After Silvio Berlusconi’s death this June, his Forza Italia party tried to beatify its longtime leader. In his lifetime, the former prime minister had often been a cumbersome figure for the right-wing coalition, which he had first brought to power. Now that he was gone, his party figured out that he could serve the more significant role of founding father of the Right. Before his death, supporters even tried to promote him as the next president of the nation.

But any hagiography of the “Cavaliere,” or “Cav,” must confront an embarrassing legacy. Berlusconi was a powerful man, and this was also because of how he spectacularized his personality. He turned his political self into a televised character and, later, a meme. He was often genuinely risible — and while the man has gone, the memes have not.

Berlusconi famously initiated a new form of populist communication, creating a televised cult of personality with his Mediaset TV empire before Vladimir Putin and even Donald Trump did the same. His manner of amicably bragging with journalists in front of parliament, his “Bunga Bunga” sexual escapades, the inappropriate jokes he made at both party rallies and international summits — it all helped consolidate his power. At the same time, his oddities pushed his political authority further from any kind of objective credibility. Berlusconi turned himself into a stereotype that foreign observers used to evoke the quirkiness of Italian politics. “His legacy abroad remains this,” says Michela Grasso, admin of Spaghetti Politics, an Instagram page explaining Italian politics to the rest of the world. “He contributed to legitimizing this stereotype of our politics as something tragicomic.”