the aim of transforming the neoFascist

MSI (Movimento

Sociale Italianao) into a

with wider electoral appeal.

Its

president

is

more moderate

Gianfranco

Fini,

force

and

it

polled 12 percent of the vote in the national elections of 2001.

Northern League

Lega Nord, founded

Bossi, a regionally based party

which draws

it

in

at

it

advocates strong

autonomy and even advocated secession from

one stage of

its

brief history.

It

by Umberto

support predominantly

from Lombardy and Venetia. Anti-immigrant, regional

1991

the Italian state

polled 3.9 percent of the vote in

2001.

Olive Tree Coalition first

led

L'Ulivo, a centre-left coalition of forces,

by Romano Prodi, which narrowly

won

the national elections

of 1996, but lost those of 2001

Palazzo Chigi

Palazzo Chigi,

a

mainly seventeenth century

palace, close to Montecitorio (q.v.), the official seat of the President

of the Council of Ministers (q.v.).

,

GLOSSARY President of the Council of Ministers

xv

Presidente del Con-

siglio dei Ministri, the head of Italian government, directs and

coordinates the activities of the executive in the context of the powers

granted by the

Republican constitution.

In

book sometimes

this

referred to for convenience as 'premier' or 'prime minister'.

President of Regional

Government

Presidente della Regione,

the head of the regional executive, wielding considerable and increasing

power

at the local level.

(Governor), in recognition of

Now this

President of the Republic head of the tion.

Italian state

sometimes called 'Governatore'

changing role.

Presidente della Repubblica, the

and the guardian of the Republican constitu-

The powers of the President

are limited but crucial, and to

differing degrees Presidents have always played an active role in Italian politics.

The President

seven-year term in

is

elected by

members

of parliament for a

office.

The Quirinale Palazzo del Quirinale, formerly the Papal residence, now the official seat of the President of the Republic, situated in the centre of Rome on the hill which bears the same name. Rifondazione Comunista

Partito della Rifondazione

nista, literally 'the party for the refounding of in 1991 in the

wake of

the dissolution of the Italian

Communist

and in opposition to the more moderate Democratici Its

secretary

is

Fausto Bertinotti, and

in the national elections of

Social

Forums

2001

The World

it

Comu-

Communism', formed party,

di sinistra (q.v.).

gained 5.0 percent of the vote

.

Social

Forum

is

not an organisation,

but 'an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate

xvi

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

of ideas, formulation of proposals ... by groups and civil

society that are

movements of

opposed to neo-liberalism and to domination of

the world by capital and any to building a society centred

form of imperialism, and are committed

on the human person' (from the

WSF

Charter of Principles)

UIL

Unione

italiana del lavoro. Founded in 1949,

third force of Italian trade unionism with

1

is

the

,900,000 members and

occupies an intermediate position between the left-wing

and the Catholic CISL

it

(q.v.). Its general secretary

is

CGIL

(q.v.)

Luigi Angeletti.

Presidents of the Council of Ministers and duration of their List of Italian

governments, 1983-2004 President

Date of nomination

Date of resignation

Bettino Craxi

4 August 1983

27 June 1986

August 1986

March 1987

Bettino Craxi

1

Amintore Fanfani

17 April 1987

28 April 1987

Giovanni Goria

28 July 1987

11

March 1988

13 April 1988

19

May 1989

22 July 1989

29 March 1991

14 April 1991

24 April 1992

28 June 1992

28 April 1993

Ciriaco

De Mita

Giulio Andreotti Giulio Andreotti

Giuliano

Amato

3

Carlo Azeglio Ciampi

28 April 1993

16 April 1994

Silvio Berlusconi

10 May 1994

22 December 1994

Lamberto Dini

17 January 1995

11 January

Romano

1996

17

May 1996

9 October 1998

Massimo D'Alema

21

October 1998

18

Massimo D'Alema

22 December 1999

19 April 2000

25 April 2000

31

Giuliano

Prodi

Amato

Silvio Berlusconi

10 June 2001

December 1999

May 2001

PROLOGUE

When I

was

I

a

young researcher working

Venetian archives,

in the

once dared to ask a distinguished senior American professor

was

sitting

at the

next to

me what

time of Fascism.

didn't really notice.'

day

It

it

had been

He looked

at

even easier

is

like to

be a historian

me benignly now not to

of opinion,

the

extremely well.

'I

Every-

notice.

sun

shines,

the

tourists

arrive,

Yet something important

is

we

and

happening

potentially quite sinister, and the seeming normality of it

in Italy

and replied:

continues as before, daily newspapers reflect a wide range

life

mask

who

in

life

eat

all

Italy,

serves to

very well.

Silvio Berlusconi's

government of

Italy since

2001, and

his presi-

dency of the European Union from July to December 2003, have given rise to

much

unease in international public opinion. The world's

press has repeatedly posed a

combination of media and political control in

many

the

number of

political

many

Italy

power herald

modern democracy?

Is

his the

a

new model

which sounds

a sophisticated Italian ear:

is

of

most ambitious of

populist answers to democracy's present fragility?

again, a question oft-repeated but

to

questions: does Berlusconi's

historically

history repeating

playing the same role as the precursor of Fascism as

itself, it

And

ingenuous with

did in the

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

2

early 1920s?

1

After

all, it

1974, that 'every age has

was Primo Levi who wrote, its

Fascism'; and he

'one can reach such a condition in

means of terror and

as

went on

many ways, not

long ago as

to

warn

that

necessarily by

police intimidation, but also by withholding or

manipulating information, by polluting the judicial system and by paralysing the school system.' 2

Others have preferred, either from conviction or convenience, to be sharply dismissive of Berlusconi. They point to the

fact that his

actions in

government have been characterised mainly by improvisa-

that

he has no economic strategy, that he has been most

tion,

concerned with the course of and

his

lawyer friend, Cesare

himself

Italian justice directed against

The

Previti.

accident-prone and

slight,

clownish figure that he has cut on the European stage has only increased such suspicions. 'Burlesquoni' was to

dub him

in the

summer

how

The Economist chose

of 2003. 3

Yet the cumulative evidence, culled not

just

from

politics

but from

wider cultural processes, would suggest the need to take

Silvio

Berlusconi seriously. As of yet, there has been no theorisation of Berlusconi's project from the ranks of the Italian centre -right. lacks a Giovanni Gentile, the distinguished philosopher

Minister of Education,

Mussolini's

He

who became

or even a Keith Joseph,

able

propagandist for Mrs. Thatcher. However, that does not imply that

no project

exists.

One

constituent parts.

its

1

'The whole question

preoccupying in

itself, risks

of the principal aims of this book

By doing

lies in

so,

I

Article

from

trying to estimate to

what degree

this Italian

Corriere della Sera, 8

May

Italy's

model, so

p.

1.

1974, reprinted in P.Levi, Opere, vol.

1997, p. 1187. 3

to assemble

being extended in a tomorrow to other countries of Europe';

I.Ramonet, 'Berlusconi', Le Monde diplomatique, February 2002, 2

is

hope to explain why

Charlemagne, 'Burlesquoni', The Economist, 12 July 2003,

p. 29.

I,

Turin

PROLOGUE

3

present experience has a significance that goes far beyond the narrow

and complicated realm of the country's

Of

course, Berlusconi

who

historian that he

may

well

politics.

One

fail.

of the hazards for a

chooses to analyse a historical process in

How much

finishes.

easier

it

was to write

about the Venetian revolution of 1848—49, knowing before it

is

or she cannot enjoy the habitual professional privilege of

knowing how the story

how

flow

full

had ended! None the

less,

I

shall try

not to hedge

believe that Italian history in these years, whatever

number of

highly instructive for a

its final

central issues in the

begun

I

my

bets.

destiny,

I

is

modern world:

the nature of personal dominion at a time of crisis in representative

democracy; the relationship between the media system and

political

power; the connection between consumerism, families and

politics;

finally,

the ongoing weakness of the Left,

combat dangers,

its

incapacity

to

its

failure to identify

and

arouse enthusiasm for credible

alternatives.

Old concepts and The

new

coalition of centre -right parties

elections in 2001 Liberties'.

was

l

called

which

La Casa

In fact, perusing the

protagonists won

the last Italian general

delle Liberta,

two volumes of

little

space

is

'House of

Silvio Berlusconi's

struck by

how

dedicated therein to the concept of liberty, and

how

speeches which cover the period 1994—2000, one

much

the

to that of democracy.

4

The

is

liberty that Berlusconi has in

mind

is

prevalently 'negative', a classic freeing from interference or impedi-

4

Discorsi per la democrazia

a great deal little

and

L'ltalia che ho in mente,

Milan 2000. There

is,

of course,

of political and intellectual posturing in these interventions, which often bear

relation to the actual practice of Berlusconi's governing party, Forza

Italia.

This

is

particularly true of Berlusconi's prepared speeches to parliament (Discorsi per la democrazia).

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

4

ment. Individuals have to be placed

in that

condition of freedom which

allows them, in an expression borrowed from the Risorgimento, to

da

'fare

(to

se

Economy and

'go

alone'),

it

from the weight of bureaucracy and suffocating procedures,

chains,

and from

fiscal

own

grown too

pressure which has

Competition increases such his

to express fully their individuality.

society have likewise to be liberated, 'from oppressive

liberty:

and too

far.'

who

can decide freely

them. Every limitation to competition

reject

5

'Every one must be free to offer

goods, services and ideas to his peers,

whether to accept or

fast

is

equivalent to the violation of the freedom and rights of everyone.' 6 All this will have a familiar ring to

'Positive freedom',

Anglo-American

ears.

on the other hand, receives scant attention.

For Berlusconi, the market spontaneously creates

however much

State,

Rather or

so,

is

it

cannot

it

tries to

limit free

competition

By contrast, the

in

it

the

seeks to do

name of

is

sought by

hold power.' 7 Anything other than a 'minimum State'

who

the

Behind such intervention there always lurks 'the interests

of certain groups and classes, whose electoral support those

ethic, as

values into being.

legislate

to be regarded with suspicion every time

when

collectivitv.

tries,

it

work

a

well as the moral principles of loyalty and honesty.

potential threat to the person of the citizen:

'We

is

a

cannot accept their

desire to control everything, their invasion of our lives, their pre-

sumption to regulate

all

our

activities!'

8

As for democracy, when Berlusconi does pay some attention to discourse

his

nearly

always confined

'Discourse to the Senate' in Discorsi per

la

the

democrazia, 16

6 'Speech to the National Congress of the Forza ho in mente,

to

it,

need for regular

and for the electorate to have the right to vote directly for

elections,

5

is

1

1

December 1999,

p.

Italia

May

1994, p. 22.

Youth Movement'

in L'halia che

114.

114-17.

7

Ibid., pp.

8

'Speech at Vicenza', L'halia che ho

in mente,

26 November 1998,

p.

201.

PROLOGUE -

single personalities

5

the president of the Council of Ministers; the

presidents of the Regions; ideally for the president of the Republic.

His is

which concentrates on regularity and personality. What

a vision

is

never considered, and

come

should

this

communicative and cultural context

in

no

as

surprise,

is

the wider

which regular elections occur,

or the differing resources available to individual candidates to influence their

outcome. There

scant attention

is

is

no idea of

a level playing field.

Likewise,

paid to the benign consequences of a balance of

powers within the democratic

state.

Judicial

autonomy

is

regarded

with anathema. Berlusconi's view of politics

is

thus based on the corrosive combi-

The

nation of negative freedom and formal personalised democracy.

combination its

is

corrosive because negative freedom unaccompanied by

counterpart

positive

collective interests. establish, in the

framework It

in

undermines the attempt to

which the search

for self-realisation needs to take place. in

individuals unwilling to submit to a

They

to

of a collective good, a sense of limit, a necessary

encourages instead the creation

law.

assert

community

denies the possibility for a given

It

name

fatally

9

society of over-powerful

civil

much weakened

are free, too free one might suggest, to

general rule of

'fare

da

se

.

At the same time the rules of democracy, limited to the questions of regularity and personality, do nothing to guarantee an equitable

9 The classic text on 'Two concepts of liberty'

negative and positive freedom

of authoritarianism implicit

in positive

perhaps exaggeratedly so; whereas

done, that 'freedom resides see his 'What's Essays in

wrong with

Honour of Isaiah

it

of course that of Isaiah Berlin,

is

[1958), in Four Essays on Liberty,

London 1969. The

freedom were always uppermost seems important to

at least in part in collective

insist,

as

possibilities

in Berlin's

mind,

Charles Taylor has

control over the

common

life';

negative liberty', in Alan Ryan (ed.), The Idea of Freedom:

Berlin,

Oxford 1979,

p.

175. For a recent and powerful revisiting

of this debate, and the suggestion of a third concept of liberty as absence of dependence, see vol.

Quentin Skinner, 'A third concept of 117, 2001 Lectures, Oxford 2003.

liberty',

in

Proceedings of the British Academy,

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

6

terrain

on which elections can be held.

On

the contrary. Few,

impede new agents emergent from the

restrictions exist to

if

any,

tertiary

sector, particularly

from telecommunications, finance and entertain-

ment, from using

their

very considerable economic and mediatic

resources to influence heavily, and sometimes to storm, the democratic

The way

sphere. figures.

10

open

is

They have

little

for the

creation of

modern patrimonial

natural sense of democracy,

still

less a sense

of limits. They are driven, rather, by fierce acquisitive instincts, by family ambitions and clan loyalties, by an iron sense of their

own

self-

importance.

How

such figures are able to

far

make progress depends upon

of health of the democratic system

Their advent has occurred superficially

triumphant on

at a national

time

at a

when

the state

and international

level.

representative democracy

a global scale. In the year

is

2000, 120 out

of the 192 countries of the United Nations were defined as democratic.

Twelve years

earlier,

qualified as such.

triumph

a

new

11

only 66 nations out of the then total of 167 had

Yet democracy has demonstrated

in the years of its

numbers of voters; widespread cynicism

fragility: falling

crumbling mass

parties.

Its

expansion on a global scale has thus been accompanied by

crisis in

its

homelands. 12 However

about

its

politicians

and even

its

institutions;

much democracy

is

an intimate and striking

10 For an extended discussion of this patrimonialism, see below, ch. 5, pp. 116-22. 11

L.

Diamond and M.

Plattner, 'Introduction', in Id. (eds), The Global Divergence of

Democracies, Baltimore 2001, p. x, table

12

(ed.), Defining

America

1.

For the considerable literature on these themes, see amongst others David Beetham

in

and Measuring Democracy, London 1994; M.J.Sandel, Democracy's Discontent:

Search of a Public Philosophy,

Cambridge, Mass. 1996;

as

well as the ensuing

discussion, Anita L. Allen and Milton C.Regan, Jr., (eds), Debating Democracy's Discontent,

Oxford 1998; Susan Pharr and Robert D. Putnam Troubling the Trilateral Countries?, Princeton 2000; Flux,

Oxford 2002.

(eds), Disaffected Democracies:

Robert D.Putnam,

What's

(ed.), Democracies in

PROLOGUE feature of modernity,

no

has

it

7

dynamic of forward march,

inevitable

nor inbuilt quality control. Outside the narrow

political sphere, often isolated in antiquated

and protracted

rituals, the

tions of the last

twenty years have been great indeed. They press upon

politics, influencing is

here to

its

stay,

social

and even moulding

bending

politics to its

own commodity-driven

do not

economic,

just personify

needs.

The

it.

own

and cultural transforma-

centrality of the

logic, its

own

sense of time,

The media, dominated by

and simplify democratic

media

television,

politics, thus distorting

its

contents. Their markets, extremely oligarchical in character, throw

up

personalities of the sort that are

Of course, media moguls

under consideration here.

have existed before,

concerning their overarching influence. After the

power of newspaper barons

in Britain

were considered by many

press

Norman

as has

First

preoccupation

World War

the

and their control of the popular

democracy. The

a threat to

critic

Angell wrote in 1922:

What England

thinks

is

largely controlled

by

a very

few men, not by

virtue of the direct expression of any opinion of their

own, but by

controlling the distribution of emphasis in the telling of facts:

one group of them and keeping another group

stressing

background

In the

as to

make

a

same year Walter Lippmann had warned

Norman

13

in

Modern

Angell,

The

Press

and

the

Britain,

Oxford Tigers,

1997,

p. 29.

which

best the press a

his readers tersely that

However, the influence of

Organisation of Society,

London 1922,

p. 26;

few exploit

is

in

For contemporary newspaper barons, Nicholas

London 1993.

14 Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, its

14

John Eldridge, Jenny Kitzinger and Kevin Williams, The Mass Media and Power

Coleridge, Paper

'At

so

the

13 given conclusion inevitable.

'news and truth are not the same thing.'

quoted

in

a servant

New

York 1922,

and guardian of

social disorganisation to their

p. 358.

He went on

institutions; at its worst,

own

ends'.

it is

a

(p. 363):

means by

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

8

the print

media can with

difficulty

be compared to the constant

presence of television in modern homes. Berlusconi, is

a broadcasting tycoon,

The

is

an entirely

historical

complicated and

media

from

figures that have

sphere,

a

number

combination:

new

initial

television and political

shall see,

power

least

at

linear. In the biographies of the

emerged

in these years to

of elements reoccur,

made

fortunes

so far,

powerful

invade the public

not always in the same

in the building trade or in financial

media

speculation; the spectacular transformation of ailing firms or enterprises;

and investment

acquisition of,

are

one.

of such a process are,

realities far

we

not a newspaper baron. The process by which

modern consumerism, commercial being linked

as

in,

sporting clubs with

considerable popular followings; 'creative' financing and other market

operations which border on, or go beyond, the limits of legality; and,

of course, the central role of commercial television in launching political careers.

The connections between media and same.

I

basis of

shall

politics are

not always the

be concentrating here upon ownership and wealth

as the

Some

of the

power, but there

are, obviously, other variants.

great media entrepreneurs, including the most powerful of

Murdoch, choose to wield

political

distinctly patrimonial figures

and control which extend to Others have risen and

influence indirectly.

(Murdoch

all five

fallen

all,

Rupert

They

are

has ambitions for ownership

continents), but hardly charismatic.

with startling rapidity, overreaching

themselves and accumulating insurmountable debt. Jean-Marie Messier constructed Vivendi, a huge media empire, in very few years, only to see

it

crumble before

his eyes.

The

ill-fated

and the embattled Michael Bloomberg politics as a

power

his

TV

Globo network

in Marseilles

York both used

base, without conspicuous success.

inho, through the powerful

took

in

Bernard Tapie

New

local

Roberto Mar-

in Brazil, successfully

young candidate Fernando Collor de Mello

to the presidency

PROLOGUE of Brazil in 1989, only to see him squander

Cem Uzan TV,

Star

in

power

Turkey, the founder of the country's

tried recently to assert himself

on

in

first

9

record time.

pay television,

a national political level,

but with limited success. Thaksin Shinawatra, on the other hand, the proprietor of a significant telecommunications empire in Thailand,

became

2001, just two

the country's Prime Minister in January,

months before Berlusconi triumphed

in Italy.

15

Trajectories vary, as does the degree of political and legal constraint

new

exercised upon the freedom of action of the antibodies which

some

democracy

offers vary

from country to country.

hung on

cases Lilliputian prosecuting magistrates have

grim determination, tying flimsy ropes around

colossi with

and causing them eventually to topple over. political culture

The

tycoons.

In others, the

of a region has favoured their

rise.

In

to these

their legs

long-term

Southern Europe,

South-East Asia, Turkey and South America, where politics, even in their

democratic form, have been dominated by deep-rooted

clientel-

ism and where the rule of law has often been uncertain, are natural terrains for such figures.

16

But their

limited to such settings. There

—

politicians

the senator

is

a

rise to

growing

list

influence

of American

is

not

billionaire

Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, Mike Bloomberg, Jon Corzine,

from

New

Jersey

— who have

by buying unprecedented amounts of

15

power and

TV

spent their

way

into office

time. In the presidential

For Thaksin Shinawatra's victory, see 'Tycoon or Thai Con?', The Economist, 11

January 2001; for

Cem

Uzan, www.metimes.com/cem_uzan.htm; for Collor de Mello,

Venicio A. de Lima, 'Brazilian television in the 1989 presidential election: constructing a president', in in

Tapie,

Who is

Thomas

E.

Skidmore

(ed.), Television, Politics

and

the Transition to

Democracy

Washington D.C. 1993, pp. 97-117; for Tapie, Christophe Bouchet, Thomme d'affaires, Paris 1994; for Messier, Jo Johnson and Martine Orange, The Man

Latin America,

Tried to

Buy

the World,

London 2003. A

useful introduction, though

now

a little dated,

Jeremy Tunstall and Michael Palmer, Media Moguls, London 1991. 16

A fundamental treatment

though not

Italy, is

of this theme, covering the Balkans and Latin America,

N.P. Mouzelis,

Politics in the Semi-Periphery,

London 1986.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

10

campaign of 1996, Perot broke

on commercial

'infomercials'

percent of the vote.

and

politics

is

17

Where

all

the rules by buying half-hour

television,

and was rewarded with 18.9

de-regulation

is

the

highly personalised, the space for

name

of the game,

manoeuvre

is

corre-

spondingly great. Silvio Berlusconi represents the Italian declination of these trends.

most ambitious attempt to date to combine media control

His

is

and

political

the

power. He

the

is

first

of these figures to lead a major

nation state, ranked seventh in the world in economic terms.

choose to regard him

as a

which of these views

tell

trajectory

is

significant

prototvpe or is

as

an exception, and time will

closer to the truth. In either case, his

and worthy of being studied

in depth.

17 See the interesting comparison by Enrico Canaglia, Berlusconi, Perot political outsider, 'Italy:

Soveria Mannelli 2000, pp. 51-93; also the

the family business', The

New

We may

e Collor

comments of Alexander

York Review of Books, vol. 50, no. 15, 9

come

Stille,

October 2003.

BUILDINGS

1:

1.

First

steps

Milan, the city in which Silvio Berlusconi was born on 29 September

1936, has always occupied a special place in 1848,

Italian history. In

March

inhabitants staged an extraordinary urban insurrection, one

its

of the most significant events of the Risorgimento. After five days of sustained fighting, they threw out of the city the garrison of 13,000

troops

commanded by

the redoubtable Austrian, Field Marshal Rad-

etzky. In the decades after the unification of Italy, the city

known

as the

'moral capital' of

became

industrious and dynamic, the

Italy,

country's commercial and financial centre, in contrast to

Rome,

the

centre of politics and of intrigue, as well as of the Catholic Church.

The Milanese bourgeoisie,

closely connected geographically to the rest

of Europe, to Switzerland and in part enlightened.

European witness.

level,

When

It

G.Rosa,

//

was capable of of

young Milanese

took Paris by storm

1

Germany

as the history

the

in

1

in particular,

was robust and

cultural expression at the highest

its

music temple, La

Futurist painter

Scala,

bore

Umberto Boccioni

February 1912, he wrote home: 'The whole

mito della capitale morale, Turin 1982.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

12

battle has revolved

around

my

"States-of-mind" paintings.

French are astonished that from there has

emerged

a

word

.

The

.

.

Milan

a small provincial city like

them

[Futurism] which has quite taken

aback, accustomed even as they are to novelties of the most absurd sort.'

2

After the First

Benito Mussolini all

World War, Milan was

when he founded

energy and movement,

the

first

his Fascist

reference point for

movement. The

money making and pragmatism,

city,

but

Italian

not Mediterranean, has always been divided: between reform and reaction,

between

numerous working

integrative class,

and repressive strategies towards

between

its

world

radical innovation (as in the

of design), and dull provincial conservatism. The biography of Silvio Berlusconi can be read as the storv of one part of the Milanese bourgeoisie, dynamic, parvenu and without a sense of limit, as

ascendancy over the other, and

in the

end transforms

it

gains

it.

Berlusconi was born on the city's northern extremity,

in

the

quarter called Isola Garibaldi, 'Garibaldi's Island', where in 1936 the city

ended and the

fields

began, and where today the city

but the urban agglomeration continues.

still

ends

His father Luigi, twenty-

eight-years-old at the time of Silvio's birth, was a clerk in the Rasini

bank,

more

a credit boutique than a bank, with just

Piazza Mercanti. class

in

His mother, Rosella Bossi, from a lower-middle-

background, was twenty-five and

be the dominant force

a housewife.

in the family. Silvio

his colonial

empire.

Two

She was always to

was the

the year in which Italian troops entered Adis

proclaimed

one branch

first child,

born

Abeba and Mussolini

other children were to follow:

Antonietta in 1943, and Paolo in 1949.

For the Berlusconi family, the war years were dramatic but not

2

Umberto

Barbantini.

Boccioni, Gli

scritti

editi

e

inediti,

Milan 1971,

p. 346,

letter to

Nino

BUILDINGS

13

catastrophic. In 1943, Rossella, pregnant with her second child, and Silvio

were evacuated

to near

many young

the city. Like

respond to Mussolini's

Como

Milanese, Silvio's father Luigi chose not to

army of

to enrol in the

call

Salo, but rather to seek refuge in Switzerland.

time, was not to see his father again for nearly

absence very much, but

this

on

to escape the Allied air raids

may

it

the Republic of

Silvio,

two

seven

years.

He

at the

suffered

well have served to strengthen

those elements of independence, pride and determination which form so central a part of his character.

which he imbibed

in these

one, but

did

still

less

Faced with the

it

It

also

meant

that the family culture

formative years was not a die-hard Fascist

have the Resistance

difficult choices

as its reference point.

of allegiance during those years

—

to

Mussolini and the Germans, to the Resistance and the Allies, or to no

one

in particular

—

upon which the

choices

destinies of entire family

groups depended, the Berlusconi family chose exit rather than loyalty. 3 After the

by the

war

priests

Silvio's parents sent

of the

Salesian

him

order,

to a boarding college run

the

Sant'Ambrogio

Via

in

Copernico, near the central station. Theirs was an ambitious and radical choice, unusual for an Italian family.

were allowed home

for very

protracted absence from

long

summer

holidays.

few days during the school year, and

home was

The

Salesiani

good reputation. The day began

at

Mass, there were lessons until lunch history, philosophy,

ics,

afterwards, and then

The boys boarding there

only in part compensated

were

strict

3

Milan 1980.

Greek, mathemat-

music and religious education), the Rosary

more

Princeton 1982.

On

a

seven a.m. with breakfast and (Italian, Latin,

lessons until supper. Lights

For a compelling account of the need to choose, see ch. civile,

by

and the school had

went out

nine p.m. in the long austere dormitories, each containing

guerra

this

for

exit

and

loyalty, Albert

1

more

at

than

of Claudio Pavone, Una

O.Hirschman,

Shifting Involvements,

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

14

fifty

Berlusconi stayed at the Sant'Ambrogio from

beds.

1948 to

1955, from the age of eleven to eighteen. His school records show

him

been an excellent student who obtained high grades,

to have

maximum

though never the

of profound religious that

for

good behaviour.

If

he had a weakness,

own hierarchy of values, it was a lack conviction. One of his companions remembers

terms of the school's

at least in

'during

prayers,

[Silvio]

concentration.

lost

His

moved

lips

mechanically, without forming the words, his thoughts were clearly elsewhere.' 4 In spite of his rigorous Catholic education, Berlusconi

was never going to be Andreotti,

Democrat, an Aldo Moro or Giulio

a Christian

who combined

figures

profound religious conviction and reshaping figure,

intense

personal ambition with

who were

the dominant force in

postwar years. Berlusconi was always

Italy in these

world of business, not

attracted to the

moved and was modern, not

a 'lay'

to

politics,

all

that

to the canons and rituals as well as the

timeless serenity of Italian Catholicism.

There are many anecdotes about him of the most repeated

homework

to

preferably for

who was

his

is

him

that of

companions

money. His

for

father

fifteen at the time,

how

Sant'Ambrogio.

at the

selling his rapidly

sweets

or

he spent the

gave him each week. Silvio refused to reply, and

him

the

money

as usual

five

fearfully, 'If

At school

you touch Silvio

his stubbornness.'

his pride,

made

then

5

The testimony

is

Giorgio Ferrari,

that of Giulio

II

it's

all

And he

lira

it:

my

that

'The

son

curtains [addio].'

s

who was

Berlusconi. Inchiesta sul signor TV,

di Silvio Berlusconi,

is:

added, almost

to

Milan 1994,

Colombo.

padrone del diarolo. Storia

he

his father left

a friend, Fedele Confaloniere,

4 Giovanni Ruggeri and Mario Guarino, p. 22.

hundred

on the sideboard, he refused to take

independence,

but

asking his son,

when

episode', recounted Luigi Berlusconi, 'encapsulates his pride, his

completed

objects,

little

remembered once

One

Milan 1990,

p. 7.

BUILDINGS stay

by

his side in all the

years to

come, and who

15

the current

is

He was

President of Mediaset, Berlusconi's television company.

in the

year below Silvio, but they shared a great passion for music. Confaloniere had attended Milan's prestigious Conservatory and played the

piano since he was four years old; Berlusconi sang along and played the double bass.

He adored

Gilbert Becaud, Yves Montand, Nat King

Cole and Frank Sinatra. By the age of sixteen, the two boys were organising their

and

first,

improvised concerts during the

later, at university,

of Silvio's

jobs was as a chanteur and

first

He recounted

the Mediterranean.

keep large groups entertained

compere on

One

cruise ships in

that often single-handedly he had to

all

evening with jokes, songs, and so

on. Bernard Tapie, born in a Paris suburb in 1942,

many

summer holidays,

they were to play in various nightclubs.

who was

to mirror

of the earlier elements of Berlusconi's rise to fame, was also to

hand

try his

at a singing career.

