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Decadence and Democracy in Italy
What does the tolerance of Silvio Berlusconi's hedonism say about Italians?
A Sin That May Not Be Forgiven
Updated January 27, 2011, 12:44 PM
Alexander Stille is the San Paolo professor of international journalism at Columbia University. He is the author of numerous books, including, "The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country With a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi."
Silvio Berlusconi has been linked with more than a dozen scandals over the past 17 years. From the current accusations of frequenting prostitutes and interfering with police investigations, to extremely serious cases of corruption that have led to convictions among some of his closest associates for crimes that include bribing judges, fixing cases, suborning perjury and collusion with the mafia, why is it that Italians put up with him, given the overwhelming evidence of moral turpitude?
This bizarre situation has come to seem normal to Italians, just as one’s eyesight adjusts to the darkness.
In almost any other democracy, that would have been enough to end a politician's career. But Italians are deeply cynical about their political leaders. Believing that “everyone does it,” it is possible to convince yourself that the exposure of Berlusconi’s crimes and misdemeanors is actually a sign that he is being singled out for persecution.
This is a view that is reinforced by the substantial portion of the Italian media, which is controlled by Berlusconi. Even the media outlets he does not own outright are either intimidated or under his influence. Much of the evidence in the current scandal (as with those in the past) has not been aired on the principal newscast of the Italian state TV, which, together with Berlusconi’s networks, enjoy a nearly 90 percent market share in a country where 70 to 80 percent of the public gets its news from television.
The lack of a strong and credible opposition is also an indispensable prerequisite for understanding Berlusconi’s staying power. The center-left government of Romano Prodi, elected in 2006, was composed of nine different parties that wrangled constantly during the government’s brief life, paving the way for Berlusconi’s return in 2008.
Before Berlusconi, there was no tradition of restrictions on ethical problems such as conflict of interest or insider trading. When Berlusconi was first elected to office in 1994, it became accepted that the richest man in the country, its largest media owner and the subject of numerous criminal investigations could, without selling any of his private holdings, run the government, oversee the large state broadcasting system and rewrite the criminal laws. It seems almost a natural consequence that he should use the resources of government for his own ends, including purging the state TV of those who would dare to criticize him.
With the passage of time, this profoundly anomalous situation has come to seem normal to Italians, just as one’s eyesight adjusts to the darkness.
Italians have never appreciated that a politician’s “private” conduct can have serious public implications.
Italians have never appreciated that a politician’s “private” conduct can have serious public implications. Italian politicians rumored to have bevies of mistresses generally saw their public prestige rise rather than drop. Italy is, in many ways, a deeply sexist society. Italian media (thanks partly to Berlusconi) is awash in images of female nudity that are frequently degrading and highly exploitative, and tolerated by Italian women and men alike.
Italy trails the rest of Europe in female employment and gender equality. And so when it emerged that Berlusconi had slept with prostitutes supplied by a government contractor or may have engaged an underage prostitute, many Italians -- women as well as men -- shrugged it off as purely private behavior that has been wrongly exposed to public scrutiny.
That said, the seemingly endless chain of scandals that has unfolded during Berlusconi’s latest government, which took power in 2008, has taken its toll and created serious Berlusconi fatigue even among those who have supported him in the past. It is not based so much on moral repulsion at Berlusconi’s actions as much as on the realization that Berlusconi’s personal problems have dominated the public debate and made it impossible for him and his government to focus on the real problems of the country, which are many and significant.
Berlusconi’s obsessive focus on defanging the Italian judiciary system and crafting immunity laws to protect himself from prosecution have paralyzed parliament and created the well-founded impression that his own personal business is above any other consideration. This is a sin that the Italian public may not forgive him for.
Debaters
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A Sin That May Not Be Forgiven
Alexander Stille, author, "The Sack of Rome"
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Women's 'Decorative' Role
Chiara Volpato, psychology professor, University of Milan-Bicocca
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Lack of Political Options
Molinari Maurizio, journalist, La Stampa
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Embracing Neo-Paganism
Antonio Monda, writer and journalist
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The Elite Decides
Federico Varese, professor of criminology, Oxford University
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A Distorted Reality
Eloisa Morra, contributing writer, Women’s International Perspective
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Challenging Berlusconi
Clare Watters, University of Birmingham
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179 Readers' Comments
Post a comment »The Italian public will forgive him for everything as soon as he give them something in exchange...hope for a job or tv announcement of tax cuts.
