Silvio Berlusconi, whose state funeral will take place today in Milan, was the first modern populist. The media tycoon became a politician to take back control of Italy from the establishment on behalf of the people.
The Italians called him Il Cavaliere (The Knight). He created a brand of politics that decades later would become a new driving force in America and Europe and would be called populism.
Berlusconi reminds me of Jay Gatsby, the tragic hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great novel
Italians voted for him in their droves. Like Donald Trump, he was dead rich but loved by the dirt poor. He spoke their language: he loved beautiful football and beautiful women. He hated tax and red tape and fines and the big bad state.
He was a right-wing politician who spoke to Italy’s red wall. No other Italian politician in the history of the Italian Republic, founded after the defeat of fascism in 1945, got as many votes as he did, or was prime minister for as long as him.
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