Building a new Roman empire

Among the sweeping institutional reforms introduced by Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government in the last three years, one that gets relatively scant attention is the initiative to rewrite the history textbooks used in Italy’s public schools. The old textbooks, Berlusconi declared, were “Marxist.” The Berlusconi-sanctioned textbooks would be edited to “respect historical truth.” Here is an excerpt from one of the new history textbooks, describing the first years of Italian unification after 1870: “The men of the Right were aristocrats and great landowners. They entered politics with the sole intention of serving the State, not to enrich themselves or climb up the social ladder.... The men of the Left, on the other hand, are [note change of tense] professionals, entrepreneurs and lawyers, ready to further their careers in any way. Sometimes, they sacrifice the good of the Nation to their own interests.”

The excerpt (and the telling observation in brackets) appears in Paul Ginsborg’s incisive new study, “Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power and Patrimony.” Ginsborg mentions the textbooks only in passing and understandably so: Berlusconi has engineered many measures far more audacious and controversial. Still, there is a revealing irony to this history lesson: Berlusconi’s campaign to reinvent Italy has never been expressed so literally.

Ginsborg, a British-born professor at Florence University, is the author of “A History of Contemporary Italy” and “Italy and Its Discontents: 1980-2001,” two of the most accomplished studies of the country published in recent years in any language. His new monograph on Berlusconi, along with Tobias Jones’ more expansive “The Dark Heart of Italy,” gives a troubling account of the present state of democracy in Italy. Even more troubling is Ginsborg’s suggestion that Italy’s current plight, far from being an aberration, represents the direction in which many of the world’s democracies are headed.

Before he entered politics, Berlusconi, a “man of the Right,” was not a born aristocrat, but he did achieve great success as a landowner. He began his career in the early ‘60s with the construction of two apartment complexes, the second of which was financed by shadowy sources who to this day remain unidentified; it was the first of several financial arrangements that would raise suspicions about the integrity of Berlusconi’s business connections. His most celebrated success came with Milano 2, an upscale gated community in the Milan suburb of Segrate, boasting its own underground parking, artificial lake, manicured park space, hotel, schools, church, porticoed shopping district and cable television system.

When Milano 2 opened, its 10,000 residents could watch the three state-owned RAI television channels, two foreign channels and -- an afterthought on Berlusconi’s part -- a new local station, Telemilano. Telemilano became an enormous success, however, and in the coming years it acquired other local television stations across the country. By the mid-1980s, Berlusconi had a virtual monopoly of Italy’s private television stations. Although they ostensibly remained locally operated, Berlusconi coordinated them so that they broadcast the same programs -- even the same commercials -- simultaneously. As Jones puts it, this was “national broadcasting in all but name” -- significant because privately owned channels were then still forbidden by law to broadcast nationally. Berlusconi now had the same number of national networks -- three -- as the state and a much larger audience, thanks to a format modeled on American TV pap: variety shows, soap operas, game shows and movies (usually American B-movies). In just a few years, he had transformed a construction company into a media empire.

Berlusconi no longer worries about competing with RAI: As prime minister, he controls the three public channels too. It’s a position he has seized with unsubtle diligence. In April 2002, he denounced three prominent RAI television personalities -- two journalists and a comedian -- who had criticized him on the air; shortly afterward, they were banned from Berlusconi’s channels. Lilli Gruber, Italy’s most popular newscaster, resigned from RAI this spring, charging that Berlusconi’s stranglehold on the television industry “has taken [on] the dimensions of a life-threatening disease.” One week later, RAI chairwoman Lucia Annunziata announced her resignation, complaining of Berlusconi’s increasing interference in editorial matters. The newscasters who remain make Bill O’Reilly look like Walter Cronkite. Jones gives a hilarious account of anchorman Emilio Fede, who introduces “news items on the opposition by shaking his head and saying, in a stage whisper, ‘These stupid Commies.’ ”

Berlusconi’s interests are by no means restricted to television. He also owns Mondadori, Italy’s largest publishing company; two daily newspapers; Radio Italy, a national commercial radio network; and the soccer team AC Milan. He is something like President Bush, Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump and George Steinbrenner rolled into one. His likeness and voice are everywhere, especially come election time. In the run-up to the 2001 election, Mondadori sent a copy of his autohagiography, “An Italian Story,” to every household in Italy. On the eve of the most recent round, the electorate received a text message from Berlusconi on their cellphones politely reminding them to vote.