He,

like Berlusconi,

was endowed

6 with considerable charm, and even recorded one or two 45s. But

neither of It is

them had any

lasting success in this field.

worth comparing these early years of Berlusconi with those of

another major figure in the cohort of modern media tycoons. Rupert

Murdoch, born

in

1931,

is

He was

five years Berlusconi's senior.

the

son of an influential Australian newspaper owner, Keith Murdoch,

who was

knighted in 1933, and

Weekly Times group.

who owned

Murdoch was

the Melbourne Herald and

thus born into the art and was to

enjoy a considerable inheritance from which to construct his empire. Berlusconi,

and Tapie, began from nothing. Just

Berlusconi's

as

formative years were

unusually internal and confined, so

Murdoch's

were extraordinarily

external, free, even wild. In 1938

Murdoch's

father

bought

Wagga, some

a

sheep station on the Murrumbidgee River near

16,000 acres in

6 Bouchet, Tapie, pp. 23ff.

all,

mainly rolling rocky

hills.

Wagga Rupert

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

16

and

Helen, would ride

his elder sister,

and water

who had done

Helen,

each.

penny per Both

Rupert sold the water

rats.

skin.

all

day, or catch rabbits, hares

rats for their skins, six

the skinning, received from

men went

read,

him one

7

Berlusconi enrolled at the State

to university.

University of Milan, where he studied Law. to

pence

nominally,

history.

maintain himself while

Berlusconi's

university,

at

Murdoch went father

to

Oxford

asked his son to

which he did

a variety of

in

ways. Murdoch enjoyed one of the best sets of rooms

in

Worcester

College and was one of the few undergraduates to sport a car. In 1953, coached frantically by Asa Briggs, he got a third-class degree. slowly but well, in

Berlusconi graduated,

1961, with a thesis of

considerable relevance to his future, on the contractual aspects of advertising slots.

8

He

obtained the highest vote possible, and his thesis

received a prize from the Manzoni advertising agency.

The construction industry

2.

Milan

in the early

1960s was a

law. Differently from the labour market

nearly

full

the time,

which offered many

city

manv

was

other

moments one and

a flexible

in Italy's

in the

employment. The 'economic miracle',

was

possibilities

young graduates, even those who had trained

to determined

in the process of

making

Italy

postwar history,

North there was as

it

was

called at

one of the world's richest

economies. Membership of the recently established European

mon

Market,

a

in the

good transport system, design

flair,

Com-

entrepreneurial

7 William Shawcross, Murdoch. The Making of a Media Empire, 2nd revised ed.,

New

York 1997, pp. 17-29. 8 first

In the Italian university

degree within three vears,

system there as

is

is

no obligation on the student to complete

habitually the case in Britain.

a

BUILDINGS skills,

and above

all

17

the availability of great quantities of cheap labour

from the South were the elements which combined to produce an unprecedented boom.

One example

will have to suffice here.

by 1967

fridges a year;

In

1951,

this figure

of the industrial transformation Italy

was producing

just

18,500

had reached 3.2 million, making

the country the third largest producer of fridges in the world, after the United States and Japan.

Milan expanded rapidly. There was

from the

money

made not

to be

the path chosen by Silvio Berlusconi. His

problem was not

of imagination or determination, but a chronic lack of

For the

only

factories, but in the construction industry as well. This

four

first

of

blocks

flats

he constructed,

was

a shortage

initial capital.

via

in

Alciati

(1961 — 62), he persuaded the head of his father's bank, Carlo Rasini, to stand guarantee for him. flats,

As

for the potential purchasers of the

down

he convinced them to put

only on paper. This was not an

time since demand for housing

deposits

uncommon far

on homes

that existed

practice in Milan at the

exceeded the supply. Berlusconi

revealed himself a master of persuasion, and of attention to detail.

Legend has

it

that the first

was sold to the mother of

flat

friend and musical companion,

vinced, wrongly as

it

From

his early

at his best in

with those

been to keep

who

a

II

for a

Later on, he was

initial

costs to a

all,

his natural

minimum,

wide network of contacts, to make

to

alliances

have something to gain from an undertaking, and in

particular to listen to and get

9 Ferrari,

risks.

motivating and guiding other men. Above

maximum

room

later:

days Berlusconi took calculated

inclination has always

exploit to the

Fedele Confalonieri. She was con-

turned out, that there would be no

Her son commented

garage.

his great

padrone, p. 15.

on the same wavelength

as his clients.

9

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

18

After Via Alciati,

Brugherio,

just

it

was time

outside

Milan,

for

something more ambitious. At

Berlusconi

planned

a

complex of

apartment buildings to accommodate approximately 4,000 people.

new company,

founded

a

project.

The

Rasini

He

Edilnord S.p.a, and sought sponsors for his

bank supported him

again, but the other principal

source of finance was a murkier one: a Swiss company, the Finanzierungesellschaft fur Residenzen

Ag

of Lugano, whose real proprietors

have never been identified. The ambitious operation was

1964 market conditions were

In

Yet Berlusconi made

favourable than three years

less

were higher, and Brugherio was too

interest rates

earlier,

advertisements were taken

The

flats

flats

in the Corriere della Sera,

third building project,

bounded

Milano

space.

It

was located

in the

some 10,000 people,

for

a

whole page

by 1969 the one

(1970—79), was the one

2 2

was an

early Italian exercise

commune An

Milan, not far distant from the Linate airport.

complex

10

had been sold."

which made Berlusconi's name. Milano in

block,

in

isolated.

He persuaded

a success of this project as well.

key pension-fund manager to buy up

thousand

at high risk.

of Segrate, east of

enclosed residential

was guarded by means of an

it

elaborate system of concierges and night watchmen.

The homes of Milano

2

were designed

12

for the well-to-do Milanese

bourgeoisie, both traditional and dynamic, young and old. Indeed, Italian families'

close

daily

meant

preference for emotional and spatial proximity, for

contact between grandparents,

that the project

sold as a city 'for

have

'a

house

in

1

2

G.Fiori,

II

number

ones,' but also as a place

Milan without the smog and

venditore,

The best description

Oxford 2001, pp. 100-1.

and children,

had to appeal to different age groups.

10 For further details of this encounter, see below, ch. 11

parents,

was

where you could

traffic

5, p.

It

jams of Milan',

126.

Milan 1995, pp. 32-4. in English of

Milano

2

is

in

John Foot, Milan

since the Miracle,

BUILDINGS and enjoy

countryside house in the

'a

reflected, but also helped to

city.'

Its

19

dominant ethos

promote, the metamorphosis of Milanese

capitalism in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This

was the beginning

of the era of the 'Milano da bere', the 'city you can drink', a city of

new

wealth founded upon telecommunications, finance, fashion and 13

advertising.

In its architectural design,

reaction to modernism.

Its

Milano

be described

2 can best

architects

(Ragazzi,

as a

cosy

Hoffer and Pozza)

preferred red brick to concrete, shunned away from high rise and

surrounded homes with green spaces and ever-green

complex boasts

as its central axis a

The

trees.

porticoed street one and a half

kilometres in length, offering a very wide range of shops. Pedestrians, cyclists,

and motorists are kept carefully separate. The central piazza

overlooks a small building

team and

his

particular.'

The

artificial

his friend's

'extraordinary sense of detail and of the

14

real strength of

offered:

Every Friday Berlusconi toured the

lake.

and Fedele Confalonieri remembers the apprehension of

site,

a hotel

and

a

Milano

2 lay

with the quality of services

it

conference centre, six schools, a church, a

running track and swimming pools, underground parking and cable television. This last offered six channels, three for the

public service, and

on the Milano first

two

instigation of 2 itself.

some of

TeleMilano,

Berlusconi regarded

be the beginning of

13

for abroad.

it

as

The

last,

it

was

called,

news

station for

was born

in 1974.

an amusing optional extra, but

his television

it

its

significance as the

At

was to

empire.

'Milano da bere' was an advertising slogan for an after-dinner drink,

Ramazzotti. For

Italian

was used,

the residents, as a local as

RAI, the

free channel

dominant image of the

Amaro

city in the 1980s, see Foot,

Milan, pp. 165—7.

14 Ferrari, pp. 21-2.

//

padrone, p. 38. See also Paolo

Madron,

Le gesta del Cavaliere, Milan 1994,

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

20

Berlusconi

is

how

fond of recalling

Milano 2 was: 'When

my

morale

is

pockets and go for a walk in Milano

2.

were

against

me

.

.

.

low, I

the completion of

difficult I

my

put

my

hands in

remember how many people

Theirs was a political and bureaucratic machine

perfectly designed to impede, to prohibit, to delay and to hinder.'

15

Berlusconi had to liberate Milano 2 from this machine, to assert the right of

freedom from interference

that

was central to

had to stop the 'Communist magistrates',

as

his success.

He

he called them, from

controlling the regularity of the building contracts, the trade unions

from making

a fuss

about working conditions, architectural professors

and the newspapers from

criticising the quality of the project.

also to persuade the airport authorities at Linate to

He had

change the

flight

paths of the incoming and outgoing jets so as not to disturb the

new

residents.

3.

All this persuasion

Horses for courses

and desistance not only had

but raised

a price,

larger questions about business practices, public ethics and the rule of

law. In his valuable biography of Silvio Berlusconi, published in 1995,

the journalist Giuseppe Fiori listed his subject's principal character traits.

16

He

paid tribute to Berlusconi's courage, talent, and creativity,

optimism and exceptional work capacity,

his

attention to the charming gesture.

and

He noted

his desire to please

his subject's

volubility, as well as his boundless desire to

himself.

15

He

could not

and

stubbornness

make

a

name

for

to underline Berlusconi's ambiguity and

fail

S.E.D'Anna and G.Moncalvo

(eds), Berlusconi in Concert [in Italian],

London 1994,

p. 316.

16 Fiori's Antonio Gramsci.

1970.

Life

of a Revolutionarj was published by

New

Left

Books

in

BUILDINGS '

spregiudicatezza\ or lack of scruples, his deft

of secret deals and his sense of clan. It

footwork

21

world

in the

17

might well be argued that such characteristics were necessary

elements of being a building trade entrepreneur Certainly

was habitual

it

in

Milan in the 1970s.

practice, and not just in that particular place

and time, to surround oneself with capable lawyers, see could be bent in one's favour, and pay public responsibility.

—

firmly linked

If

and economic

ethics

the law

activity

had once been

century the academic discipline of

in the eighteenth

economics had been considered

how

attention to questions of

little

branch of

a

ethics,

and

Adam

Smith

had been professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow

—

two had moved

the

Business

by the end of the twentieth century.

As The Economist declared recently with com-

business.

is

far apart

mendable frankness: 'Businesses are ultimately interested profits

...

one

in

thing:

businesses think that treating their customers and staff

If

well, or adopting a policy of "corporate social responsibility", or using

ecologically friendly stationery will add to their profits, they will it.

Otherwise they

television holding

producing a

will not.'

18

It

was to take Mediaset, Berlusconi's

company, more than twenty years before

minimum

not so

at the

much one

it

started

of 'socially responsible advertising' amongst the

tens of thousands of advertising spots that

However,

do

it

broadcasts regularly.

19

beginning of Berlusconi's career the question was

of public ethics and responsibility, as of the necessary

sense of limits and of transparency imposed by the law. Here the

shadows

cast

something

17 Fiori,

by

his early decisions

in his family

//

venditore,

have never really

and school education, or

p. 41.

For

a

long discussion of

Anderson, 'Land without scruple', London Review of Books, 18

See the survey, 'Globalisation and

its critics',

p. 4.

19

It is

called

'Comunica/ione

sociale Mediaset'.

else

left

him. Either

the extreme gap

'

spregiudicatezza

vol. 24, no. 6, 21

in The Economist,

,

see Perry

March 2002.

29 September 2001,

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

22

between the

size

of his ambition and the shortage of his capital, or

else the collective ethos of the his

empire, or perhaps

be

later to

The

much

all

criticised

him

three, pushed

and the subject of

financing of Milano 2

and

,

mystery. For the early

a great

group of friends with

its

flats

whom

he built

in directions that

were

legal actions.

successor Milano 3 has remained ,

of Via Alciati, Berlusconi's sources

of capital and partners were, legally speaking, clearly visible. For

Milano 2 they are buried

purely nominal proprietors,

in a jungle of

offshore companies, financial Chinese boxes. Berlusconi's

on 29 September 1968 and only

appears' later,

in

What

1975.

name

'dis-

surfaces again seven years

can be the reasons for such an extensive and

temporally protracted dissimulation? 20

The

accusations, which have been repeatedly

that Berlusconi used

money from

early operations and that he

exported from

employed such

Italy's

Another

One

complicated and

such was capital which had been

(at the

time

all

such movements were

stock exchange, which

possibility

by the Mafia

at

Palermo

television the origins of so

is

in

origin, flowed into the

Berlusconi.

An

Italian Story',

loans of 1977—78, see 'An especially section 6,

See also Fiori,

The

first

much

in July

last

interviews before being

1992, explained to French

liquidity:

//

billion lira, of

twenty-two companies of Berlusconi's empire;

'Silvio

The Economist, 28 April 2001, p. 23. For the shareholder

open

letter to Silvio Berlusconi', The Economist, 2

August 2003,

'Your early business career', available on http:// www. Economist.

venditore, p. 39, as

well as Ruggeri and Guarino, Berlusconi, pp. 45—66.

edition of Ruggeri and Guarino's book, dating back to 1987,

an unsuccessful

strictly

Milan not Rome.

20 Between 1978 and 1985 The Economist has estimated that some 93.9

unknown

illegally

was laundered money from the Mafia. The

magistrate Paolo Borsellino, in one of his killed

capital in

There were various possible

and then channelled back from Swiss bank accounts

controlled),

towards

Italy

in Italy, are

highly suspect sources to finance his

questionable circular flows of funds.

sources of finance.

made

libel action

bv

Silvio Berlusconi.

was the subject of

BUILDINGS At the beginning of the 1970s, Cosa Nostra became sense that

make of

it it

took over the drug trade a

One

its

members entered

movement

the

which

for

was exported and deposited

certain of

a firm, in the

in such a massive

way

as to

monopoly. Cosa Nostra thus began to manage an

enormous amount of money capital

23

it

obviously sought outlets.

in safe

Its

bank accounts abroad, and

into contact with financiers expert in

of capital. 21

of Milan's most famous stockbrokers, Aldo Ravelli, referred to

the Mafia as one of the three great sections of the Italian bourgeoisie, at least in

terms of

From an

its

early period in Berlusconi's business career there existed

though not necessarily

a significant Sicilian connection,

took the form of

In personal terms,

it

Marcello DeH'Utri,

who was born

met

22

financial resources.

at university in

in

his

a Mafia one.

long collaboration with

Palermo

in 1941.

The two had

Milan. Berlusconi was just finishing as Dell'Utri

began, and the latter, lonely and rather intimidated by the great

northern capital, was always to be grateful to Berlusconi for instant

friendship.

harmonious

as that

more than once

The

relationship

21

were not being

that his talents

The interview, of

Rome

as

with Fedele Confalonieri; DeH'Utri was to

ated. But he recognised in Berlusconi

L'odore dei soldi,

was not

May

21

1992,

is

some

published in

2001, pp. 47-50. The quote

is

feel

23

He

E.Veltri and M.Travaglio,

on pp. 49-50.

22 See his extended and illuminating conversation with F.Tamburini, Misteri

Milan

as

sufficiently appreci-

sort of father figure.

full in

his

profound or

d'ltalia,

1996, which Ravelli allowed to be published only after his death, p. 183. His

insider's typology of the Italian bourgeoisie

was not

'semi-clean' bourgeoisie, headed by Agnelli; section

a flattering one. Section

two was

'intent

one was

on gaining quota

any cost, without scruples and often outside the law'; section three was the Mafia.

a at

Two

and three, according to Ravelli, were often intertwined. 23 See the interrogation of Dell'Utri

where he was questioned about the resentment that

lay

behind

it

at the

legal case

Tribunale di Torino, 5 October 1996,

he took out against Fininvest, and

how

the

was dissolved by Berlusconi: 'Then Berlusconi, how can

I

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

24

also said

on one occasion, rather

pardon dishonesty but not

that

was to play

24

stupidity.

1974 Berlusconi took

In

revealingly, that Berlusconi could

a

symbolic step of some significance, one

bought the great and beautiful eighteenth-century Arcore, north of Milan, the historic country

at

Stampa

Casati

di

image.

a central part in the construction of his

Soncino family.

He

of San Martino

villa

home

of the noble

has 147 rooms. By buying Arcore,

It

Berlusconi clearly signalled the grandiosity of his ambitions and their

Not

patrimonial nature.

for

him the

Milan's and Italy's most influential banker,

bank clerk and had

like a

of Enrico Cuccia,

austerity

who was

said to have liyed

tone for one part of the Milanese

set the

bourgeoisie ever since the war. In the park surrounding the

villa

of

San Martino, Berlusconi constructed an imposing mausoleum to house the bodily remains not only of his friends as well.

own

family, but those of his closest

25

The circumstances surrounding

purchase of the

the

aroused more than one suspicion. After a tragedy heir, the

woman

Marchesina Anna Maria Casati Stampa

of 22, decided to

sell

up

at

The Marchesina 's

good

legal

flat in

Previti.

Old Masters and

put

acknowledged

in a certain sense

moment

in Veltii

lire.

At the time such

central Milan, but not

able collection of

it,

Soncino, a young

a

sum was

much more.

consultant in the transaction was a bullish

young Roman lawyer, Cesare

certain

have

villa

her family, the

what was widely considered to be

an extremely low price: 500 million the going price for a

di

in

my

She allowed the

villa's

library of antique

problem ... As happens

in

consider-

books to be

good

families, at a

the father calls the son and resolves the problem'; interrogation published

and Travaglio, L'odore

24 Interview with

Ferrari,

dei soldi, p. II

187.

padrone, p. 65.

25 For a splendid description, Enrico Deaglio, Besame mucho, Milan 1995, pp. 135—8. See also Madron, Le gesta that the affection p.

108.

which

del Cavaliere, pp.

1-2. Dell'Utri told Madron:

Silvio has for his friends

extends even to the

'I

find

it

moving

after-life';

ibid.,

BUILDINGS included in the price. Berlusconi's

own

Once

the deal

was concluded,

He was

principal lawyer.

Previti

rapidly to

25

became

become

the

third in the troika of leading personalities in the Berlusconi entourage,

the other

two being Confalonieri and

make Arcore

Berlusconi intended to

twenties he had been, on his

his

DeU'LItri.

26

his family

own

home. Throughout

admission, something of a

playboy, his lack of height being amply compensated, according to his friend Confalonieri, by his

charm and expensive wardrobe. 27

March

In

1965, nearly twenty-nine, he married Carla Elvira Dall'Oglio, an elegant but not wealthy girl from La Spezia.

Maria Elvira (Marina), born 1969. At in Viale

went

the family

first

in

They had two

children:

1966, and Pier Silvio (Dudi), born in to live in a comfortable block of

San Gimignano on the periphery of the

city.

flats

They were

joined in the same block by his parents, his aunt Maria Bossi, his

cousin Lidia Borsani, and one of his close school friends,

Comincioli.

Berlusconi

has

Romano

always wanted to preside over,

with

generosity and bonhomie, a large group of relatives and friends. This is

his

'clan',

significance.

a

word he and

his

The composition of

friends use without derogratory

the clan has varied over time, but

Berlusconi's instincts have remained the same.

The

villa at

Arcore needed revamping.

the nouveau riche, Berlusconi features.

One was

an indoor

In the inimitable style of

was to introduce

swimming pool with

a

number of novel

a wall of television

26 The Economist investigation of August 2003 (http://www.Economist.com, section 6,

'Your early business career') emphasises

in

both the Arcore and other transactions the

role of the 'enigmatic' figure of Giovanni Dal Santo.

Dal Santo was working in Milan as a bookkeeper. of a

number of

Berlusconi's companies at crucial

such as Immobiliare Idra

when

Santo laundered 2 billion

lira

Coriasco

in

it

bought

Born

He

in Sicily in

1920, by the 1970s

suddenly became the only director

moments

Villa San Martino.

in their

shadowy existence,

According to The Economist Dal

(about 5.1 million euros in today's money) through

March 1979.

27 Interview with Ferrari,

//

padrone, p. 27.

SAF and

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

26

screens at one end of

it,

control of his empire while the

presumably to

facilitate the

swimming around. 28

new owner's

After he had secured

Berlusconi contacted Marcello DeH'Utri to offer him the

villa,

position of factotum with special responsibility for

who

Dell'lltri,

had worked

after graduating

Palermo, accepted willingly. Sometime after

its

renovation.

in a series

of banks in

his arrival

he brought to

Mangano,

Arcore

a figure of considerable disrepute. Vittorio

mafioso

from Palermo, of the powerful familv of Porta Nuova, was

ostensibly to take charge of the stables, though there

young

a

was only one

horse.

The reasons

for

Mangano 's presence have long been debated and

contested.

The most

the early

970s the kidnapping of wealthy entrepreneurs or members

1

plausible

is

that of the

of their family was quite widespread in

own

Berlusconi's

familv

had

phenomenon was connected

even

Italy,

been threatened

in

in the

Sicily,

North while they awaited

The

number of

and sent to trial.

In

North.

way.

this

to the fact that a significant

Mafia bosses had been removed from surveillance in the

need for protection.

live

under

They had used the

opportunity to build up their network of criminal contacts throughout

Lombardy. 29

It

may

well be that Dell'lltri installed

Mangano

guarantor for Berlusconi's family. Mangano, however, was not

bodyguard,

let

was described personalities

northern

Dell'lltri

alone a stable boy. Tall, heavilv built and taciturn, he later

who

Italy.'

as a

just a

by the magistrate Borsellino

as

'one of those

acted as a bridgehead for the Mafia organisation in

30

and Berlusconi,

though their testimonies vary, have

always maintained that once their suspicions were aroused they sent

28 The VIP magazines and approved biographies dwelt lovingly on the other 'optionals' as

they chose to

call

them, using the English word.

29 Corrado Stajano, La

criminalita organizzata in Lombardia,

30 See the interview of 1992 published

in Veltri

Milan 1985.

and Travaglio, L'odore

dei soldi, p. 50.

BUILDINGS Mangano away from

the villa forthwith. Yet Dell'Utri admitted freely

Mangano was

that while

his friends,

was

there, there

going: 'He sometimes introduced

were

me

a great deal of

Furthermore, contacts between the two

were intercepted by the police calls

Mangano

the

men

calls

New

York.

He

as

well as

'a

horse'

of the Porta to

life

eventually

Nuova

advertising

31

//

went back

di

is

Palermo and became the leader

to be arrested, tried and sentenced

for double homicide,

Publitalia, the cash

the Mafia

cow

of his empire.

padrone, p. 38, and the remarks by the famous anti-Mafia magistrate

venditore,

2nd

Sicilians'

tendency to discretion, not to speak of

18ff.

it

reaches levels of paroxysm'; Cose

ed., p. 49.

p. 71,

illuminating discussion of Mafia

Mass. 1993, pp.

membership of

was to become the head of Berlusconi's

proverbial. In the ambit of Cosa -Nostra

II

'the small

Dell'Utri

Cosa Nostra, Milan 1993,

32 Fiori,

to

He was

from Palermo, Giovanni Falcone: 'The muteness,

do with him,

died in prison from cancer in 2000, at the

company,

Ferrari,

on

He

trafficking.

age of sixty.

He made

also spoke,

and replied that he did not have

family.

imprisonment

and drug

Some

from Milan

32

change' for a horse.

Mangano

31

way of signifying an undercover

a habitual Mafia

deal. Dell'Utri laughed

aren't

style.'

did not cease.

familiar terms, with Dell'Utri, saying he had business to

—

Names

for a period of ten days.

Palermo and

to

in

1980, Mangano's phone

years later, in February

coming and

to these people, saying that they

but he never mentioned a single name.

mentioned when people are presented

coded phone

27

for a detailed account of these interceptions. 'horses',

D.Gambetta, The

Sicilian

Mafia,

For an

Cambridge,

THE MAKING OF A TELEVISION EMPIRE

2:

Family

1.

The

villa at

crisis

Arcore was soon ready to receive the Berlusconi family,

which took up residence there

second half of the 1970s. As

in the

extreme luxury offered no guarantee of domestic

often happens,

tranquillity. In 1980, at the age of fourty-four, Berlusconi fell in love

with

a

young,

voluptuous

and intelligent actress from Bologna,

Veronica Lario, twenty years have occurred

the Teatro

at

The

his junior.

Manzoni

coup defoudre

Berlusconi was to affair

hidden for

mother

in

a

fall

magniflco cornuto.

years.

one wing of the former

continued to

live at

his

1

Fiori,

//

venditore, pp.

He

business headquarters

Arcore, outside the

75-76; Mario Oriani

Le Cocu magnifique

installed

Fernand

Veronica and her

Villa Borletti in central

that time tell of a Berlusconi riven

Crommelynk's

in

]

passionately in love with Lario, but kept his

number of

wing was

the other

//

said to

Milan, which Berlusconi

in

happened to own, and where Veronica Lario was playing

Crommelynk's comedy,

is

by

city.

guilt.

—

first

—

while his family

All the testimonies of

His secret love

(ed.), Berlusconi story,

was staged for the

Milan

time in Paris

Milan 1994, in

1920.

affair

p. 19.

THE MAKING OF A TELEVISION EMPIRE

29

conflicted with his loyalty to his family and his deep-felt need to be

loved, even worshipped, by

As

members

all

of his family and entourage.

usual, he tried to reconcile the irreconcilable,

private

life

he

succeeded.

in part

and

at least in his

Veronica gave birth to their

1984, he immediately recognised the child, and

child, Barbara, in July

a year later

When

he and Carla Dall'Oglio separated.

It

was not to be an

acrimonious divorce. Carla was more than adequately provided

for,

and not banished from the Berlusconi entourage. The two children of the

first

which

marriage were to work closely with their father in Fininvest,

in

1984 became the overall name for Berlusconi's group of

companies. 2 Marina

particular soon demonstrated

in

many

of the

business qualities of her father.

Veronica Lario and children

be

— Eleonora and

a successful as well as

Silvio

Berlusconi were to have

Luigi,

born

in

unconventional marriage, with Lario playing

from the stereotypical

a role far distant

two other

1986 and 1988. Theirs was to

figure of the uncritical

and

unconditionally supportive companion of the Great Man. She refused to live at Arcore, sent their children to the Steiner school at Milan,

declined

to

the

play

First

Lady when Berlusconi became Prime

Minister, and voiced publicly her disagreement with her husband's

support of the Iraq war of 2003. Berlusconi has admitted to loneliness in his

time

as leader

made very

has

of

Italy.

His wife has not been by his side, but

clear her support and affection for him.

gruppo Fininvest, Turin 1997, p. 92.

2

Mario Molteni,

3

Maria Latella and Veronica Berlusconi, 'Dialogo

II

3

Bush', Micromega, 2003, no. 2, pp. 7-18.

tra

due madri contro

la

guerra di

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

30

Masons

2.

In

March 1981

Gherardo Colombo and

the Milanese magistrates,

Giuliano Turone, while conducting enquiries into the disgraced banker

Michele Sindona, came across the

list

of 962 persons belonging to a

secret Masonic lodge, the P2 (Propaganda 2). substantial

if

section of the

idiosyncratic

included the names of

all

The

nation's

list

contained a

power

elite.

It

the heads of the secret services, 195 officers

of the various armed corps of the Republic,

among whom were

twelve generals from the Carabinieri, twentv-two from the army, and eight admirals.

There were forty-four members of parliament, includ-

ing three ministers and the secretarv of one of the ruling parties, the Social

Democrat Pietro Longo.

made up

the remainder of the

number 1,816

(the

some

Magistrates,

of police, bankers and businessmen,

list

may never have been

a figure for the role,

were

Communist. The P2 formed part of the lay far

was

below the surface of the

farce,

workings

is

or destroy

some much

less

Italian

so.

To

it,

at

found).

Licio Gelli,

seemed

conspiratorial and anti-

secret history

Republic.

Some

reconstruct

its

which never

of that history

subterranean

almost impossible. Nearly always the intent was to limit Italian

democracy — though always with the reiterated

patriotic goal of saving the country Italian

men

1,600 upwards, which

The aims of the lodge, whose nominal head, too insignificant

was on

Silvio Berlusconi

list.

numbers went from

suggests that the complete

prefects and heads

servants and media

civil

Communist

from

its

principal enemies, the

Party (PCI) and the trade unions.

At the time of the lodge's foundation, the PCI had reached the height of it.

its

powers, with more than one

To combat

its

influence,

P2 aimed to

in three Italians voting for infiltrate political parties,

newspapers and trade unions by means of what one of the organis-

THE MAKING OF A TELEVISION EMPIRE documents

secret

ation's

called

'economic-financial

'sums not exceeding 30 to 40 billion allow carefully chosen

men,

acting in

manoeuvres':

would seem

lira

good

faith,

31

sufficient to

to conquer key posts

necessary for overall control.' 4 In 1977, the lodge had

made such

progress as to succeed in gaining covert control of Italy's leading

newspaper, the

Corriere della Sera.

thus extremely timely.

The

fortuitous

The lodge had devoted

the majority report of the Parliamentary the pollution of the public

What was

life

words of

Inquiry, 'to

Berlusconi doing in such an organisation? The

Silvio

show

that he played a strategic role within

is

'nothing much', for there

range of contacts, to raise

his

the

Commission of

likely

extend

itself, in

of a nation'. 5

most

answer

unmasking of P2 was

it.

He

is

no evidence to

probably joined to

his visibility, to

continue that

extensive 'networking' which his friend Confalonieri rated as one of the keys to his success. lation of capital.

Membership could

also facilitate the

accumu-

During the 1970s, Giovanni

Cresti, the director

Monte

dei Paschi, granted

general of Siena's influential bank, the

Berlusconi's companies extensive credit on very favourable terms.

Although lodge

—

it

his

could not be proved that Cresti was a

name was not on

friend of Licio Gelli.

