By Athena Papakosta

For some it is the end of an era since they can hardly imagine the Italian political scene without Silvio Berlusconi. In her statement, the country’s prime minister, Georgia Meloni, said that “first of all he was a fighter, a man who was not afraid to defend his ideas.”

They called him “Cavaliere” which means knight and the Italians lived with him for at least three decades. He became one of the richest men on earth, founded a party from nowhere in less than a year, and became Italy’s longest-serving prime minister.

Silvio Berlusconi’s life ended in a hospital in Milan. He was 86 years old. But his legend in Italy will remain immortal. Not necessarily for the right reasons.

Before he became prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi was already a construction emperor, a media magnate of the country and a king of football after he bought the bankrupt Milan and took it to the top of Europe.

He was first elected prime minister of Italy in 1994 and again in 2001 and again in 2008. His conservative party christened it with the motto of Italy’s national soccer team… Forza Italia and ruled his country as if it were multinational with speeches that they resembled a general, a CEO, a coach but also a jester.

Everyone knew early on that they were dealing with a populist showman who challenged the establishment that essentially created him, who loved to stay black before Donald Trump even appeared on the world political stage, who was close friends with Vladimir Putin and who consciously defied any sense of political correctness.

His connection with the public began early, when he was still singing on cruise ships, and throughout his adult life he never stopped seeking applause and admiration. Even his villa in Arcore was turned into a palace, while the one in Sardinia “hid” an artificial volcano from which lava spewed forth.

Italian television worshiped him. Inspired by the American television landscape, it changed Italian reality television for the worse by giving Italians the “opportunity” to watch television programs that hosted commentary that spat on all political correctness and jokes in which women made up to patriarchal standards and half-naked against the rules of sexism they would laugh. In fact, this “penny” has remained even today on Italian television.

For many, his turn to politics was not for ideological reasons but for business purposes since he allegedly wanted to protect his interests.

Looking at his political legacy you will find few things he brought to the table that changed Italy for the better while, you will find that everything seemed to be done so that it would be his image that would transform the next day into something greater.

Italians saw in him the good and the bad with him polarizing the country as much as anyone during the post-war period. To half he was nothing less than a man of the people who spoke their language and understood them, entertaining them with his humor and energy. But to the rest, he was nothing more than a problematic sexist, a narcissist who defied all the rules of the state by partying with sex workers at his so-called “bunga-bunga” parties.

Analysts and journalists say he invented populism in Italy by repeatedly calling him a “charmer of Italians”. They note that he cut the ticket for the entry of the extreme right into the dominant Italian political scene by creating ties with the League of the North but also with the successor party of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement, “National Alliance” in the bosom of which the current prime minister was politically born of Italy, Georgia Meloni.

However, none of the scandals that marked his political career succeeded in dethroning him except for the fact that he brought the third largest economy of the Eurozone to the brink of a debt crisis. The Italians did not forgive him for this. He himself left without actually ever moving away from the focus of Italy’s next electoral contests.

His persona, this mixture of exaggeration, self-centeredness, arrogance and sometimes picturesqueness found imitators. Donald Trump is certainly one of them.

He himself wanted to live to be 150 years old to see Italy proud and on the right path. For many he was an immortal figure and he himself seemed to be having fun with it. In recent years, his health suffered greatly. His life seemed to everyone like ten lives and more. He lived them all, probably, as he wanted. A funeral home in Italy posted on Social Media “Rest in peace. You were funnier than us.” And he was, indeed, although he sometimes deviated from it.