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

[Keith Millea]

Published on Tuesday, February 26, 2013 by Common Dreams

Big Winner in Italian Election? The Five Star Movement

The Big Loser? Austerity

- Craig Brown, staff writer

Massive crowd in Milan's Duomo square at a 'Tsunami Tour' rally of Beppe Grillo, comedian-turned-political activist, in Milan, Italy, in this Feb. 19, 2013 photo. Grillo describes himself merely as the spokesman or "guarantor" of the Five Star Movement. (AP Photo/Alessandro Treves)

Italy's two major political parties are stunned by the results of this week's elections: the dramatic surge of the anti-establishment Movimento Cinque Stelle (The Five Star Movement).

The actual outcome of the Italian election remains in doubt, but there's no question who the big winner was: comedian-turned-political activist Beppe Grillo and the Five Star Movement (M5S).

Poster for the Five Star Movement's "Tsunami Tour"Last year, the Five Star Movement barely registered in polls of likely Italian voters. With results now in, the Five Star Movement, took over 25% of the vote - more than the two major parties.

The Five Star Movement's anti-austerity, anti-establishment message struck a chord with millions of Italians. The 'Five Stars' of the movement are the party's core principles:

1. Publicly owned water
   
2. Sustainable transportation
   
3. Sustainable development
   
4. Free and open internet access
   
5. Environmentalism
   

The big loser? Austerity. Reuters reports:

The election, a massive rejection of the austerity policies applied by Prime Minister Mario Monti with the backing of international leaders from U.S. President Barack Obama to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, caused consternation across Europe.

Grillo's insurgent campaign had almost no money, just a couple of campaign staffers and an RV that carried Grillo all across Italy in what he dubbed the "Tsunami Tour."

The Five Star Movement's simple - yet clear and compelling - message paired with the smart use of social media overcame the challenges of a low-budget campaign. The M5S website is here - Facebook page here - Twitter here. Beppe Grillo's Blog (in English) here.
Jamie Bartlett writing for the Guardian:

How Beppe Grillo's Social Media Politics Took Italy by Storm

"The mainstream parties are finished! They won't survive for long", announced Beppe Grillo, in typical style, on his Five Star Movement's online television channel late on Monday night. For a long time political scientists have predicted that the internet would lead to the decline of formal political parties and Beppe Grillo is showing how.

[...] he has around a quarter of a million supporters who consider themselves members of the movement: an army of volunteers and door-knockers that would previously have taken years to recruit. The medium and the message fit hand in glove: the media is a racket, so circumvent it. Politics is closed especially the party list system so elect members online.

That is why his election rallies have been by far the most well attended of all the candidates, and why the pollsters didn't see him coming: his voters turned out more consistently than anyone else. The same thing happened in Germany with the Pirate party in the recent Berlin election, where pollsters dramatically underestimated their support. Polling companies have some work to do.

This election was a litmus test on whether social media campaigning and support can translate into actual votes. The result is a resounding yes. The melange of virtual and real-world political activity is the way millions of people relate to politics in the 21st century. Formal membership of political parties is plummeting, while social media following Facebook groups or Twitter followers is growing fast. Grillo has shown how to use them.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/02/26-15

[Magda Hassan]

Italy's centre-left reaches out to Beppe Grillo

Democratic Party leader Pier Luigi Bersani challenges the Five Star founder to bring his rising party into a new coalition



Beppe Grillo announced he would be representing his movement in negotiations with President Giorgio Napolitano aimed at forming a new government. Photograph: Giorgio Cosulich/Getty Images

The leader of Italy's centre-left, Pier Luigi Bersani, set out to lure Beppe Grillo and his Five Star Movement (M5S) into a coalition government after their spectacular breakthrough in the general election.
At a press conference in Rome, a weary-looking Bersani said it was time for the upstart movement to do something more than just demand the removal of Italy's mainstream politicians.
"Up to now, they have been saying: 'All go home.' But now they're here, too. So either they go home as well, or they say what they want to do for their country and their children."
Grillo had earlier said his followers in parliament would not join a coalition, but would consider proposals "law by law, reform by reform". [MH bolding]
/snip


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb...ppe-grillo

Looks like a good way to go. Some activists are thinking much more laterally now given that the traditional political forms are controlled by others.

[Jan Klimkowski]

I want to believe.....

[Magda Hassan]

Showtime! Thinking About Kim Dotcom's Internet Party

By Chris Trotter / January 15, 2014 /
Rating: 3.3/5 (23 votes cast)


If Dotcom is able to combine these three elements: popular mistrust of the political class; an unmediated means of communicating with the masses; and carefully staged opportunities for cathartic political release; then he has every chance of polling well above the 5 percent MMP threshold.