5

to be a close

della P2,

Rome

massonka P2, vol. 7, pt.l,

196.

p.

The

dating probably from the period 1975-76, entitled

sulla situazione italiana'

A.Cecchi, Storia

— he was known

d'inchiesta sulla Loggia

two key documents,

'Memorandum in

list

of the

6

4 Commissione parlamentare organisation's

the

member

and 'Piano

di rinascita

democratica', are published

1985.

Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta sulla Loggia massonka P2, Sigla no. 2, Relazione

conclusiva di maggioranza, p. 164.

From 1977 onwards,

the Corriere della Sera, Angelo Rizzoli, director,

Bruno Tassan Din, and the

series of articles for the

was

a

member

banks or

pp. in

it

emerged

later, the

owner of

of the P2, as were the managing

editor, -Franco Di Bella. Berlusconi himself

wrote

a

newspaper from 10 April 1978 onwards.

6 See the internal enquiry carried out by the venditore,

so

Monte

dei Paschi, reported in Fiori,

60-3. One hundred and nineteen members of the P2 were employed

the treasury and finance ministries.

//

in

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

32

There

no evidence to show

is

membership

conspirator, but his

One was in

took pains to deny

that he

Verona

that his

Berlusconi

that

revealing in a

is

it.

In

was an

1988 he was to

membership dated from

active

number of ways. tell a

court

just before the scandal

broke, and that he had never paid an inscription fee. Both statements

were untrue.

1990 the Venetian Court of Appeal condemned him

In

for false testimony. This

has been passed

The other Even

tions.

if

insistence its

were

own

the only definitive sentence of guilt that

revealing aspect concerns Berlusconi's political convic-

he was not

have been aware of

and

is

on him.

its

a leading

overall aims.

member

The

of the lodge, he must

lodge's anti- Communism,

on the need to destroy the independence of the judiciary

strategy to take over key elements of the

media of

elements that were to figure prominently

all

its

political project in the future. So, too,

that time

in

Berlusconi's

was the idea

that patriotic

values could best be nurtured within a heavily piloted democracy.

Commercial television

3.

The 1980s were

to witness the transformation of Berlusconi

from

a

highly successful provincial building entrepreneur into a figure of national repute.

The

television, then in

Berlusconi to

its

make

vehicle for this transformation

infancy in Italy.

the leap.

A number

One was

was commercial

of factors encouraged

the vulnerability of the Italian

building trade, subject to periodic and crippling crises. Another, as he

explained on one occasion to Marcello Dell'Utri, was the immediacy that television offered an entrepreneur:

plan something today and you see television

already

you think of

on the

screen'.

it

in

the

it

'In

the building trade you

realised in ten years' time. In

morning and

Dell'Utri commented:

in the

'The

evening

medium

it's

of

THE MAKING OF A TELEVISION EMPIRE was profoundly congenial to Berlusconi's character.

television

him because of the speed with which he could put

inspired

practice the ideas that

Berlusconi.'

is

33

television

7

went through

his head. I'd

symbiotic relationship

This

It

into

go further: television

medium

with the

of

fundamental to our understanding of the man.

is

Another strong motive for

change

his

of direction

was

that

commercial television offered an unprecedented opportunity for him

make quick money. Here,

to

we

as

shall

see below, the role of

Berlusconi's advertising company, Publitalia, founded in 1979 and run

by Marcello dell'Utri from 1982 onwards, was to be increase in

its

turnover was spectacular: 12 billion

by 1984; 2,167

billion

billion

crucial.

lire in

The

1980; 900

by the end of the decade. Already by

1984, 85 percent of Fininvest's income came from the television division,

and nearly 2,000 members of

employed

Of

there.

3,500 workforce were

its

8

almost equal significance was the

fact that in the early

1980s

Berlusconi acquired a political patron of great importance. Bettino Craxi,

of the

leader

the

Socialist

Italian

was to become

party,

President of the Council of Ministers in 1983. Massive and intimidating, a

a

shrewd

and inveterate

tactician

modernising veneer which

Italy's

anti- Communist,

two major

Craxi offered

parties, the Christian

Democrats and Communists, both lacked. He, too, was Milanese, very

much

in tune

with the fashion-conscious, high-tech consumerism

which characterised the politics

were

city in the

new

to be personalised and simplified, they

strong showbiz element, their principal

There was

7 Ferrari, 8

del

little

11

decade. Under his leadership,

that

padrone, pp.

was

medium was

Socialist in all this,

Berlusconi.

Esame

vol. 11 (1986), no. 4, pp.

to have a

to be television.

much

of southern

69-70.

Molteni, Fininvest, p. 67, table 4.2; Madron, Le

Gruppo

but

were

geste, p.

102; Sandro Gerbi,

'I

conti

del bilancio consolidato 1984', Problemi dell'Informazione,

601-8.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

34

European Socialism was going

in the

same direction

in the

1980s.

Craxi was to become the ideal guide and protector for Berlusconi. By

1984 the

men were

firm friends, with Craxi agreeing to be the

godfather (compare) of Barbara, the child born out of wedlock to Berlusconi and Veronica Lario.

No

Christian

Democrat leader would

have considered such a gesture. Berlusconi viewed his

of a crusade, a Italy,

shift into

way of breaking

which found

commercial television

the grip of a staider,

cultural expression in the

its

as

something

more

restrictive

monopoly exercised

by RAI, the public broadcasting company. He explained

later:

Viewers avidly desired things that were different from those which the

RAI

offered

the

RAI

closed up shop at

.

.

.

they wanted shows that went on 1

late,

whereas

1:00 p.m. Basically, private television was

an act of transgression which tempted great numbers of people.

thought about

all

those things which could enter their

I

homes — game

shows, quiz shows, information, but also advertisements and consumer goods. 9

Here was

ground plan from which he was not to

a

two

shift for

decades.

In France in the early 1980s Bernard Tapie, a figure

Berlusconi in

many ways, was

reaching the height of his popularity.

Tapie offered the French the three 'Rs':

claimed these to be a rule of family had evolved for

life far

FIAT and

in Turin, the three 'Ss' reigned

9 Ferrari,

II

padrone, p. 70.

who resembled

(

le

Reve, le Rire, le Risque'

.

He

superior to that which the Agnelli

for the Juventus football team. There,

supreme:

'

Semplicita, Serieta, Sobrieta

.

THE MAKING OF A TELEVISION EMPIRE

35

Tapie and Berlusconi, as well as Murdoch in the earlier part of career,

wanted

all

and

in business

to contest and break free

in public institutions.

buying up old and

from the old

Tapie made his

elites,

first

them

off again.

business idol in France. In April 1985, at the

He

rapidly

both

fortune by

restructuring and downsizing

ailing firms,

ferociously, and then selling

10

his

them

became

a

Grand Auditorium of

the Palais des Congres in Paris, he staged what was described as

France's

'business show'.

first

Invited by the Ecole Superieure des

Dirigeants d'Entreprise (ESDE), he

the auditorium (capacity of

filled

4,000) twice over. Hundreds of young people came to hear him. The

Anne

journalist are?'

Sinclair asked him:

Tapie replied: 'Because

I

to

programme

their

start

own

progress. Ambitions

evening, gained an

,

Ambitions.

businesses,

Berlusconi

1986 Tapie launched

In early

Young people were given

his

the chance

and the programme followed their

which was transmitted

at

8:30 p.m. on Friday

audience share of 34 percent. 11

initial

many ways more

Tapie 's success was in

—

did you get to where you

love myself, a reply that Berlusconi

would very much have appreciated. television

'How

spectacular than that of

he was a more accomplished showman

—

but the

was more soundly based. Tapie compered programmes on

Italian's

television,

Berlusconi bought up the television stations themselves. Structural conditions in Italy were on his side. Throughout the 1980s, a decade

which has

rightly

been described

mercial television was

10

left

Murdoch was incensed

as fatal for the sector, Italian

without regulation.

in

particular by British

12

Back

in July 1976, the

complacency and snobbishness.

'They distrust money,' he asserted. 'Thev despise business. They create the psychological currents which have done so

change'; Shawcross, Murdoch, p. 31, as well

as-

J.

12

Paolo Caretti,

(2003), no.

1

,

'Informazione:

to Britain and

its

social

and

willingness to

Bouchet, Tapie, p. 26.

Villeneuve, Le mjthe Tapie, Paris 1988, pp.

11

issues,

much damage

com-

52-7 and 64-7.

l'anomalia italiana', Democrazia

e

Diritto,

vol. 41

pp. 169-70. The Constitutional Court was to intervene frequently on these

but without conspicuous success.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

36

Italian Constitutional

Court had

down some

laid

guidelines. National

broadcasting was to be reserved for public television, but local com13

mercial operators could henceforth begin transmissions.

The Court

declared that ether was a collective resource and asked parliament to

with urgency for the whole area of the mass media. In par-

legislate ticular,

requested respect for what

it

pluralism.

The

first

was to ensure on

society found expression

civil

and external

called internal

it

that the different voices of Italian

television.

The second

that the

own-

ership of television channels should not be unduly concentrated. All this

was

wilfully ignored

by the

Bettino Craxi in particular. At just

1983, the Italian Socialists were

1 1

still

and by

politicians of the time,

percent of the electorate in

.4

too small a force for the

far

Craxi had the power of veto over the

ambitions of their leader.

formation of government coalitions, he could even become President of the Council of Ministers, but he wanted the Socialists to be a great

European force,

Spanish

their

like

unhindered and meteoric

rise

or

of his friend Berlusconi was a unique

opportunity for increasing the media influence and

works of

The

his

own

result

was

party.

that years passed during

perfect conditions for Silvio Berlusconi.

new

which an unchecked

free-

television entrepreneurs, the

He was

one

most dynamic of

the

who was

prepared to

sail

Local commercial transmissions were to be permitted on the grounds that there

1

were

clientelistic net-

14

reigned in the world of commercial television. These were

for-all

the

The

French counterparts.

sufficient frequencies available 'to

permit the freedom of private

initiative

danger of private monopolies or oligopolies'; A. Pace, 'La radiotelevisone in particolare riguardo alia emittenza privata, 'Ri vista

(1987) no. 14 The activities

efforts

3, p.

without

Italia

Trimestrale di Diritto Pubblico, vol.

con 37

623.

Italian journalist

Piero Ottone recounted in 1994:

over the years, on occasion

at close quarters,

and

'I

I

have followed

remember

the

his [Craxi's]

superhuman

he made to prevent Parliament from passing legislation on television regulation';

'L'ltalia dei furbi', Ulisse, vol.

7 (1994), no. 12; quoted in Fiori,

II

venditore, p. 100.

6

THE MAKING OF A TELEVISION EMPIRE wind

closest to the

in legal terms,

and

the greatest quantities of capital.

who seemed

to have access to

His principal competition

Italia

1

,

transmission.

Only Berlusconi risked

network

establishing a national

TeleMilano of Milano for here

regulation, 15

With

that antitrust legislation

illegality,

whole of the peninsula, ensuring

in the

form.

were both convinced

way, and that they could not stray too

its

the

and Mario Formenton of the Mondadori group,

channel Rete 4,

was on

at the

who owned

time, Edilio Rusconi of the Rusconi publishing group,

which owned

37

2.

from

far

local

buying up local stations

clear reception,

for his Canale 5

,

and explicitly

the heir of the

little

Naturally enough, he was opposed to any

was negative freedom

work

at

undiluted

in

By 1984 he had bought out both Rusconi and Formenton. three

his

major channels,

Canale

Rete 4 and

5,

Italia

1,

transmitting nationally, he had established a near monopoly.

On

Rome

16 October 1984, three magistrates from Turin,

and

Pescara respectively gave orders for Berlusconi's television stations to

be partially blacked out. Their argument was very simple. The ruling of the Constitutional Court in

1

976 made provision

A

channels were in breach of these provisions.

found

itself

without Mediaset transmissions.

experience. That day

its

significant part of Italy It

programmes included

was

5), as

moment

15

well as

New

York,

New

to have a blank screen.

He

York

legislation,

on Rete

(all

4.

It

scheduled for

was not

a

good

16

told Alberto Statera in 1983: 'For

need for any

a disconcerting

the favourite childrens'

cartoon, The Smurfs, Dallas, Dynasty and High Noon

Canale

for local but not

commercial broadcasting, and Berlusconi's three national

national

my

part,

I

am

convinced that there

because the market, here as elsewhere, contains

all

necessary to regulate itself; A. Statera, 'Silvio Berlusconi', in N.Ajello et

is

no

the antibodies

al.,

Perche low,

Bari 1984, p. 217. 1

The

in Fiori,

II

best reconstruction of this extraordinary event and

venditore, pp.

105-20, upon which

my own

account

its is

aftermath

is

to be found

heavily dependent.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

38

Predictably enough, the popular outcry was considerable. Berlusconi's

channels,

which continued to transmit to the

country, fanned the flames, demanding respect for a

new

'freedom to use the television's automatic controls'

right,

telecomando). In the face of this mediatic crisis, the

of the

Italian

Republic,

of the

rest

first in

citizen's (liberta di

the history

Craxi reacted with a speed and

Bettino

determination which could only have been called exemplary had thev

been employed Ministers

another and worthier cause.

for

was summoned

immediately issued

to

meet on Saturday, 20 October, and

decree law

a

The Council of

months,

(decreto legge), valid for six

ordering the resumption of national commercial transmissions. At the

same time the new Pillitteri,

Socialist

spokesman

Craxi's brother-in-law and later to be

announced: 'The magistrates' at

a

moment when

refining a

for telecommunications, Paolo

initiative

parliament

new law on

is

in

is

all

the

mayor of Milan,

more

inappropriate

the process of examining and

private television transmissions.'

the law regulating telecommunications

17

In the event,

was only passed

in

August

1990, fourteen years after the Constitutional Court had invoked necessity.

The new law merely sanctioned the

status quo,

its

leaving

Berlusconi's empire untouched.

This unedifying story was dense with implications. All over the world

between media ownership and

the relationship

political

power

been an intimate one After Rupert Murdoch threw the weight of .

has his

newspapers (The Sun and The News of the World) behind Mrs. Thatcher in the

1979 elections, she wrote to thank The Suns editor Larry

Lamb, and

in

1980 knighted him for

When Murdoch 17 Ibid., p. 109.

his

'services to journalism'.

took over The Times and The Sunday Times

in

1981,

THE MAKING OF A TELEVISION EMPIRE his bid

was not referred

to the

39

Monopolies Commission. The pledges

he gave on editorial independence were soon to be flouted, but no

was taken against him. Throughout the 1980s, Thatcher and

action

Murdoch were

linked in a close relationship,

two

faces of the

same

relentless neoliberal drive

towards deregulation and the concentration

of power.

Murdoch came

to control British satellite television and 36

percent of

its

printed press. 18

There are many other such

stories.

became Canada's senior media tycoon

Israel

in

Asper, for instance,

2000 when he

the year

bought up most of Conrad Black's Canadian media holdings. Asper

worked and

closely with Canada's current

Prime Minister, Jean Chretien,

as a result strongly discouraged criticism of

Can West Global Communications. Hersant, the right-wing

owner of

a

him

in

any part of

In France in the 1980s,

his

Robert

very considerable media empire,

courted assiduously both Jacques Chirac and Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

One

of Giscard's closest lieutenants even held a post at the Socpresse,

Hersant's major holding company.

The

Italian case

went

or rather the lack of

it,

still

19

further because

of the

entire

it

involved the regulation,

commercial television sector.

In

1970s, the Italian political class had already effectively divided

the

public television

between them, with RAI

Democrats, RAI 2 of the

Socialists,

1

a fiefdom of the Christian

and RAI

3

of the Communists.

This could hardly be considered correct practice, or the encouragement of a tradition of public broadcasting autonomy, but at least there existed a plurality of voices and positions. 20

18 p.

No

Eldridge, Kitzinger and Williams, Mass Media, pp.

such pluralism, either

33-42; Shawcross, Murdoch,

210. 19 For Hersant, see Tunstall and Palmer,'

Me dia

Moguls, pp. 141-51; for Asper, see

Cathryn Atkinson's obituary, Guardian, 16 October 2003.

20 For

a detailed

and convincing history of the RAI, see Franco Monteleone, Storia 3rd ed., Venice 2003. RAI television had begun in

della radio e della televisione in Italia,

1954.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

40

internal or external,

much more

Bettino Craxi,

how

rich

was to reign for the private

sector. In the 1980s,

so than the Christian Democrats, realised

were the pickings

to be had there, and

how

formidable an

operator was his friend from Milan. 21 His were valid enough consider-

narrowly party point of view, but they were poison for

ations

from

Italian

democracy

a

in the

key area of media policv.

'Non e

4.

The commercial

television

profoundly American

upon

effect

in

the cultural

la

RAT

system which Berlusconi built up was

character, and

was to have

of the nation.

life

It

is

a

conspicuous

worth describing

in

Berlusconi organised the programming of his channels substan-

detail.

as

tially

mixture of films and telefilms, quiz and variety shows,

a

cartoons and sport, with football preeminent in this

last

category.

He

operated under one peculiar restriction. Until the telecommunications

law of August 1990,

from broadcasting

Italian

live.

which was

prohibition,

commercial television was prohibited

The most important consequence of all

the stranger for being maintained in a

context otherwise dominated by total ity

this

laissez-faire,

was the impossibil-

of presenting news bulletins.

For the telefilms

rest,

Berlusconi rapidly acquired a vast library of old films,

and cartoons, buying up

in particular,

but also

MGM,

liberally

Warner, Disney and some American

television companies. Carlo Freccero

one of the

earliest

1

A

use of the films for

which showed

a classic

5,

American or

convincing analysis of the relationships that developed in and around the Socialist

party in the 1980s esp. pp.

made good

and most successful programmes of Canale

Pomeriggio con sentimento (1981),

2

from the archives of Titanus

138-9.

is

to be found in Luciano Cafagna,

Una

strana disfatta,

Venice 1996,

THE MAKING OF A TELEVISION EMPIRE

every afternoon from 2:00 p.m. onwards, and which set

Italian film

the tone for afternoon

programming on

was

true of the afternoon

women's

morning. Buongiorno

also true of the

fashion, gymnastic exercises

Italians, especially

Mike Bongiorno, an

iconic figure

most famous quiz show,

to 1955.

22

sogni nel cassetto

/

who had been

responsible for the

him from

marked the

the

official

,

which dated back

RAI

at a

very early

opening of Canale

1980. 23 The working friendship between the

more than two

has lasted

and so on, introduced the

Lascia o raddoppia?

Berlusconi had recruited

November

Italia

cooking

hands of Italy's veteran compere,

in the safe

nation's

date, and his

its

housewives, to the delights of breakfast television.

Quiz shows were primarily

in

What was

Italian television.

(Canale 5, 1981), modelled on Good Morning America, with tips,

41

5

two men

decades. As for telefilms and soap operas,

they were once again American, and only later in small part Brazilian

and

1982 Canale

In

Italian.

5's Flamingo

Retequattro's Dynasty; in 1983

its

ABC, was triumphant over

the

Road and Dallas vied with

mini-series Thornbirds, bought from

Retequattro's very costly Winds of

War (Paramount and ABC). Cartoons were

at

first

American and

then increasingly Japanese. The Simpsons arrived on Canale 5 in 1991. Finally, football

a competition

inated in

was

first

represented by Mundialito (Canale

between club

sides of different nations,

Uruguay but which Canale

5

was to make

1982),

5,

which had its

own

orig-

in the

1980s. 24

22 See the seminal article by Umberto Eco, 'Verso una

now pp.

civilta della visione?'

(1961),

published as 'Fenomenologia di Mike Bongiorno' in his Diario minimo, Milan 1992,

29-34. 23 The party to launch the

new

quiz show, which offered prizes far superior to those

of the RAI, took place on the banks of the

artificial

lake at the centre of

Milano

2;

Molteni, Fininvest, p. 71.

24 The encyclopaedic and indispensable guide to the history of

programmes

is

in brackets in

Aldo Grasso,

my

Storia della televisione italiana,

text refer to the year in which

2nd

ed.,

programmes were

Italian

television

Milan 2000. The dates first

screened.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

42

terms of content,

In

it

important to stress that Berlusconi's

is

massive importation of American material was to

a

great extent

indiscriminate, in the sense of not being subject on his part to rigorous

What mattered was

censorship.

ideological

political correctness.

Hollywood

audience

levels,

not

were transmitted which some-

films

times expressed values far distant from Berlusconi's own. Cartoons

with their ecological emphasis, or The Simpsons, which

like The Smurfs,

American

highlights losers rather than winners in

way be considered stage popularity

One

was

could in no

life,

'organic' to Berlusconi's project.

25

At

this early

all.

of the few areas of distinction, in Bourdieu's sense of the term,

came with

variety shows, omnipresent

on

Here not

Italian television.

only was production autochthonous, but the styling of some of Berlusconi's

programmes was

was paradigmatic

significantly innovative. Drive in (Italia

in this respect.

Its

mixture of demented humour,

— with

repetitiveness, imitations, even transgression

rampant Milanese yuppies —

its

early barbs against

fragmented and chaotic timing,

invented television slang and scarcely clad vallettes marked dently from the staider

from 1984 went on the

RAI productions of air

1983)

,

1

on Sundays

at

the time. Drive

it

off stri-

in,

which

8:30 p.m., and which was

repeated until 1988, enjoyed a mass youth following. 26 In broad terms, Berlusconi's three channels 1

was aimed

at

were designed

youth, Retequattro catered primarily to housewives

and pensioners, and Canale

The gender ing,

for different audiences: Italia

5

politics of this

was designated

for family viewing.

new commercial

but very rarely touched upon. Let us look

Berlusconi

is

On

at the

body

first.

often held responsible for enticing Italian housewives to

undress in front of the television cameras, but 25

television are fascinat-

this is

not

strictly true,

The Simpsons, Paul Cantor's excellent 'The Simpsons: atomist politics and the

nuclear family',

26 Grasso,

Political Theory, vol.

27 (1999), no.

Storia della televisione italiana, pp.

6, pp.

400—2.

734-49.

THE MAKING OF A TELEVISION EMPIRE nor part of

Umberto

his style.

7, 1987), a

Smaila's

programme,

show which involved young

Italians

43

Colpo grosso (Italia

of both sexes gaining

quiz points by slowly shedding their clothing (though never their 27 underpants), was not broadcast on one of Berlusconi's channels.

Nor was

its

programmes

formula copied by them.

On

the other hand, Mediaset's

were heavily sexually oriented, in a lecherous

way

that

stopped just short of nudity. Every middle-aged compere was, and

accompanied by

still is,

in

scantily dressed soubrettes.

Cameras zoomed

upon them from below and behind, emphasizing anatomical

whenever

Rarely had the

possible.

'erotic

gaze'

detail

been so crudely

constructed. 28 This was a very far cry from the RAI. So, too, was the explicitly

lunchtime,

'Non

titled

with

e

la

Rai'

numerous

its

(Canale

cast

5,

of very

1991),

young

broadcast at

dancing

girls

provocatively in body stockings to the popular music of the time.

be one of them was the dream of every thirteen-year-old returning from school, to desire them the fate of every

ever read Nabokov's

Beyond body

Italian girl

man who had

Lolita.

politics

general gender choices. as well,

To

and the representations of desire

Women,

lay

more

not only on Mediaset but on the RAI

were almost always treated

as decorative 'chickens' (galline),

without an idea in their heads. They could aspire to be newscasters. In exceptional cases, like Raffaella Carra, they could

variety shows. But there

ence, trary.

however

slight,

was no inkling of gender

run their

equality,

no

own influ-

of the feminism of those years. Quite the con-

Avuncular condescension reigned supreme, ripe with sexual

innuendo, though sometimes masked by an old-style gallantry.

were required

27 However,

Women

to play along, and did.

it

is

true that Berlusconi indirectly controlled, by

means of

Publitalia,

the publicity revenues and thus the lifeblood of Italia 7.

28 See the renowned

article

Screen, vol. 16 (1975), no. 3,

by Laura Mulvey, 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema',

and the ensuing debate.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

44

When analysing a media culture, its silences are as important as its noises. On Berlusconi's channels there was a lot of entertainment but room

little

for the real world.

The ban on

live

did not help, but what documentaries there animals, not humans, with the result that

it

broadcasting certainly

were tended

was

easier to

to be

be informed

about the habitat of penguins than social conditions in southern In general,

Mediaset made few programmes

itself.

Although

the luxury of broadcasting on three national channels,

space

for

arm of commercial

quality

a

constituted by the British Channel

omission was to cost, and

still

television,

on

it

it

Italy.

enjoyed

made no

such as that

4 from 1982 onwards. Such an

costs, Berlusconi dear in

terms of

his

overall cultural image.

4.

The publicity empire

Advertising revenue was the driving force and determinant of Berlusconi's

programme cial

with audience ratings the undisputed arbiter of

television,

choices.

As Nora Rizzi has explained, the aim of commer-

was

television in general

grammes, which

know how

to

is

not

'to

know how

to produce pro-

or should be the rule in public television, but to

produce, by means of the programmes on

television audiences; that

is,

offer,

the consumers required by the market of

investors in publicity.' 29 In this exercise,

Berlusconi proved to be a master.

were extremely favourable several

for him.

By the 1980s

Conditions

in Italy there

thousand firms which wished to advertise more

television but

were unable

29 Nora Rizza,

'II

palinsesto

to

come

do

so.

fully

tradition of advertising

on on

fattore di produzione. Evoluzione delle logiche di

programmazione nell'emittenza commerciale', no. 4, p. 530.

The

were

Problemi dell'Informazione, vol. 15 (1990),

THE MAKING OF A TELEVISION EMPIRE had been a carefully restricted one.

Italian public television

line

45

was

It

in

with the policy of most European public television, and derived

from the

in particular

early Christian Democrats' diffidence towards

unregulated consumer culture.

RAI had been concentrated

From 1957 onwards,

principally in the

publicity

legendary

on the

Carosello.

Broadcast at 8:50 p.m. for ten minutes, after the news and before the children at the

went

to bed, Carosello featured four or five

little stories,

end of each of which the product being advertised was

nominated.

briefly

30

As always with the Christian Democrats, behind noble intentions lay

more

Sipra,

squalid realities.

The RAI's

associated advertising

under the control of the redoubtable Colonel Fiore, granted

the limited advertising space available as political

if

performing

and religious dispensation. The breaking of

monopoly

offered great opportunities.

Berlusconi

commercial

made

the

most of

this clientelistic

his

chances.

His rivals in early

Rusconi and Mondadori, were both major

television,

ing space to firms.

Berlusconi soon outdid

behind which lay considerable acumen, was: 32

In other

a personal,

31

owners of print media, with considerable experience

sales.'

company,

selling advertis-

them both. His 'I

don't

sell

space,

boast, I

sell

words, he wished to guarantee to potential advertis-

ers not just the insertion of a certain

number of

spots at fixed times,

but the control of the whole environment in which the advertisement

was located, ensuring value

for

money and above

all

increased sales

of the product in question. Television advertising derives

from

a

its

being

golden chain of connection: from the marketing department

of a firm to the advertising agency, to the crew making the spot, to the television

company and

30 O. Calabrese, 31

11

programmes,

Carosello o dell'educazione serale,

D'Anna and Moncalvo

32 Fiori,

its

finally to the

Florence 1975.

(eds), Berlusconi in Concert, pp.

venditore, p. 93.

63-4.

consumer

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

46

many

at

home. Berlusconi

as

he could. In particular, he cut out the advertising agencies, offering

tried to intervene in as

parts of this process

instead a direct line to his television channels, with Publitalia absorb-

ing the 15 percent fee charged by the agencies.

new

In his talia' s

33

crusade, Berlusconi mobilised both himself and Publi-

army of young salesmen. Important customers were

invited

charmed over lunch, and promised

special

individually to Arcore,

discounts and efficient follow-up services.

Berlusconi at the piano.

It

was

Some were even

treated to

from the queue outside colonel

a far cry

Fiore's office at Sipra. Berlusconi issued precise instructions to his

team

of salesmen. They were, like him, to have the 'sun in their pockets', to

exude optimism and courtesy. They were forbidden to smoke or

have long

hair,

or beards, or even moustaches. Their breath was to be

They were never

fresh and their hair without dandruff. briefcases

on the

table of their client,

to put their

nor take off their jackets

in his

presence. They had to memorise the birthdays of their clients, as well as those

of their wives and children. Flowers for their secretaries,

mimosa on women's day

(8

March). Above

no sweaty handshakes.

all,

In his 'Confidential advice for selling advertising space', an informal

'On

lecture of 1994, Berlusconi said,

experience,

can confide to you that

I

professional. If I've always talent, a

won

out,

it's

my

have always

professional

won by

being

been rarely thanks to

few times thanks to the luck of an amateur, but

I

my

have always

thanks to technique.' 34 As early as 1983, Publitalia had cornered

43 percent of the Publitalia

total

market of television advertising. 35

was never to relax

Marialina Marcucci, the

commercial channel with 33 Molteni,

II

Gerbi,

'I

its

grip in the

coming

owner of Videomusic,

conti del

years. In

a small,

(eds), Berlusconi in Concert, p. 300.

gruppo Berlusconi',

p.

601.

1995

independent

a strong youth audience, recounted

gruppo Fininvest, p. 74.

34 D'Anna and Moncalvo 35

won

the basis of I

how

she

THE MAKING OF A TELEVISION EMPIRE had been forced to

up. By hogging the whole market in television

sell

publicity, Publitalia

47

had made

it

impossible for small companies like

hers to survive:

I

remember once,

was

it

at the

end of the

eighties, that

we had

an agreement with [the ice cream company] Algida for their

campaign of advertisements. all:

was

It

worth 70 million

a contract

sellers

on

Silvio

Even

Berlusconi's channels.

so,

the Publitalia

of advertising space tried to undercut us. They offered Algida

very favourable terms

if

the

company agreed

company

that the only Publitalia has

all its

that has never let itself be intimidated

by

.

