The latest neocon

(Note: in a comment, former U.S. diplomat Vincent Chiarello basically confirms my points about Berlusconi’s shift to the left.)

Before, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was a whoremonger, but, we thought, as the saying goes, at least he was our whoremonger. But now he has drunk the neocon/liberal Kool-Aid and believes in Muslim democracy. So now he’s a whoremonger for Muslim democracy. Also, for reasons not understood, he has been allowing the African refugees to come to Italy, instead of returning them to Africa. So now he’s a whoremonger for Muslim democracy and the Islamic invasion of Europe.

The story is from a site called Adn Cronos International:

Deauville, 27 May (AKI)—The unrest that has shaken the Arab world over the past six months and ousted two of the region’s autocratic leaders shows that Islam is compatible with democracy, Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi told said on Friday.

“The principle has been established that democracy is not only compatible with western countries and their civilisations, and I believe this is very important,” Berlusconi told journalists at the Group of Eight summit in Deauville, France.

The stirrings of democracy seen in the popular revolts that have taken place in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and other Arab countries are the latest in an “extraordinary period of history” that has unfolded over the past 25 years, he said.

“Who could have predicted the fall of Soviet Communism and the end of Apartheid in South Africa and the Arab people’s decision to march towards democracy?” Berlusconi stated.

Tunisia’s longtime president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali fled the country in January following a month of popular protests dubbed the Jasmine Revolution. This inspired the revolt in Egypt that toppled its Hosni Mubarak from the presidency less than a month later on 11 February.

“These events show that democracy can take root in countries that have different cultures from those of the west and it’s imaginable that these revolts could spread to other countries,” Berlusconi concluded.

These are the statements of an unthinking person. Autocrats have of course been repeatedly chased out of power throughout history, to be replaced by other autocrats. The fact that two autocrats were ejected in two Muslim countries doesn’t mean that those countries have democracy or are heading toward democracy in any meaningful sense of the word. And, of course, all the signs are just the opposite of any impending democracy, as Barry Rubin has shown in one article after another, for example, this. Does Berlusconi read English? If not, can he have Rubin’s articles translated into Italian for him?
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Vincent Chiarello writes:

Allow me to comment upon the Adn cronos article, and in so doing provide some texture to your charge that Silvio Berlusconi has become a “whoremonger for Moslem democracy and the Islamic invasion of Europe.” [LA replies: Just to avoid any misunderstanding, I didn’t mean that his support for Muslim democracy and Muslim immigration was whoremongering, but that he is a whoremonger who also supports Muslim democracy and Muslim immigration.]

Hitherto, Berlusconi has been an opponent, albeit speaking more forcefully than acting upon it, of the Moslem invasion of Italy. But the saving grace for the Italian people of that diffidence was the Northern League’s Minister of the Interior (the chief law enforcement officer in the country) Roberto Maroni. It was he who strongly denounced the “invasion” of Lampedusa. It was Maroni, who as Berlusconi’s responsible cabinet official, went to Brussels to argue that these North African interlopers in Lampedusa were a European problem, not only an Italian one. Last year, I personally saw at Milan’s airport, scores of Sub-Saharan Africans being put on planes and deported. The system seemed to be working then. What changed?

In my judgment, Berlusconi is distancing himself from the Northern League, whose election platform has always called for the deportation of all non-documented aliens in Italy, but which lost in local elections in the Milan area a week or so ago. Secondly, Berlusconi, although claiming that he will not run for re-election, believes that Maroni and the League are a hindrance, rather than a help, to those aspirations, and will seek to craft a coalition without the League’s open support. That tactic may prove to be flawed for Berlusconi’s re-election campaign, but it will be disastrous for Italy.

Thus, the Italian political reality is that if Berlusconi wins, it is unlikely that he will seek an energetic approach in deporting those currently in Italy. If he loses, his likely successor will be from a left-center coalition, and their approach to the Moslem menace will be that of Italy’s northern neighbors. And we all know the results of such dereliction of duty.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 28, 2011 09:21 AM | Send