Il "Guardian" parla di noi

[Rasputin]

Qui in Italia il Tg1 ci ha nominato in tutto per 30 secondi ostridicolo:

Italians are angry with their politicians; it would be foolish to ignore them | Anna Masera | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk



While Spain's indignados have made the news, Italy's version is now finally surfacing politically too: polled nationally during the last administrative elections, the groups that belong to the movement reached between 10 and 15% , including the 5 Star movement (Movimento 5 stelle) founded by Beppe Grillo. Also known as the grillini movement, it stresses that it is "neither on the right nor on the left" and grew mostly on the web without any big financial backing or media coverage, reaching well beyond 5% in Bologna, Milan and Turin.

Massimo Bugani, the mayoral candidate of the grillini in Bologna, who won an exceptional 10% of the votes in a traditionally leftist city, said: "My mother worked for 10 years in the press office of the council in Bologna ; my family voted centre-left, but hearing from the inside how things were not working, I looked for another party, so when Grillo started his blog, I was the 11th to sign up for the Bolognese meet-ups on the internet".

Grillo has proposed a popular law against the candidacy of politicians under investigation, and changes to the voting system. Like the Spanish protest movement, it wants to avoid association with any political party: both are "anti-party" and "anti-system" movements. And like the indignados, the 5 Star movement welcomes other forms of protest against a variety of issues, from the No Tav movement (which opposes the development of high-speed trains) to the protests against waste incinerators in Naples and the surrounding region of Campania. In short, movements of the disillusioned and the indignant who end up demonstrating against the existing politics, rather than offering an organic political proposal.

Going by last weekend's Spanish elections, the indignados have so far failed to inspire a new direction in politics. In Italy, established politicians have been quicker to latch on to these grassroots movements. Italy's anti-Berlusconi Democratic party commissioned (and financed) a documentary on Grillo's 5 Star movement and its "Woodstock-style" event of 2010, and published it for free on YouTube, to understand why the grillini refuse associations with traditional political parties. It is a reminder that the web is part of the grillini's strategy for success. According to Mario Adinolfi, an Italian blogger who caters to younger Italians looking for new kind of politics, "in Bologna and also elsewhere, the 5 Star movement used the internet intensively and better than anybody else".

It might be easy to write off the 5 Star movement as a purely ideological, rather than political, breed. But there's a danger in that kind of thinking, as Adinolfi warns: many initially dismissed the secessionist Lega Nord (Northern League) when it reached almost 10% of the vote at the 1996 general election – with much of its support coming from a traditionally working-class, leftwing constituency. But in the end, the Northern League resorted to traditional political machinations, siding with Berlusconi's rightwing coalition.

But the Democratic party should take care: it is more likely to win over the indignados of Italy with serious proposals for economic recovery rather than YouTube gimmicks.

[democratico]

il Guardian è un giornale serio, io sono abbonato da anni, tra l'altro tra le sue file c'è stata la fondazione di Amnesty International, ha un inserto culturale di quasi 30 pagine