.

they have their budgets to balance.

.

.

.

All in

all,

Usually, though, the firms give

.

way. And from their point of view

quite comprehensible because

it's

36

According to David Forgacs' calculations, a total of 31

1

in

1984 the RAI showed

hours of advertising, whereas

commercial channels showed 494,000 advertisements for 3,468 hours; in

all,

were being shown

countries put together.

Italy, 37

more than

in

all

the other European

The onslaught was not only temporal but

volume automatically increased

for adults'

programmes but

at

advertisement time, not only

children's as well.

There was

of Vance Packard's famous 'hidden persuaders'.

36 C.Gallucci, 'Sola contro un dannato Biscione', 17 March, pp. 47

37 D. Forgacs,

a total of

1,500 television advertisements per day

circa in

advertis-

say

been Coca-Cola.

46,080 advertisements for

to spend

you could

ing budget on the Fininvest channels.

this

lira in

peanuts compared with the sort of sums that were being spent on

advertising

aural:

signed

summer

38

little in all

Italian

L'Espresso, vol.

commer-

41 (1995), no. 11,

50. Italian

Culture

in

the

Industrial

Era,

pp. 184-5.

38 Vance Packard, Hidden Persuaders,

New

York 1957.

1880-1980, Manchester 1990,

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

48

cial

1980s were a noisy, endlessly

television advertisements in the

repetitive, frontal attack

veterans

of the

upon

fledgling

world of goods.

39

consumers

as well as

hardened

programmes were

Children's

constantly interrupted as Gig toys, one of the leaders in the sector,

displayed with blaring tones the

full

range of

robots, castles and

its

racing cars for the boys, and dolls, their houses and their clothes for the girls.

No

one should underestimate the

effect of such a barrage in

forming, and not just reflecting, family patterns of consumption. Far from separating out programmes, film stories and advertisers'

names,

channels strove to create a seamless

as in Carosello, Berlusconi's

web between programmes and

adverts.

In

this

they

followed a

consolidated American tradition, which had begun with The Maxwell

House Showboat, a radio programme of the 1930s, and had flowered in the golden age of

American

television in the 1950s, with

like the Kraft Television Theater.*

innovator in

Mike Bongiorno, once

In Superflash, a

Italy.

programmes

again,

was the

1982 quiz show, he adopted the

American habit of himself sponsoring

product

a

in the heart of the

transmission. Others followed suit. Suddenly comperes

were sipping

coffee in the middle of their shows, eating salami and smacking their

down on

lips, lying

soubrettes.

Some

mattresses, carefully aided by the ever-attendant

of the

more

intelligent

TV

comperes adopted

a

vaguely ironical approach, others simply went through a dull and servile routine in return for a great deal of

How

far

was

televisions

this different in

money.

any way from the other commercial

which were flourishing

all

over the world

at

the

39 For an interesting analysis of the type and quantity of advertisements years, R. Grandi,

Come parla

40 Greg Myers, Ad

la pubblicita,

Worlds,

Milan 1987, especially

London 1999,

p.

117.

p. 14.

same

in these

THE MAKING OF A TELEVISION EMPIRE time?

Certainly,

American — not advertising and distinguish the

there was a great deal that was quintessentially just the

the

programmes themselves, but

overall

complete control of set

However,

style.

television

a single individual.

the quantity of

certain key elements

experience from others.

Italian

democracy did commercial

was

49

develop

in

First,

no other

under the almost

Second, no regulatory body

up to oversee standards. The Guarantor for Telecommunica-

introduced in 1990, was designed to be toothless from birth.

tions,

Third, Italian public television lacked the traditions to respond to the

new

challenge

distinguish parties

from

it

competitors in a way that would

of commercial its

Too dependent upon

challenger.

the political

and lacking an autonomous culture, the RAI ended up by

aping Mediaset and competing with those of audience rating. Only

RAI

exclusively

it

on

its

independent news,

terms

—

3 constituted a partial exception.

Overall, though, there was no public television to editorially

own

well-researched

responsibility,

civic

the flag of

fly

documentaries and quality programmes which could appeal

at different

times to both majorities and special interests. The Italian viewing public was profoundly bereft of

Of

course,

television in particular, their

political

Certainly,

it

all

of

this.

the debate about the degree to which media,

allegiance

would be

determine people's culture and eventually is

a

wide-ranging and complicated one.

foolish to

assume that individuals and families

new commercial

simply imbibed the oft-repeated messages of the television.

In the Italian case, at least

delicate the connections are

how much

translation,

one study has revealed

between viewing and family

criticism

and rejection

reception of television programmes. 41 However,

more foolhardy

41

and

is it

values, and

involved in the

would be even

to claim that the influence of television

F.Casetti (ed.), L'ospitefisso, Milano 1995.

how

is

marginal.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

50

In Italy, the Eurisko survey of

1986 compared the frequency of certain

key elements of cultural consumption: 86.3 percent of interviewees

watched television on

who

compared

a daily basis,

listened to the radio and 41.4 percent

to only 46.4 percent

who

read a newspaper.

Only 17 percent went to the cinema once or more a month, and 6.1 percent to a museum. Television was the only daily 'cultural' activity of the average Italian family. 42 In

same year of the Eurisko survey, the novelist Alberto

the

Moravia recounted

in a delicate article in the Corriere della Sera his

experience of being seen on television, and reflected on what exactly television was:

Those who [have seen sincere affection.

my work

.

.

.

me on

television] greet

But when

much

they often reply, without

they go to

work they have no time

mystery of what television really something

The

else.

them

ask

I

they have read any of

And

here

of whether

me

reply that they give

we come is

it

a

to the

pastime or

signifies implicitly that,

since they find time for television, but not for reading, then the

media is

in question

the point

I

is

not a traditional pastime. So what

wanted to get

with

in the street

apparent regret, that because

to read. is,

if

me

to. Television,

I

think,

is

is it

mass

then? This

something

like

sleeping or eating: a physiological need, which reading obviously isn't. In

any case, the record for the disassociation that television produces

between

me

as

pure image and

me

Verona. In the main square of the

42 G.Calvi

as a

city, a girl

(ed.), lndagine sociale italiana. Rapporto

5.14, p. 173. For a good introduction to the

way

in

came some days ago

writer

came running up

to

in

me

1986, Milan 1986, p. 172 and table

which the vast debate on the influence

of the media has developed over time, see J.Curren, M.Gurrevitch and J.Woollacott, 'The

study of the media: theoretical approaches', in O. Boyd-Barrett and P.Braham (eds), Media, Knowledge and Power, the important

London 1987, pp. 57—79.

works of David Morley, Family

London 1986, and Home

Territories,

On

television

Television: Cultural

Media, Mobility and Identity,

and the family, see

Power and Domestic Leisure,

London 2000.

THE MAKING OF A TELEVISION EMPIRE 'How happy

and exclaimed: you?'

are

television,

The phrase and

make your

acquaintance:

it

prolonged debate. The opposite was the case. Instead,

duopoly was created: on the one side

pumped a

and

out not just from 2001

decisive

fashion,

and

a

rise

to

grotesque

it

Berlusconi

the

early

deeply conformist,

system

television

won

political

power

1980s onwards.

The

twenty-year period of cultural conditioning

and Berlusconi's eventual return to

when

,

but from

this

a

consumer-oriented

uncritically

connection between

shall

I

a flagging public broadcasting

The combination produced

channels.

repetitive

in

who

on the other the suffocating preeminence of Berlusconi's

system, three

on

might have been expected that

commercial version would give

its

who

me

had already seen

as a particular 'physiological need,'

powers of 'pure image',

the advent in Italy of

to

that she

loved me; but she had no idea

as a result she

Given the nature of television the subtle

am

I

signified

51

in the

triumph

political

second part of

is

this

a

fundamental one.

book,

when

I

analysing

Berlusconi's overall political project.

It

is

worth adding

a

word on As

especially his print interests.

Berlusconi's other media property, I

wrote

at the

beginning of

this

book,

Berlusconi has distinguished himself for being a television tycoon rather than a newspaper baron. Television has been the

medium

that

he has most understood, loved and exploited. Nonetheless, he also built a

up

a considerable print empire.

typical

At

its

heart was

Sorrisi e

Canzoni,

television-oriented weekly magazine which combines the

43 Alberto Moravia, 'Amare August 1986; quoted

in

il

prossimo

Aldo Grasso,

di affetto televisivo,' Corriere della Sera,

Storia della televisione italiana, pp.

45S-6.

20

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

52

times of the programmes with information and gossip about them. Berlusconi was careful not to exclude the stars and starlets of the

RAI, and to offer accurate information on the schedules of television channels.

Italian

some three

He was rewarded with

million copies by

the newspaper

Indro Montanelli.

November

which had

Giornale,

II

This story,

He

1986.

as its editor the

all

the

a circulation of also invested in

veteran journalist

though, did not end well, because

Montanelli became increasingly exasperated by the owner's interfer-

ence in the editorial

much

of his

and eventually

left

along with

Montanelli, a liberal conservative, was then to

staff.

become one of

line of the paper,

Berlusconi's

most implacable

July 2001, at the age of ninety-two.

II

death in

critics until his

Giornale

owned by

presently

is

Berlusconi's brother, Paolo, but has never flowered into being Italy's

major conservative newspaper. That

which

Corriere della Sera,

the 220,000 of

but

Last

II

not

sells

title

still

belongs firmly to the

685,000 copies per day, compared to

Giornale. least,

in

1990

Italy's

largest

publishing

Mondadori, became part of Berlusconi's empire. The control proved to be a very bitter one.

Roman his

It

battle for its

was resolved only by

a

court of law, which found in favour of Berlusconi and against

De

Carlo

rival

However,

in

Benedetti, at the time the

2003, Cesare Previti, the lawyer

owner of

who had

Berlusconi clan after the purchase of Arcore, was

eleven years'

Roman

house,

Olivetti.

joined the

condemned

to

imprisonment for having successfully corrupted the

judges in the original court case. Only the Italian legal system,

which allows

a

defendant to go free until condemned by

grades of justice, kept Previti out of prison. 44

44 See

ch. 6

below,

p. 145.

all

three

THE MAKING OF A TELEVISION EMPIRE

53

Football

5.

Since childhood, Berlusconi had been an ardent fan of the famous

Milanese football club, to the stadium

AC

Milan. His father had taken

on Sundays.

In

March 1986,

as the

him

regularly

crowning element

of what was an outstandingly successful decade, Berlusconi decided to

buy up the affections',

ailing club.

belonged, so he

It

He was

time before making the purchase.

narrowly partisan by

on and

a nation

off the field. But in

renowned 1982

He

its

divided loyalties, both

won

its first

since the Fascist period, and national football fever height.

The opportunity

to

link

hesitated a long

afraid of being seen as too

for

had

Italy

to 'the sphere of

said,

not to that of economic calculation. 45

World Cup

was then

at its

personal and municipal sporting

triumph to national television audiences and both to consumer adver-

was too great

tising

members of at the city's

the

for Berlusconi to turn

new AC Milan team were

people would laugh

at

with irony. But

AC

season

at

'I

knew very

me,' Berlusconi recounted

we needed

to

show

that the

all

later,

well that

'even treat

whole way of thinking

three of his television channels. For the

some 65,000 season

In France,

1986 was

tickets

were

less

also the year in

famous than Berlusconi's

to take their clubs to a series of

45 Ferrari,

//

Ibid., pp.

padrone, p. 129.

134-5.

AC

new 1986—87

sold, an all-time record.

which Bernard Tapie bought

up the Olympique of Marseilles, another

46

presented to 10,000 fans

Milan had changed.' 46 The event was subsequently transmitted

repeatedly on

much

In July 1986, the

Arena. The team arrived by helicopter, with loudspeakers

playing Wagner's The Ride of the Walkyhes:

me

down.

ailing football

Milan. Both

team, though

men were

rapidly

unexpected national and international

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

54

triumphs

—

sure proof, or so

seemed, that their business dynamism

it

could be successfully applied to other the

into

first

using

arena,

political

Marseilles to launch his career

Tapie, indeed, was to be

fields.

his

first as

new-found popularity

a Socialist

number of

financial scandals, in

1996—97 he

Berlusconi has lasted the course very

elsewhere in

his business

significant

to be

from grace

much

better.

At

AC

Milan, as

in the early part of his career, there

The

Hollywood

as

shown on

was to acquire new conformist.

rapidly

evidence of bold and unconventional choices which paid

handsomely. Just

were

empire

fell

47

and was eventually condemned by the courts.

off

then as a Radical

His triumphs, though, were short-lived. Embroiled in a

politician.

was

at

films, if they

were popular enough,

television regardless of their content, so Milan

players,

elan of

grey Sunday afternoons

and

Dutch at the

Gullit and Frank Rijkaard

a

new manager, who were

football of the time

came

to light

up the

San Siro stadium. Marc Van Basten,

were

at the heart

of the

new

from

far

Ruud

team, alongside

outstanding Italian defenders like Franco Baresi and the young Paolo Maldini. Gullit was a special case. His family

wore dreadlocks

in the

came from Suriname, he

manner of Bob Marley, and was committed

antiracism at an international level. His speed and elegance on

entranced the Milanese

were

full

fans.

Within

a

few months San

Siro's terraces

of youths with their faces painted black, their hair coloured

with the red and black of Milan AC, and with dreadlocks their shoulders.

Berlusconi, too, espoused an antiracist position:

explained to them [the fan clubs] that

slogans

it

48

Ferrari,

II

Tapie, pp. 39ff;

Andre

padrone, p. 135.

'I

was possible to support a club

were those who unfurled banners with anti-Semitic and

on them. That mentality had

47 Bouchet,

over

falling

without being violent or intolerant. The Milanese fans that inherited

to

the field

to go.'

I

racist

48

Bercoff, Comment

ils

had

ont tue Tapie, Paris 1998.

THE MAKING OF A TELEVISION EMPIRE In

1987 the little-known Arrigo Sacchi arrived

55

new

Milan's

as

manager. His combination of constant pressing, marking by zone and almost mathematical organisation of the relationship between defence, midfield and attack, was highly controversial but bore almost diate fruit in the hothouse

team won the 1989

it

4-0

crushed Steana Bucharest

pion's Cup.

49

in

Milan.

The

May

to take the

At the end of the same year

Cup, the highest possible accolade for successes

were

Berlusconi's language, and the Italy!')

it,

European Cham-

it

won

a

club team.

the Intercontinental

AC

Milan's

to continue throughout the early 1990s.

As has often been pointed out,

('go for

new AC

1988. At Barcellona in

atmosphere of the

championship

Italian

imme-

national team.

name

metaphors abound

football

of his political party, Forza

in

Italia

derives from the chanting of the fans of Italy's

Soccer was

Italy's

'deep play'. 50

It

was an abiding

passion, revelatory of elements of the nation's deeper popular culture

of which Berlusconi aspired to be the foremost interpreter. In the

1980s

in Italy the

game was

big business, as

it

was to become

Britain ten years later. Football fed naturally into television

to

in

and played

huge audiences, passive recipients of ever-greater amounts of

Postgame analyses took up peak viewing time on many

advertising.

channels on Sunday and repetition.

The

Monday

night, reaching grotesque levels of

between global markets,

links

and club ownership were

visible

television advertising

everywhere.

By the end of the 1980s Berlusconi had achieved everything he could have wished

49 five

Of

for.

In order to transport

26,000

course, as with

tycoons worth the

all

fans to Barcellona, the club chartered a ship, twenty-

aeroplanes and 450 buses.

50 Clifford Geertz, Cockfighting in

The

game" and reconnected

to

it

as

discussion of football as Italy's

London 2001, pp. 112-19.

' of Cultures, New York 1973, of his study, is 'set aside from [everyday]

Interpretation

Bali, the object

"more than

a

game"'

(ibid.,

p. 450).

'deep play', see P. Ginsborg,

Italy

pp.

448-51.

life as

"only a

For an extended

and

its

Discontents,

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

56

name, there was no question of stopping said in 1989,

AC

Milan

whole of

when

now

my

life

a journalist

that he I

there. 'Let's be sincere,' he

asked him

if

had transformed

he would consider selling

it

so successfully,

'in

the

have never bought anything, however small, with

the slightest intention of

it

being sold again.' 51 Patrimonial instincts

such as these were unusual. So too,

as

we

shall see,

was Berlusconi's

determination to defend what he had acquired.

51

Ferrari,

//

padrone, p. 136.

On

Berlusconi and football, see also the interesting

chapter in Tobias Jones, The Dark Heart of Italy London 2003, pp. 61-85. ,

INTO POLITICS

3:

1.

It

Clean hands

can safely be said, paradoxical though

may

it

appear, that without

the reforming zeal of Francesco Saverio Borrelli, the distinguished

magistrate

who was

to

become

the Chief Procurator at Milan, Silvio

would never have been

Berlusconi

Prime Minister. By the

Italy's

beginning of the 1990s, Berlusconi had every reason to be content

with

his lot.

Not only was he

Italy's

outstanding businessman, but he

was protected, even cosseted, by the ruling group of Italy's In

1989 the so-called 'CAF' had come into being.

from the created

first

it,

letters of the

the Socialist Bettino Craxi, the Christian

Andreotti and Arnaldo Forlani.

It

new

The 'normal'

politics,

its

but

own is

Law

had

Democrats Giulio

of 1990, so favourable to

empire. relationship in a neoliberal

tycoon and sympathetic

Each has

name derived

men who

was they who piloted through

parliament the Telecommunications' Berlusconi's

Its

surnames of the three

politicians.

democracy between media

political leadership

was thus

in full swing.

sphere of operations. The media tycoon lurks behind

not

in politics.

He

derives advantage from the actions

of sympathetic politicians, and repays

it

with conspicuous and benev-

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

58

olent treatment of the same. There

is

a

whole history to be written

of the regulatory and legislative favours granted in cies

on these

bases.

1

Italy

modern democra-

was no exception. The Act of 1990 not

only confirmed Berlusconi's near monopoly of commercial televsion. It

also

RAI

allowed him to transmit

'live',

and thus to compete with the

in its last area of prerogative: the

making of the news. Personal

tensions and factional rivalries obviously remained, but the ground

had been tation

laid in Italy for a serene, pernicious

between

television

power on

and long-term cohabi-

the one hand and politics

on the

other. Instead,

all this

was swept away by an extraordinary sequence of

A

events from 1992 onwards.

time engulfed the national

elections

rising tide of legalism

clientelistic practices

at least in the

of the Italian State. First, the

The

principal political

north of the country, was the populist

Northern League, headed by Umberto

Bossi.

His party, neolocalist

Rome

and xenophobic, protested against the corruption of

name of

a

community

Italy,

and

be fed back into services, not dissipated by the

Sometimes 'autonomous' meant

its

taxes

Roman

were to

bureaucracy.

been

a relatively closed one,

a

bad mistake. Bossi 's ideal

deeply hostile to immigrants

of any sort, whether extra- European or from the south of a particularly

The

secessionist, at others federalist. In

either case, the Risorgimento had

message had

in the

of the North, hardworking and honest.

League wanted an autonomous northern

community was

for a

1992 saw the ruling parties penalised

of April

heavily for their arrogance and corruption. beneficiary,

met and

powerful resonance

in the

Italy.

His

economically

dynamic world of small family businesses, which proliferated throughout the urbanised countryside of the North. In 1992 the League

1

For some indications, see Jeremy Tunstall and Michael Palmer, 'Media moguls

Europe', pp. 67-8.

in

Jeremy Tunstall

(ed.),

Media

Occupations

and

Professions,

in

Oxford 2001,

INTO POLITICS

59

gained a startling 25.1 percent of the vote in Lombardy, 19.4 percent in

Piedmont, 18.9 percent

The mould of

new

politics

in the

Veneto.

had been broken, to the benefit not just of

figures like Bossi, but also of reforming elements within the Italian

State.

Of

these 'virtuous minorities', the one present in the judiciary

was the most judiciary had

For most of

significant.

modern

Italy's

history,

the

been firmly subservient to the executive, no more so than

during the Fascist era. However, the postwar constitution of 1948

accorded the magistracy considerable autonomy, including the tution of a self-governing Higher Council.

and their

allies

The

Christian

Democrats

blocked the immediate realisation of the constitution's

provisions, but by the 1960s the Higher Council

new

insti-

was operating and

a

generation of magistrates had taken up service. The judiciary was

a corporation in its

own

ing elements within

it,

right, jealous of its privileges,

though never

but the reform-

a majority, are a crucial

element

in the history of these years.

The campaign

for legality in public

life

was directed and coordi-

nated with great ability and tenacity by the chief prosecutor of Milan,

Francesco Saverio Borrelli. determination, very

much

a

A

shy and reserved figure, but of steely

Milanese bourgeois, enamoured of

classi-

music and of horse riding, Borrelli was sixty-two years old

cal

1992, and had

He came from

become

in

chief prosecutor in Milan four years earlier.

a family of magistrates,

leading Sicilian magistrate

who was

and

like

Giovanni Falcone, the

to be assassinated

by the Mafia

in

1992, he had been deeply steeped in a culture of service to the State.

Educated

and

its

in Florence,

he admired Milan for

its

'European vocation,

rather Protestant tendency to consider riches and success as a

proof of divine grace.' 2

2

p. 6.

See his long interview with the journalist M.A.Calabro, In prima

linea,

Milan 1993,

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

60

It

might be supposed that such views would have led him to see

eye-to-eye with Silvio Berlusconi, but the

common, except perhaps

two men had very

little in

which they both

their love of the city in

worked. Indeed, they represented two different parts of the Milanese bourgeoisie, and projected city:

we

the one, as

two

diametrically opposite images of the

have seen,

as the

other as the centre of a dynamic,

scrupulous capitalism.

'moral capital' of

modern but not

Borrelli's rigid

Italy,

the

necessarily very

and severe idea of

a public

sphere where there were clear and codified rules, no grey areas and

no personal favours, was obviously an anathema to Berlusconi. Borrelli's pool of magistrates in Milan,

ex-policeman, Antonio Di Pietro, ruthlessness in

great speed and indeed

1992—93. Their main target was corrupt

from the ruling particular.

which included the famous

moved with

parties,

Heads

fell

them was Bettino

politicians

the Socialists and Christian Democrats in

with great regularity. The most renowned of

Craxi. In

December 1992, he was placed under

investigation for corruption, receiving and violation of the law

public financing of political parties. As the charges against

more

substantial,

his villa at

he

fled the

Hammamet

country in

in Tunisia,

May

on the

him grew

1994, seeking refuge in

where he was

to die in January

2000.

Corrupt

politicians

were the

willing connivance with

principal target, but businessmen's

them was soon exposed. Senior management

from FIAT, Carlo De Benedetti, the managing director of

Olivetti,

Raul Gardini of Ferruzzi, Gabriele Cagliari of the state-owned ENI,

were

all

placed under investigation. Both Gardini and Cagliari com-

mitted suicide. Civil servants were also implicated. The San Vittore prison in Milan became the new, insalubrious salotto for those

had held power in the '

Tangentopoli

y

city in the

1980s. Milan itself had

who

become

the city of bribes.

The example of the Milanese magistrates spread throughout

Italy.

INTO POLITICS There was much to

from the point of view of

criticise in their actions

The

the rights of defendants.

61

transcripts of their interrogations leaked

out mysteriously, and were published by newspapers and journals. Public opinion was inflamed by the extent of the corruption that was

being revealed, and

it

was

person to be put under

sufficient for a

him or her

investigation for

to be considered guilty. In a country

where concepts of honour and of cutting

a

good

figure are very

deeply rooted, the ignominy of public exposure was particularly hard to bear.

The prosecuting magistrates were mistaken, but

Nor

faith.

is

would be wrong

it

and sometimes

intransigent

to conclude that they acted in bad

there any convincing evidence to suggest,

Berlusconi was to maintain relentlessly for

more than

they were engaged in a left-wing conspiracy. 3

On

as

a decade, that

the contrary;

the evidence points to the magistrates' political heterogeneity. original

pool

of Milanese

magistrates,

Gherardo Colombo were on the

Left,

Silvio

Of the

Gerardo D'Ambrosio and

but Di Pietro and Piercamillo

Davigo were both right-wingers, and Borrelli himself declared that political inspiration

was

desire

their

derived from Benedetto Croce. attack

to

all

widespread

What

corruption

his

united them

and

illegality.

Overall, theirs was an impelling and indeed unique contribution to

between

the relationship

was

It

also

Italian institutions, public ethics

one doomed to

failure,

reminiscent to the historian of

the ill-fated Jacobin republics of 1796-99. trates

were too

became more

would delve too deeply and

illegalities

Italians to feel

3

This

is

The prosecuting magis-

isolated to succeed. After initial enthusiasm for their

actions, public opinion

tions'

and society.

into

all

tepid,

alarmed that the enquiries

aspects of Italian

were too much

life.

'Accommoda-

a part of daily transactions for

comfortable with an overzealous judiciary. Within the

the case

made by Giancarlo Lehner,

Storia di un processo politico,

Milan 2003.

62

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

State,

and amongst the politicians of the centre -left, the reforming

magistrates found few real

Democrats,

seemed

although

allies.

only

The main opposition

party, the Left

touched by the

marginally

enquiries,

to be too worried about possible skeletons in their

Communist cupboard

own

old

to give the magistrates the sort of political

support they needed. Even amongst the judges themselves,

as

we

shall

were elements deeply compromised by the system. The

see, there

President of the Republic, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, was on the reformers' side,

but

it

was not easy to eradicate so consolidated

and administrative corruption.

political

campo'

La 'discesa in

2.

a tradition of

4

['Onto the pitch'] At the time, the Clean Hands campaign looked something revolution,

political

commentators.

A

and indeed

was heralded

it

Italy's ruling parties

as

like

such by

many

had effectively been swept away.

great void had been created in the centre of Italian politics, and

was into

this

a

it

space that Silvio Berlusconi stepped. By doing so, he

attempted what no other media magnate had ever done before him: to unite very significant

media ownership to national

political

power;

furthermore in one of the largest and richest of modern democracies.

The reasons

4 The

statistics

for Berlusconi's choice are

of the 'Clean Hands' campaign

to the Procura of Milan, in ten years of activity,

tell a

were of

On

one

level,

story of relative failure. According

between February 1992 and March 2002,

the courts had tried and passed definitive sentence in

sentences, only 14.5 percent

complex.

'not guilty'.

1,121

However,

relevant cases. in

Of

these

another 46 percent of

cases the courts had dismissed the defendants, mainly because the Italian judicial system

had been too slow, and the time allotted for trying defendants had expired. Berlusconi himself was later to exploit to the Peter

Gomez and Marco

full

the snail pace of Italian justice; Gianni Barbacetto,

Travaglio, Mani pulite,

Rome

2002, pp. 704-05.

INTO POLITICS argument seemed

the

a simple one.

footballing terminology:

and that

it

was

As he put

it,

63

employing inimitable

heard that the game was getting dangerous,

'I

being played in the two penalty areas, with the

all

With

5 midfield being left desolately empty.'

and mentor,

his friend

Bettino Craxi, disgraced, and with no other politician seemingly able

—

to ride the storm

Democrat, was

was to step

On

the popular Mario Segni, a reforming Christian

clearly not

up to the task — the only obvious solution

directly into the politicians' shoes.

From

another level, there were impelling economic motives.

1989 onwards, Berlusconi's Fininvest had moved dangerously and suddenly into debt. His was not the only media empire to find

Rupert Murdoch, too, went through the

in trouble in these years. stickiest

patch of his long career in 1990—91, coming very close to

succumbing to debt sive diversification

bought,

at a

December 1990. 6

in

was

In Berlusconi's case, exces-

the root of the trouble. In 1988 he had

at

considerable price, the Standa chain of supermarkets,

one of the largest

consumer goods

in

Italy,

hoping to become

would forthwith become

'the

home

of the

refused

machine that

its

to

be

easily

A

Italians.'

retailer of

huge advertising

announced

slots,

old-fashioned and unwieldy organisation,

major

a

as well as their principal publicist.

campaign, based on 1,500 television

people,

It

that Standa

did not.

employing some

it

converted into the dynamic selling

we

have

had acquired the Mondadori publishing house. In the same

year, Berlusconi

5

The

17,000

desired. 7

new owner

Fininvest had also diversified in other fields. In 1990, as seen,

itself

bought the pay

E.Semino and M.Masci,

Berlusconi',

Discourse

and

'Politics

Society,

metaphors were military and

vol.

is

TV

-football:

7 (1996),

biblical.

6 Shawcross, Murdoch, pp. 349ff. 7 Madron, Le geste del

cavaliere, pp.

channel, Telepiu.

182-4.

metaphor no. 2,

However, by

in the discourse

p. 248.

of Silvio

His other preferred

64

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

1994,

it

was reaching only 700,000 subscribers,

fewer than

far

its

French equivalent, Canal Plus, which boasted more than 3,500,000 subscribers at that time.

Between 1987 and 1993 Berlusconi had

grown twelvefold

increased his turnover fivefold, but his debts had

the same period, and his profits diminished by times.

8

He was

There was

all Italy's

into their hands. difficulty

menace of

the incumbent

a

probable left-wing

March 1994. At the

local elections

December, the centre -left had taken control of

previous

practically

more than twenty

in big trouble.

also

victory in the national elections of

of the

in

major

cities;

even Naples and Palermo had

The ex- Communists and

be considered

their

a radical force for change,

allies

fallen

could with

but the question of

whether they would leave Berlusconi's commercial television empire untouched was certainly an open one. Last but not least,

it

was not

would move

magistrates

clear

against

if

and when the anticorruption

Many

Fininvest.

of Berlusconi's

Milanese business associates had been brought into the investigative net during the previous

had

first

met Berlusconi

two

years. Borrelli recalled in

his

thinking there right,

have

famous smile is

at the

no war between

for heaven's sake,'

known

that

it

that he

in the corridors of Milan's Palace of Justice

on 17 March 1994, ten days before the national had flashed

2002

Chief Procurator.

us?' Borrelli

replied Berlusconi.

was only

elections. Berlusconi

a question of

'I

am

right in

asked him. 'Absolutely 9

But both

men must

time before their paths

crossed again, and in different circumstances.

