E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Vincenzo Pinto / AFP - Getty Images
Italy's former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, seen giving a speech during a campaign rally in Rome Friday, appears to have shrugged off recent scandals.
ROME — He is the comeback kid of Italian politics, but Silvio Berlusconi's attempt to revive his career is under the spotlight after he defended fascist wartime leader Benito Mussolini at a ceremony for victims of the Nazi Holocaust.
The former prime minister said Mussolini's decision to echo Nazi Germany's anti-Jewish laws had been his "worst fault" as a leader "who in so many other ways did well."
He said: "It is difficult now to put yourself in the shoes of people who were making decisions at that time. Obviously the government of that time, out of fear that German power might lead to victory, preferred to ally itself with Hitler's Germany rather than opposing it."
The remarks, given to reporters in Milan on Sunday, prompted outrage from many quarters in Italy and overseas.
“He has lost the plot," said David Patsi, president of the Italian school Dante Alighieri in Jerusalem and whose father was killed in a concentration camp. "He is an idiot. But I am not surprised. Sometime he even reminds me of Mussolini."
He added: "But I don’t think he is the problem. The problem is that a large number of Italians agree with him.”
That helps explain why Berlusconi could still make his comeback, despite a track record would have forced almost any other politician to retire from public life.
In November 2011, he was forced to resign as prime minister after it became clear that his denial of the economic crisis was bringing Italy to the brink of disaster.
In October last year, he was sentenced to four years in prison for an epic offshore tax fraud, put off pending appeals to higher courts.
And, if that weren't enough, he is still on trial for allegedly paying an underage exotic dancer for sex.
His popularity hit an all-time low and the 76-year-old with a net worth of almost $6 billion -- according to Forbes magazine -- might have been expected to retire to one of his many mansions.
But he was simply waiting for the chance to strike back in the flamboyant style that won him three terms as prime minister.
Following the resignation of Mario Monti -- the technocratic prime minister who replaced him in 2011 promising to reinvigorate Italy's languishing economy -- Berlusconi has done what he does best: He carpet-bombed the Italian media with guest appearances, clocking up an impressive 63 hours of airtime in only 21 days.
In essence, it's as if during the recent U.S. presidential election, former president George W. Bush was given more airtime than Barack Obama and Mitt Romney combined.
Crisis 'wasn't my fault'
Seems inconceivable, but then Italy has always been an exception in the Western world, and flamboyant and media-friendly Berlusconi, even as an outsider, draws a bigger audience than his closest competitors combined.
Officially, Berlusconi is not actually running as a candidate prime minister -- because this was the price it took to persuade the Northern League party to join Berlusconi's People of Freedom party in a coalition.
But a good result in the elections could mean that all bets are off.
Karima el Marough, better known as "Ruby the Heart Stealer," was called to testify over allegations that former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi paid to have sex with her when she was still a minor. NBC's Claudio Lavanga reports.
“Italy’s economic crisis wasn‘t my fault. It was the consequence of the wider international crisis,” a defiant Berlusconi recently told a TV host, before he refused to apologize for previously denying the extent of the crisis.
It would seem to be an uphill task for Berlusconi to win the premiership for a fourth time -- in polls his coalition is trailing the center-left Democratic Party by at least 12 points.
But, after his TV onslaught, Berlusconi's bloc saw its poll rating rise by 3 percentage points.
Berlusconi 'very clever'
Italians are tired of painfully high unemployment rates, rising taxes, tax-evasion clampdowns and plummeting spending power.
But it remains to be seen whether they really believe Berlusconi when he claims that the economic crisis wasn't his fault and that his tax-cutting strategy is the solution.
“Berlusconi has been very clever. He stepped aside when the new government introduced very unpopular austerity measures and has come back in the limelight only now, saying that the cure was worse than the illness,” Maurizio Caprara, a journalist for the daily Corriere della Sera, said.
“Now he is trying to rally again his troops. Many became disillusioned following his many scandals, but many, as the polls show, may decide to give him one more try,” he added.
Monti recently called Berlusconi the "Pied Piper of Hamelin," who “leads the mice to drown in the river, having fooled Italians three times already.”
