When recently celebrating his 100th birthday, Henry Kissinger seemed like a natural candidate to “achieve” another century. Silvio Berlusconi, with his eternal youth, eternal beauty, and another young woman by his side, appeared to be that candidate. He declared with a smile, “I am mortal, but I will live for 120 years.” Forever young, forever beautiful, with another young woman by his side, under the care of the best doctors, including plastic surgeons.

When he ended up in the hospital, he would get annoyed that he was wasting time on tests when he had so much to do. He wanted to rule Italy from behind the back of a little blonde girl, his former Minister of Youth Affairs, who had long been treated with some disdain. He was making plans to create a new party that would unify the Italian right and to move the coalition to the European level with the European Parliament elections and the formation of a new European Commission next year, where, of course, he intended to play the role of a key intermediary. “Yet he is only an ordinary man,” Beethoven is said to have remarked when Napoleon crowned himself emperor. Death came unexpectedly, even to him. Silvio Berlusconi is dead.

To Poles, the 86-year-old was unequivocally associated with politics, immersed in moral scandals, and a friendship with Vladimir Putin. Berlusconi was indeed the longest-serving prime minister of Italy after World War II, with an impressive record of 9 years and 54 days. However, he played a much larger, multidimensional role in Italy’s history. When he entered politics, he was already one of the most famous people in the country. As La Repubblica wrote after his death, “For the past fifty years, there hasn’t been a day when his name hasn’t been mentioned on television, in newspapers, in parliament, in bars, or at stadiums.” From beginning to end, he was, as he referred to himself, “a born seducer.”

The future prime minister was born in 1936, and his childhood coincided with the years of World War II. He was a contemporary of Francis, whom he said he greatly admired and himself would have been a pope in a similar style, but “I hold up better” (as we can see, ultimately the clergyman outlived the billionaire). As a young boy, he had to contribute to the family budget – his father fled to nearby Switzerland due to his anti-fascist views, fearing persecution from the Salo Republic, and there was also a younger sister to feed. When his mother got up at five in the morning and commuted to the city, Silvio offered help to neighbouring villagers, milked cows, and harvested potatoes. After the war, he helped his classmates with their homework for sweets or small amounts of money. In high school, he formed a musical band that performed at parties and weddings – and of course, Silvio sang. He also worked as a vacuum cleaner salesman and a wedding photographer while simultaneously graduating with honours in commercial law.

He then plunged into the whirlwind of the “adult” business, specifically the real estate industry. He obtained money for one of his first projects by seducing the secretary of a venture capital fund manager and subsequently arranging for a “coincidental” seven-hour train journey, sitting opposite the boss. He built a broad network of contacts in the world of finance and politics, creating an aura of a brilliant young man, while likely not sparing bribes. He constructed the modern Milan Two neighbourhood, designed for 10,000 middle-class residents, green and comfortable for families with children, for which he received the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic from the president before the age of forty. From that moment on, he was addressed as “Il Cavaliere,” the Knight.

This only fueled Berlusconi’s appetite. He decided to invest the millions he had earned in the media. Churchill said that history would be kind to him because he would write it himself. Berlusconi didn’t want to wait; he wrote his own present and future. In Italy, at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, the public television station still held a monopoly. There were no private nationwide channels. Silvio bypassed the regulations by acquiring small local stations and broadcasting the same content on all of them at the same time. He then pushed through laws in parliament to abolish the monopoly, entering into an agreement with his close friend, the socialist Bettino Craxi.

It was a win-win situation. Berlusconi had his media empire, and Craxi and other allies of the billionaire could count on the favour of the new stations. Silvio’s television was not just ordinary competition. The Milanese man brought a wave of pop culture from across the ocean to Italy by acquiring rights to American TV series, movies, game shows, and entertainment programs. He contrasted the polite, modest, and aesthetically austere public television, which didn’t even have many advertisements, with mockery, consumption, entertainment, and individualism—and he won.

The next step was the acquisition of AC Milan—a beloved team he had supported since childhood, which was in crisis. Here, too, things had to be different and spectacular. Berlusconi literally descended from the sky as the saviour, landing ceremoniously at the stadium by helicopter to the joy of the gathered fans. The club regained its greatness, soon winning the league and then the European Champion Clubs’ Cup—the predecessor to the UEFA Champions League.