8

Giuseppe Turani, 'Non sono piu d'oro

le

uova

della Fininvest', la Repubblica, 12

February 1995. 9 'Memorie di un Procuratore', interview with Francesco Saverio Borrelli, in Baracetto,

Gomez,

Travaglio, Mani pulite, p. 689.

INTO POLITICS

On

10 July 1993, a secret meeting took place at the

between Berlusconi and

Two

his closest advisors.

65

of Arcore

villa

of them, Fedele

Confalonieri and Gianni Letta, a suave and moderate ex-journalist

who was

to try and

mend many

bridges in the coming years,

were

against any political initiatives. Marcello Dell'Utri, then at the head

of Publitalia, was in favour. Berlusconi, with characteristic elan, chose

name and

to go ahead. In order to choose the political party

he employed

and polling techniques of

all

his

the image of the

new

the considerable marketing, advertising

Never

organisation.

had the

in Italy

creation of a political force been studied so minutely and scientifically,

and never before had to

a

single

assumed the form of

it

business

Association of 'Forza

enterprise.

came

Italia'

On

10

a party so closely linked

November

5

began to spring up throughout the country. However, the beginning of 1994,

when

National

it

was only

at

the President of the Republic announced

new

national elections for the

final

plunge.

On

the

into being, and supporter clubs

end of March,

26 January, with

that Berlusconi took the

a gesture of considerable

symbolic

importance, he sent a videocassette of nine minutes and twenty-four seconds, recorded at Arcore, to Reuters, the television channels. In

Italy is

the country

horizons.

Here

I

it

I

love.

as in this

Here

I

moment

my

have

I

have learned, from

be an entrepreneur. Here

Never

RAI and

own

to his

he announced:

my

my

have acquired does

Italy

.

roots,

father and

.

.

my

from

my

hopes, life,

how

passion for liberty.

need people of

.

to .

.

a certain

experience, with their heads on their shoulders, able to give the

10 Gianni Riotta,

'II

segreto della vittoria e "la strategia da judo"', Corriere della Sera,

30 March 1994; P. McCarthy, 'Forza Italy', in

pp.

Italia:

the

new

politics

Stephen Gundle and Simon Parker (eds), The New

and old values of

Italian Republic,

130-46; and the detailed reconstruction of Carmen Golia, Dentro Forza

1997, pp. 27ff.

a

changing

London 1996, Italia,

Venice

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

66

country a helping hand and to make the state function. ... political

system

to work,

is

it is

emerges

essential that there

If

the

a 'pole

of Liberty' in opposition to the left-wing cartel, a pole which capable

of attracting to

the best of an Italy which

it

is

honest,

is

11 reasonable, modern.

In order to create this 'pole', Berlusconi allied himself with

very different forces of the Italian Right.

The other was

League.

party which sought

its

1992 had seen

Sociale

a historic

mayor of Rome

for

his candidacy,

1994,

and

he hastily

Alleanza Nazionale

MSI would

fight

was to become

move

in the

politics,

Italian

into the mainstream.

after

When

had

a

Fini ran

autumn of 1993, Berlusconi endorsed 46.9 percent of the vote. In January

up an umbrella group with the name of under whose auspices the

(National Alliance), the

He, too,

chance for the taking. His party, which

Fini polled set

(MSI), a

and which was

politician Gianfranco Fini.

had always been confined to the fringes of golden opportunity to

two

the Northern

Italiano

identity in the Fascist past

young Roman

led by the

Movimento

the

One was

next elections.

a highly organised

In

time,

National

mass right-wing party

Alliance in Italian

politics.

The Northern League and

the National Alliance

bed fellows, and were to remain so Fini

right

were

difficult

up to the present time.

and Bossi disliked each other, and their parties diverged

cally.

AN

(Alleanza Nazionale) was strongly nationalist. Even

radiif its

evolution into a standard type of Italian political party developed

11

Silvio Berlusconi,

'Costruiamo un nuovo miracolo',

For a commentary on the speech and del

primo discorso

di Berlusconi.

its

staging, see

Giornale,

27 January 1994.

F.Maresciani, 'Analisi

Indagine semiotica sul funzionamento discorsivo', in

M.Livolsi and U.Volli (eds), La comunicazione politica

199S, pp. 227-41.

II

M. Deni and tra

prima

e seconda Repubblica,

Milan

INTO POLITICS rapidly,

its

culture and party sections

nostalgia for a Fascist past.

12

Fini

were infused with an overt

was to claim

at

committed

its

support deriving mainly from

The League, on the other hand, was

South.

national state. All three leaders

supreme within

their

own

own

An

—

Bossi, Fini

parties.

national elections, but there

Rome

and the

potentially separatist,

and Berlusconi

They were

—

ruled

to fight democractic

were few elements of democracy within

organisations.

alliance

founded on such contradictory bases did not augur well

for the future, but

it

served

election campaign that

was

His was

but not Fascist, wedded to the free market but not to the

racist

their

13

to the idea of a strongly centralised and interven-

with

tionist state,

time that

this

Mussolini had been 'the greatest statesman of the century'. a party

67

its

temporary purpose magnificently. The

was fought between January and March 1994

a rather one-sided affair because the

when coupled with

available to Berlusconi, politics,

made

Alliance

of the centre-left,

for

a

understood what had

media and other resources

hit

it.

his

whirlwind entry into

The progressive

unequal competition.

very

led by Achille

Occhetto, never really

Berlusconi's campaign was quintessentially

American, personalised and glamorous. The progressives pointed to past career in the

shadow of Craxi, and to

his

his failure to separate

business and political interests. Berlusconi replied by promising one million

new

Communists

The It

jobs. (real

He promised

liberty

from the

from the

centre-right coalition achieved a remarkable victory in 1994.

obtained 42.9 percent of the vote in the

which translated into 58.1 percent of the

12

state,

and imaginary), from excessive taxation.

For the development of

Alleanza nazionale:

AN,

see

Chamber

seats in the

Marco Tarchi, 'The

of Deputies,

lower house. In

political

culture of the

an analysis of the party's programmatic documents (1995-2002),

Journal of Modern Italian Studies, vol. 8 (2003), no. 2, pp. 135—81.

13 Alberto Statera,

'II

migliore resta Mussolini', La Stampa,

1

April 1994.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

68

the Senate,

victory

its

was

less clear,

and

it fell

just short of an overall

majority, with 49.2 percent of the seats. But Berlusconi

was confident

that he could persuade a handful of senators to change sides, and that

he had the numbers with which to govern.

own

His

much

emerge

party, Forza Italia, had gained 21 percent of the vote,

than his pollsters had predicted, but enough for

less

the

as

largest

political

force

in

it

to

fragmented party

Italy's

system. Alleanza Nazionale had polled a very successful 13.5 percent, the Northern League

8.4 percent.

At

Forza

beginnings,

its

Italia

reflected faithfully the structure, values and personnel of Berlusconi's

business empire.

Some

directly

from

firm'),

an entirely

Publitalia.

members

fifty

Here was the

new

of the

parliament came

'

partito-azienda

new phenomenon on

('the party-as-

western democratic

the

political scene.

Michele Caccavalle,

neodeputy for Forza

new

a

bank manager from the Lazio region and

who was

Italia,

be disenamoured of the

later to

party, has left us a valuable account of the party's inner workings

time.

at this

local

He had been

introduced to Forza

Italia at

manager of the Standa supermarket.

convinced that

Italy

needed

a

new

Nettuno by the

was

Caccavalle

centre -right party,

'a

easily

modernised

Christian Democracy', capable of reforming a decrepit state, and of

applying managerial pragmatism to Italy's economic problems.

found Berlusconi 'approachable snobbish bourgeois like simpatico/

He went

candidates of Forza

had

first

De

—

not an aristocrat like Agnelli, or a

Benedetti, but down-to-earth, affable,

1994

to Milan in February Italia.

met Veronica

as

£600).

It

kit cost

one of the 276

At the Teatro Manzoni (where Berlusconi

Lario) he received his

'kit del

terms have always been used with over-abundance camp). The

He

each candidate one million

consisted of a luxurious bag

'full

candidate

(English

in the Berlusconi

lira (at that

time about

of surprises'

—

ties,

adhesives, lapel badges, a videocassette with the party's programme,

INTO POLITICS musical cassettes of Forza

Italia 's

anthem to

69

sing along to. Caccavalle

very kitsch and rather embarrassing', as well as expensive.

found

it 'all

Once

in parliament,

he was to discover

have not got a leader, but a boss.'

'that

we

Forza

Italia

deputies

14

Government and defeat, 1994-1996

3.

Berlusconi's

first

government

of the vote to 30.6 percent.

Soon, however, the

from running the

seemed out of

AC

fragility

Milan

enough.

well

started

European parliament, Forza

elections for the

won

Italia

At the June

increased

its

share

the European Cup.

of his coalition revealed

itself.

Far

State as a business, Berlusconi, hardly surprisingly,

his depth. In

many key

areas he tried to take decisive

action, only to be forced to retreat. In an early initiative, he offered

the post of Minister of the Interior to the very popular Milanese magistrate,

Antonio Di Pietro.

Berlusconi hoped in this

way

to

circumscribe and limit the Clean Hands investigations. Di Pietro went to

Rome, admitted

refused the post.

to being seduced

On

by Berlusconi's charm, but

13 July 1994 the

new government

passed a

decree law, which basically intended to wind up the whole enquiry.

However, the Milanese magistrates went on against this

height of

television to protest

unwarranted interference, and even though

it

was the

summer, the public outcry was immense. The Northern

League's Minister of the Interior then backtracked and threatened resignation.

Other face of a

On

19 July the government climbed down.

retreats followed.

Pension reform was abandoned in the

huge trade union demonstration

14 Michele Caccavalle,

//

in

November

1994.

An

grande inganno, Milan 1997, pp. 10-11 and 42. See also

Golia, Dentro Forza Italia, pp. 21—82.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

70

initial

attack

upon the autonomy of

Bank of

which had often

Italy,

an important check against arbitrary executive action,

served as

proved unsuccessful. The

march and

bureaucracy had

state

own

its

slow pace of

self-protective agenda.

Worst of

all,

On

enquiries.

drawn

Berlusconi himself was

into the Clean

November 1994, while he was

22

United Nations'

handed

the

conference

international

on

Hands

presiding over a

he was

criminalitv,

Notice of Guarantee, informing him that he was under

a

investigation

corruption.

by Milanese magistrates concerning possible charges of

The

centre-right politicians and Berlusconi's televisions

accused the magistrates of an 'institutional coup d'etat'. According to them, there had

been an outrageous attack upon the President of

moment

the Council of Ministers, at exactly the

which he was

one of the most important international commitments of

fulfilling

career.

in

Certainly, the timing

admitted

felicitous,

However, the charges were

later.

formed part of

was not

a

as

his

Borrelli himself

substantial

ones,

and

wider inquest into the alleged systematic bribing of

the Finance Police in return for their turning a blind eye to false tax returns.

I

shall

deal

with these charges in detail below.

In

the

following months, other grave accusations were levied against Berlusconi

himself and

members

of his

Marcello Dell'Utri and Cesare

Previti,

closest

entourage,

including

Berlusconi's principal legal

advisor and Minister of Defence.

By the beginning of December 1994 Umberto

Bossi

and the

Northern League were no longer prepared to go on supporting Berlusconi.

Many

of the League's supporters

Clean Hands campaign,

many more were on

unions and against pension reform. Bossi

felt

into a highly uncertain parliamentary adventure

him of

his

still

believed in the

the side of the trade

he was being sucked

which would deprive

mass support. He withdrew the League's ministers from

the government, which duly

fell

on 22 December

after barely six

INTO POLITICS months

in

office.

Berlusconi's

proved an ignominious

experience of high office had

first

affair.

For more than a year after

The

71

his fall, Italian politics lived in a

vacuum.

able and wily President of the Republic, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, an

old-time Christian Democrat but no friend of Berlusconi, refused to fresh elections.

call

Instead,

he instituted an interim 'presidential

government' under Berlusconi's former Treasury Minister, Lamberto Dini. Berlusconi himself complained bitterly: stake, that

is

if

in the idea of

democracy we include the

electors to express their opinions his side.

However,

Berlusconi had in

one of

coni,

in

his

Scalfaro

little

luxurious

.

.

,'. 15

was within

option but to villas in

white running

'Democracy

outfit,

sit

The

polls

itself is at

right of the

were firmly on

his constitutional rights,

and wait.

Bermuda,

On summer

and

holiday

a youthful -looking Berlus-

was photographed leading out

his

obedient senior advisers, identically clad, uneasy and overweight, for their

morning run.

It

was meant to be

presidential-style photograph, but there

American dictator to

it

as well.

In this interim period,

a

very North American,

was something of the South

16

which was to

last until

the spring of 1996,

Berlusconi's anger and sense of having been betrayed

seem

blinded him from seeing the contours of Italian politics. rebuild bridges with the significant

the time, the

15

to have failed to

or enlarge his coalition in any

way. Antonio Di Pietro, afraid of being blackmailed and

with an eye to

Left.

League,

He

politics,

had resigned from the magistracy.

most popular man

in Italy,

He

was, at

and definitely not of the

But Berlusconi was quite unable to entice him, or many other

Berlusconi, speech of 24 October 1995, in Discorsi per la democrazia, p. 126.

16 Oggi, vol. 51 (1995), no. 36, 6 September.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

72

moderates for that matter, into

his centre-right coalition.

By

contrast,

the centre-left had reorganised in the Olive Tree coalition, and had

found

in

Romano

Prodi a very credible candidate for President of the

Council of Ministers.

The April 1996

national elections

were

a very close-run thing.

The

Northern League chose to stand alone, equidistant from both of the major

coalitions.

It

was rewarded with 10.1 percent of the vote,

notable performance which spelled disaster for Berlusconi in the North.

Without the support of the League

in

much

a

of

Lombardy, Veneto

and Piedmont, he could no longer aspire to that almost clean sweep of the uninominal seats that he had achieved in 1994. As a result, the

Olive Tree coalition of Deputies

won

a

narrow

victory.

However,

in the

Chamber

was dependent upon the unpredictable support of

it

Rifondazione Comunista, the

far-left

party which had gained 8.6

percent of the votes in the lower chamber. Berlusconi,

who had

saw power

thus

elections,

waited with increasing impatience for these

away from him.

slip

In

spite

of his

continuing dominance of commercial television, he appeared to be 'yesterday's man', a meteoric figure but not one test

of time or

fulfilled

his

own

who had

stood the

very considerable ambitions. The

weight of judicial accusations continued to multiply.

It

seemed only

a

matter of time before Berlusconi exited from the scene, in one way or another.

4. A family business. Fininvest and the Financial Police

The

trial

of Silvio Berlusconi for alleged corruption of the Milanese

Financial Police listed in April

was

2001

just

one of ten court cases which The Economist

as decisive

evidence of the fact that Berlusconi

INTO POLITICS was

'unfit to

govern

Italy' for a

73

second time. As he was eventually to

be found not guilty and was to demand that the free press restore to

him

that 'honourability as a citizen

trampled under foot', this trial as

it

17

it is

and

as a leader

which has been

worth following the terms and

details of

unfolded, painstakingly slowly, at the various levels of

Italian justice.

when

Everything began on 26 April 1994,

a

young Vice -Brigadier

of the Financial Police, Pietro Di Giovanni, went to see his superior officer,

Colonel Guglielmo Miglioli, to

the corps had offered

him money which

Berlusconi's companies. refer

the

him

tell

that another officer in

came from one of

allegedly

Miglioli told the

young Vice -Brigadier

matter immediately to the magistrates,

which he

to

did.

Antonio Di Pietro took charge of the case, and over the next few

months there emerged extensive evidence of the

Financial

Police

taking bribes, in return for turning a blind eye to 'approximate' tax

returns from a large

number of Milanese companies.

one of these. Three different occasions were identified case, involving the

Most of their guilt

sum

of 330 million

lira,

was

in Fininvest 's

or approximately £20,000.

the firms involved sought to minimise the

image by adopting

Fininvest

damage done

to

a policy of plea bargaining, admitting their

immediately and receiving reduced sentences

in return. Fininvest

resorted to a different strategy. While not denying that monies had

been paid out,

claimed that the company had been a victim, not a

it

perpetrator of the crimes in question. In other words, the Financial Police had subjected

it

to extortion threats. Furthermore, the

17 Berlusconi, 'Quell'attacco dei giudici che ha cambiato 21

October 2001. He added

la storia', Corriere della Sera,

Guarantee was

that the Notice of

com-

'the last of a series of

public intimidations, completely alien to a State based on the rule of law'. His Minister of the Interior, Claudio Scajola, added, 'The winner

wished to change the history of 'Berlusconi assolto, assolto va all'attacco.

il

is

Italy against the

Polo ora chiede

le

scuse,'

an

Italy

of progress, the loser he

wishes of the ivi.

"Ora restituitemi l'onorabilita",

Italians';

who

D.Martirano,

See also Luca Fazzo, 'Berlusconi la Repubblica,

21 October 2001.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

74

pany denied that

its

head, Silvio Berlusconi,

knew

anything about

what was going on. Cesare Romiti, the Managing Director of FIAT,

'How

had adopted a similar attitude.

could

I

possibly know', asked

Romiti, 'about everything that was happening in the company's eleven subholdings, which in turn control 1,033 companies?' 18

was

It

a line

of defence that can be termed 'ignorance as a result of magnitude',

and one often adopted by senior management

in similar cases.

The

higher up the company, the less likelihood of knowing what was

happening lower down.

management

senior

control, but

it

was

The defence

was not

comforting

a

line

in

terms of

command and

a highly convenient one.

strategy of

Whereas Romiti

area.

It

efficiency or effective hierarchies of

FIAT and Fininvest

attributed total

one key

differed in

responsibility to the

lower

echelons of FIAT, with he and Giovanni Agnelli resting in blissful Fininvest did not

ignorance,

company's overall director of Silvio Berlusconi's

do the same. Salvatore

for fiscal affairs,

— he and

his family

and

Sciascia,

a close collaborator

had often received

money, watches and jewels from Berlusconi — admitted

knew what was going

(Sciascia)

on,

the

gifts

of

that he

and that so too did

Silvio's

younger brother, Paolo Berlusconi. The admitted chain of knowledge thus ascended higher in Fininvest than in FIAT, reaching right up to the firm's family owners, but stopping just short of Silvio Berlusconi himself. This

was

at this

was

just as well, because Berlusconi, as

we

have seen,

time President of the Council of Ministers.

Interrogated by the Milanese magistrates, Salvatore Sciascia con-

firmed

the

absolute

dominance of the Berlusconi family

company's structure: 'Fininvest

is

headed by the Berlusconi family.

I

18

a

Travaglio, Mani pulite, pp. 248-9.

the

holding which in substance

mean by

is

this Silvio Berlusconi, his

See Piercamillo Davigo's testimony to the authors of Mani

Gomez and

in

pulite;

Barbacetto,

INTO POLITICS

75

wife, his parents, his sister, his brother Paolo Berlusconi and his five children.'

19

When

it

was

his

turn to be interrogated Paolo Berlusconi

immediately admitted that he knew that monies were being paid, but that the

Financial

expansion of their enquiries to include

He added

irregularities.'

him with

Police had threatened a

meticulous control of formal

had never been informed:

that his brother

'The structure of the Fininvest group, leaving aside a precisely designated division of responsibilities:

that

all

'an unjustified

I

titular posts, has

personally

concerns tactics and strategy, while Silvio Berlusconi has

responsibility for the overall global strategy of the group.'

Here the matter might have been forced to Silvio

manage

Berlusconi was concerned,

had

20

rest, at least as far as

not been for a peculiar

it

incident that had taken place in June 1994,

more than

a

month before

Paolo Berlusconi had been interrogated. The Milanese magistrates discovered that Massimo Maria Berruti, a lawyer close to Berlusconi

who had was for

previously been employed by the Financial Police, but

at the

time an 'external consultant' for Fininvest, had

Rome on

Palazzo

8 June 1994. At 8:45 p.m. he had

Chigi,

the

demonstrated

this fact.

Rome. A

We

pass found

Milan

left

been admitted to

President of the Council of Ministers'

residence in the heart of

who

amongst

do not know, obviously, the

official

his

papers

real content

of the conversation between Berlusconi and Berruti, but

little

more

than half an hour later, at 9:29 p.m., having just emerged from Palazzo Chigi, Berruti

made

of the Financial Police.

a

phone

call

The following

to Marshall Alberto Corrado

day, Corrado

phoned another

policeman, Colonel Angelo Tanca, with instructions to keep silent

about one of the three episodes of alleged corruption that concerned

19

The Milanese magistrate's documentation of

interrogations, have

been valuably reproduced

Palermo, Le mazzette

della Fininvest,

20

Ibid., pp.

96 and 104.

their case,

in their entirety in

including a

number of

Tribunale di Milano e

Milan 1996. For Sciascia, see pp. 51—72.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

76

the Mondadori publishing house. Both phone calls had been inter-

cepted by the police. This sequence of events, which 1

994, was

came

sufficiently linear for the

to light only in

They duly sent him the

famous Notice of Guarantee on 22 November 1994,

now

Palazzo

the fact that

formally under investigation. Besides Berruti's

to

visit

were many other elements which led the

there

Chigi,

by

as required

Code of Penal Procedure of 1989, informing him of

he was

of

Milan pool of magistrates to begin

investigations directly into Silvio Berlusconi.

the

November

magistrates to doubt Silvio Berlusconi's defensive line of 'ignorance

through magnitude'. meetings

at

From

the

Arcore of the

Fininvest's overall strategy,

it

confiscated official minutes of the

became

which decided

Corporate,'

'Comitati

clear that Silvio Berlusconi, as

so often happens with the heads of family firms, even very large ones,

intervened obsessively on the manager,

all

sorts of minutiae: a salary increase for

Urbano Cairo, the price of decoders

for the pay

TV

channel Telepiu, the buying of a house for Antonio Craxi, brother of Bettino,

whole -page advertisement

a

possible,

really

nothing of

the

illegal

magistrates

On

13

asked

USA Today, themselves,

etc.

21

and which were not a one-off

Silvio Berlusconi,

22

still

Berlusconi began with

document requesting

my

presence,

the following phrase: 'the person

Barbacetto,

it

reiterated over time?

December 1994,

dramatic confrontation.

In the

Was

he knew

that

Prime Minister, but

only just, was interrogated by the Milanese magistrates.

name

21

payments, not of great economic size but morally

very damaging for his company,

phenomenon, but

in

Gomez and

who

I

It

was

a

a clarification:

have read alongside

in fact at that

Travaglio, Mani pulite, p. 281.

22 Tribunale di Milano e Palermo, Le mazzette, pp. 153—73.

my

time was

in

INTO POLITICS

77

control of the activities of the companies of the Fininvest Group.' absolutely unfounded.

wish to

state that this affirmation

ible for

any one person to have a real control

is

It is

I

impossof the

[controllo dijatto]

managerial and administrative activities of a group of these dimensions.

Francesco Saverio Borrelli insisted instead on the overall responsibilities

links

of those at the top of Fininvest, and on the closeness of the

between

Silvio

and

his brother:

'Your brother has been defined

Borrelli:

Berlusconi: 'No,

my

brother was not

person

who was most

while

devoted myself to the other

I

your

as

alter ego.'

alter ego.

easily accessible to

His role was as the

everyone

which

activities

company,

in the I

have described

.'

above. Borrelli:

my

.

.

'From the episodes which are the object of the accusation

and from other episodes,

it is

apparent that the Group had created

hidden slush funds, to be used million

lira

formed part of

circumstances.

in certain

these.

The 330

Can you describe how

these

hidden funds were created, and with what modalities?' Berlusconi:

only

prefer to

'I

were kept

totally

when

call

them "nonregistered

hidden from me. ...

these events

came

I

to light.

came I

funds", even to

if

they

know about them

was very taken aback

because, leaving aside

my

absolutely negative,

consider such operations absolutely incon-

venient for a group

You have

to

I

.

.

.

moral judgement on

which pays

understand that

a billion lira a

100 million

lira

all

which

this,

day

in taxes.

.

is

.

.

represents one-

thousandth of the daily operations of the Group, the sort of financial transaction which takes place in

Towards the end of the instead

it

every thirty seconds.

.' .

.

interrogation, the magistrates concentrated

on the role of the lawyer Massimo Maria

Berruti:

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

78

Davigo [Piercamillo Davigo, another of the Milanese 'pool' of magis'Did he [Berruti] explain to you that the reason for which

trates]:

he had been arrested was for having interfered with the course of justice

by ensuring that the message

Tanca? This

is

is

'I

deny absolutely

has

I

that this contact can be derived causally,

wish to add a

emerged from

and

my meeting with It seems to me that nothing to demonstrate my direct

effect,

final thing.

interrogation

this

responsibility in the three incidents that

enquiry.

I

from

form the object of the

hope you now are aware of the damage

an interrogation has brought to

for

off

with you.'

in a relationship of cause

Berruti ...

now show

between Corrado and Tanca was triggered

after Berruti 's conversation

that

reached Colonel

especially important since our enquiries

that this contact

Berlusconi:

[to stay silent]

me

that this request

personally,

to

me

as

President of the Council of Ministers, and to our country, seeing that

you sent

me

a Notice of

Guarantee

at the

exact

moment when

was presiding over the United Nations' conference on world

I

crime.'

Davigo: 'Perhaps the terms of our I

beg your pardon and

at

I

last

accusation are not clear to you.

will repeat

them. The evidence shows that

8:45 p.m. on 8 June 1994 the lawyer Berruti asked to have a

meeting with you

in Palazzo Chigi.

A

short time after, at 9.28

p.m., Berruti called a telephone operator and one minute later, at

9.29 p.m., he called the number of Marshal Corrado. The following day Marshal Corrado warned Colonel Tanca that he was about to

be involved the

in the investigations

Mondadori episode.

and their weight

In

May 1995

I

hope

and that he was to stay

silent

about

that the temporal sequence of events

as circumstantial

evidence are

now

clear to you.'

the Milanese magistrates finished their enquiries and

requested that the Berlusconi brothers, Sciascia and various

members

INTO POLITICS of the Financial Police be sent for

79

Berruti and Corrado

trial.

were

accused of aiding and abetting as well as of obstruction of justice.

Three years

two

later the judges in

They found

case.

Milan gave their

Berlusconi guilty and

Silvio

months imprisonment. But

years and nine

first

ruling

on the

condemned him at

same time

the

they found Paolo Berlusconi not guilty because he had taken

upon himself

responsibility

order to protect his brother:

in

to

'It

all is

not rare', wrote the judges, Tor the weaker suspect to take upon himself

all

knowing

responsibility,

the

at

of being condemned,

cost

that in the event he can be sure of the gratitude of the

stronger suspect.' trates'

even

The judges

thesis that Fininvest,

endorsed the prosecuting magis-

fully

not the Financial Police, had been the

corrupting agent.

However, under the until the case has

case of this

trial,

been heard

May

tations

Italian justice for nonconstitutional matters. its

verdict.

too,

It,

condemned

but since the charges referred to incidents of nearly

and since Berlusconi could benefit from a

ten years previously,

number of

enforced

of possible appeal. In the

at all levels

2000, the Appeal Court gave

Silvio Berlusconi,

is

meant both the Appeal Court and the Cassation

that

Court, the highest level of In

system, no sentence

Italian judicial

'general extenuating circumstances', the statute of limi-

came

into play.

The Appeal Court

also expressed

its

doubts

about Paolo Berlusconi's innocence, but since he had been acquitted at a

lower level he could not

now

be retried unless there was fresh

evidence against him. Finally, the

Corte

di Cassazione

gave

its

verdict

2001, a few months after Berlusconi had again

won

on 19 October

the elections and

returned to Palazzo Chigi. The highest court announced that the President of the Council of Ministers was not guilty. insufficient evidence

to

show

that

responsible for what had happened.

There was

was he who had been

it

On

really

the other hand, the court,

80

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

though well known for the its

judges,

political

adamantly to

refused

conservatism of the majority of accept

the

defence

thesis

that

Fininvest had been subject to extortion threats. According to this definitive sentence,

Salvatore Sciascia, Fininvest 's Director of Fiscal

Affairs, 'had certainly

operated for the Group

the level of a purely personal initiative.'

as a

He had

whole and not on

also discussed 'these

matters on an equal basis with [the Financial Police], in order to obtain illegal

advantages for the

Group.'

With

the

Berlusconi himself, the Court reaffirmed the guilt of accused, including the Financial Police and the lawyer Berruti,

who

exception of all

the other

Massimo Maria

received an eight-month prison sentence. 23 Silvio Berlus-

coni was indeed found not guilty at the end of the day, but the

circumstances revealed by the favourable light

upon

trial

can hardly be said to have cast a

the activities of his businesses.

23 http://www.osservatoriosullalegalita.org, Corte di Cassazione, sezione VI penale, sentenza 7 novembre 2001, n. 3945 2.

RIGHT AND LEFT, 1996-2001

4:

1.

Retrenchment

F.Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his novel The Last Tycoon (1941), 'There are

no second

American

acts in

lives.'

His axiomatic observation also

held true in the torrid climate of Italian politics and business of the 1990s. After the seemingly interminable continuities of the Christian

Democrat decades, when Aldo Moro could invent paradoxical geometric metaphors such relations

as that

of the 'parallel convergencies' to describe

between Christian Democrats and

Andreotti could than six times,

become President of the

Socialists,

and when Giulio

the Council of Ministers

atmosphere of post- 'Clean Hands'

no

Italy

less

was

dramatically different. Elite instability, and even mortality, proved

very high.