As Ginsborg’s book makes explicit, Berlusconi entered politics not with the sole intention of serving the State but to enrich himself and Fininvest, his group of companies. He has often appeared to sacrifice the good of the nation to his own interests, creating what is, in effect, Italia 2. In recent months, however, he has faced his most difficult crises yet. In June, his party, Forza Italia, suffered a disappointing showing in both the European parliamentary elections and Italy’s regional elections, and there is a growing rift between Berlusconi and Gianfranco Fini, the leader of the “post-fascist” National Alliance party, Forza Italia’s most powerful political ally. Most damaging was the resignation last month of Italy’s finance minister, Giulio Tremonti. Still, Berlusconi recently celebrated an impressive milestone: In May, his government became Italy’s longest-serving administration since World War II.

How has one of the world’s largest and wealthiest democracies allowed its richest citizen to assume control of its government, its economy, its entertainment industry and its press? Jones’ explanation, like his book, is full of great insight but ultimately frustrating. “The Dark Heart of Italy” is a collection of Jones’ impressions of Italy based on his experiences as a journalist and teacher of English in Parma. He is a scrupulous observer of daily life; the book’s highlights include a moving description of his visit to a famous sanctuary in Puglia and his labyrinthine tangles with Italian bureaucracy at the local post office.

Yet he has a propensity for generalizations that tend to contradict his nuanced observations. He writes, for example, that as a political outsider Berlusconi benefited from “the anti-establishment vote,” which “in Italy is always influential,” whereas elsewhere he laments “the fact that old age and tradition are so dutifully deferred to.” Berlusconi’s television propaganda is effective because “the public ... is amazingly malleable” and “Italians seem hooked up to a lifestyle sell which has nothing to do with reality”; yet earlier in the book we read that “Italians, as viewers, are ... less supine; whenever I watch TV with friends, they invariably shout ‘cretin’ at the television.” Jones’ book is more a spirited travelogue of his years in Italy than a convincing portrait of the country he loves so dearly, a place so beautiful that “[i]t’s often hard to find anything which is remotely ugly.”

Ginsborg, on the other hand, finds plenty of ugliness. He agrees with Jones that factors endemic to Italian culture have benefited Berlusconi, such as the country’s strong Catholic values (especially the principle of absolution for previous transgressions) and its notoriously inefficient bureaucracy. Both authors point to the complicated legal process allowing criminals to remain free until their cases have passed through several levels of appeal; often, by the time the final appeal is heard, the statute of limitations has kicked in, and the case is thrown out. In large part because of this appeal process and the tactics mastered by his redoubtable phalanx of lawyers, Berlusconi has evaded at least 10 cases charging him with bribery, corruption and fraud. When all else failed, the parliament, stocked with Fininvest employees, passed a law that granted legal immunity to a sitting prime minister. The constitutional court overturned this law in January, forcing Berlusconi to stand trial on corruption charges, but his lawyers have so far succeeded in delaying the case for another year. The statute of limitations looms ever closer.

It can be argued that the larger trends responsible for Berlusconi’s ascendancy are not specific to Italy. As Ginsborg points out, the relationship between the media (especially television news) and political influence, the increasing range of powers assumed by the executive branch at the expense of a weakened judiciary and the Left’s “incapacity to arouse enthusiasm for credible alternatives” are all issues familiar to many outside Italy. Despite the political partnership of Forza Italia and the National Alliance, it is misleading to compare Berlusconi to Mussolini, as many commentators have (including Jones and Ginsborg, however delicately). The model perfected by Berlusconi is not fascism or corporatism or even capitalism. The Italians have their own word for it: “Americanismo.” *