Friday, March 14, 2014
Capitol (Omni Shoreham)
This paper analyzes former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s mobilization of anti-communism in his multiple electoral campaigns spanning 1993 to 2008. In their appeal to disaffected voters following the collapse of the Italian postwar parliamentary system, Silvio Berlusconi and his center-right Forza Italia party depended heavily on accusations of a red nemesis lurking behind Italy's center-left political parties and its anti-corruption judiciary. Despite the fall of the Soviet Union and the transformation of the Italian Communist Party into a social democratic party, Berlusconi turned to a political discourse steeped in anxiety of a communist conspiracy, the choice of good or evil, of the Blues of his political party Forza Italia or the Reds of the center-left. Berlusconi/s successful uses of “anti-communism without communists” reveals the lingering and visceral fear of this enemy - a fear that transcended the political - for a significant portion of the Italian electorate.