Men came

and went with alarming speed. By 1996, Bettino

Craxi, Giulio Andreotti and Arnaldo Forlani, the three the seemingly impregnable 'CAF' of the late 1980s, legal accusations. Craxi, as

we

members of

all

faced grave

have seen, had fled the country. But

other politicians too, like the Christian Democrat reformer Mario Segni, hardly lasted a season.

Even Achille Occhetto, who

presided over the metamorphosis of the Italian the Left Democrats,

in

Communist

was unceremoniously sent on

his

way

1989 had party into

after losing

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

82

the elections of 1994. As for the business world, as

we

have seen, in

July 1993 both Gabriele Cagliari, the former president of ENI, the

state-owned energy company, and Raul Gardini, Managing Director of Ferruzzi, committed suicide. Cesare Romiti, the very influential

Managing Director of FIAT, was soon to be condemned for cooking the books of the great car production company.

and Enrico Cuccia, head of

seemed

Italy's

Only Giovanni Agnelli

most important investment bank,

to maintain a timeless quality about them.

Silvio Berlusconi did

not appear

at all

immortal. In 1996 the belief

was widespread

that he too, having lost the elections,

disappear from

the

To add

May 1997

as

and

scene,

political

Milanese magistrates.

in

finish

to his difficulties, he

would

shortly

net of the

the

was diagnosed

in

from prostate cancer, and was to undergo

suffering

surgery for the condition. All seemed to conspire against his appearing for a 'second act'. It is

a

measure of the man that he fought back with great determi-

nation and eventual success. Certainly,

it

would be true

to say that he

had no clear alternative. With the number of criminal charges against

him and

his associates increasing constantly, the

of negotiated exit from Italian public for broke,

and knew

it.

chance of some sort

was very

slim.

Rupert Murdoch was interested

Mediaset television channels

his

life

at this time.

He was in

may have been

selling up. This

political

true, but he

and media power

if

buying up

Berlusconi refused to

negotiate, claiming later that his children had prevented

needed both

going

knew

full

him from

well that he

he was going to survive.

Berlusconi thus had few options other than to stay in the front line.

In a

The way whole

coalitional

The

in

which he did

series of areas

— he

—

so,

legal,

though, was

was always to be

was the

skill.

judicial one,

his principal

short of masterly.

economic, party-political, European,

retrenched with great

first battlefield

little

which from 1994 onwards

concern. In

Italy,

he was

now

being

RIGHT AND LEFT, 1996-2001 accused of

One

parties, bribing the Financial

illegally financing political

accounting and the corruption of judges.

Police, tax fraud, false

was accused of tax fraud and the breach of

Spain, he

83

In

antitrust laws.

1

postponement

part of his defensive strategy appeared to be the

of judicial hearings for as long as possible, on the grounds that his political

commitments did not allow him

of this sort,

when combined with meant

judicial system,

that there

to be present. Delaying tactics

the very slow pace of the Italian

was

a

good chance of the

unfinished by the time the statute of limitations

was Berlusconi's position,

At the same time, the 'organic

—

began to launch

who had

those

was

a systematic

the

news programmes but

last

almost ten years.

It

into play. If this

being an effective one.

it

intellectuals' of Berlusconi's tele-

their

a barrage of unceasing

magistrates. This

being

was hardly an honourable way of clearing

it

one's name, but there was every chance of

vision channels

came

trials

own

programmes —

political

abuse against the prosecuting

media campaign,

largely outside of

inside the political sphere,

is

difficult to

estimate

its

which was to

full

effects.

The

barrage was directed not just against the 'Communist judges' of Milan.

As Marcello dell'Utri had been accused of

well-known

politicians

colluding with

it,

like

the discrediting process

two

with the Mafia, and

was designed to encompass

the anti-Mafia magistrates of Palermo as well. possible,

links

Giulio Andreotti had been accused of

From

the

many examples

will suffice to illustrate the history of this campaign.

The

who had own programme, Sgarbi

flamboyant art historian and polemicist, Vittorio Sgarbi,

become

a

quotidiani,

Forza

Italia

on Canale

deputy 5 for a

told his viewers: 'Di Pietro, trates are assassins

who

in 1994,

had

number of

'Silvio Berlusconi.

An

years.

On

14 July 1994 he

Colombo, Davigo and the other magis-

have killed people. They should be kicked out

and no one would lament their going'.

1

his

Italian Story',

Two

days later, he returned

The Economist, 28 April 2001, p. 22.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

84

to the attack:

'The judges of the Clean Hands campaign should be

arrested, they are a criminal association with permission to

kill,

they

aim to subvert the democratic order'. 2 Sgarbi's programme was usually

more than once

broadcast

Liguori, in his

in the space of

programme

Studio aperto,

twenty-four hours. Paolo

was

also an implacable critic

of the magistrates. Sgarbi, Liguori, Giuliano Ferrara, Emilio Fede, the

anchorman of the Rete 4 news, preached the same unceasing message year

year out: the magistrates were unreliable and vindictive, they

in,

were

left-wing, they had

all

A new

reasons.

'video -truth'

trumped up the charges

for political

was thus created: Berlusconi was the

innocent victim of a monstrous plot.

A

second, crucial area of retrenchment concerned the economic

bases of Berlusconi's empire. As in

we

have seen, by 1994 Fininvest was

deep trouble. Excessive and precipitate

diversification, as well as a

reluctance to quote Mediaset on the stock market, and thus open the

door to nonfamily

capital,

had pushed Fininvest dangerously into debt.

The companv's precarious preserve

its

financial

state,

as

well as the need to

near monopoly of commercial television, were amongst

the strongest motives which had driven Berlusconi into politics. Yet

while his political fortunes foundered in the fateful year of 1994, those of his

company

did not. Franco Tato, a tough, independent-minded

manager from Mondadori, nicknamed 'The

Kaiser',

was given

overall

control of the reorganisation of Fininvest. Although he antagonised a lot of traditional

management, who recognised the authority only of

Silvio Berlusconi,

Tato succeeded in carrying out fundamental reforms

between 1993 and 1996. His

insistence

on the

relative

autonomy of

the seven sectorial subholdings of Fininvest (Mediaset, Mondadori, Standa,

meant,

2

Mediolanum, Medusa, Pagine as

Quoted

Mario Molteni has written

in Barbacetto,

Gomez and

Italia,

Societa Diversificate),

in his recent study of the the

Travaglio, Mani pulite, p. 243.

RIGHT AND LEFT, 1996-2001 Fininvest Group, that 'the sun had set

on the

85

typical organisation of a

one-man company which had accompanied the development of the

Group from

its

very beginning'. 3 In 1996 Mediaset was successfully

quoted on the stock market. 4 The Standa supermarkets, which had

been

a

heavy weight around the neck of Fininvest, were sold

off,

belying Berlusconi's boast that he never got rid of anything.

By 2001, the empire was back

in

good economic shape.

acquired a European dimension, and

some of

its

It

had not

owner's deepest

ambitions, such as to control the cycle of the Italian consumption of

— from

commodities at

mass

retail

their advertising

outlets

— had

on

television to their availability

to be abandoned.

In global

economic

terms, even in global media-enterprise terms, Fininvest was not

more than

a bit player.

been abandoned, Telecinco rich

man

left

Dreams of an

with

only

outside of

international

media empire had

50 percent share of the

a

much

Spanish

Nonetheless, Berlusconi was a very

Italy.

indeed, one of the richest in Europe. His patrimony was

estimated at this time at between 10 and 14 billion dollars. 5 This

became

greatly increased wealth

own

party and of the

name

new

the essential lubricant both of his

political coalition

which gathered under the

of the 'Casa delle Liberta', 'the House of Liberties'.

Other key developments political project.

in these years leant solidity to Berlusconi's

The growth and transformation of Forza

Italia

one of these. The 'party -as -firm' was slowly transformed into

membership

3

Molteni,

4 For

organisation, the 'party of the people'.

II

gruppo Fininvest, p. 206.

5

www.

its

a

new

mass-

statute

-

details of Mediaset, Berlusconi's

percent of the shares, see

By

was

media group, of which Fininvest holds 48.2

gruppomediaset.it.

www.forbes.com/finance/lists. The Economist,

in its editorial, 'Fit to

run

Italy?',

April 2001, estimated Berlusconi's fortune to be as high as 'perhaps 14 billion dollars'.

28

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

86

of January 1997, Forza

Italia

was reorganised into an

effective

machine

for mobilising electoral support, with a capillary presence covering

the entire peninsula. 6

By the end of the year 2000

300,000 members. The party had

it

had more than

strongholds in the three northern

its

Piedmont and the Veneto, which together

regions of Lombardy,

accounted for more than 40 percent of

its

members. But

it

was strong

too in Lazio, and in the southern regions of Puglia, Campania and Sicily.

The

members

of the party, in contrast to the top-down approach of

three years of

first

1997 promised more power to the individual

statute of

life.

Yet there was

little

evidence by 2001 of

democracy making much headway. The powerful tors'

were

still

'regional coordina-

appointed by the President, and Forza

the personal fiefdom of Silvio Berlusconi,

a

its

remained

Italia

'personality party'

in

which idolatry of the leader was openly encouraged.

One

of the greatest deficits with which Berlusconi had always to

grapple was that of credibility on the European stage.

bad European press

in

party as the natural heir of the

acceptance

among

the

EPP group

Prodi, a Christian

a patient strategy of presenting

DC, with

a

view to gaining

European Christian Democrats. His

were crowned with success admitted to the

received

1994, and worse was to come. However,

between 1996 and 1999, he followed his

He

in

December 1999. Forza

was

European parliament. Romano

in the

Democrat

efforts

Italia

to his fingertips,

was highly displeased,

but Helmut Kohl and Jose Maria Aznar showed

little

hesitation in

7 accepting the very useful 25 votes that Berlusconi had to offer.

The terms,

last

area of intervention, and the

was the re -establishment of the

6 E.Poli, Forza

Italia.

7 Although not

members

CCD

crucial in electoral

electoral

Strutture, leadership e radicamento territoriale ,

8.3, p. 250. For the consolidation in

of the Catholic

most

1997 and

of Forza

Italia,

pact

with the

Bologna 2001, table

after, ibid., pp. 121ff.

Pierferdinando Casini and Raffaele

are part of the Forza Italia

group

in the

Lombardo

European parliament.

RIGHT AND LEFT, 1996-2001 Northern League. Between 1994 and 1996,

a

87

truce between the

warring parties of the centre -right had seemed absolutely impossibile;

Umberto

the odour of betrayal and the sound of rhetoric

were

still

Bossi's inimitable

too strong. Slowly Berlusconi realised that he could

who was

not do without the League. Giulio Tremonti,

to

become

his

Treasury Minister after 2001, a shrewd and very wealthy accountant

from Sondrio,

in

the extreme north of Italy,

Northern League back into the Bossi realised that his best

patronage

it

offered.

fold. Its

hope now

the

first

or the

last

time,

bowed

2.

Between 1996 and 2001,

still

way.

If

in the

we

Its

between

split

Fini,

not for

The centre-left Silvio Berlusconi

Italy in these

came if

in

from the

cold, but

the centre-left coalition

years had not helped

him along

the

return to the question of democratic antibodies mentioned

Prologue of

this

book, to the degree of awareness and vigilance

necessary in the changing conditions of

we

remained, but

to Berlusconi's wishes.

he would never have been able to do so

which governed

the

government and the

lay in

The North-South, centre -periphery

the League and the National Alliance

drew

patiently

support was on the wane, and

can see that the leaders had

Italian

few of the

modern democratic

politics,

centre -left suffered from major deficiencies. qualities

needed to confront so fast-moving,

opulent and dangerous a player as Berlusconi. They offered no proper analysis of his rise to late,

were

clear, until

it

was too

about the danger he represented. Though well-intentioned, they overall less than resolute about the democratic ordering of the

Italian state.

8

power. They were not

8

'Democratic antibodies' are discussed by Paolo Sylos Labini,

Roma-Bari 2003.

Berlusconi e gli anticorpi,

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

88

Their record of government on the key issues here under consideration

No

a dismal one.

is

during the

five years

law on the

No

of centre-left power.

media system was undertaken.

No

was passed

conflict of interests

effective

reform of the

Italian

media authority was

introduced to take the place of the toothless 'Guarantor for Telecom-

No

munications'.

strong line was taken on the incompatibility of

Berlusconi's being simultaneously the leader of the opposition and

under

trial

on

number of

a

serious charges.

9

Massimo D'Alema, the leader of the major left-wing

Instead,

party, the Left Democrats, tried to involve Berlusconi in a compli-

cated process of constitutional reform. In January 1997, the bicameral

commission for

institutional

reform came into being under D'Alema's

presidency. This was the third such commission in less than twenty years, the previous

two being those of 1983—85 and 1993. Both had

proved resounding

failures

third

would end

own

fate.

and there was nothing to indicate that the

differently. Berlusconi

was primarily interested

in his

He was open to discussion on all manner of constitutional — semi-presidentialism, a German-style chancellorship, etc.

variations

—

but the bottom line was very clear: there could be no deal without

a

castiron

guarantee of his

forthcoming

—

respect

—

the bicameral

own

future.

legal

he unceremoniously declared

and empty-handed.

it

was not

commission had no powers his

of reforms. After nearly eighteen months, solate

When

in

this

opposition to the packet

D'Alema was

left

discon-

10

9 For D'Alema's defence on these and other issues, see his debate with the author of this

book

at

Florence on 25 February 2002; 'D'Alema nella fossa dei professori', L'Unita,

27 February 2002; Concita Repubblica,

10

A

first historical

transizione italiana, occasione,

De

Gregorio,

'E

il

leader disse

"Non

c'e

regime"',

la

26 February 2002. account of these events

is

to be found in Nicola Tranfaglia, La

Milan 2003, pp. 79—99. For D'Alema's viewpoint, see

Milan 1997; and also Paul Betts and James

D'Alema', Financial

Times, 22

December 1997.

Blitz,

'The

FT

his La grande

interview.

Massimo

RIGHT AND LEFT, 1996-2001 Of

89

equal gravity was the centre-left's attitude to the Clean Hands

campaign. Although assuring formal support to the magistrates of Milan, and indeed to those of Palermo, the centre-left politicians

were always reluctant a central part if

to

make

the question of the respect of legality

of their political stance. They reacted on occasion and

pushed hard they would assure support, but they would never take

Of

initiatives.

power

course, in the last analysis, the courts alone had the

to decide

However, the government,

Berlusconi's fate.

as

always in these cases, could help to create a climate of opinion: either to favour indulgence situation

where

Procurator written

at

with

and procrastination, or

justice

Palermo, Giancarlo his

experience in the

else

to

encourage

Caselli,

fellow-magistrate, Sicilian capital

book

the end of his

at

a

The Chief

was being seen to be done.

Antonio Ingroia,

about their

during the 1990s, posed a

number of

anguished questions about the centre-left's performance:

Why

was the

themes of

possibility of increasing citizens' sensibilities

legality, justice

was there no support

and the moral question put

in

for the concrete realisation of a

towards the

new

the justice system, truly based on equality before the law? the

new

role for

Why

path which the magistrates wanted to follow ... in the

inquests of the Clean

Hands and

anti- Mafia

Why

doubt?

was

many

campaigns, interrupted

and detoured? 11

It

was sad indeed

that the Olive

pursue these issues just

Germany and

the

France, involving

and Helmut Kohl

1

at

as

Chancellor,

Tree coalition

in Italy

chose not to

moment when parallel scandals in Chirac when he was mayor of Paris revealed how much political corrup-

Giancarlo Caselli and Antonio Ingroia, L'eredita scomoda, Milan 2001, p. 175.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

90

tion

was

a structural part of

modern European democracy, and not

one to be swept under the carpet. 12

How is answer

is

it

possible to explain attitudes both so tepid and fateful?

a complicated one.

At the

D'Alema must bear considerable of

very

realpolitik,

much

in the

leader, Palmiro Togliatti, he

mould of

and

Massimo

A politician enamoured Communist

the postwar

was convinced

A weak

where he wanted him.

level of individual agency,

responsibility.

The

had Berlusconi

that he

partially discredited leader of the

opposition, with a very shaky legal record, was infinitely preferable to a

new man

Fini.

Much

resignation.

with

better to leave

that he

and popular Gianfranco

him where he was than

As Francesco Saverio

was convinced

A

a clean bill, like the capable

Borrelli

had Berlusconi

commented

in his pocket.

deeply ingrained pessimism about

to call for his

13

later,

Italian society also

convince D'Alema that politics was a matter for

served to

compromise

elite

Montecitorio, not mass campaigns or the mobilisation of In

D'Alema

He was wrong.

at

civil society.

1994, he had himself briefly been placed under investigation by

Carlo Nordio, a magistrate from Venice. There was no question of personal

corruption,

but there was the

question

responsibilities in the illegal financing of his party

movement.

All

traumatic and

charges

left its

of his possible

by the cooperative

were dropped, but the experience was

mark. D'Alema had no sympathy for 'overzeal-

ous' prosecuting magistrates.

He was

not alone.

The

post- Communists in his

party

moved

uncertainly on the terrain of the correct balance of powers within the State,

and of that between the rights of defendants and the needs of

justice.

12

What was

For the

Corruzione

e

political

true of the Left Democrats was even truer of the

corruption of these years, see D. Delia Porta and

Y.Meny

(eds),

democrazia, Naples 1995.

13 Interview with Borrelli, Travaglio, Mani pulite, p. 699.

December 2001 -April 2002,

in Barbacetto,

Gomez and

RIGHT AND LEFT, 1996-2001

Olive Tree coalition. The political alliance which had

rest of the

defeated Berlusconi in 1996 was fractious and heterogeneous. those

who were

Democrat

91

past.

in the centre of the centre-left

They were opposed

came from

media

(the

two

a Christian

to taking any determined meas-

ures, either of a judicial nature, or regarding Berlusconi's

position in the

Most of

issues

predominant

had become almost inextricably

intertwined by this time). For them, a policy of laissez-faire and letting

bygones be bygones was the wisest one to adopt. Behind such

attitudes lay a deep-rooted tendency in Italian political culture, clearly

of Catholic origin, towards pardoning and forgetting.

The moderates of

the Olive Tree coalition

losing precious electoral support.

The

promoted

in

initially

by

activists

resuts of a

civil

were

scared, too, of

referendum of 1995,

society

order to limit

in

Berlusconi's

media power, seemed to confirm

Italian voters

had been called upon to decide whether the law should

limit the

number of

television channels held

worst

their

fears.

by any one person.

On

Berlusconi's channels, the referendum was presented incessantly in the following terms:

'Do you want your

free

choice of evening

viewing to be destroyed by the law?' The electorate had replied no,

by 57 percent to 43, though whether

it

was responding to Mediaset's

question or that on the ballot paper was no longer clear.

Throughout the Olive Tree

coalition there reigned the fear of

deepening that profound structural divide in Berlusconi's rise to

power had done

and there were many,

from interference,

who

so

much

Italian

in

from

State or judicial interference, lined in using the

term

an all-embracing way, as signifying arbitrary state

power, the deprivation of liberties, the suffocating of private These were evocative themes for a majority of centre-left

which

believed primarily in freedom as freedom

especially

up determinedly with Berlusconi. He delighted

Communist

society

to exacerbate. All those,

Italians,

was reluctant to leave too many such aces

initiative.

and the

in Berlusconi's

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

92

hand.

was

It

tension, seek Last,

better, so they argued, to

compromise,

but not

least,

lower the

level of political

let things ride.

they were comforted in such choices by the

general political climate in Europe at the end of the century. Italian centre-left

pendulum of had

finally

ism.

The

had come to power

politics in the

in 1996, at a

moment when

The the

major democracies of the western world

swung away from Republican and Conservative United

victories of Clinton in the

neoliberal-

States, Blair in Britain,

Jospin in France, and finally Schroeder in Germany, meant that the

Olive Tree coalition had found a congenial and sympathetic international environment in 'progressive'

which to work. However, the recipes

governments on an international

for

were heavily

level

influenced by those of their predecessors. Reagan and Thatcher were

long since gone, but the force of the neoliberal paradigm lived on in the minds and

programmes of

their opponents.

The

values of the

market and of individualism continued to reign supreme: deregulation and privatisation, not only of industries and banks, but services,

also of social

went on apace, often well beyond the

limits of previous

The public sphere became

increasingly visual

conservative regimes.

and increasingly passive, dominated by commercial television, to

which public broadcasting was ever more subordinate. So great was the force of this model, and so widespread the fear of losing the

middle ground of the electorate, that elaboration of convincing alternatives.

The

Italian

hesistant one.

little

progress was

in the

version of these general

trends was a particularly

The culture of the Olive Tree's reformism, with few

exceptions, derived from that of the Bank of Italy

14 Perry

made

14

Anderson,

pp. 5-24; Colin Leys,

'Renewals',

New

Left

Review

(New

—

liberal, rational

Series),

'Public sphere and media', Socialist Register,

no.

1

(2000),

Rendlesham 1999,

pp. 314-35. For a spirited rebuttal of accusations of insufficiency, Anthony Giddens, The Third

Way and

its Critics,

Oxford 1999.

RIGHT AND LEFT, 1996-2001 watchful

ising,

of the

important virtues in an

public sphere not noted for such

Italian

But they were not enough.

emerged

to

No

complement and balance

'technicians'

and

These were

need to balance the books.

qualities.

liberal

93

intellectuals

corpus of left-wing thought

the intellectual weight of the

The centre -left governed from

above, with reforms, norms and regulations being announced to an essentially passive citizenship.

There was no attempt to build support

and involvement from below, to create a climate of enthusiasm which could have sustained some of the government's worthier In

more than one

initiatives.

sphere, as with educational reform and the teachers,

exactly the opposite happened.

Romano

After

on

1

Prodi had led

January 1999, the centre-left lost

was to be the had been the 2001:

to

programme

way. Giuliano Amato,

and D'Alema the second

we've suffered from

'If

inability

its

of the three prime ministers of this period

last first

European monetary union

Italy into

link

— commented

a defect in these years,

the

satisfactorily

single

chapters

it

in

—

who

Prodi

March of

has been our

of our reform

to a general design capable of involving the public, and of

giving the perception of leading the country towards a better society

of the future'.

15

The old

Italian

structural reform, the laying society,

Communist and

down

Socialist strategy of

of stepping stones to a Socialist

had long since been abandoned, but nothing very distinctive

had taken

its

well, and in

place.

some

By 2001 the areas

it

centre-left said that

it

had governed

had, but in the country there was scarse

enthusiasm for, or even knowledge

of,

what

it

had done. The long-

standing tradition which identified left-wing politics with the politics

of participation and grass-roots democracy, of learning citizenship

through practice, had been

15

left

woefully in abeyance.

Massimo Giannini, 'Le Cassandre sono

la Repubblica, 2

March 2001.

servite' (interview

with Giuliano Amato),

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

94

The elections of 2001

3.

By the time national

elections

were held

in

March 2001, Berlusconi

was once again very much the front runner. His programme was

a

strong and simple one: decrease taxation, streamline the state admin-

provide public works for the southern un- and under-

istration,

employed;

establish greater security in the cities,

immigration and

its

stamp out

illegal

high co-relation with petty and not-so-petty

crime; reform the judicial system and put an end to the prying and punitive actions of excessively independent magistrates.

His electoral campaign was fought with great opulence of means,

which the lax

Italian

laws on electoral expenditure permit and even

encourage. The lavishly illustrated booklet of 127 pages, entitled Una storia italiana,

political

dedicated entirely to his entrepreneurial, sporting and

achievements, as well as to his

and friends, was distributed to fascinating text.

Written

in

idyllic relations

fifteen million Italian

what

is

a highly

homes.

unusual style for

with short sentences of ten to twelve words each, use

with family

it

It is

a

Italian,

makes exclusive

of those three to five thousand words which are the basic

vocabulary of the language.

Each has

a

Its

structure

is

that of a series of fables.

happy beginning, an immediate menace on the horizon,

the collective struggle of a united group of friends ('Friendship, fidelity,

loyalty,

a

taste

for

adventure,

cheerfulness,

intellectual

curiosity: these are the characteristics of the "Berlusconi clan'"

an eventual triumph. The tone of the biography

merited

rise

to

power from humble

origins.

is

16 ),

and

that of inevitable,

Difficult

details

are

glossed over in a semifalse and sympathy- seeking fashion, as with the

account of Berlusconi's separation from his

16 Una

storia italiana,

Milan 2001, p. 38.

first

wife:

'The pro-

RIGHT AND LEFT, 1996-2001 fessional life of Berlusconi

becomes ever

dedicated only to work. The family

is

95

with days and nights

fuller,

serene, but something in the

relationship with Carla changes at the beginning of the 1980s. Love

transformed into sincere friendship.

agreement, decide to continue their

own

fulfilment.'

17

The many

by the unifying theme of the of Forza

Italia

against the

(blue

'Reds'

of

power.

.

.

attention'.

.

if

with each one seeking their storia italiana

Good

are connected

against Evil, of the 'Blues'

team)

of the centre-left, of business Italy against the a terrible fear in the air,

preoccupation that the future of

one

Una

and Carla, by mutual

also the colour of the national football

is

wicked magistrates: 'There was

suffocating

lives,

fables of fight

Silvio

is

the

pre-

Italy

would be an

a grave

and

illiberal

and post- 1989 Communists came to

The Procura of Milan had directed

its

cannons with great

18

Television statistics reveal that Berlusconi had an overwhelming

presence on his

own

channels, and a broad parity with the opposition

on those of the RAI. 19 To personalise the campaign, Berlusconi insisted that his should

During the campaign

it

be the only face on Forza

was thus possible to see

Italia' s

hoardings.

this single, fixedly

smiling face repeated thousands of times in the electoral bunting

strung across the narrow streets of central Naples, or else the same face, enlarged

beyond measure,

staring solemnly

downwards from

the

top of the pillars of a publicity temple erected in the atrium of Florence station. Such concentration of attention on a single figure

was

entirely

new

in the history of the Italian Republic.

17 Ibid., p. 11. 18 Ibid., pp. 70—1. For an interesting analysis of this text, Alessandro Amadori, Mi consenta,

Milan 2002.

19 G.Legnante and G.Sani, 'La campagna piu lunga', in R.D'Alimonte and S.Bartolini (eds), Maggioritario jinalmente? La transizione elettorale

figures

4 and

5.

1994— 2001

,

Bologna 2002,

p. 59,

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

96

Facing

him was an

uncertain, partially demoralised and profoundly

disunited centre-left coalition.

It

electoral unity that had brought

Already in 1998 the

it

narrow victory

fragile political truce

Rifondazione Comunista brought

by Romano Prodi.

was unable to regain the

down

five years earlier.

had been sundered when

the popular

In 2001, the party of

government led

Antonio Di Pietro, the ex-

magistrate 'hero of Tangentopoli', refused (or according to refused') an electoral accord.

The 3.9 percent of votes

lost in the

him 'was

that his party

many marginal

seats

House of Deputies. Rifondazione Comunista,

too,

garnered were thus squandered and,

were

level of

as a result,

fought alone in the Senate elections, though not for the uninominal seats in the

The

House of Deputies.

centre-left thus joined the fray ill-humoured and

matically

ill

-equipped.

Even

so,

Berlusconi's victory was far

overwhelming. In the competition for the uninominal

House of Deputies (75 percent of the Liberties gained

program-

from

seats in the

total), Berlusconi's

House of

45.4 percent of the votes against the 43.8 percent

of the Olive Tree coalition. In the proportional competition (allotted the remaining 25 percent of the seats), the distance

two groupings was much wider — 49.6 percent House of

Liberties,

between the

for the parties of the

40.6 percent for the Olive Tree plus Rifonda-

zione Comunista. Voters were clearly centre-left coalition than for

its

more

fractious

willing to vote for a

component

parts.

In the

Senate, the Olive Tree plus Rifondazione Comunista actually polled

more

votes than

its

opponents (44.2 percent against 42.9 percent).

However, the absence of stand-down agreements chance of having broadly the same number

cost

them

the

of Senators as their

opponents, a result which would have considerably limited Berlusconi's

the

room

new

for

manoeuvre. In the end, thanks to the workings of

electoral

law of 1993, the House of Liberties had a very

comfortable majority in both houses: 368 seats against 261 in the

RIGHT AND LEFT, 1996-2001 Lower House, and 176 for unfettered

It

against

134

in the

97

Upper. The way was open

government.

perhaps worth making one or two observations about the

is

connections between long-standing structural trends in

and the pattern of voting in 2001. The presence

Italian society

unusually large and

vital

over the peninsula of the self-employed, and more

all

specifically of family firms

and family shops, has never made the Left's

task particularly easy, though there

is

no simple

translation of the

force of the self-employed into right-wing votes. As

is

well known,

the central Italian regions have developed a dynamic tradition of small firms and industrial districts, without this jeopardising

left-wing electoral fidelity which has characterised

much

them

of the

since the

war. 20

None

the less, suspicion of a lackadaisical but occasionally punitive

and the need to be free from

State,

taxation,

The

society.

its

controls and above

form part of the natural discourse of these sections of Christian

Democrats understood

of the history of the Republic.

The word

this at a

Libertas

all

its

Italian

very early stage

stood at the centre

of their political vocabulary and adorned the crusaders' shield which

was the party's

electoral symbol. Protection (pension schemes) and

laissez-faire (a blind

eye to tax evasion) were at the heart of their

courting of the self-employed, both rural and urban. Berlusconi's

'House of Liberties' elections

for

the

is

the conscious heir of these traditions. In the

House of Deputies of 2001, 63.4 percent of

entrepreneurs and professionals voted for the 'House of Liberties',

20 Carlo Ramella, Society

Trigilia, Grandi partiti e piccole imprese,

'Still

and

a

Bologna 1986; more recently Francesco

"Red subculture?" Continuity and change

Politics, vol. 5

(2000), no.

