The ‘fascist threat’ in Berlusconi’s Italy

ABSTRACT

It is still frequently the case today that the Italian political media use the term ‘fascist’ as an epithet aimed at opponents who do not proclaim themselves to be such in order to discredit them in the eyes of democratic public opinion, a usage with a long the history in the Italian Republic. In recent times the alarm over an imminent fascist threat was reiterated with regard to Silvio Berlusconi’s government, which in the years between the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century offers a paradigmatic case. Following the collapse of the First Republic, the profound transformation of the political framework and Berlusconi’s entry onto the scene, the category of fascism was in fact revived in an attempt to delegitimize a right-wing coalition that in turn disavowed the values of anti-fascism. By examining the political media debates of the period between the birth of Forza Italia and the fall of the last Berlusconi’s government, the aim of the article is to highlight these tendencies to use the past and bend to current needs with effects that are still visible in the current situation of political communications.

RIASSUNTO

Ancora oggi frequente nell’arena politico mediatica italiana, l’uso del termine ‘fascista’ come epiteto rivolto ad avversari che non si proclamano tali, al fine di screditarli agli occhi dell’opinione pubblica democratica, è una consuetudine nella storia della Repubblica italiana. In tempi recenti, un caso paradigmatico si è registrato tra gli anni Novanta e il primo decennio del XXI secolo, quando l’allarme per il fiorire della minaccia fascista è stato reiterato nei confronti del governo di Silvio Berlusconi. Dopo la fine della Prima Repubblica, la profonda trasformazione del quadro politico e l’entrata in scena di Berlusconi, la categoria di fascismo è stata infatti rispolverata nel tentativo di delegittimare una coalizione di destra che a sua volta sconfessava più o meno apertamente i valori dell’anti-fascismo. Esaminando il dibattito politico mediatico del periodo compreso tra la nascita di Forza Italia e la caduta dell’ultimo governo Berlusconi, il saggio si propone di evidenziare queste tendenze ad attualizzare il passato, piegandolo alle proprie esigenze, con effetti ancora visibili nell’odierno scenario della comunicazione politica.

KEYWORDS:

• Italian Republic
• public use of history
• fascism
• anti-fascism
• Silvio Berlusconi
• mass media

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• Repubblica Italiana
• uso pubblico della storia
• fascismo
• anti-fascismo
• Silvio Berlusconi
• mass media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

^1. “Berlusconi preferisce guardare il corteo in TV”. La Repubblica. April 26, 1994.

^2. These statements, reported widely by both Italian and international press, were taken from an interview with Boris Johnson and Nicholas Farrell for The Spectator.

^3. Further examples in Zunino (2003, 436).

^4. See Paolo Villaggio on the TV programme Tribuna Politica, 1987: https://www.teche.rai.it/2017/07/paolo-villaggio-tribuna-politica-1987/ (last accessed 30 November 2023).

^5. A collection of these cartoons by Forattini (1993).

^6. Pmli, “Siamo o non siamo in un regime fascista?”, 23 January 2002: http://www.pmli.it/siamononsiamonelfascismo.htm (last accessed 30 November 2023).

^7. The category of ‘tele-fascism’, introduced into public debate in the 1990s (e.g. Fracassi 1994), is still in use to define Berlusconism also in international literature (e.g. Sidera 2023, 99). For a judicious analysis of the theory of ‘anthropological changes’ generated by the Berlusconian monopoly of television, see Dei (2011).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matteo Pasetti

Matteo Pasetti is Professor of Contemporary History in the Department of the Arts at University of Bologna and teaches History of Mass Communications, History of Journalism, and Politics and Visual Culture in Contemporary History. His main areas of research are the history of Italian fascism, the history of fascism in a transnational perspective, the comparative history of twentieth century dictatorships, and the use of the past in the public sphere.