Two of the most famous criminal defendants in the world took centre stage this week — Silvio Berlusconi at his state funeral in Milan, and Donald Trump at his arraignment in Miami. The two were leading figures in three of the more important political phenomena of our time.
To the late Andrew Breitbart, a conservative media force significant in the rise of Trump — Steven Bannon, chairman of Breitbart News, was Trump’s chief White House strategist — is attributed the phrase that “politics is downstream of culture.” That thought was better formulated by Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist philosopher imprisoned under Mussolini, but in both Italy and the United States it remains true.
Trump, whatever his success in business, was essentially a master of vulgar celebrity-driven culture. Indeed, his real estate empire principally sold a vulgar, celebrity brand. Berlusconi, whose media empire included three of Italy’s national television channels, offered Italians an alternative to the staid state broadcaster. He rose to billionaire status by dragging Italian popular culture down; a Berlusconi channel game show would typically include trivia questions and topless dancing.
Berlusconi and Trump managed to garner the support of culturally conservative voters who would otherwise be repelled by their appalling personal conduct. Berlusconi turned his underage sex parties into something of a joke, but the reality was that he managed to get much of Italy to wink at something rather close to human sex trafficking.
Italians largely accept that prosecutors and judicial proceedings are often politically motivated. Berlusconi was subject to some 30 trials, with some convictions set aside on appeal. Only one tax fraud charge remained and resulted in a light-touch community service sentence. Other prominent Italian prime ministers were subject to years of criminal prosecutions before him, including the legendary Giulio Andreotti and Bettino Craxi.
For all that, though, both Berlusconi and Trump did achieve significant political change, shaking up a tired political consensus. For Berlusconi, he swept into the vacuum left by the Christian Democrats, who had managed Italian politics for decades to keep the communists out, with all the compromises that entailed.
More than policy change, Berlusconi and Trump advanced a new style of politics that replaced statesmanship with gamesmanship, and with very little sportsmanship. That style depended to a certain extent on the wealth that granted both of them the possibility of acting independently of the establishment. Yet once introduced, that style will outlast them both, even as Trump took the torch that Berlusconi first lifted high.
