Feb 10, 2021
As I’m writing Notes, a politician who had left Italy in disgrace has reared his ugly head.
Silvio Berlusconi
Arm raised in salute, he’s come back from his exile in France because our future Prime Minister Mario Draghi is currently holding consultations with the political parties of the Italian Parliament, including Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. To be honest, seeing him once again sent a shiver down my spine: he is the father of Italian populism, and probably one of the most important reasons why Italy lost a precious 30 years of sorely needed reforms. You may remember him as ‘bunga bunga’ man, but I’ve used other expletives to describe him.
Sorry…was that out loud?
As I’ve discovered reading up on him from Prof Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Prof Daniele Albertazzi, Berlusconi can be categorised as a ‘Strongman.’ He didn’t go as far as inciting an insurrection once he was ousted from power in 2011, but whatever he did up to that point can be thought of in these terms. He used his office as Prime Minister for his own personal gain, used the power of the legislature to protect his person, created a party to his likeness with a following akin to a rock star, and used his media channels as megaphones for his propaganda. As all Strongmen do, he mixed the threat of violence and charm just enough to keep his fans enthralled until the reality of the crisis of the Italian economic and political system was no longer tolerable.
Trump is the political son of Berlusconi, but he went a step further: he turned the threat of violence into reality. That threat had been presaged since the beginning, when in 2016 he said he would be able to shoot someone on 5th Avenue and still keep his voters on board. From there his language, his tweets and his rally speeches were filled with threats targeting Blacks, Muslims, Mexicans and women.
Looking back to 2015-16, how many of you can say that you could foresee the violent turn of events that we witnessed on Jan 6? How many said, “he’ll become presidential.’ Most of us did, with the exception of those analysts and scholars of fascism and authoritarianism that warmed us of what was to come.
Prof Ruth Ben-Ghiat, expert of Italian fascism, propaganda and authoritarianism had been writing and talking about Trump’s Strongman bent on her own opinion page on CNN and a host of other publications and networks since the moment he came down the escalator in Trump Tower, announcing he was going to be running for the office of President.
Prof Ben-Ghiat’s ‘Strongmen’ takes us through 100 years of authoritarian leaders, from Mussolini and Franco to Pinochet, Putin and Trump, providing an insightful comparative analysis of their characteristics and actions as Strongmen.
It must have been extremely frustrating for Prof Ben-Ghiat to watch the horror unfold on Jan 6th since she had been so vocal about Trump’s certain spiral into violence. She spells it out here in this video back in November 2020: please have a listen.
I’ll say it here: I admit that I hadn’t predicted the Jan 6th Insurrection. Like many others I was pre-conditioned to think that ‘Americans’ wouldn’t have been crazy enough to storm their Capitol. Many observers had been monitoring the various encrypted chat boards and were publishing warnings. But it’s one thing to say you are organising a coup, it’s quite another to actually carry one out. The aura of American exceptionalism dissipated in seconds, making Fareed Zakaria’s analysis back in 1997, in his Foreign Affairs article ‘The Rise of Illiberalism’ that much more prescient:
The problems of governance in the 21st century will likely be problems within democracy. This makes them more difficult to handle, wrapped as they are in the mantle of legitimacy.
Today in the face of a spreading virus of illiberalism, the most useful role that the international community, and most importantly the United States can play is to consolidate democracy where it has taken root and to encourage the gradual development of constitutional liberalism across the globe.
As discussed with Uriel Epshtein, executive director of the Renew Democracy Initiative in our up-coming chat, Americans and American politicians will be called to address tribalism, polarisation, inequality and disinformation at home if they are to maintain their moral authority in international relations abroad. It would be hypocritical of me to say that it’s just the Americans: the same can be said of European societies and our governments that have been equally guilty of failing to address the forces of illiberalism as they took hold in Europe and in other states since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Impeaching with Pierpaolo & Prof Scott Lucas
In preparation for my chats with Pierpaolo & Prof Scott Lucas, I thought I’d throw in my due cents on Donald J Trump’s second Impeachment Trial.
Although it sets off my rocks, I’m getting mentally prepared for Trump’s acquittal. I’m not at all hopeful that 17 Senators will side with the Democrats and do in one of its own. So, you’re probably asking: what’s the use of going through all the motions?
The short answer…it will have an impact.
As David Frum rightly points out, impeachment trials are a signal that there’s an emergency in the democratic process and that signal spurs change and produces an outcome. Trump wasn’t convicted in his first Impeachment Trial for extorting Ukraine for his own re-election campaign. It did, however, have a tangible effect: his behaviour was put under a microscope, and what we saw was horrifying. Most Americans did agree that he was guilty as charged and that image was planted and took root.
The 2020 Presidential Election was set within this backdrop of dishonesty and conniving. As revealed by polling data in August and September, not only were Americans appalled by his mismanagement of the Covid pandemic and getting weary of his constant aggressive tones, but they were judging his performance within the frame of the first impeachment trial: he can’t be trusted. When the Bob Woodward recordings hit the electors, his image as a lying, insensitive, opportunist was confirmed. By the time Trump began whole-heartedly campaigning in October, it was impossible to undo what had been done: lies, ad hominem attacks, incompetence and Twitter warfare was set against decency and statesmanship.
Trump must be tried in the Senate even if we all know he won’t be convicted because the insurrection sought to stop President Biden’s confirmation, brought death to 5 people and terror to all those present in the Capitol that day, damaging the American image abroad as a bastion of liberal democracy.
Putting this aside, it will also curtail Trump’s future chances of running again in 2024, and diminish his hold on the GOP. It’s already happening: according to the latest polling, support for Trump from his Republican base has dropped dramatically from 56% to 36%. There are much fewer Republicans that believe he has done ‘nothing wrong.’ I’m afraid he’ll get off scot free, but as details of the insurrection emerge from the hearings, he’ll be condemned politically.
In the sage words of the Rolling Stones: you don’t always get what you want, but if you try some times, you just might get, you just might get, get what you need.
Ticked Off Vic on QAnon…
From our good friends at…
Brexit, Vaccine Nationalism, and the Future of the UK
Scott Lucas- Feb 9, 2021
The Daily Mail went with a straight battlefront analogy, “EU Vaccines War Explodes“.
The Daily Express preferred an organized crime narrative, “EU Chiefs ‘Behaving Like the Mafia’“.
And The Sun reached for a Coronavirus-related quip: “Now EU Are REALLY Giving Us the Needle“.
It was a turbulent 48 hours for the European Union. A contract dispute with Astra Zeneca over vaccine supply, sparked by problems at a Belgium production facility, had morphed into a dispute between the EU and the UK over whether the pharmaceutical company was diverting doses meant for Europe.
The European Commission wanted to prevent Northern Ireland being used as a “back door” to move vaccines into Great Britain. So it invoked Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol, which allows the EU or UK to unilaterally suspend operations believed to be causing “economic, societal, or environmental difficulties”. (read more…)
Up-coming pods…
Feb 11: Uriel Epshtein- the Renew Democracy Initiative
Feb 14: Pierpaolo De Caro- the Insurrection & Twitter jail
Feb 17: Prof Ruth Ben-Ghiat Strongmen
Feel free to comment or DM me on Twitter @MoniqueCamarra
Write to us at: coffeetalkpolitics@gmail.com
CTP senior researcher: Davide Cortese
Thanks for reading!
Mo