Forza Italia was not founded to push out an established party. It was founded to replace the Christian Democrats who disbanded in 1994 due to scandals involving corruption and Mafia links. Berlusconi was not a populist outsider who forced his way into politics but a man who was part of Italy’s business establishment. He a member of the P2 Masonic lodge.
The account is an accurate reflection of the coup conducted by Merkel and the EU against Italian democracy as they also did later in Greece. Both these coups occurred before the 2016 Brexit referendum and were considered quite acceptable by Remainers.

“There were much bigger threats than Berlusconi looming out there: neoliberal globalisation, transnational corporations, free-trade agreements, and global financial institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO”

This sounds like the left to me- now in deep cahoots with the party of Davos. Transnationalism, transhumanism, trans genderism, racist anti-racism’ – all attacks on the colour blind civic national order rooted in tacit Judeo-Christian values.

Berlusconi was no buffoon, and the man in his shadow, his partnet Ennio Dorris was a very clever investment manager and financier, who revolutionised Italy’s mass affluent/retail asset management business via his Mediolanum empire. Berlusconi also had, albeit a ” reluctant admission” to the so called financial ruling ” salotto buono” of Italy, Mediobanca, Lazard, Agnelli’s then Holding companies , Generali and their very few close financial allies.

However, the tide in Italy was turning and not least due to US investment banks seeking to ” overthrow” this cartel and the one and only US bank in this circle, Citibank ( thanks to my Italian father there) and the left finally succeded in demolishing the Salotto buono… but putting nothing in its place.

The manner of the replacement of Berlusconi by Monti was remarkably similar to that of of Truss by Sunak.

Silvio Berlusconi’s legacy is a mixed bag, like any other modern leader.

In the 1990s, I hated Berlusconi for propping up the Italian old regime, and for blocking what could have been a new leftist way forward for Italy. In more recent years however, he came to be seen as a threat to EU-NATO hegemony, which put him up a few points in my estimation.

For a change an interesting article by this author.
Will Meloni prove to be a stateswoman or a pawn?
(To the editor: it is Romano, not Romani, Prodi)

Why are we forgetting that Berlusconi was a convicted criminal (tax fraud) who leveraged his position to avoid actual imprisonment ?
Still, perhaps Mr. Fazi is right to call him “Italy’s last statesman” and not some dodgy oligarch … I don’t think so !
The idea that Italy suddenly became “post-democratic” *after* a billionaire who owned half the media became Prime Minister is frankly absurd.
Isn’t it curious how much financial fraud there is amongst these leaders – Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Lagarde, Chirac, Kohl, … . And how all these countries seem to specialise in things like presidential immunity from prosecution. Not one resigned. Not one served any jail time.

For the editor: The hyperlink at the end of the penultimate paragraph (“a point that Meloni understands all too well”) actually links to the previous hyperlink (a La Stampa article about Spanish PM Zapatero). It would be interesting to have the correct link: thanks.

“For everyone on the Left, and especially for those who had witnessed first-hand the violence in Genoa — including myself — the blame for those tragic events fell on one person:”
For refusing to bow to mob violence

The left are always anti something and never quite sure what they’re for.

The simple irony of being automatically anti- any idea from some political hate figure is that you are effectively letting them decide your opinions for you.

I am a Remainer and I am on the left. I did not, and do not, consider what happened to Greece and Italy as in any way acceptable. Nor was I “taken in” by Berlusconi who, whatever else, paved the way for people like Johnson and Trump. I am a Remainer because the benefits of EU membership, as not just a trade body but something that offered tangible benefits to ALL it’s member populations (travel, education, employment, business etc). On top of that it has succeeded beyond imagination in ending the eternal wars and conflicts in Western states. What I detest about the EU is the way that the Parliament and Commission function at the behest of big business and finance. But, strangely, outside the EU so does Parliament. Witness Labour breaking promises every week and declaring every five minurtes their commitment to “financial responsibility” and the breaking of yet another promise. There has not been a single discernible benefit from Brexit nor will there be. Italy outside the EU would fare no better than the UK and probable even worse.As for the left as a whole their mistake has not been to be wrong about what is wrong, but to not own 98% of the media, to have no real clout on social media (despite what the right keep saying about ‘cultural Marxism” or “Woke” people running everything). I wish. Our economy is now run by financiers, unaccountable to anybody, who have gorged on the dismemberment of the state for 40 years. We are back in a rentier capitalism run and owned by people who have zero interest in anything except profit. Both Trump & Berlusconi were property developers. There is not a country in existence where property developers become rich without corruption. Or one where they have ever cared about any social consequences of their actions, such as evicting the poorest and vulnerable from their homes.
The biggest economic player in the EU Germany enforced needless austerity on the EU as though the 1930’s had never happened. (As did that scumbag Osborne in the UK). When Mario Monti was installed to lead a “technical government” the word technical was used to imply a ‘neutral’ government, one with no ‘ideology’. One of the worst ideas is that somehow ‘technical’ people are not real people, they act ‘objectively’. They are ‘scientific’. The biggest lie of all is that economics is ‘scientific’. All economic arguments are underpinned by ethical considerations or aims that have ethical impacts. Despite what the EU did I find it impossible to feel the slightest sympathy for Berlusconi. He is no loss to the world. An epitath for many of out current leaders and politicians across the globe.

What a load of utter bilge! Many on the extreme Left and Right seem to have become united in the belief that elected governments can and should be able to do anything they want and everything is a matter of political will. No they can’t; they have to live in the, you know, real world.

If you borrow vast sums of money, for example, regardless of whether you call this “investment” you need to pay back the debts. Recall the UK going to the IMF in 1976?

Ok, do don’t do that, just print money, that obviously can’t have any adverse consequences.

South Africa has been following utterly disastrous redistributionist policies for years, threatening to lead to a complete collapse. All our radical critics of “neoliberalism” yadda yadda can offer is to do much the same. Europe has further to fall, that’s all.

RIP to the John the Baptist of vulgar sex-mad billionaires who go into politics.

I find the problem with the lefties is that they’re fools, not that they don’t mean well. A fool when given power tends to be deceived by more devious centres of power and therein lies the problem with left-wing movements.
Given the above, I find this is the more insightful article about Berlusconi seeing another one from Harrington also came out. Singling out Berlusconi or vices of other powerful men by the left as the main problem we have is short-sighted, and it takes effort to understand why.

But this is my problem with Thomas Fazi and his like:
He stands against technocracies subverting democratic government. He is appalled by a supposedly independent and apolitical central bank blackmailing an elected prime minister outbox office. Yet when Brexit is put before him, he reaches for the hanky and is utterly disgusted.