Comedian takes aim at Italy's establishment

MILAN - The success of a grass-roots antipolitics campaign spearheaded by an iconoclastic comedian is giving Italian politicians pause for thought.

Beppe Grillo is the man behind V-Day (the V stands for a very rude Italian expletive), which attracted 300,000 people on Saturday to sign a petition supporting a common goal: purging Italy of its corrupt political class, which in Grillo's view includes political parties, most government institutions, and the media.

Some politicians dismissed Grillo's initiative as "shallow demagoguery" and warned of "populist tendencies."

"Mass protests aren't always right," Antonio Polito, a center-left senator, said yesterday. "The history of the last century is full of mass protests that were wrong. When democracy was lost, it was lost thanks to mass protests."

Others cautioned of warning bells that should be heeded.

"In the face of mass criticism, those who are criticized should listen and try to understand," Fausto Bertinotti, the left-wing speaker of the lower house of Parliament, said on a talk show late Tuesday night. "Grillo is filling a void that exists in politics with some very dubious material, but his criticism should be accepted."

Italians lined up in more than 200 cities and towns to sign the petition for Grillo's "Clean Up Parliament" proposal that, if it were brought before Parliament and adopted, would ban candidates convicted of crimes from seeking public office, limit politicians to two terms, and introduce the direct election of legislators.

"I was really surprised. I didn't expect such a big turnout," Grillo said in a telephone interview Tuesday. Organizers estimated that 50,000 people turned out at a rally Saturday to hear the comic rail against the political class in Bologna. "What happened out there was the release of a virus that's about to attack the political class. But in this case there's no vaccine."

In many ways, V-day was one more example of a growing dissatisfaction among Italians with the state of politics. With more than 750,000 copies sold, a summer bestseller has been Sergio Rizzo and Gian Antonio Stella's "The Caste: How Italian Politicians Became Untouchable," a biting exposé of greed, waste, and corruption.

"People feel that basic requests, like greater efficiency, widespread reforms, or the modernization of institutions and the economy are being ignored by the current class," said Roberto D'Alimonte, who teaches political science at the University of Florence, adding that statistics and polls all pointed to general dissatisfaction. "Then, too, they see the current crop of politicians as costly, privileged, and arrogant."

Grillo's protest began through his blog, beppegrillo.it, one of the top five most read websites in Italy, with more than a million hits in July, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

The blog has spawned hundreds of grass-roots groups that organized stands in cities around Italy and abroad to collect signatures Saturday.

"The idea of V-day was to give a voice to those who don't have a voice," said Grillo, who has denied plans to start his own political party. His supporters, he said, are already a political movement and meet regularly to discuss issues such as the economy and the environment.

"Because the movement starts on the Web, it starts from below," he said. "We need new blood, new words."