Beppe Grillo: Revolutionary Satire? Or is he Serious?

[Jan Klimkowski]

So, the most corrupt and banal democracy in Europe nearly gets Berlusconi again.

Instead, the real winner is the stand-up comedian Beppe Grillo, who got 25 percent of the vote without even standing for election.

Whilst the market's man, Goldman Sachser Super Mario was trashed at the ballot box....

Here's Beppe in his own words:

"Politicians Go Home!"

The rediscovery of being human


"All the newspapers agree: Grillo has filled the historic Piazza San Giovanni with his young people. They're young and inexpert and enthusiastic and life is returning. This is the humanity that has made history: the humanity that has ingenuously thrown itself at life, strengthened only by their enthusiasm, the conviction that to be human means dreaming, hoping, loving, enjoying and believing that it's possible to succeed by working hard to realise one's dream.

With these dreamers, we have come through the worst nightmare that the Italian people have ever experienced, in spite of their long history full of catastrophes: that of not having a future. Of not having what every person needs in the idea of the future: that it'll be beautiful, joyful, new, different, full of life. Is it perhaps possible that having a balanced budget, even though it is considered to be indispensable, can really make up "The Future"? Is it perhaps possible that the European Central Bank, even though it may be willing to buy so many Italian bonds, can play the part of the Good Fairy? Enough, yes - enough! We absolutely need to go back and live the true life , that life that has always made the Italian people very rich even when they were poor: the ability to believe in the future, to believe in the beauty of their land, to have trust in their joyous and lucky "star".

All this has been deliberately killed off. Buried in the lugubrious world of the priests of money, deaf and blind to anything other than the accumulation of the currency. Economists and bankers have become the masters of Europe and they have chosen Italy as the experimental centre of their power, where they are starting to take the place of politicians, who are by now, completely subservient and corrupt. They managed to do this so easily that even they themselves are gob-smacked. They perhaps had not imagined, in spite of their massive presumptuousness, that just the clinking of money would have been enough to be called in by the politicians and heads of State to take their places. In just one year, the situation has forced 45 entrepreneurs to commit suicide. A result that is truly worthy of respect! Italy has never been a suicide country, not even in war-time. However, the members of the government, have remained unmoved. Unfortunately, these Italians are "lazy bones": they only know how to complain. The day after an entrepreneur committed suicide, Mario Monti went to console, not the despairing family, but the functionaries of the tax collection agency, Equitalia: they are certainly diligent workers! The truth is that with the tyranny of the bankers, word has spread about their gangrenous inhumanity. The arid desert of their souls is incompatible with life. They have gulped down and destroyed, all the feelings, the passions, and the values that Italian have believed in, and for which they have worked and struggled since the beginning of their history. Everything has been wiped out in the name of a balance sheet, in the name of a currency. Even the Church has fallen silent. After having always proclaimed the supremacy of the spirit over matter, they haven't had the strength to rebel against the supremacy of the god called euro. In Sanremo, there was the "sign" of the death of the Italian spirit, a sign that only Italian thought could have invented: the intentional, knowing cacophony of the Mononote song.

Now however, Grillo's young people have sent out the shout of hope: "politicians, go home!". So first of all, a President of the Republic not belonging to the parties, a person that's neither an economist nor a banker, one who is not pleasing to the politicians and is not a sidekick to the politicians, but a person who truly represents the Italian people for the reasons why the whole world has always valued Italians: for art, poetry and music." Ida Magli