NP Berlusconi's political base

[Doug Millison]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/web2515/lee2515.html
A flamboyant demagogue with extremist allies, Berlusconi ran as head 
of a far-right-tilting, populist coalition that embraced openly 
racist and neofascist parties. The Italian 
media-mogul-turned-politician compares himself to Napoleon, delights 
in ridiculing AIDS victims and is chummy with Rupert Murdoch. 
Convicted four times on charges of perjury, falsifying financial 
records, tax offenses and bribery, Berlusconi has a shady track 
record with several criminal indictments still pending. He was voted 
into high political office despite allegations of Mafia connections 
and questions about how he acquired his personal fortune.  A walking, 
talking conflict of interest, Berlusconi has his fingers in 
practically every big-business pie in Italy. He is one of the world's 
wealthiest men, presiding over a $14 billion financial behemoth that 
includes Italy's biggest publishing house, its leading advertising 
agency, its wealthiest department-store chain, a major investment 
firm, extensive real estate holdings, the country's top soccer club 
and, most significantly, Italy's three main private television 
networks. [...] Berlusconi's principal governing partner is 
Gianfranco Fini, a suave, 49-year-old politician who cut his teeth as 
leader of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), Europe's oldest 
neofascist party. Berlusconi publicly aligned himself with Fini 
before the MSI chief gave his organization a face-lift and renamed it 
the National Alliance in 1995. The National Alliance recently grabbed 
11 percent of the vote, ensuring that Fini will be deputy prime 
minister in the new regime.  Fini claims that he is now a mainstream 
conservative, but the identity of his party remains inextricably 
bound up in its fascist heritage. Despite Fini's attempts to distance 
himself from the most extreme elements of the National Alliance, many 
of its members still harbor nostalgia for Mussolini's Blackshirts. 
[...] And then there's Umberto Bossi, head of the xenophobic Northern 
League, which holds the balance of power for the ruling coalition in 
Italy's lower house of parliament, even though it polled only 4 
percent of the vote. Bossi's crude and incessant immigrant-baiting 
has drawn comparisons with Austrian far-right leader Jorg Haider, who 
was among the first to congratulate Berlusconi for his electoral 
triumph. Bossi has called for the Italian navy to shoot at ships 
suspected of carrying undocumented immigrants into the country. 
Strident anti-immigrant rhetoric was also a staple of Berlusconi's 
campaign, while his TV stations stoked public anxiety by depicting 
Italy as a nation overrun by foreign criminals.  [...] In the late 
'70s, Berlusconi secretly joined Propaganda Due (P-2), an elite, 
fascist-leaning masonic lodge that is often mentioned in accounts of 
Italian intrigue. Described by Italian judges as an illegal "state 
within a state," the P-2 had high-level connections to Italian 
intelligence agencies, the armed forces, leading financiers and 
captains of industry. P-2 members have been implicated in nearly 
every major political scandal that has shaken Italy since the 
mid-'60s--including neofascist
bombings, coup plots and a major smuggling operation that specialized 
in arms and drugs, while laundering dirty cash through front 
companies owned by the Vatican Bank. Berlusconi's name was found on a 
list of P-2 initiates after a 1981 police raid in Tuscany. Of the 963 
names on the P-2 roster, most were prominent Italians. The list also 
featured several dubious characters from Argentina, including: Gen. 
Juan Peron, the former president; Jose Lopez Rega, head of the 
Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance, a notorious death squad; and Adm. 
Emilio Massera, a member of the military junta responsible for the 
disappearance of 30,000 people during the "dirty war" of the '70s and 
early '80s. Convicted of making false statements about his P-2 
membership, Berlusconi managed to escape unscathed from the scandal 
thanks largely to Socialist Party chief Bettino Craxi, who became 
Italy's prime minister in the mid-'80s. Craxi was the best man at 
Berlusconi's second wedding, and both men were adept at exploiting 
the lucrative system of political patronage and illicit pay-offs that 
flourished in postwar Italy. Craxi was instrumental in thwarting 
early attempts to rein in Berlusconi's media outlets, and Berlusconi, 
in turn, actively promoted Craxi on his TV stations. During this 
period, Craxi and other right-wing political leaders in Italy knew 
they could count on unflinching support from Washington, which 
propped up a political order that was riddled with corruption in an 
all-out effort to keep the sizable Italian Communist Party from 
gaining power. But when the Cold War ended, so did the Communist 
threat, and the entire political edifice in Italy crumbled overnight. 
"

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/may2001/ital-m07.shtml
" At a local level the League and the National Alliance work closely 
together with Nazi groups. The city council of Verona, a stronghold 
of the League, has supported Nazi concerts, lectures on the 
"Auschwitz lie" and a presentation of books by Nazi publishers. 
Verona also made headlines because the fans of the local football 
club shouted down African players of rival clubs on a regular basis. 
According to the president of the Verona football club, the team does 
not dare to employ black players because of the negative response of 
the fans. [...] Now, for the first time, Berlusconi has been able to 
unite the most important sections of the economy and the media-which 
he owns as the richest man in Italy-with parts of the old political 
establishment and the most significant ultra-right organisations. His 
main political orientation is very different from that of the 
traditional Christian democratic right. In place of the conservative, 
often Catholic-oriented standpoint on the family and society, 
Berlusconi pursues aggressive nationalism and racism-promoting a 
ruthless form of economic liberalism instead of state intervention in 
the economy and traditional lobby politics. He is perhaps closest to 
Margaret Thatcher, the conservative British prime minister of Great 
Britain in the '80s, a person he profoundly admires. The difference, 
however, is that Thatcher relied on the traditional Tory party to 
realise her program, whereas Berlusconi has entered into a public 
alliance with fascists and racists."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,494412,00.html
Tuesday May 22, 2001
The Guardian
Silvio Berlusconi is preparing to purge leftwing journalists and executives
from Italy's state television, Rai, to consolidate his government's
dominance of the media. [...] Gianfranco Fini, the leader of the 
post-fascist National Alliance who will soon become deputy prime 
minister, wants to purge the entire board to punish its "scandalous" 
bias during the election campaign.