Where to start? Predictably allegations of madness have been attached to Berlusconi’s aggressor. I’m sure he’s pretty fucked. Bracketing that for a second, an obvious comparison comes to mind. George W. Bush had shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist. It was an insult he couldn’t comprehend because he wasn’t conversant in the gestural language that it sprung from. In essence, the shoe missed, but his folksy jovial response rendered the fact the gesture pointed to visible. Something like, “he knows so little of the situation that he doesn’t even understand this.” But an Iraqi journalist leveraging an incomprehensible insult at an invading leader and an Italian national throwing a statue of a Milanese cathedral and injuring the prime Minister of Italy’s face are two different things. There is no doubt that an already polarized Italy will be further embroiled. The assailant is perhaps owed gratitude from Mr. Berlusconi and his allies, as it will no doubt elicit sympathy for a political figure heavily belabored with scandal.
I’m curious to see what happens, but I am also pessimistic. To clarify: I think that Mr. Berlusconi and the manner in which he rules Italy are essentially corrupt. But I’d go one step further and say that his obvious corruption is not a case of this sort of bureaucracy gone bad, but rather his administration offers a clear-cut example for this sort of Democracy functioning how it is designed to. That is, corruption is one of its foundational tenets. My pessimism ultimately stems from sympathy with the critique I surmise to be the attacker’s, because I feel certain that the message he intended has been undermined by the apparent ugliness of the attack, and will likely have the opposite effect. I am no pacifist, but I do know that instances of subjective violence such as this one can often sustain the systemic violence they are trying to critique. It’s not for nothing though, that the picture they’re painting of the assailant in the media (he has mafia ties, solicits prostitutes), is strikingly familiar to Berlusconi’s image itself.