1,

pp. 1-24.

in central Italy', South European

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

98

31.7 percent for the Olive Tree. The equivalent figures amongst shopkeepers, artisans and other self-employed workers were 54.2

percent and 34.7 percent. 21 That part of entrepreneurial

and

which had struggled

Italy

which was

instinctively

modern but vaguely

individualistic,

found the

in the course of half a century to

upon hard work,

material well-being of families

cock-a-snook attitude towards the smiling face of the tireless

state,

Catholic,

and

self-sacrifice

recognised

itself

in

a

the

Milanese businessman.

little

Another strong connection between Christian Democracy and the

House of

Liberties,

all

to the detriment of the Left, lies in the long-

term patterns of gender voting. After the war the culture of the

Church and

women

that of Italian

was with some trepidation

that both the

had agreed to universal suffrage

women

years later, practising

is

in the

over the age of

Catholics

show

still

French and the

not limited to

this

44.8 percent of housewives category, given the

—

Italian Left

fifty-five

who

and those

unsurprising in

fact.

themselves

a

An

in the

Furthermore, the more television

women

Italia,

compared

in Italy

one or two hours

daily.

21

ITANES,

22

Ibid., pp.

50-2.

il

42.3 percent of

who watched

only between

between the consumption of goods

subjectivities,

Perche ha vinto

Italia.

The connections between housework and

the advertising of commodities,

and the formation of

—

than three hours a day voted for Forza

to 31.6 percent of those 22

social

watched, the more they

a propensity to vote for Silvio Berlusconi.

who watched more

2001

extraordinary

significant

low percentages of female occupation

those

are

a very marked preference for the

voted not just for the centre-right but specifically for Forza

showed

It

period 1945—47. Nearly sixty

However, the pattern of women's voting

centre -right. elections

overlapped in a very strong way.

centro-destra,

between female viewing and the

Bologna 2002,

p. 63, table 4.2.

RIGHT AND LEFT, 1996-2001 packaged messages of the charismatic male

99

political figure, are

here

to be found in striking form.

Against

between

worth noting

this, it is

forty-five

and

youngest generation of

that

in

'cohort

(the

fifty-four

women,

women

work, those aged and the

of '68'),

eighteen to twenty-four years old,

voted significantly in favour of the centre-left. However, said that the Left has capitalised

upon

cannot be

it

the favourable disposition of

these sections of Italian society. In the context of the general misogyny

waged

of Italian public institutions, the Left in general has never

determined battle for equal opportunities, and the Left Democrats

a

in

however

particular are not seen as the party of female emancipation,

The Ministry of Equal Opportunities remained woefully

interpreted.

under-resourced and understaffed during the centre-left governments of the period

To

1

996 -200 1. 23

must be added those

these considerations of class and gender

concerning regional tradition and development.

A whole

school of

recent Italian historiography has taught us to beware of talking in

terms of

a single South, or for that

matter of a single North. 24

the less, the Left's historic weakness in society has cost

it

dearly. For

many

much

None

of southern Italian

decades, the experience of the

Resistance in the centre-north from 1943 to 1945 was contrasted to the passive revolution of the

period.

If

Kingdom

of the South in the same

the Republican cause prevailed narrowly over the

monarchy

who was

Minister for

23 See the valuable testimony of the sociologist Laura Balbo, Equal Opportunities between ministro, Soveria

24 Above

1998 and' 2000:

Riflessioni

in-attuali

di

una ex

Mannelli 2002.

all

the

work

of the academic journal, Meridiana; and Robert Lumley and

Jonathan Morris (eds), The New History of the 1997.

L. Balbo,

Italian South: the

Mezzogiorno Revisited, Exeter

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

100

referendum of 1946,

in the

the centre-north, with Basilicata

The

it

was thanks above

some precious

all

to the voters of

from the poor peasants of

aid

and Calabria.

rural and archaic nature of the South of

disappeared,

but the

structural

1

946 has long

weakness of the

remained. Key southern regions, Puglia and

since

vote has

Left's

Sicily in particular,

were

decisive for Berlusconi's victory in 2001. In a modernising process

characterised by

pulverisation,

its

by the distribution of cash benefits

to individual families, high rates of youth

unemployment, an uninter-

rupted culture of patron-client relations and covert

political collusion

with organised crime, the Left rarely found the themes or personalities

around which

modernity could coalesce. The

a different version of

recent and surprising exception of Antonio Bassolino, standingly popular

mayor of Naples, and now

first

the out-

the President of the

densely inhabited region of Campania, suggests that this was not an altogether impossible task.

However, the

Left's regional vulnerability

to certain parts of the South.

Lombardy-Venetia, once the Habsburgs, of

Italy,

now

the

It

now

is

by no means confined

has a northern problem as well.

Italian pearl in the imperial

crown of the

most economically dynamic and prosperous area

has rediscovered over the last twenty years a unity of economic

purpose and of political persuasion that has effectively marginalised the Left.

The Venetian provinces and many of the Lombard ones have

expressed a dominant, though by no means single, culture of small family firms, conspicuous consumption and xenophobia.

made an almost Christian

painless transition

from being the fiefdoms of the

Democrats to the devoted followers of Umberto

now from

the Northern League to Forza

been further emarginated. At the resentation was reduced to the

They have

last

Italia.

election

odd outpost

its

The

Bossi,

centre-left has

parliamentary rep-

at Trieste, the

lagoon and the mountains of Trento and Belluno.

and

Venetian

RIGHT AND LEFT, 1996-2001 The

crisis is

fate of Milan.

not just a provincial one. Crucial to

Not

that the

period

Republican

in

400,000 metalworkers

some of

Italy's

history in its

was the

city

as

(circa

1955—75)

factories. In

it

boasted nearly

1961 one in

in the province of Milan.

five

in

of Italian

Not by chance

and the contemporaneous emergence of

the headquarters of Italian high tech and of Berlusconi's

television and publishing empire,

forces in the city.

26

On

radically

to replace

changed the balance of

the Left, the workerist ideology of old

longer had a substantive base in reality,

emerged

capital of Italy

at the height of the Fordist

twinned with Birmingham. 25 The rapid process of de-

industrialisation after 1980,

Milan

but

immediate hinterland, concentrated

most renowned

metalworkers were employed

Left,

has been the

it

commercial and banking

had ever been the capital of the

101

no

and no fresh proposals

it.

25 G.Petrillo, La capitale del miracolo, Milan 1992, p. 97. For a further breakdown of the

statistics,

nese:

1945-1 975',

S.Datola,

G.Fajertag

in Istituto

and

F.Lissa,

milanese per

la

'L'industria

storia della

metalmeccanica

Resistenza e del

operaio, Un minuto piu del padrone, Milan 1977, pp. 115 — 16.

26 Essential reading on these processes

is

Foot, Milan since the Miracle.

mila-

movimento

BERLUSCONI'S PROJECT

5:

The temptation

and more than once

exists,

in the twentieth century

and conservative European public opinion has succumbed to

liberal

of not

taking

seriously

personal

projects

for

political

it,

dominion.

Berlusconi himself, through his joke -telling and clowning at international meetings, his perpetual smile and expansive (right

arm draped

friend), has tried to foster a particular Italy,

public

image of himself outside of

The endeavour

reassuring and dynamic at the same time.

succeeded only

body language

paternally around the shoulders of a colleague or

in part,

because for

sphere he remains the

many

participants in the

archetypical

Italian

—

has

European

friendly

and

generous, lightweight and untrustworthy. Appearances, though, can

be deceptive. His

is

a serious political project,

from some of the most profound changes

in

drawing sustenance

contemporary society

well as from the innovations of neoliberalism. succeed.

The

first

half of his five-year

has certainly not gone

all

his

term

well not

we

shall see,

in office, as

way. But the way

in

as

He may

which he survived

and then prospered between 1996 and 2001 should warn us against understimation or flippant dismissal. History, in any case, has taught us to be

wary of

little

men

with big appetites.

Berlusconi harbours ambitions for personal and charismatic control

BERLUSCONI'S PROJECT of the

modern democratic

Such ambitions are not couched

State.

the language used in the frontal confrontations

and democracy

103

between

in

dictatorship

in the first half of the twentieth century. Instead,

from

both necessity and intent, he adopts the language of the American empire, the universal values of liberty and democracy, justice and prosperity, which

This

the frame

is

the heart of the United States' global project.

lie at

confines of the

the

Berlusconi's appetites,

for

1

complicated passage of persuasion which he must work. In order to

do

so,

new and

he has recourse to both the very

brings to bear his profound experience of the

the very old.

He

modern techniques and

methods of mass communication, well aware of the degree to which these are penetrative of the domestic sphere. At the

of the content of his messages

far

is

codes in

to very long-standing cultural

same time much

from new, but makes reference Italian

and Mediterranean

society.

1.

The

Society,

democracy and the media and the logic of television make

logic of democratic politics

uneasy companions. Democratic politics depends upon lengthy and complicated policy processes, upon the diffusion of power, upon participation in decision-making.

narratives

Television,

often undramatic.

personalities,

verbal duels.

'current' Its

affairs,

1

time spans are protracted and

is

sceptical

at least as

conflicts,

of charismatic figures.

dramas and mini-dramas,

between the two,

that has triumphed. Politicians of

M.Hardt and A.Negri,

its

presently constituted, needs

time spans are highly compressed and

archetypical. In the tension

medium

It

on the other hand,

Its

all

it

is

its

narratives

the logic of the

beliefs adapt

Empire, Cambridge, Mass., 2000, pp. I7ff.

themselves

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

104

to

its

sound

constraints, celebrate their television personae, practise their

The power wielded by

bites.

their spin doctors

by

leaders, carefully protected

and focus groups, has grown exponentially. At the

same time, mass media markets have witnessed

a

dramatic process of

concentration, both vertically and horizontally. Genre firms within

medium have become

each distinct

ever larger; concurrently, there

have been mergers between firms in different types of media, greatly promotion'. The contemporary media market

facilitating 'cross

made

beleaguered outpost.

The members of Berlusconi

the global television oligarchy, of

a particularly fascinating

is

traits: fierce

upon which

life-blood,

their

acquisitive tendencies; limited

means

a

2

number of common

All this

not

is

minnows, and public broadcasting appears ever more

for

that the

medium

whom

Silvio

example, are distinguished by a

attention to levels of audience share,

advertisements,

depends;

insatiable

and conformist cultural frameworks. is

not safe in their hands. They

may

experiment occasionally and leave some editorial independence to their subordinates, but

by and large they play

and produce television of

a repetitive

safe,

aim for high

profits

and unedifying quality, perme-

The

ated by advertisements and selling techniques of every sort. Italian case

is

not the worst. As one American reader wrote recently

to the Financial Times:

'Unlike Italian television,

we Americans

even choose among several 24/7 shopping channels,

essentially

advertising,

and many late-night infomercials and advertorials.

Despite the

fifty

cable

TV

numbing

2

more channels

viewer, the fare drivel'.

is

available to the typical

24/7 .

.

.

American

mostly the same stultifying and mind-

3

T.Meyer (with L.Hinchman), Media Democracy, Oxford 2002; G.Doyle, Media

Ownership, 3

or

can

London 2002.

B.Myers, 'Dissent that drowns in the din of

February 2003.

TV

drivel', Financial Times, Letters, 22

BERLUSCONI'S PROJECT There

no iron law which

is

commercial

medium

dictates that

need be

television,

like

all

televsion, even

Potentially at least,

this.

can have highly positive effects. In the 1960s in

television,

of

spite

in

many

its

105

all

the

public

Italy,

had performed a valuable

failings,

educative role, informing parts of the population which otherwise

had

or no contact with elements of a national or international

little

culture. Joshua

Meyrowitz,

in a

renowned study of

the mid-1980s,

argued that the levelling effects of the electronic media were also

worthy of serious

in

life,

and

old, scholars

led

to

a

new

'situational

which hierarchical senses of place and

down: 'through

position had been broken

young and

They had

attention.

geography' of social

illiterates

.

television rich .

.

and poor,

often share the same or

very similar information at the same moment'. 4 The benign effects of television,

who

however, depend heavily upon two crucial

medium and how

controls the

society in lated,

which

operates. These

it

though the second

control

is

criticality,

is

culturally rich

two

is

lacking in

then the links between television and

indeed be tenuous. This

is

exactly

what

is

the

factors are closely interre-

not entirely dependent upon the

too narrow and mass culture

factors:

and varied

is

civil

happening

first.

If

autonomy and society will

at the

present

time. Private television

and corporations. 5 salaries,

but

States, Italy

it

is

is

It is

owned by

the hyper-rich, by conglomerates

run by corporate managers earning enormous

consumed by

their social opposites. In the

United

and elsewhere, families with the lowest level of education

and of income are the most dependent on television. They most

feel

television as a 'physiological need', to use again Alberto Moravia's felicitous expression.

They

are also those least involved in civil society.

Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place, Oxford 1985, p. 90. is Ronald V.Bettig and Jeanne Lyn Hall, Big Media, Big

4

J.

5

Informative of this world

Money. Cultural Texts and

Political Economics,

Lanham 2003.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

106

Passivity

and privatism are not effective bulwarks against the dominant

messages being projected

at these

who

Rather, they are those

families

most

are

from

likely to

television screens.

respond positively to

the 'preferred reading' of the messages encoded in media texts.

It

is

we must examine

within this context that

2002 average three hours

daily

fifty

nearly one hour

the Italian case.

viewing time per individual in

Italy

By

had reached

minutes. In 1988 the equivalent figure had been

watched more

less. Italians

television than any other

nation in western Europe, though less than the United States. In 1996

Mike Bongiorno, one of

his

programmes: 'The

five to six years old

that old people

like that.

statistics tell

Anything

from

we

it.

do,

its

In Italy,

we

a day

live for television,

Perhaps I'm exaggerating a

bit,

but

6 thinking about the television'.

we do

was indeed exaggerating, but he Ever since

us that Italian children of

watch television three or four hours

watch even more.

take our arguments

show compere, commented on

veteran quiz

Italy's

failed to

mention one

and

we it is

He

crucial fact.

inception, the great majority of commercial television

had been run by

his close friend

From 1983 onwards,

all

the

and employer,

Silvio Berlusconi.

major cultural choices and

attitudes of three national channels

who had also been President of the who wanted to return to running

political

had been dictated by one man, Council of Ministers in 1994, and the country as soon as possible.

This was the Italian anomaly.

6

From Bongiorno's show

Storia della televisione italiana, p.

The US

figure for

2002

is

Telemania, Rete 4,

1 1

December 1996, reported

623. For comparative

statistics,

four hours nineteen minutes.

in Grasso,

see www.mediametrie.fr.

BERLUSCONI'S PROJECT

Family dreams

2.

Central to the creation of a television culture of mass content

question of consumerism, with tion, use, disillusion, rejection

of

modern consumerism,

107

it

its

is

the

perpetual cycle of desire, acquisi-

and then renewed desire. At the heart

can be argued,

lies

the enhancement of

through a greatly increased wealth of experience and personal

life

However, choice

choice, both in the realm of goods and of services.

does not take place in a vacuum. The housewives large

numbers

television, are

for Silvio Berlusconi,

and

who

who watch

bombarded with purchasing proposals

intervals throughout the day.

7

so

vote in such

much

of his

at fifteen-minute

Their children are subject to equally

insistent advertising during their

programmes, but with the volume

automatically increased during the breaks for advertisements. Tilde

Giani

Gallino's

millennium

work on

Italian

reflects the results of

families

at

the beginning of the

such bombardment. In her study,

children's drawings of themselves and their families

and

startling reference to their

own

make frequent

shoes, usually sneakers, above

all

distinguished by the logo of Nike, Adidas or Reebok. 8 Supermarkets are often present in these drawings. In one such, the child has

her parents but not herself. parents,

is

In

her place,

drawn

standing between her

the shopping trolley. Individual identity

is

thus formed and

expressed, as never before, in the context of insistent advertising

7 In 1994, for instance there were 165,959 advertising spots on public television and

775,936 on commercial 8

T. Giani

pp. 42—53.

Gallino,

The study

comparison with Turin 1977.

television.

Famiglie is

2000.

Scene

di

particularly valuable as

a similar research published

gruppo con it

interni,

Turin 2000, esp.

charts transformations

twenty years

earlier; Id.,

11

by means of

complesso di Laio,

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

108

messages, which are then translated and acquire material form in the

world of shopping. 9

With

modern consumption, ever

the advance of

come

has

to be placed

autonomous imaginative hedonism'.

the

in

called

'modern

Central to this concept visible practice of

complex model of

just a small part of a

most of which takes place

10

The

place of daydreaming and longing.

becomes

greater emphasis

on what Colin Campbell has

is

the

consumption

individual hedonism,

imagination of the consumer.

Television channels and the Internet, videocassettes and video games,

'Walkmen' and

modern

CD

instruments,

players,

to

mention only the most obvious

play to this world of emotions and romance,

all

of dreaming and imagination. Shifts in television advertising reflect

same trend. From

the

product and as

its

beneficial effects

elsewhere has

and

passionate

become

as

individual

come

in

more on

communication.

'virtual' lifestyles as

encouraged to cut loose. There

invitation to absolute

on the

quality of the

on the consumer, advertising

to concentrate ever

element

much about is

a traditional insistence

in Italy

the emotional

Advertisements

have

about real products. The arises the

paradox of an

freedom and choice, extended by

a television

system of absolute conformity.

Consumerism, however,

is

only one pillar of this construction.

strongly normative aspect exists as well. This

down

Italians' throats, as

of television;

it

has

is

A

no longer pushed

with Catholic propaganda in the early days

become

subtle and cumulative.

The

advertise-

ments, variety shows and soap operas of Italian television transmit a

9 For a complex and convincing treatment of these processes, D. Miller, The Dialectics of Shopping, Chicago 2001.

10 Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the

1987, p. 77.

Spirit

of Modern Consumerism, Oxford

BERLUSCONI'S PROJECT powerful and continuous version of what

The family

should be.

voracious entity,

consumption.

is

the

Ideally,

and

life

seen as a loving but also ambitious and even

site it

Italian family values

109

of enterprise and

saving as well

as

of

surrounded by a multiplicity

lives its daily life

of commodities: cars, cell phones, televisions, computers.

values

Its

are tolerantly Catholic, vaguely inclined towards gender equality, but

with mothers

still

playing a central role as providers of services:

emotional, gastronomic, laundry and secretarial.

by reference to

its

shadow,

magical reconciliatory powers. tinctly familist

—

and interests

first,

some

sacrifice

State.

It is

much

need of the medium's

Italian television family

own

and very rarely being portrayed

part of these for the

good of

is

dis-

acquisitive instincts as

willing to

civil society, let

alone the

the incarnation of negative freedom.

imagined families belong to Berlusconi. They

turned-out,

well

neat,

The

in

in the sense of putting its

In this sense, these

are

11

further defined

shows which concentrate on

as in 'reality'

dysfunctional families or couples,

It is

sporting,

computerised,

joking,

pro-

American, globe-trotting, business-oriented and privatised. They are, to use an Italian expression, profoundly per bene, in the sense of that

term which such.

signifies respectability,

Of course,

Berlusconi

did.

or at least the aspiration to be

respectable and consumerist Italy existed long before

But the

point

crucial

is

he

that

is

its

organic

representative, the personification of the world of television advertising,

of upwardly mobile dreaming

elections of 2001,

in the

young people told the

Riviera,

become

reality.

journalist Paolo

vote for Berlusconi because his television was his party

11

was

Some

M.Fanchi

Rumiz full

young one, he made them dream of

that they

would

of young people, success. Outside,

references are to be found in P.Abbiezzi, 'La famiglia "in" televisione', in

(ed.),

pp. 35-51.

a

Just before the

discotheques of Rimini and the Adriatic

La famiglia

in

televisione.

La famiglia con

la

televisione,

Rome

2002,

110

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

on the road between Rimini South and San Marino, Rumiz noted 40 hypermarkets to

in the space of ten kilometres,

40 minutes

to find a parking space.

Berlusconi, then,

Ensconsed

with cars queuing for up

12

not just President of the Council of Ministers.

is

in his magnificent eighteenth-century villa of Arcore,

who

nation; not just those also those

who would

already enjoy

its

he

segment of the

also presides over the imagination of a consistent

considerable wealth, but

like to, including large

numbers of southern

Italian families.

What

is

the nature of his charisma?

Max Weber's famous

the canons of

Weber was preeminently which

most

at

It

certainly does not

typology.

If

within

lie

pure charisma for

an extra-economic or anti-economic power,

'can tolerate, with an attitude of emotional indiffer-

ence, irregular, unsystematic acquisitive acts', 13 then Berlusconi can

hardly be said to

who, writing

in

the

fit

bill.

Nor would he

fit

that of

Thomas

1841, was convinced that there were no

Carlyle

modern

heroes worthy of the name. Rather, wrote Carlyle, 'they are bank-notes, these social dignitaries, of them,

alas,

Berlusconi's is

forged,

in

money

is

real

carefully manufactured.^

12

May 13

14

enough. Perhaps

it is

his

charisma that

the sense of being constructed within the confines,

practices and symbols of

16

representing gold; and several

all

always are forged notes'.

all as

modern communication and consumption;

It is

not that he

is

a particularly able orator,

Paolo Rumiz, 'Quelli del Grande Fratello "Con Silvio puoi sognare"',

la Repubblica,

2001.

Max Weber, On

Charisma and Institution Building, ed. S.N.Eisenstadt, Chicago 1968,

p. S3.

14

Thomas

[1841], p. 14.

15

I

Carlyle,

am

On

Heroes, Hero-Worship,

grateful to Stephen

Gundle

for

and

the Heroic in History,

drawing

my

London 1901

attention to this quote.

Stephen Gundle, 'The death (and re-birth) of the hero: charisma and manufactured

charisma in

modern

Italy',

Modern

Italy, vol.

3

(1998), no. 2, pp. 173-89.

.

BERLUSCONI'S PROJECT nor physically particularly compelling, renowned for

endowed with any other

naturally

his

111

heroism, or

For

charismatic qualities.

this

reason he has long been underestimated. But he has worked with great care at creating and selling an image of himself. Pier Paolo

Portinaro suggests three strands in this construction: that of the 'great

communicator', careful to use simple language and attentive to details that in

make up

Houdini sense, but

the

the

all

not

a television frame; the 'master of evasion',

dreams; and the 'sporting

as

unrivalled salesman of escapist

the

fanatic',

winner of trophies and munificent

sponsor of a great football team. 16 These elements must, however, be

preceded by another: acquisition

of riches,

that far

of the

'self-made

tycoon'.

It

Agnelli, long considered the richest

man

in Italy, that

endows and

enables the other aspects of his charisma. Berlusconi's opulent style,

'part-Dallas, part-Mediterranean chic',

of some, but 'total

it is

17

may

life-

attract the scorn

an essential element of his appeal. So too

love for himself which Giorgio Bocca found

his

is

Giovanni

greater than those of the late

'at first

is

that

disarming

but then in the long run preoccupying'. 18 So great a concentration on one's

own

modern

—

best

summed up by

'Individuals are their

own

Berlusconi's

best guides to

However, perhaps the essence of qualities.

pastime

—

dominant ethos of

individuality corresponds well to the

Italy

Many

Italians

his

what

is

own dictum good

charisma

mirroring

—

a national

self reflected

16 Pierpaolo Portinaro, 'Sulla illegittimita del nuovo', Teoha 1,

19

lies in its

them. In the admiration for Berlusconi projection and

no.

for them'.

look at themselves in the mirror

and imagine an opulent and powerful

of 1999:

back to

self- recognition

Politico, vol.

11 (1995),

pp. 21-2.

17 Q.Peel and F.Kapner, 'Salesman on the spot', Financial Times, 23 March 2002. 18 Giorgio Bocca, Piccolo Cesare, Milan 2002, p.

19 Silvio Berlusconi,

Movement', Rome,

11

1 1

'Speech to the National Congress of the Forza

December 1999,

V Italia

che ho in mente, p. 118.

Italia

Youth

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

112

was

are combined. This

the

first

by Alessandro Meluzzi

clearly highlighted

number of Forza

Italia's

in

journal of ideas, IdeAzione. Berlusconi

was one of those natural leaders who

'by their personal audacity or

up becoming the symbol of the contemporary unstoppable

capacity end

mania for doing, moving, feeling

...

alive.

A

leader

who

will

be

chosen because everyone can recognise something of themselves in him, can identify themselves and that which they would want to be'. 20

The production of consent contains

via the

media

is

a complicated process.

elements that are both of battering-ram insistence (the

down upon

repetitiveness of the advertisements raining

considerable subtlety.

television channels,

make

as to

At

and

is

is

How,

first

insisted

a

in

and of

often criticised on his

even occasionally the object of

most popular regular programme,

8:40 p.m.).

us),

The President of the Council of Ministers never

misses an opportunity to observe that he

Italy's

It

Striscia la notizia

such circumstances, can

we

own

satire, as

on

(Canale 5,

possibly be so foolish

comparison with Mussolini?

seems an impeccable position. Berlusconi has

sight this

on the pluralism of

political voices

on

all

news

bulletins,

another clear indication of his chosen adoption of the universalist language of liberalism. Recently his daughter Marisa, on becoming President of the Mondadori publishing house, the largest in Italy

with 4,700 employees, and part of her father's empire, insisted that her guiding criteria would be 'profound respect for our readers and for the market, without any pretence to indoctrinate or orientate;

the

importance of

a

plurality

of ideas

and choices;

an extreme

attention to authors and to their possibility of expressing themselves

20 Alessandro Meluzzi, 'Sotto IdeAzione, vol.

1

(1994), no.

1, p.

le

169.

ideologic niente, solo leader concreti e vincenti',

BERLUSCONI'S PROJECT freely'.

21

Beneath the pristine surface, however, things immediately

become more complicated. Take news on RAI Uno, the where

the example of the eight o'clock

flagship channel of Italian public television,

formal pluralism prevails: every night there

a

among whom

parade of politicians,

They

sition.

113

all

members

figure

a

is

regular

of the oppo-

say something briefly. After them, and sometimes

before as well, Berlusconi or one of his ministers appears, to say

something

at greater length.

There then follows the and

a series of depressing incidents

Pope

is

general impression conveyed

The

time for sport. The

is

it

mainly

of varying nature.

fatalities

given a ritual few minutes and

cronaca,

of desperation at the state of the

is

world, the vacuity of the politicians, the need for religion and the

good sense of the Prime Minister and

his

government. Dissident

from society are never heard. The multiple

voices

Italian civil society

simply do not exist, except

associations of

when

become

they

of such proportions that they cannot be ignored, as with the Euro-

pean Social Forum's peace march

in Florence in

Berlusconi also makes reference, with

sense. His

them, because

media regime

is

this

21

R.Rho, 'Mondadori

a

on the

on the

silencing of

all

rule enunciated with

Marina Berlusconi. Alia presidenza con orgoglio',

la

Repub-

19 February 2003.

22 These are subjective observations, based on

TGI

market shares

makes good commercial

thus one based not

dissenting voices, as under Fascism, but

blica,

guile, to

must have some sympathetic

for different audiences: left-wing voters television reserved for

some

November 2002. 22

since Berlusconi's

statistics

government took power

collected by the

democrazia

di Firenze.

faithful if long-suffering

2003, the time dedicated to the cronaca

at as

viewing of

June 2001. They are supported by the

'Osservatorio suirinformazione'

Taking two days

of the

Laboratorio per

random, 6 November 2002 and

1 1

42 percent

civil

society or to dissident, non-party, voices.

all

was dedicated to the

la

February

described above was 45 percent in the

second. Almost no time at

case,

in the

in

first

associations of

See also the alarming dossier on

TGI

prepared by Usigrai, the journalists' union of the RAI; Jacaranda Falck and Stefano Livadiotti,

'Un

TG

dawero

Cavaliere', L'Espresso, 22

May

2003, pp. 58-60.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

114

acumen by

show compere, Maurizio Costanzo,

the talk

who

2001: 'Power does not belong to those belongs to those

who permit you

television audiences are at stake,

uncertain quality.

voices,

Enzo

control.

24

When

places, to

all

television'.

in

August

television. 23

When

It

mass

Berlusconi's pluralism appears of directly in April 2002,

announce that three major dissenting

Michele Santoro and Daniele Luttazzi would be

Biagi,

banned from the

on

was he who intervened

It

from Bulgaria of

to talk

on

talk

television channels

six

now under

(indirect)

his

the trade unions called a general strike in October

2003 against the government's pension reform

they were

plans,

denied adequate coverage of the strike on the RAI news bulletins.

The President of

the RAI, Lucia Annunziata,

who had been

appointed

by the pro-Berlusconi Speakers of the two houses of parliament,

denounced the government

when

for 'using

two weights and two measures'

broadcasting information. 25

Italian television

appears superficially as a reasonably plural, mark-

edlv repetitive and reassuring arena (variety shows and old films have

always been very

much

in the fore).

It

has great appeal to an ageing

population, but also to youth. In 1994, as part of a series of revealing

school essavs on

new

figures in Italian national politics,

a

Roman

thirteen-year-old offered the following naif and profound reflections

on Berlusconi's media regime:

At school, almost

all

the teachers say that Berlusconi

he'll sell the school to

who

has

monev

to

buv

it.

23 Maurizio Costanzo interviewed for Telegiornale, RAI

.

2,

.

.

is

a Fascist, that

But

if

Berlusconi

28 August 2001, 8.50

P.M.

24 T.Fisk, 'Imagine

if

Blair tried to force

Paxman

off the air', Independent, 5 June

2002. 25 Natalia Lombardo, 'No

2003.

ai

sindacati su Raiuno,

si

a Gasparri', l'Unita,

22 October

.

BERLUSCONI'S PROJECT a Fascist,

is

why

wore black

Fascists

he always laughing and happy?

is

were always

shirts,

and used their clubs on people.

