Comedian Beppe Grillo Tries Fights Corruption and Big Spending

The Van Der Galiën Gazette – Netherlands
By Michael van der Galiën
October 11th, 2007

I assume that most of you have never heard of one Beppe Grillo since the far majority of readers of this blog are Americans. Therefore a short introduction: Beppe Grillo is an Italian comedian who’s fed up with the corruption in the Italian government / politics and who has decided that it’s time to act. Instead of letting the ruling class get away with their corruption and idiotic spending Beppe Grillo confronts them with their behavior and tries to mobilize the country to get rid of them. In a short amount of time, his website has become the most popular website of Italy. Luckily for us, it’s also available in English.

Beppe uses his website to mobilize the Italian people and to reform his country. He encourages other Italians to become active, to run as independent candidates for office, but ” I have already put in writing and I repeat once more that I don’t intend to form political parties. What I am committing to in the next few months is to use the blog and assign a symbol to promote the civic lists that have the characteristics and the commitments that I will publish,” he writes.

He encourages other individuals to run for office, to form a list, and he’ll support them when they do. They aren’t, however, allowed to be a member of one party or another; they have to be completely independent if they want to receive his endorsement. They’re also not allowed to have a criminal record, of course. This way he hopes to - in the end, because we’re talking about municipal elections right now - clean the Parliament from some 23 members who should be in jail instead of in Parliament where they use their office to enrich themselves and their families and friends.

For those of you who are wondering whether he’s successful let me only say this: not only is his website the biggest and most popular of Italy with some 160,000 visitors each day, when he decided to organize a get-the-hell-out day, 330,000 people showed up. If he would run for office himself, he would get elected in a heartbeat (if he’d qualify for office that is). Furthermore, there are some 260 Beppe Grillo groups in Italy - these groups consist out of individuals who have been inspired by the comedian and who do dedicate their free time to improving Italy.

The Dutch newspaper the NRC Handelsblad explains why Grillo is so popular: some 60% of Italians answered with “disgust,” “anger” and “mistrust” to the question “what word comes to mind when you think about politics?”

Beppe’s approach is simple: he wants to reform Italy by starting at the individual, neighborhood and municipal level. Over time, the revolution has to impact the central government as well. For now it seems that his work may very well pay off. Lord knows Italy needs a true reformer.