And yet, at least according to his recently rising popularity, many Italians seem to find his tune irresistible.
Related:
Italy's 'bunga bunga' man Berlusconi, 76, unveils girlfriend, 27
Witness: Italian ex-PM Berlusconi hosted strippers dressed as nuns
Leave a Comment:
He is a buffoon, how can you hold a clown responsible for being a fool?
He makes Italy even more of a laughing stock than they deserve!
The idea that this guy has the backing of any party is an embarrassment to the country!
One Fascist defending another.
Italy may have looked like Poland in the End is someone didn't do something..
Many of us wouldn't be here to talk about it.
Berlusconi owns most of the media in Italy so it isnt any surprise that Italians dont hear about a lot of the crazy things he does. He shows why its so important that any one organization should not own a majority of the news media in any country. Our own country is also divided because we cherry pick the news media which feeds into our own perceptions, weather or not those perceptions are based in reality is another question.
There are losers who defend Hitler too.
Either something got lost in the translation, or my reading skills are bad, or people are just not reading this clearly. I read this a few times, I don't see him saying "Mussolini was right! I don't see anything that say's Mussolini was justified. Simply that Mussolini was thinking Germany would win and decided to join the winning side as he saw it. out of fear? possibly. He calls it Mussolini's 'fault", how is that a justification? maybe it's just me that dose not get this, but then again, maybe it's you.
What happened in Germany or Italy COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED unless there was an underlying negative. The Holocaust would not have gone on so long with such a death toll if nations around the world, including England and America, had felt any real concern for the Jewish people. The prejudice against Jews was very strong all over in that Era.
If you deny why the Holocaust happened, is it not the same as denying the Holocaust? The Jews say "Never Again". Well in order to make sure that nothing like that ever happened again to any race, we better look at the history Honestly and understand the dynamics. otherwise it will become "any day now". And the next holocaust could be against YOUR race or religion.
He should stick to chasing around young Italian skirts.
Berlusconi = Italian word for dog-@!$%# on your shoe. [Stinks to high heaven even after you've wiped it off.]
You're correct, George. All he said was that Mussolini joined up with Germany because he was afraid of Italy being invaded; he didn't try to say that what he did was right. That's a nice story, and one that modern culture likes - the villains in fiction nowadays are at least somewhat sympathetic characters, justified by a dying wife or a broken heart or a puppetmaster blackmailing them.
But, in Mussolini's case, that's just not true. He was one of the founders of fascism, seizing absolute power and crowning himself "Il Duce" long before Hitler even took power in Germany. He discussed war plans with the Germans before they attacked Poland, and declared war on France just soon enough before their surrender that he could claim some of their land for Italy when they fell.
The man was a cold-blooded shark. You can't rewrite history to portray him as a benevolent ruler forced at gunpoint to side with the Nazis
Mussolini came to power during economic disaster in Italy, Hitler came to power during economic disaster in Germany; when there is chaos, anyone proposing a solution will gather a large following; something to keep in mind as we head to a severe financial crisis in America in the next year.
Saxon, minus the genocidal impulse, the United States now is the embodiment of Mussolini's wet dream: the amalgamation of corporations with government. This is the real fascist ideal. And it is here on our shores already.
Corporations are now people. Il Duce is grinning from ear to ear. Well done, Supremes.
ORB 1943
Your translation is off. Dog $hit is merda di cane in Italian!
My first thought on reading that this guy could get reelected in Italy was that the Italian populace have totally soaked their brains in red wine. They are obviously not of sound mind. Then I thought I should keep that thought to myself because my country (US) is reelecting nincompoops, too.
njofaustin
My error. Care to translate the rest of it? I only have some French and long forgotten Latin
I note that you did not disagree with the sentiment about Berlusconi's utility.
He's just so slimy. And orange.
Really kind of ridiculous for Americans to criticize Berlusconi,look what we have in the White House and congress?
Right. Except for his unfortunate digression into homicidal bigotry, Mussolini was nothing if not a good Republican.
Wonder if this baffoon is Italian Trump amplified?