.

.

reason to laugh, they were a gloomy

learnt that the

uniform, wanted the war

in

And

.

I

115

so they certainly had

But

lot.

no

Berlusconi put on a

if

uniform, started clubbing people and wanted to go to war, then his televisions

wouldn't be watched by anybody'. 26

The debate about

the

degree to which media control, especially

television control, determines people's political allegiance is

a

and culture

wide-ranging and complicated one. At an explicitly political level,

scholars are deeply divided about the weight of votes brought to

Berlusconi's cause by his media dominance. Such things are indeed difficult to quantify.

27

If

we go beyond

deeper level of everyday weighing process

Chapter

2

,

it is

is

even more complicated.

essential to bear in

to goods and services

the political sphere to the

and of material culture,

life

mind

As

I

then the

mentioned

in

the varying significance given

by consumers, and the complex way

in

which

the powerful and repetitive suggestions of television are filtered by different families and individuals.

26 P.Nicotri, Berluscon de collected

from eight

Berlusconi,

different schools,

28

Even

so,

Venice 1994,

from Luino

it is

p. 47.

in the

difficult to

deny the

Nearly 1,000 essays were

extreme north to Palermo

in

Sicily.

27 In 1994 Luca

Ricolfi,

on the

basis of an extensive investigation,

argued that the

influence of Berlusconi's televisions had been decisive in the national elections of that year;

TV,

see L. Ricolfi, 'Elezioni e mass media. Quanti voti ha spostato

la

(1994), no. 6, pp. 1031—46. Other political scientists, such as

Giacomo

more

sceptical. See his edited

volume Mass media ed

elezioni,

//

Muhno, Sani,

vol.

43

have been

Bologna 2001

One in-depth British study concluded: 'There is no way of knowing whether someone who has his eyes glued to the screen is "viewing" any more intently than someone who is ostensibly conversing with his wife. Although the first person's eyes are on the screen, his thoughts may be far away, and while the second person's eyes are orientated to his wife, he may actually be listening to what is happening on the television'; P.Collett 28

and R.Lamb, Watching People Watching

Television,

London 1986,

p.

10.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

116

over riding power of the connections that Berlusconi has established

on

his television channels

in his

magazines over a period of twenty

consumerism, advertising, family

years:

social

ball,

and

entrepreneurship, foot-

life,

charisma and political leadership have

mobility,

together in spectacular fashion.

come

29

Patrimony and the State

4.

Buttressed by his control of the media, Berlusconi has turned his attention to the State.

He

priority, to rein in the

intends, in the

power of

first

place and as an absolute

He and

judicial review.

of Justice, Roberto Castelli of the Northern League, are carrying through the operation in the efficiency rife

and the safeguarding of

government's

in every area of the

benches of Forza

Italia

judicial

are occupied in

name

his

Minister

insist that

they

of greater judicial

autonomy. Such claims are In parliament the

activity.

no small part by those who

have worked in various parts of Berlusconi's business empire, and the lawyers

who

have taken

The upper ranks of

his defence.

the state

administration are, likewise, in the process of being renewed by a radical

'spoils

system'.

Fidelity

to party and person,

precise criteria of professionalism and experience,

of recent reform. 30

29 is

An

The CNR,

interesting point of comparison, though less all-inclusive than the Italian case,

and propaganda; Arvind Rajagopal,

ness'),

rather than

the guiding light

funding institute for scientific

Italy's

the reshaping of the Indian public under the influence of

too, there

is

is

a significant

Politics after Television,

consumption element, referred to

'manifest not only in the range

Hindu

television soap operas

Cambridge 2001. as 'Retail

of consumer objects

In this story,

Hindutva' ('Hindu-

made

available

to

new

supporters of Hindu nationalism, but also in the variety of consumption styles and the

range of modes of aesthetic appropriation possible'

30 For a convincing critique of the S.Ristuccia,

pp. iii—x:

'Frattini'

'L'Amministrazione perduta', Queste

'We have

(ibid., p. 279).

law (no. 145 of 15 July 2002), see

Istituzioni, vol.

29 (2002), nos. 125—6,

melancholically returned to the the wars of investiture typical of the

BERLUSCONI'S PROJECT been placed under

has

research,

Minister, Letizia Moratti,

control by the

tight

who was

briefly President

Education

and Managing

News Corporation Europe

Director of Rupert Murdoch's

117

before

accepting ministerial office. State schools and universities are being

The public

starved of funds.

—

reversing

Rosy

ministers,

is

being undermined by regionalisation and privatistrenchant defence by one of the centre-left's best

Bindi.

31

goes well, Berlusconi himself

If all

years,

of President of the Republic.

Once

is

to

move,

at the

end of

from the post of President of the Council of Ministers to

election,

and

on

its

universalist lines,

ation

health system, introduced in 1978

He

five

that

aims to do so by direct popular

any case in the context of greatly added powers.

in

Quirinale, he will have reached the apotheosis of his

at the

power; the sporting, joking, extraordinarily rich father of the

Italian

nation. His role, as one of his sharpest advisors, Giuliano Ferrara, has

come

written, will

to resemble, of course with the appropriate self-

irony, that of Louis XIV, the

Fininvest Berlusconi

which the planets of writes Ferrara,

Middle Ages. and kings'

.

Each

.

.

'a

is

(p. viii).

1996—2001 were

far

Sun King. 32 Indeed

was frequently referred to

civil

Lombard

region.

It

is

Sun around Berlusconi's,

servant seeks the favour of princelings and princes, bishops is

careful

to

insist

from immune to the idea of

is

33

patrimonial conception of the State, in which

Ristuccia

The model here

as the

his closest collaborators revolved.

that

the centre -left governments of

a spoils system,

of the 'Frattini' law constitute a further qualitative leap in the 31

in the early years of

that introduced

but that the provisions

wrong

direction.

by Roberto Formigoni, the President of the

based upon the state paying for services carried out mainly by

private (Catholic) hospitals, and

upon the placing of

privatised services in the hands of

cooperatives friendly with the regional government. Old-style clientelism and privatisation are thus intimately linked.

The

centre-left regional

modern

governments of Tuscany

and Emilia- Romagna have remained closer to the original universalist model, and have balanced their books

more

successfully than has

Lombardy.

32 G. Ferrara, 'Prefazione', in P.Beaussant, Anche

2002

(orig. ed., Le Roi Soleil se leve aussi, Paris

33 Molteni,

II

gruppo Fininvest, p. 179.

il

Re Sole sorge al mattino,

2002), pp. 12-13.

Roma

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

118

The great man himself

public and private are indistinguishable'. 'atypical

symbolising

figure

from patrimony, nor the

How

.

work

.

'is

Government

.

is

in

,

which personal,

spatially

modern

patrimonial

Weber's

which authority within the

who

of inheritance', 34 gradually gave

extended

and

not to be separated

is

to talk of a

it

exercised by a particular individual

patrimonialism, in

feared

the heart of democratic Europe? In

in

original formulation patriarchalism

rule

despised,

an

from the person'.

State

useful or accurate

project at

new power,

a

adulated throughout Europe

is

is

way

oikos

designated by a definite in

ancient societies to

traditional authority

became more

and dependent upon different forms of

inter-

personal relationships. Authority became 'decentralised'. The children

and slaves of the household were settled upon the land, each with their

own

holdings, cattle and responsibilities, and the patrimonial

own

leader gradually formed his coloni,

administration,

but by custom, above

and help

all

.

.

owed something .

In the

wide variety of are

administrative

staff.

Max Weber,

York 1947,

absolute loyalty and

to them, 'not juridically

economic

36

A

reciprocity of favours

patrimonialism leant

field,

hands .

.

.

of the

There

is

a

chief

was thus

itself to

and the members

wide scope for actual

and the expression of purely personal whims on

34

The followers and

a

different possibilities, but 'the important openings for

the

in

price.

protection in the face of external forces

in times of necessity'.

established.

its

owed him

subjects of the patrimonial leader

military service, but he too

New

of slaves,

staff

or conscripted subjects', as well as 'mercenary bodyguards and

armies'. 35 Naturally, decentralisation had

profit

'a

of his

arbitrariness

[their] part'.

37

The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation, ed. Talcott Parsons,

p. 346.

See also

id.,

Economia

e societa,

Turin 1999, vol. 4, pp. 106ff.

35

Id.,

The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation, p. 347.

36

Id.,

Economia

37

Id.,

The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation, p. 357.

e societa, p.

107.

BERLUSCONI'S PROJECT

119

Obviously, any transposition of such terminology into the

modern

world must be treated with the greatest of in cattle or land, or chiefs.

care.

38

We

are not dealing

with slaves, armed mercenaries and primitive

But the underlying mechanisms of power and personal relations

delineated above have an extraordinary resonance in contemporary

Personal authority and charisma (the latter no part of Weber's

Italy.

patrimonialism 39 ), unlimited acquisitive ambitions and ownership, the arbitrary

whim

of favours,

reciprocity project.

of the patron resting on a weakened rule of law, the

However, they

and democratic

social

since traversed, albeit

these

all

cornerstones of Berlusconi's

are

are being pushed to the fore in a

and

political system.

more

imperfectly than

It

complex

one that has long

is

many western European

societies, the stages of material

and formal rationalisation. As

resistances to such a project, as

we

too

is

a result

shall see, are considerable,

but so

acquiescence.

It is

worth noting,

also

many

as

many commentators have done,

that there are

populist elements in Berlusconi's self-presentation and

political career.

He

is

the person

who, under the

vigilant

and doting

eye of the long- serving political commentator, Bruno Vespa, went on television to sign a formal pact with the electors: his principal

38 The best discussion of such a transposition that is

that of Pierpaolo Portinaro,

'

constitutes the preface to G.Roth, Potere personale Politische Herrschaft

39 As is

is

he did not

aims in the space of a five-year term of

Berlusconi times,

sweep,

if

und personliche

Freiheit,

Frankfurt

I

office,

realise

he would

have found, albeit in pre-

Personalismo senza carisma', which e

clientelismo,

am Main

Turin 1990 (ed. orig.

1987), pp. vii—xx.

well known, Weber's typology of power, of great articulation and historical

none the

less

composed

structurally in an elementary fashion,

combining and

contrasting the criteria of personal and impersonal, ordinary and extraordinary, power.

Patrimonial power, according to his scheme,

while charismatic

power combines

is

based upon personal and ordinary

the personal with the extraordinary.

criteria,

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

120

not stand again for re-election.

He, too, when faced with the

own

confirmation on 28 January 2003 that his

alleged judicial

trial for

corruption and that of his lawyer friend Cesare Previti were to be

concluded

and not moved elsewhere, issued

at Milan,

a videocassette

from Arcore containing the following provocative statement:

democracy he who governs by sovereign

liberal

be judged, when he

by

his equals,

Government

in office

is

'In a

will of the people can

and directs the

affairs

of State, only

by those who have been elected by the people.

is

who

by the people and by

has passed a public examination to

represents

become

it,

a judge'.

Surel's three basic elements of populist discourse

—

not by

40

.

.

.

who

Meny and

the celebration of

the people's centrality and wisdom, their constant betrayal by the elites

and the old

—

leader

Yet

are

it

all

political class, their necessary

replacement by

present in Berlusconi's speeches.

would be

framework, for that would be to miss much of

who

certainly a

But he

is

chose as

a

little

all,

its

dated,

a

is

Giuseppe is

42

commodities and

and footballers, of television channels and entertain-

a patrimonial

and use of wealth,

40 P.Di Caro,

The best

that of

very well-prepared one.

a buyer of

of supermarkets and publishing houses, and

ers,

essence. is

the Salesman. Berlusconi

title II venditore,

and probably above

services, of villas

His

its

now

consummate salesman, and

also,

new

mistake to confine his project within a populist

a

biography of Berlusconi, though Fiori,

a

41

and acquisitive as

instinct, fired

well as the need for his

governo e del popolo, non dei

'"II

much

else besides.

by the production

name and

face to

giudici"', Corriere della Sera,

be

30

January 2003. 41

Y.Meny and

Y.Surel,

'The constitutive ambiguity of populism', in

Id.

(eds),

London 2002, pp. 11-13. See also their Pas le peuple, pour le peuple, Paris 2000, and P.A.Taguieff, L'lllusion populiste. De Yarchaique au mediatique, Paris 2002, pp. 1 17— 21 Populism is also present as an analytical tool in Adrien Candiard's Democracies and the Populist Challenge,

.

engaging L'Anomalie Berlusconi, Paris 2003, esp. pp. 223—4.

42 D'Anna and Moncalvo

(eds), Berlusconi in Concert, p. 300.

BERLUSCONI'S PROJECT omnipresent.

compared

In

From

spectacular view.

pher recounted

on the

name everywhere. land.

.

underdeveloped

the future site of

lie

the seventy-acre

City'

.

.

more

The Trump name

West

Tour de Trump, and

Trump

a

for almost

one

a

Monopoly-

It is

full year.

'Trump

a bicycle race

new custom -manufactured

Cadillac.

town on

apartment

called

Trump Cup,

Cadillac

in the title of his first

...

'I

as

fifty-five story

branded on

Trump: the Art of the Deal, which remained atop the list

known

City'. Across

luxurious

is

And

sixtieth

Side yards, the

TV game show

a

card', a Brazilian horse race called the

limousine called the

the water.

Plaza, a thirty-nine story luxury

board game called Trump,

best-seller

so his biogra-

Manhattan, also

and/or 'TV

Palace, an even

.

On

In the air.

real estate parcel in

Trump

Trump

apartment complex.

called

most

city's

Along the Hudson River between

.

.

'Trump

Third Avenue stand building, and

style

liked to boast that he

York and the

Trump Tower,

the top of the

and seventy-second streets largest

New

in

he can be

in 1993:

[He] can see his especially

room

living

others,

in

Donald Trump, who

to a figure like

had the largest

though not

respect,

this

121

New

book,

York Times

believe I've added

show

business to the real estate business', Donald told Playboy, 'and that's

been Here,

a positive for

at

work

in an

my

properties and in

my

ultra-modern setting,

is

life'.

43

an ancient appetite for

unceasing personal accumulation and peacock display. In Berlusconi's case,

more

so than in

Murdoch's or Trump's, there must be added

the constant effort to create loyalty, and the need to be admired and loved. As Eugenio Scalfari once wrote: clan and identifies himself with desire

would be

43 Harry Hurt

that his clan

III,

Lost Tycoon,

it.

comes

'Silvio

Berlusconi loves his

His greatest and most generous to comprise the

London 1993,

pp. 13-16.

whole of

Italy.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

122

Who

enters therein can ask and obtain almost anything,

outside

television

enemy

an

is

is

or an infidel ripe for conversion.

an unrivalled business opportunity, but

principal instrument for proselytism'.

Such airs,

that

and

instincts

who

do not make him

a natural populist leader.

populism enters strongly into

For him, also the

is

44

when combined with

priorities,

it

remains

his linguistic

his plutocratic

At most

we

can say

armoury, but that the

material constitution of his project suggests the use of other terminol-

ogy so

to define

as

it

better.

Umberto

Bossi,

with

the populist

much

bill

fits

better.

labelling,

there

obsessive,

rough and

The legacy of the past

5.

Apart from

his

movement,

direct language, regional base and grass roots social

which

the

is

is

important but must not become

question of origins.

Much

of Berlusconi's

culture and activity are the expression of deep-rooted elements in

One

Italian history.

relations.

relations

The

survival and indeed

between patrons and

Italian life,

more than

after

disconcerting as

it is

famous inquest on deriving from the

On

of the most pervasive of these

clientele

patron-client

vertical dyadic

every sphere of

years of formal democracy,

fascinating. In

Sicily,

predominance of

clients in practically

fifty

is

1876 Leopoldo Franchetti,

of that island:

the one hand, a fidelity, an energy in the friendship

44 Eugenio

Scalfari,

as

described in memorable terms the qualities

equals and in the devotion of inferior to superior that

1995.

is

in his

between

knows no

'La breve avventura dell'arci italiano', la Repubblica, 15 January

e

BERLUSCONI'S PROJECT scruples

limits,

On

or remorse.

other

the

gradually group themselves around one or

may

.

more

.

who

individuals

potentate, whatever

be the foundation of his power: superior wealth and energy of

character, or cunning, or other qualities'.

In

.

123

1974 Pierre Boissevain published

pology entitled Friends of

a

45

book on Mediterranean anthrowhich explored the world of

Friends,

networks, manipulators and instrumental friendships. 46 In 1994 Ber-

'When

lusconi addressed his employees in the following terms:

work with my

my

collaborators

best friends. ...

It

is

the

those

most profound root of every

ship'.

47

that

I

will find

moments

of sentiment which are

feeling, the expression of friend-

Intimately linked with such attitudes

giving. Berlusconi

renowned

is

myself amongst

thus only just and indeed easy to create

work

precisely at our place of

know

I

I

the practice of gift

is

for his largesse,

which takes frequent

compere Mike

and varied forms: a portrait of

his

Bongiorno;

a

wounded policeman

summit

Genova; wristwatches for the hostesses, firemen and

at

carabinieri

2002.

free holiday for a

present at the

The

NATO

extolled

virtues

family for the

summit these

in

at Pratica di

practices

are

after the

Mare

in

between the public and private sphere, between a patron, a civil servant

A

second element

is

and

a friend or relative.

of business, not of arms. Yet his

is

a martial

his decision to

45 Leopoldo Franchetti, Condizioni

a cavalier politics,

was these

qualities

It

enter politics in January

politiche e amministrative della Sicilia,

Friends of Friends,

47 D'Anna and Moncalvo

is

approach to

[1876], p. 40.

46 Pierre Boissevain,

of

made

prime minister and

that of the condottiere. Berlusconi

based on high risk-taking and swift manoeuvre.

which characterised

a

May,

not those

citizenship but of devoted subservience, with little distinction

G8

Oxford 1974.

(eds), Berlusconi in Concert, p. 302.

1

994, and

Rome

1993

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

124

which gave him the impetus for an extraordinary victory

just

months

in Italian

The image of the

later.

cavalier e

town

horseback, are ubiquitous in

same

series of school essays

one

a potent

is

Emmanuel

popular culture. Garibaldi and Victor

two

often both on

II,

squares. In 1994, as part of the

quoted above,

from

a thirteen -year -old

Bari wrote:

It

has been such a long time since they built

personalities

on horseback. Those

famous people of the

Head of it's

the

past.

But

government and

now

able

time for another equine statue.

and he could be leading Italia!'

a

that

do

monuments

exist are

to

famous

monuments

all

to

that there's Cavaliere Berlusconi,

winner of so many It

things, perhaps

could be of bronze or of marble,

courageous cavalry charge, crying 'Forza

48

These two elements, patronage and the

condottiere

tradition,

On

taken together provide the key to Berlusconi's masculinity.

one hand he expresses

if

the

a natural paternal authority, behaving as a truly

Mediterranean patron, offering protection and rewards in return for loyalty and obedience.

On

the other, his

is

a constant assertion

certain type of virility. Berlusconi presents himself as a ladies'

not

as a

man's man,

as

Mussolini did, and his entourage plays willingly

to this image. Marcello Dell'Utri told

never been a libertine, but he not had to

He

it,

is

much time

he a

is

is

to dedicate to

one

journalist: 'Berlusconi has

certainly a seducer, even

women. But when he

if

he has

puts his

mind

uniquely charming. The seduction begins with his smile.

man who

can

make

a

conquest

something of the feminine in

Berluscon de' Berlusconi, p. 22.

49

//

padrone, p. 27.

at first sight'.

Berlusconi's

48 Nicotri, Ferrari,

of a

man,

49

seductive

And

there

charm,

is

far

1

BERLUSCONI'S PROJECT removed from

much

125

which was very

habitual and brutal male conquest,

50 the image that Mussolini projected of his masculinity.

though,

Virility,

not just a question of seduction.

is

question of courage, of possessing

(

le

It

also a

is

To be

palle\ of having balls.

a

of Berlusconi's stature, you have to have, metaphorically

cavaliere

He makes

speaking, exceptional sexual equipment.

not one to wear the 'horns' of the cuckold.

If

clear that he

it

the cuckolder, the giver of horns, not the cuckold, the receiver.

These

attitudes,

adorned

modern

in

vestige,

is

anything, he will be

come

51

naturally to the

fore in Berlusconi's dialogues. For example, at a meeting of Forza Italia at

Udine

May

in

2003, he explained that the Cirami law, which

had been introduced to allow defendants to protest against judges' biases,

and

request

to

pp. 144—45), was

The answer ran

the

of

transfer

their

as follows:

'Who knows,

(see

trial

Why

a sacrosanct piece of legislation.

below,

was

this?

perhaps one of us has stolen

the fiancee of the presiding judge. Such things happen to us, because

we're well known to be tombeur desfemmes. ... To of a friend

is

not the sort of thing

that's fine. [General laughter]'.

Sometimes the

appears to be of

how

in

it

together.

along with a powerful client to

50

On

The scene

For a

Andalusian J

.

G

pp.

.

One

of his favourite stories

is

women's

whom

a train

knowledge of the

vaginas, in order to play

he wished to

journey from

sell

Rome

the apartments

to Milan:

'I

put

Berlusconi's smile and the question of his femininity, see the perceptive article

of Stephen Gundle, 5

with undertones of sexual tourism

early in his career he feigned

extraordinary qualities of Circassian

of Edilnord.

do, but of a magistrate, well

52

talk gets dirtier,

and of the boys being

we

steal the fiancee

'11

sorriso di Berlusconi', Ahrochemestre, 1995, no. 3, pp.

fine discussion

town

in

the

14-17.

of these themes in relation to masculine attitudes in a small

1950s,

Julian

Pitt-Rivers,

'Honour and

social

status',

in

Peristiany (ed.), Honour and Shame. The Values of Mediterranean Society, Chicago 1966,

45-46. 52 Barbara Jerkov, 'Scippata

la

bandiera della pace',

la Repubblica,

12

May

2003.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

126

into action

we were

all

both

my still

"charme"

[sic],

on these

common

my

became

Of

We

.

.

my

strongest supporter,

built

a different quality, but is

about

them

call

that.

He

best friend'. Berlusconi adds that

very

still

me

a friendship based

his client's secretary so as to

he was taking and where he was going to

cultural tradition,

up

you can

"cultural" bases, if

he had previously seduced train

.

got to Milan station,

with him telling

in the bar, half- drunk,

the "nature" of Circassian girls.

we

and when

much

sit.

know what

53

part of a long-standing

Berlusconi's constant and exaggeratedly stated

respect for the Catholic church. All Italian politics, both of Left and Right, pass through the gateway of the Vatican City. For some, like

Giulio Andreotti, the doors have always been wide open. For others,

even devout Catholics

like Alcide

Christian Democrats, they

were

De

Gasperi, the

first

leader of the

partially closed. Togliatti tried to

win

the Church's acquiescence by forcing through, in the face of secular

opposition, the continuation of the Lateran pacts in the

new

Italian

Constitution of 1948. Berlusconi's version of these relations takes the

form of as

state susbsidies for private Catholic schools,

many

and support for

of the doctrinal elements of the Church which do not

contradict

too glaringly his opinion polls and his

However,

in the context of

interesting

aspect

of the

deep-rooted

House of

Italian

Liberties'

cism

the adulation of charismatic figures

powers. Padre Pio, the Capuchin

53 For two different versions of Ferrari,

//

padrone, p. 25, and the

Berlusconi in Concert, pp.

182—5.

this story,

much

friar

conduct.

most

culture, the

Catholicism

enthusiasm for one of the most archaic expressions of

—

own

is

its

Italian Catholi-

endowed with miraculous

who

is

supposed to have

both recounted by Berlusconi himself, see

fuller version in

D'Anna and Moncalvo

(eds),

BERLUSCONI'S PROJECT received

the

stigmata,

supreme example.

the

is

127

April

In

2000,

Berlusconi's Canale 5 broadcast a two-part dramatisation of Padre Pio's

life.

awarded

Aldo Grasso, it

in his

monumental

history of Italian television,

programme of

the accolade of

Carlo Carlei has not spared us anything possibility of exaggerating,

.

the year: .

.

he has exaggerated: rays of sun perforating

the clouds, a photographic style taken directly

bleeding statues at

.

.

.

'The director

where there was the

from

ex voto offerings,

burning bushes, furious battles with Evil which

54 times takes the form of a Molossian hound'.

Lastly, state are

was

worth noting

it is

that patrimonial attitudes to the Italian

not entirely new. Leaving aside the Fascist experience, which

sui generis,

one of the

earliest Catholic critiques of the Christian

Democratic regime, that of Ruggiero Orfei, was precisely that the party had 'occupied' the state. 55 administrative class, with

was never the

its

Italian State's

conduct and service to the

The development of an independent

own

codes of conduct and

strong point. political class

Even the judiciary enjoyed very

little

real

esprit de corps,

The powers of discretionary were always much

autonomy before

However, the Christian Democrat's occupation of the qualitatively different

DC

from

acquired.

Most of them spoke

incomprehensible

'

po\itichese\

State

was

by Berlusconi. None of the

that projected

leaders ever had the wealth or the

greater.

the 1960s.

media charisma

that he has

to the people at great length in an

Above

all,

none of them was ever

allowed to become the acclaimed and undisputed leader of the party,

and those

who

to their cost,

tried, as

came

Amintore Fanfani and Ciriaco De Mita learned

to a sorry end, victims of lethal interfactional

plotting.

54 Grasso,

Storia della televisione italiana, p.

694.

55 Ruggero Orfei, L'occupazione del potere, Milan 1976.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

128

Berlusconi and Mussolini

6.

How

echoes of a Fascist past in Berlusconi's personalist

far are there

construction of power? Caution

immediately are the differences rather than the

strikes the historian similarities

between the two

of contexts'

is

electoral

in

two men do form

It is

has been called the 'contrast

here very strident, for the context of dictatorial rule

democracy

character'.

What

cases.

1920s and 1930s seems

in the

obligatory in this field, for what

is

removed from

far

the mediatic and

which Berlusconi has asserted himself. Yet the 'a

kind

of

commentary on one another's

56

very

difficult to call

Mussolini a patrimonial figure. His whole

formation, as a militant Socialist and journalist, as well as his path to personal power,

Mack

is

strikingly different

Smith, no friendly biographer of

was perhaps strange

money had so little poor — his second over a million in

from

that

someone

Duce, has written that

'it

so adept at corrupting others with

interest in wealth itself

S7

Not

that Mussolini

was

autobiography, written in 1927—28, earned him

lira in its first

1944 earned him

11

that of Berlusconi. Denis

a similar

two

years,

sum

(this at a

and another book he wrote time

when

the President

of the Council of Minister's annual salary was just 32,000 personal acquisition and ownership were not his driving

Patrimonialism, of course,

is

lire).

But

spirits.

not limited to the question of the

ownership of material goods. Patron-client relations were second 56 The methodological insight comparison; see

is

Clifford

Geertz's,

working on

his Islam Observed: Religious Developments in Morocco

1971, p. 4. For the distinctions between comparative history

a

very different

and Indonesia, Chicago

as the parallel

demonstration

of theorv, as the contrast of contexts, and as macrocausal analysis, see the excellent article

of T.Skocpol and

M. Somers, 'The

uses of comparative history in macrosocial inquiry',

Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 22 (1980), no. 2, pp. 174—97.

57 D.Mack Smith,

Mussolini,

London 1981,

p. 108.

BERLUSCONI'S PROJECT nature to both men, and the Fascist party, like Forza relations as their bedrock.

129

had such

Italia,

Yet the reciprocity of favours was not a

behavioural code that Mussolini espoused easily, for he considered

himself above

such

refusal to distinguish

things.

Even more importantly, Berlusconi's

between private and public

concept

interests, his

of liberty as the individual's freedom from interference, his champi-

oning of private interests in areas previously the prerogative of the State, are all at the antipodes of the Fascist project. Berlusconi, as

have seen, wrote in 1999: 'Individuals are their

what in

is

good

for them'.

58

own

best guides to

Giovanni Gentile and Mussolini had written

1932, in their famous entry on 'Fascismo' in the

italiana:

new

is

it

is

for

for the individual only in so far as his interests

coincide with those of the State'. different concepts

Enciclopedia

power

'Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of

the State; and

we

59

These are obviously two very

of the bases of political

power

modern

the

in

world.

The question of charisma

seems

made

a very great

mark

at first sight to

between the two men. There can be

distinction

Mussolini

also

impact upon those

little

a clear

question that

who met

him, and

Winston Churchill not only thought him

not just on

his sycophants.

good thing

for Italy and Europe, but declared himself fascinated

'his

gentle and simple bearing and by his calm, detached poise',

he had his

meeting with him

first

December 1940, he continued

58 See above, p. Ill,

n.

January

in

For

a sensitive

the Berlusconi government, Stuart Woolf,' 'Crisi di

della democrazia italiana,

60 M.

Gilbert,

by

when

late 60

as

The

19. italiana, Florence,

comparison of the origins and context of the

destra. Senso e limiti di

As

to call Mussolini a 'great man'.

59 [G. Gentile] -B.Mussolini, 'Fascismo', Enciclopedia p. 847.

1927.

a

una comparazione',

in

un sistema

Fascist

1932, vol. 14,

regime and of

e origini di

una nuova

Gianpasquale Santomassimo, ed., La notte

Milan 2003, pp. 50—68.

Winston

S.

Churchill,

vol. 5,

1922-1939, London 1976,

W.S.Churchill, The Second World War, London 1949, vol.

2, p.

548.

p. 226;

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

130

English historian A.L.

Rowse

described going to hear him speak from

the balcony of Palazzo Venezia in

By and

large he

He

shaven jowl. chords

came

in the spring of 1937:

out: a short stocky butcher, with a heavy

artist in

this

speaking; but what struck

ugly customer's

him, of the artistry of

However generous one might wish difficult to

res