Nascita del populismo digitale. Masse, potere e postdemocrazia nel XXI secolo

 Nascita del populismo digitale è leggibile e scaricabile in formato PDF per lettori di ISSUU, iBook o e.book.

Il non-partito M5S guidato da Beppe Grillo e Gianroberto Casaleggio ha ottenuto alle elezioni nazionali del 24—25 Febbraio 2013 un clamoroso successo elettorale: il panorama della politica italiana ne è uscito profondamente sconvolto. Questo libro cerca di indagare le novità che caratterizzano la nascita di un nuovo fenomeno politico: il populismo digitale. Siamo all’inizio di un cambio epocale della politica governamentale e della democrazia rappresentativa come l’abbiamo conosciuta fino da oggi? Lontano dall’essere un’anomalia italiana, il populismo è un fenomeno saldamente occidentale, sia nella sua versione analogica, sia nella sua versione digitale, con una english version, l’UKIP, estremamente seducente e, per questo motivo, non meno pericolosa di altre formazioni anti-establishment di destra. Abbiamo formulato a intellettuali italiani e anglosassoni - di varia estrazione politica e differenti competenze disciplinari - sei domande riguardanti alcuni punti fondanti della nascita del populismo digitale e delle relazioni esistenti tra masse, potere e post-democrazia agli albori del XXI secolo. Ciò che leggerete in questo libro è il risultato delle nove interviste rilasciate tra maggio 2013 e febbraio 2014 da Luciana Parisi, Tiziana Terranova, Lapo Berti, Simon Choat, Paolo Godani, Saul Newman, Jussi Parikka, Tony D. Sampson e Alberto Toscano.

A cura di Obsolete Capitalism.

Wu Ming 1 e la situazione politica italiana post-febbraio 2013

Wu Ming: "Basta col politicamente corretto: riconoscere che il conflitto esiste" @ Repubblica, 14 agosto 2013

Wu Ming at Repubblica website + Wu Ming Foundation

"Basta col politicamente corretto: riconoscere che il conflitto esiste"

Parla il collettivo di scrittura, autore di "Q" e "54". Il senso di comunità e la consapevolezza di una società divisa sono i punti da cui bisogna ricominciare

BOLOGNA - Una caotica battaglia in bilico fra Tolkien, NoTav e Star Wars scoppia sotto le mura di Bologna. È il mural di Blu, writer di successo, su una parete dell'XM24, centro sociale occupato a perenne rischio sgombero. Wu Ming 1 e Wu Ming 4, due "senzanome" del collettivo di scrittura che da Q in poi ha rivisto la tradizione del romanzo storico, hanno voluto farla qui, l'intervista, e si capisce perché: "Si parla sempre da un luogo preciso della storia". Il loro spalto, la loro posizione, la spiegano subito a chi entra in Giap, il loro blog di politica, dove ora si può scaricare l'ebook con "cento storie sulla fine catastrofica del governo Letta": "Siamo di sinistra, una sinistra sociale diffusa, dei movimenti, tendenzialmente extra-istituzionale". 

IL SONDAGGIO Le parole della nuova sinistra

Vuol dire che si può ancora indossare, questa parola, sinistra?
WM1: "Dipende da chi lo fa. Chi sei tu che te la provi addosso? Uomo o donna? Dove vivi? Dipendente o autonomo, stabile o precario? Sinistra non è una parola, è una visione del mondo, non è fatta per un soggetto immaginario, cambia secondo la posizione da cui la dici. Come parola disincarnata è solo un'imperfetta metafora spaziale, bidimensionale, dunque inadeguata perché il mondo è pluridimensionale, e poi ha un sottotesto "parlamentare" che pesa perfino quando la usi in modo extraparlamentare...".

Eppure è sopravvissuta al crollo dei muri... Forse era meno compromessa di altre...
WM1: "Ma no, l'hanno negata in tutti i modi, le hanno affiancato parole-gendarme come "centro-sinistra", parole-commissario come "democratici di sinistra", parole-stampella come "sinistra ecologia e libertà"...". 
WM4: "Non si parte dal chi sei, si parte dal cosa fai. Quei partiti hanno fatto il contrario, hanno messo prima l'insegna di tutto il resto, ma alla fine è rimasta un'etichetta".

Ma "sinistra" continuate a usarla anche voi. 
WM1: "Sì, ma io la uso in subordine, di sfondo, per semplificare durante il discorso, per far capire dove mi colloco, in quale luogo della storia".