I have said it before and I will say it again, liberalism must be a result of brain damage. The same brain damage that cause the reading comprehension disability found in so many liberals. God I love to liberals wet themselves in righteous indignation over the wrong thing. The emotional, knee jerk responses to this article are hilarious.
@ george pauljohn
I agree, and this is why I said what I did, even the reporter is guilty, or whom ever wrote the headline. No where do i see this guy "Defending" Mussolini. And he was correct, Mussolini did do a lot of things "correct", first he seized absolute power. And Saxon (#1.9)hit the nail on the head. Many of the things Mussolini did actually helped the economy(even though there were better ways). So much so that FDR even wrote him a letter praising Fascism. One easily argue that Hitler was a great leader.
@ JimD
Except that Fascism is exactly what the Dumbocrats are making out of the Capitalist system here.
In other words it is a Centrist type Government, with government control, but private ownership, hardly a Republican Ideal.
Italy deserves him.
becoming; saxon; The genocidal impulse was part of the economic solution. The socialistic approach championed by Hitler ( and his party now in charge ) required all citizens pulling together. Jews have always considered themselves separate from all others , especially economically. Hence, it was easier for citizens to turn their heads as their assets were taken from them and put into the economy. Especially during war time.
Valid, Yuup! I grew up around a bunch of Italians. He's an "Atomic douchebag bomb: KABOOOOM! Douchbag everywere.
jim. your mind is exhibiting worrisome signs of early onset disintegration. Hitler wasn't a socialist.
Jim is just repeating the Fox nonsense and naively looking at National Socialism in the title. He obviously never read much of the history or understood the fascist way of doing things where corporations and the government are working together to exploit the people. (the real Italian definition of fascism)
They have their obama too.
he is a conservative and bushs buddy.
If he sings Mussolini's praises, he's no conservative!
By the way, do you have any proof that he is Bush's 'buddy', or are you truly as ignorant as you portray yourself?
Just to set it straight Obama is not a facist; the teabaggers and the hard right are the ones who practice this control of fear and religion. Liberalism is the opposite of facism.
Sorry Tammy, but he is a conservative who belongs to a conservative party in Italy, just like Mussolini. Don't let the facts get in the way of your delusions.
Tammy, somebody who is a conservative and doesn't understand the right-wing's relationship (kissing cousins) to fascism really shouldn't be calling someone else "ignorant."
But I will help your. Look up what Benito had to say about corporations.
A complete idiot who proves the fact that stupidity is dangerous.
Gotta ask Why, when it ends in an I !
Yes he is a plonker.
But he is a rich plonker and thats all that really matters in the end.
He must be desperate or senile to call on the hatred within people. He needs an accident but old age will do.
We have people like him in America. They live in places with electric chairs and call buttons, and they're not allowed to have metal utensils. Time to put "pop" out in the garage...
PS, idiots- Berlusconi's party is a RIGHT-WING party in Italy.....you know, like the "homes on wheels" contingent in this country.....like the OPPOSITE of Obama....just saying...
And this guy after 12 years as president denies any blame for the economic meltdown just like Bush at the end of 8. The countries that had their finances in order like Switzerland, Sweden etc. have weathered it fine. Those like Bush that started 2 wars, a 100 billion a year drug plan and a 400 billion a year tax cut meant we had to much debt to spend our way out.
So, they've got their RINO equivalent as well, I see...
Too much debt to spend our way out?
Now that's funny.
Seeing a hooker dressed up like President Obama is crazy beyond all comprehension.
He's the Italian version of Romney!
The hooker was dressed like Michelle Obama. Only a homo would have thought of Barack!
WRONG. She dressed up AS Mr. Obama. Try reading the related story, you gay-bashing jackass:
"One of the young women who attended Silvio Berlusconi's "bunga bunga" parties told a court on Friday that she dressed up as a burlesque version of U.S. President Barack Obama to entertain the former Italian prime minister."
One of God's little misguided children; adrift, and being tossed to and fro by the tides of Italian politics.
More like a gigantic douchebag, floating in the cesspool that constitutes Italian politics.
MDNRAF-LOL!!! Maybe we can compromise and say he is adrift, and being tossed to and fro in a cesspool?
