In Italy, it is time for meditation on Monday, after the disappearance of Silvio Berlusconi, the right-wing giant who has considerably shaped Italian politics over the past thirty years. The Italians like to call him “il Cavaliere”, or “the Knight”. A reference to the “Knight of the Order of Labor Merit” (“Cavaliere del lavoro”), an honorary title he obtained at the age of 41 in 1977. All of the Italian media went into special edition.
On the right, the daily Corriere della Sera describes a man with an “extraordinary life”, who never wanted to give up and resign, as evidenced by his career. On November 8, 2011, the then president, Giogio Napolitano, announced his departure from the Chigi palace, while Italy was sinking under the weight of its public debt and threatened to embark Europe in the sinking. But he has since retained considerable political weight, including within the current right-wing coalition in power. “Berlusconi took this power so much in his life that the real magic moment is when he lost it,” the media said. He is described as a “phenomenon” marked by his “will to power”, and a “historical necessity” who had “liberal ambitions and populist traits”. “He changed politics and Italy,” headlines the newspaper at the opening of its website.
“With Silvio Berlusconi, the Second Republic, of which he was indisputably the symbol, as Andreotti had been for the First, dies”, advances La Stampa, a daily also labeled with the center-right. Some historians indeed divide the political history of the Italian Republic into two parts: the first from 1948 to 1994, the second from 1994 to today, given the change in the political spectrum. In 1994, Berlusconi created the Forza Italia party and won the legislative elections “with the clear objective of liquidating the party-cracy of the First (Republic)”, explains the newspaper.
On the left, the death of the former politician is seen as “the end of an era” and a “piece of Italian history”, as the daily La Republicca writes. “Today it is difficult to imagine an Italy without Silvio Berlusconi”, highlights the newspaper, which also points to its “excessive” side. “There was not a day when his name was not mentioned on television, in the newspapers, in Parliament, in bars, in stadiums; “Berlusca” divided public opinion like an apple.” “The richest man in the country” with a fortune “happily exposed” was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, the media points out. The daily nevertheless notes that it is this “political knight” who was able to spread the “virus of populism”.
The particularly read daily in Rome, Il Messaggero, also marked on the left, presents “Il Cavaliere” as a man who “changed politics, television and football”. Silvio Berlusconi was indeed the president of the AC Milan club between 1986 and 2017.
The weekly L’Espresso finally remarks that the AC Milan club was “the keystone of the political and entrepreneurial triumphs of the president”, with whom he “transformed a ruinous economic passion into the engine of his myth”.