Italy is passing through a moment of its history where the public has lost his strength. For many years Italy has been in need of deep changes. Nowadays we are more in need of a miracle.
To actually change Italy we would need a "tabula rasa" and start re-educating the public about the meaning of legality, respect of the law, honor, decency . all things that in Italy seem to be long forgotten
1- Berlusconi sells a strong and neat dream to italians.
No matter how despicable, sexist, plutocratic is. It's a DREAM. The dream of the richness, the high life, the self made man. No one in Italy does something remotely similar nor alternative to this.
It's a shame, but we don't have any other leader. Italians aren't stupid, and our history reveals how fast can we change opinions. Berlusconi is just the strongest choice for a lot of people.
2- Italy is not a bigot country.
No one really cares about sex scandals. Italy is much more open minded than USA about sex. I'm a scriptwriter and there are a lot of stereotypes in your movies about how catholic and retrograded we are.
3- "everyone does it".
Corruption is something inside italians. Berlusconi is just a mirror of what Italians are. Unlucky. We need a strong moral education. We can change fast, but our leaders need to do it before.
Fiumicino, 27 of january 2011 h. 4.44 am. Mario Rosario Zampella
That's a much, much livelier and truer sounding word. My feeling is that puritans and scolds on the left are just going to have to *suck it up* as we say in the increasingly unsexy USA.
The real point should be on the failure of his governance in various walks of Italian life. on this account he should be criticized as fiercely as possible. But the media obsession with his sex life is simply counterproductive and is in favour of Burloscone. Anyway, a good room for debate.
It didn't end Bill Clinton's career.
I would like to share with you my idea of the two most important origins of the big Italian problem. Understanding a problem helps to solve it.
1. Italians outside of Italy are very successful. The reason is that we are simply the best. The Italian political parties of the opposition are full of Italians; so they are all the best. Every politician of the opposition believes that he is the best and he fights against the leader, no matter how good he is.
2. In 1943 our American friends landed in Sicily with the slogan: “It is better to be Mafioso than Communist!” The majority of the Italians still believe that. I believe that to solve our big political problem our American friends should land again in Italy, but in Florence, not in Sicily, with the slogan: “It is better to be an Italian Communist, like the Mayor of Firenze, than a Mafioso like the prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.” Moreover, mutatis mutandis, in Italy we had something similar to Iraq. In fact Americans tolerated terrorism both in Italy and Iraq in order to fight communism. And may be in a few critical cases they even helped them!
We need help from outside Italy. President Obama should inform us that communism is dead forever.
We have a minority here that dominates our politics, based on a false dream of independence, patriotism, religion, and military might. The very people who are most adversely affected by their actual policies, are the ones who fall under the spell of the dream the most. The media here is more and more under the influence of these false dream makers, and the democratic balance is disappearing under the effects of the Citizens United case.
In short, the billionaires pull the strings here too, fool the people for their own gain here too, and few are doing anything about it, and the few who try are targets of the crazies who listen to Fox and the far right radio pundits. In both countries, we are losing our democracy - the people are becoming more and more subordinate.
The scandals are atrocious, and the more I read about them, the more I see that they go far beyond "personal life" issues, but the real problem is the concentration of power. Italy is a good mirror for us right now.
And still a beautiful country.
Their "headquarters" is the..... Vatican. Educate yourself, before posting nonsense.
People simply do not "embody" their leaders, nor do such leaders represent some sort of sociological compendium of the people. As an italian I simply feel outraged to be even remotely compared to Mr. Berlusconi. The point is that Mr. Berlusconi seized power through a shameless use of populism, the worst ever to be seen in western Europe since the war. A huge disinformation campaign has taken hold of the less educated 30% of the population who would vote for right wing parties anyway and who get their news only from Berlusconi's lying, ultrabiased tv channels. Should we expect these people to stop being conservative voters and start voting for the left wing parties? More likely they will stick to their belief and look the other way, as they do.
The sad bottom line is that Berlusconi was forbidden by law to run for office (a 1957 law that prevents public licencees like him to run). Once that hurdle was overcome through legal loopholes the whole game was rigged, and this could have happened anywhere. After all, as Alexis De Toqueville said "Democracy is the power of an informed people".
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