Berlusconi was Trump before Trump

[struggle4progress]

RACHEL DONADIO
1:00 AM ET

ROME—A press corps obsessed with a complicated judicial investigation. A millionaire television personality turned politician who casts himself as under attack by the courts. A party beholden to that leader, and a base that will stand by him—aware of his deep flaws and his penchant for stretching the truth ...

I’ve seen this movie before ... I saw the one that was set in Italy and starred Silvio Berlusconi. Like so many other American remakes, the one with Trump is bigger and louder ... But the version I witnessed foreshadowed the current American predicament and offers some insights into what can happen to a democracy when image becomes disconnected from reality ...

Berlusconi was an opportunist more than an ideologue in a highly complex country where different networks of power have long transcended the traditional divide between right and left. But his initial success and then his staying power were tied to one basic strategy: He created a viewership that became an electorate, and that electorate helped bring him to power and keep him in power ...

From the outset, Berlusconi faced judicial investigations — into his business dealings, then later over accusations of bribing judges, tax fraud, and paying underage women for sex ...

... The cases were impossible to follow, but what was impossible to avoid was Berlusconi railing for years on television against “communist” judges who were on a witch hunt against him. He once called himself “the most persecuted person in the history of the entire history of the world and the history of man” ...

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/04/berlusconi-italy-trump-president/587014/

[FakeNoose]

1. Great article!

Silvio Berlusconi sure looks like he's created a pattern for Chump to follow. He's got the trophy-wife, trophy-girlfriend, ties to the mob, shady business history, tax fraud trials and many other legal problems. This guy is probably going to die in jail, if any of his legal problems become convictions. He's listed in Forbes Magazine with $6.6 billion which makes him wealthier than Chump, but he's 10 years older.

[Wounded Bear]

2. K & R...for visibility...

That comparison was obvious from the beginning. No doubt Trump learned from Berlusconi.

[Mister Ed]

3. On Trump's election, s DU'er posted that an Italian friend of hers...

... had burst into tears. I don't recall the name of the DU'er, but I recall that she had tried to reassure her Italian friend: "Don't worry, we'll get through this. We'll get him voted out in 2020."

Her Italian friend had tearfully replied, "No, no, you don't understand. You don't know how hard it is to get rid of a criminal like Berlusconi once he's in power."

The memory of that post has filled me with a terrible sense of foreboding these last two years. We have to fight like hell. This is no cakewalk.

[marylandblue]

5. Fortunately,.another Italian told us what to do

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/opinion/the-right-way-to-resist-trump.amp.html

The Italian experience provides a blueprint for how to defeat Mr. Trump. Only two men in Italy have won an electoral competition against Mr. Berlusconi: Romano Prodi and the current prime minister, Matteo Renzi (albeit only in a 2014 European election). Both of them treated Mr. Berlusconi as an ordinary opponent. They focused on the issues, not on his character. In different ways, both of them are seen as outsiders, not as members of what in Italy is defined as the political caste...

Finally, the Democratic Party should also find a credible candidate among young leaders, one outside the party’s Brahmins.

[Aristus]

4. I don't know whether to feel less embarrassed about Trump since other countries

have had their own equivalent, or more embarrassed since having Trump as President meant we joined the League of Ordinary Nations.

[marylandblue]

6. The forces of ethnonationalism are sweeping the Western World

and we are not immune. So, yes we are an ordinary nation. But we are also a nation that has, on several occasions, revitalized itself and made itself better.

All political systems decay and die. The ones that survive the longest are the ones that reform themselves before it is too late. It's not too late.