Monday, November 11, 2013

Berlusconi says his family feels “like Jews under Hitler”

So, now it’s definitely proved: Berlusconi physically can’t stay too long without saying something unbelievably stupid and absurd, something that can make the headlines all around the world and make me feel like never leaving the house again.
I am little late in publishing this, but it still is worth mentioning.
Four days ago, Silvio Berlusconi shocked the whole world by claiming that he is so persecuted that his kids “feel like Jews under Hitler”, because of the Italian judiciary that “persecutes” him even if he is innocent, and that makes his family feel like “the whole world is against them”.

Berlusconi with his family

Apart from the completely inappropriate remark, the sad thing is that it was not his first one. He had already claimed that Mussolini “never killed anyone” because he just “sent people on holiday”, and that the racial laws were “Mussolini’s only fault” (see http://italianfactsrd.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/berlusconi-racial-laws-biggest-fault-of.html).
Now, I am trying to imagine what would happen here in the UK if a politician, any politician, said something of that sort. I can already picture the criticizing headlines of all newspapers and the condemning speeches of all party leaders, not to mention the critics from the public.  Yet, in Italy, even the Jewish community did not react as strongly as we would expect it to do elsewhere.
It’s so depressing to see that in Italy we became so unresponsive that we will be able to forget even this new outrage. Lately, I got really mad when I saw plenty of people on Facebook angrily protesting against a tax increase on beer but closing both eyes on any other thing. Should I deduce that it is more insulting to levy a tax on beer than to compare one’s trials with the Holocaust?

Honestly, what kind of a country does that make us? Maybe we just deserve our political class, after all. 

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