As [Labour Prime Minister, Michael Joseph] Savage progressed around the country it became clear that something extraordinary had been unleashed in the usually staid New Zealand voter. In town after town, huge crowds gathered to meet the Labour Prime Minister. Halls overflowed. Stadiums were hired. Stadiums overflowed. [New Zealand historian, Barry] Gustafson records that "Savage's speeches to crowds of up to 30,000 were among the most moving and inspiring in a New Zealand election campaign."
No Left Turn Page 166

FEW, IF ANY of those attending Kim Dotcom's "Party Party" at Auckland's Vector Arena on Monday, 20 January 2014, will be unaware that they are participating in a major political event. As far back as September, Dotcom was telling his Twitter followers that a political party was in the offing and yesterday he tweeted its name "The Internet Party" and promised "to make politics interesting." The larger than life German Internet entrepreneur went on to say that his new party would aim to "activate non-voters, the youth, the Internet electorate."
The Vector Arena seats 15,000 people and as of this morning (15/1/14) 15,000 people had registered their interest in attending. That is a huge audience for a political message. You have to go back a very long way indeed to find a political event of remotely comparable size. Nearly forty years ago, in 1975, the National Party Leader of the Opposition, Rob Muldoon, attracted 6,000 supporters to a rally in the Wiri Wool Store, but, as the above quotation makes clear, you have to travel back in time to the General Election of 1938 to find political audiences in the five figure range.
And to those who say: "Oh, it's all just the usual Dotcom razzamatazz, there's no substance there." Just take a look at Italy, where Silvio Berlusconi and Beppe Grillo have been turning razzamatazz into votes for the best part of two decades.
Forza Italia! and Grillo's Five Star Movement are not electoral parties in the traditional sense, rather they are opportunities for political excitement, for the sort of emotional release that being a part of a huge and enthusiastic audience makes possible. Don't think political meeting think rock concert or religious revival.
If Dotcom has been studying the Italian examples, especially Grillo's Five Star Movement (which won 25 percent of the popular vote in last year's Italian general election) then he will understand that the fuel which fires such electoral phenomena is the disillusionment bordering on hatred which voters (especially young voters) feel towards the political class.
These professional politicians, who seem to speak a language and act in accordance with a belief system which is quite foreign to ordinary people, remain coldly unmoved by the demands of democratic majorities. They may be members of different political parties, but the policies which they espouse are almost all variations on the same neoliberal and profoundly undemocratic themes.
Frighteningly homogeneous, the political class never saw a Budget that couldn't be improved by slashing social spending, or a Statute Book that could not be stiffened with a few more curbs on personal liberty and a host of new surveillance powers for the State. (All in the name of "National Security" of course!)
The other feature of Berlusconi's and Grillo's reconfiguration of Italian electoral politics is the way in which they were able to bypass the political class's mainstream media allies and enablers. Berlusconi was able to do this by virtue of the fact that he personally owned most of Italy's broadcasting networks; Grillo by using his extraordinarily influential blog, beppegrillo.it (according to Technorati one of the top 10 blogs in the world). With these personalised communications vehicles at their command both men were able to simply go over or around the normal journalistic gatekeepers and opinion-shapers and speak directly to their followers. The resulting impression that there was something transgressive about the bonds forged between these rogue politicians and their disaffected viewers/readers only made their messages more powerful.
If Dotcom is able to combine these three elements: popular mistrust of the political class; an unmediated means of communicating with the masses; and carefully staged opportunities for cathartic political release; then he has every chance of polling well above the 5 percent MMP threshold. Indeed, given the huge number of politically disengaged citizens (many, if not most of them, young) Dotcom's Internet Party could end up (if I may borrow Fairfax journalist, Vernon Small's, metaphor) throwing a huge spanner in the works of the 2014 General Election.
If I was John Key, I'd be doing everything I could to speed up Dotcom's extradition while I still had the power to do so.
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/01/15/sho...net-party/

[David Guyatt]

If Dotcom has been studying the Italian examples, especially Grillo's Five Star Movement (which won 25 percent of the popular vote in last year's Italian general election) then he will understand that the fuel which fires such electoral phenomena is the disillusionment bordering on hatred which voters (especially young voters) feel towards the political class.

These professional politicians, who seem to speak a language and act in accordance with a belief system which is quite foreign to ordinary people, remain coldly unmoved by the demands of democratic majorities. They may be members of different political parties, but the policies which they espouse are almost all variations on the same neoliberal and profoundly undemocratic themes.

How true that is...

[Magda Hassan]