When it was revealed, along with “Tangentopoli” (meaning “bribesville”), that politicians from all the parties governing Italy since World War II were involved in corruption, the main beneficiaries of the new distribution of power were supposed to be the communists, under a changed name. However, two months before the early elections, Berlusconi announced that he was “entering the pitch.” He named his party Forza Italia, meaning “Forward Italy” or “Let’s go Italy”—the most popular and simplest chant during national team matches. The football entourage was a brilliant marketing move— the billionaire was going to save Italy from the reds, just as he had recently saved Milan. Thanks to him, the chants of “Forza Milan” became a reality, and now it was supposed to be the same with “Forza Italia.” At the time of his “entry,” the Milanese club was in the process of winning its third consecutive championship.

Perhaps Berlusconi’s greatest political achievement was saving Italy from being dominated by the communists, who could have become the new single party, ruling for decades, as the Christian Democrats did before. He also created the centre-right coalition—an initially eclectic mix composed of the billionaire’s ad hoc party, the formerly marginal post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), and Lega Nord. Nationalists and regionalists were far from being natural partners, and it took many years for the alliance to stabilise. Today, the cooperation between Meloni and Salvini seems like the most natural thing in the world.

Berlusconi will also go down in history as a prime minister who, having twice obtained a mandate through democratic elections, was overthrown under mysterious circumstances and replaced by a technocratic government. Twice—in 1995 and 2011—the decisive role was played by the president, who acted as the guardian of the system, hanging like the sword of Damocles over every cabinet. The leaders of Germany, Angela Merkel, and France, Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as the so-called troika—the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank—also played a significant role in the second instance.

Of course, Berlusconi should not be idealised—without his mistakes, scandals, and affairs that led to the loss of public support, the conspiracy would not have succeeded. However, it is a fact that for the next eleven years, Italy did not have a prime minister who was simply the leader of a party and won the elections. All those who came between Berlusconi and Meloni emerged as a result of behind-the-scenes manoeuvres and agreements.

During Berlusconi’s funeral at Piazza Duomo, a large group of AC Milan ultras gathered in front of the monumental, incredibly richly decorated cathedral that had been under construction for seven centuries. They waved their club flags and chanted loudly, repeatedly proclaiming, “there is only one presidente.” The word can be interpreted in various ways—president, chairman, chief, leader. The organiser of collective imagination. Perhaps no individual European has had such an influence on shaping minds in their own country.

Many Italians lived in houses built by Berlusconi, watched Berlusconi’s television programs, read newspapers and books published by Berlusconi, supported Berlusconi’s team, and voted for Berlusconi, while also spending a considerable amount of time living in a country governed by Berlusconi.

The celebrity from Milan realised the American dream in his life. He was a small-town man who came from nowhere but became a billionaire and gained access to the most prestigious circles. One of the many remarks that will be remembered from Berlusconi was his proposal in 2003 in the European Parliament, where he compared the well-known German socialist Martin Schulz to a kapo in a film being made about Nazi concentration camps.

If I were to assign a film role to Berlusconi, I would choose the titular character of Citizen Kane, directed by (and starring) Orson Welles. It is worth noting that Kane was also mentioned as one of Donald Trump’s favourite films, who shares many similarities with Berlusconi.

The divine Silvio was a billionaire, a celebrity, a man of media and politics, and he also had his own Xanadu—the famous villa in Arcore. Like Kane, he also died rather dissatisfied—his party had been experiencing declining support in every subsequent election for the past fifteen years, and he himself may have felt increasingly old and irrelevant. Paolo Sorrentino also captured this sentiment well in the film Loro, dedicated to Berlusconi, where the excellent Toni Servillo, as usual, played the lead role.

The body of the Italian Citizen Kane will be laid to rest in Arcore in a sarcophagus made by one of Italy’s most renowned architects. Berlusconi had already commissioned the preparation of an eccentric mausoleum called the “Celestial Vault” in the style of “Aztec Cubism,” inspired by the tombs of pharaohs and Roman emperors, among others. It does not contain Christian symbols but instead features esoteric and Masonic references.

The honour of resting alongside the presidente will be granted to only 37 of his closest family and friends—among them, Fedele Confalonieri, his high school friend with whom he played together at weddings and later dealt with billions, creating and toppling governments. Regardless of what one may say about Berlusconi, he was a truly unique individual.

– Kacper Kita

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

– Translated by jz