I would also drop the "Italian" part of that and just say politics. Same stuff in every country. A bunch of rich nimrods, getting the populace to fight amongst themselves so they can keep sucking the country dry.
Everyone has something good to claim, Charles Manson once stopped at a red light when he was 17 years old.
Will be interesting to see if he can get the votes. If the Italians elect him, says something about their culture.
People like easy answers and berlisconi types give them.
He is a clown and a fool, but unfortunately he does appeal to a large portion of the Italian people.
Berlusconi could make Nero look sane. Berlusconio fiddles while burning Rome. And while he's at it, he can always blame those Christians (or Jews, or whatever they are), and send them to the Colosseum to be the "just desserts" to some hungry lions.
Today, Mussolini would be a Republican icon.
Ha ha, no.
Sure he would, he defended marriage and the family even as he had his 20 year old mistresses.
So all it takes to be a Republican icon is defending marriage and "the family"?
Again: Ha ha, no.
Berlusconi only opens his mouth to change feet.
I hate it when people are unwilling to accept the truth.
Barring his sheepish-like following of Hitler, and his ill-advised colonization of Ethiopia, Mussolini was good for Italy - no doubt about it.
Mussolini was one of the founders of fascism - the political philosophy I despise more than any other, BTW - and led the country into a war with a badly underperforming military alongside the Nazis, and eventually lost. That seems like plenty to cast doubt on whether or not he was "good" for Italy, although I admit I don't know what Italy was like before him. I suppose if the entire country was impoverished and starving then fighting a losing war wasn't much worse.
Yup. Armed gangs of blackshirts patrolling the streets looking for non-"patriots" to beat up, OVRA secret police monitoring all suspected dissent, dissolution of any semblance of the people's voice in government, banning of trade with anyone other than Germany, government seizure of any and all foreign-issued stocks and bonds, and so on...
But hey, he made the trains run on time. He must have been great for Italy!
SF Accountant, I have always wondered how war supposedly cures finacial depression but now I see.If you kill all the unemployed ( soldiers) and more , then you have a lot more resource for those remaining. More food, more housing, more women, more jobs,etc.. Life is good again. For that generation anyway.
War doesn't really cure financial depression in and of itself. It can be an economic boon with government spending ramping up and pouring into the public sector, and in the past it created a need for extra factory workers, which meant that unemployment was slashed due to the draft and wages went up as there was extra demand for unskilled labor. War does not "kill off all the unemployed", even when major international wars and military drafts were common, so I'm afraid your analysis is mistaken.
Of course, the economic stimulus effect only responds as described if the government has to ramp up spending, and if a country has the luxury of fighting the war on someone else's turf, where the destruction doesn't damage them. Nowadays militaries are increasingly professional, looting and annexing is discouraged, and wars are much smaller, so there's less disruption in the markets. As such the thinking that war is an economic stimulus is increasingly suspect.
Re Mussolini - "He made the trains run on time". No small accomplishment in Italy.
Am I the only one who remembers a National Public Radio news program from around 1994 regarding the release of documents from F.D.R.'s presidency that included his privte notes expressing his jealousy of Mussolini?
"Italy's comeback kid Berlusconi defends wartime fascist Mussolini"
What a frightening statement. Let's hope this doesn't become Vogue again, the world saw how Mussolini ended up. Hanging by his ankles from a gas station sign full of bullet holes. How quickly we forget...
The Good Ole Days weren't so good in Italy s case.
The bigger IDIOT is David Patsi, president of the Italian school Dante Alighieri in Jerusalem. Mussolini ran a fascist government but had one of the strongest economies of the time. That's all former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was saying.
No, he was also saying that Mussolini was only doing what was reasonable in siding with Hitler, out of fear for his nation's security. I am not well-researched on the subject, but there seem to be many people who disagree with that assessment.
He had a good economy for the same reason that Hitler did, he ignored economics and just made stuff up. It works for a while. Both Mussolini and Hitler were very close to the large corporations in their respective dictatorships. Mussolini's symbol was the fasces. A Roman weapon where a battleaxe (symbolizing the state) is surrounded by strips of wood (symbolizing the corporations) to strengthen it, to be used on their own populations.
PS, idiots- Berlusconi's party is a RIGHT-WING party in Italy.....you know, like the "homes on wheels" contingent in this country.....like the OPPOSITE of Obama....just saying...
Maybe he could come here and run as a tea party candidate.
You're right, whip up the white rubes who are afraid of being forced in to gay marriage with illegal immigrants. In a word, the Republican base.
Actually ,he is a good politician.History is a little different than what the propaganda would make us believe. The cause of WW II were sanctions. Mussolini was sanctioned along with Germany and Japan for not wanting LOANS. Japan became aggresive after Roosevelt placed sanctions on Japan which had few natural resources of its own. Jews did not have it so bad in Italy until the Germans came and Mussolini did not favor Jewish persecution.There were no concentration camps for Jews in Italy that I know of-name one. Now , in Europe due to misery, people are turning to the Right and in Italy they are on the verge of a revolution due to Globalist Agenda. The euro will end . Berlusconi smells the direction of people's desires as a good politician and mentions Mussolini-simple explaination.With EU contries in huge debts ( Germany 2 trillion euros +) - the thoughts of usury squeeze on Mussolini by England and France may have reminded Belusconi of earlier times.
really? In October and November 1943, German authorities rounded up Jews in Rome, Milan, Genoa, Florence, Trieste, and other major cities in northern Italy. They established police transit camps at Fossoli di Carpi, approximately 12 miles north of Modena, at Bolzano in northeastern Italy, and at Borgo San Dalmazzo, near the French border, to concentrate the Jews prior to deportation.
So if you are going to say the Italians were "good" because they did not slaughter jews like the Germans did, then yeah he was a great guy. I however would look at the laws he passed, the actions he took and while he may not have killed as many jews, his actions fed into WWII, contributed to the deaths of plenty of jews, and left Italy devastated at the end of the war.
Yeah, there is a lot more to the causes of the war than is written in most history books. However, Mussolini was, IMO, not a good leader at all and the end results of his rule speak for themselves.
Wonder why, once the Allies were getting close to Rome in WWII, Italian partisans tracked down and caught Mussolini as he was attempting to escape to Germany, and strung him upside-down from a tree? Suppose they really "loved" [scare quotes = sarcasm] him?
Japan became aggressive because of Roosevelt's sanctions? The ones that were announced in July, 1941? A year after Japan invaded French Indochina? Four years after Japan's all-out war against China began? TEN years after Japan annexed Manchuria? Yeah, they were really just a passive, peaceful people before evil Mr. Roosevelt slapped sanctions on them.
As for the Italian Jews, Gouranga covered it pretty well. But just to repeat him - no, they didn't kill the Jews in Italy. They took them out of Italy and shipped them to Eastern Europe, then they killed them.
So, Joe, you expect us to believe that rather than the assortment of complex motivations and unique circumstances that surrounded Europe after the carnage of the first world war, eventually leading to a series of political and diplomatic maneuvers that would eventually snowball into WWII, that it was all just because the Axis powers refused to take out loans? And then you bring up the "globalist agenda" again.
Who is it that's pushing propoganda here? I'd say it's the guy trying to retcon world history so that it fits into his conspiracy theory.
Joe has an interesting view on the history of WWII. I wonder where he got it, not from the history books.
Berlusconi is a buffoon. Running for office by invoking Il Duce. Ridiculous (and unnecessary). That is a bit like a Republican commending Nixon's handling of Watergate or a Democrat commending Carter's response to the Iran Hostage Crisis. Dumb! Il Duce's image cannot be rehabilitated, and invoking him to burnish your own image is just stupid. Most politicians who want to get elected AVOID landmines. He dances on them.
My Nonna and Nonna are rolling over in their graves right now. Wow, I have to say is that man is an idiot! My grandmother and grandfather told me how horrible Mussolini was to their town and the whole country.
" . . . after he defended fascist wartime leader Benito Mussolini at a ceremony for victims of the Nazi Holocaust."
The guy's got balls - no brain whatsoever - but really got balls.
He's got nothing upstairs or downstairs. He's an idiot. Because he can open his mouth and something comes out doesn't mean it's worth anything, infact in this case he has really bad breath one would wonder which end the air is coming from