Ma voi come ci siete arrivati, nel vostro "luogo della storia"?
WM1: "Siamo figli di metalmeccanici. Estrazione proletaria, come si diceva una volta. Cresci in un ambiente che ti fa capire subito da che parte stai. Tuo padre fa gli scioperi, le occupazioni, cresci in quella famiglia e stai dalla parte dei lavoratori come te".

Un determinismo politico-genetico...
WM4: "È un imprinting, però poi il cervello è plastico, contestualizzi, elabori. Ma sai da dove vieni. Per altri la strada sarà stata diversa, questi siamo noi, non è una legge di natura".

E se nasci borghese?
WM4: "Nella vita possono capitarti tante cose che ti fanno inciampare nel conflitto e ti costringono a schierarti. Non è l'idealità che ti porta da una parte, è l'esperienza di vita".

Non si diventa di sinistra leggendo libri, volete dire?
WM4: "Perché no? In un'intervista, Andrea Camilleri ci ha raccontato di essere diventato comunista leggendo Vittorini. Il conflitto ha molte facce, arriva in molti modi diversi. A te però la scelta, o lo accetti o lo ignori".

Appunto: come scrittori, siete "di sinistra"? 
WM1: "Noi siamo precari dell'industria culturale che attualmente stanno cercando di mettere assieme il pranzo con la cena. Siamo scrittori che vengono da una tradizione di movimento, le occupazioni, le lotte, quel mondo lì, tra movimento politico e controculturale". 

Qualcosa di comune con tutti quelli che si dicono di sinistra lo avrete pure, o no?
WM1: "Se la parola sinistra rispecchia qualcosa di comune è la consapevolezza che la società è divisa. Ma ognuno nel conflitto sociale ha la sua posizione, e i conflitti sono diversi, devi scegliere ogni volta da che parte stare, magari scopri che tu stesso non sei sempre dalla stessa parte". 

Puoi essere di destra o di sinistra più volte al giorno?
WM1: "Sì, puoi essere operaio sfruttato in fabbrica e poi padrone oppressore a casa con tua moglie".

Eppure l'avete difesa, quella parola, da chi sostiene che "non c'è più né destra né sinistra".
WM4: "Perché quella è un'opinione di destra! La destra sostiene che la società è una sola, omogenea, armonica, come una marmellata, peccato per quei grumi fastidiosi, gli allogeni, i disturbatori dell'ordine, il migrante e il dissenziente oggi, il comunista "sovietico" ieri, che vanno espulsi dalla comunità". 
WM1: "Se c'è qualcosa che tiene insieme le tante sinistre, parola imprecisa, è questo atteggiamento, ripartire dalla convinzione che la società è divisa, che il conflitto è endemico, inevitabile. Poi ci sono vari modi per affrontarlo, chiamali marxista, socialdemocratico, anarchico... Puoi cercare di mediare il conflitto, puoi combatterlo, ma se sei di sinistra di certo non puoi negarlo".

Per molti, essere di sinistra è qualcosa di meno bellicoso: è rispettare l'ambiente, pagare le tasse, gestire bene un servizio comunale...
WM4: "... fare la raccolta differenziata... No, la sinistra senza la consapevolezza del conflitto diventa il manuale delle giovani marmotte. Lo snobismo di chi si sente migliore degli altri perché open minded, politicamente corretto. Una pulizia della coscienza con detergenti economici".
WM1: "Non basta il virtuosismo individuale, non devi cambiare la pattumiera in casa, devi cambiare un mondo ridotto a pattumiera, non ti salvi il culo da solo, te lo salvi solo insieme agli altri".
WM4: "Ma conflitto non vuole dire per forza fare a botte con la polizia. Vuol dire come minimo non far finta che non esista. Il processo amianto di Casale è conflitto anche se avviene per via giudiziaria, istituzionale; la causa Thyssen lo stesso, si è visto chiarissimamente chi sta da una parte e chi dall'altra".

Di conflitto ce n'è, in Italia, mi pare. Solo che l'asse sembra essersi ribaltato da orizzontale a verticale, da destra contro sinistra a casta contro non-casta...
WM1: "Una formula fortunata perché semplicistica. Sposta il problema dal sistema al singolo, attribuisce tutte le colpe alla disonestà, alla cattiveria degli individui, sostiene che la partita è truccata perché qualcuno bara, mentre la partita è truccata perché il mazzo di carte è segnato fin dall'inizio. La corruzione è del sistema, non del singolo". 
WM4: "L'Italia è una strana eccezione, forse perché qui c'è stato il grande diversivo del movimento di Grillo che ha rallentato i processi. In tutta Europa e nel Mediterraneo ci sono movimenti che non hanno paura di definirsi. Alla Puerta del Sol di Madrid, il 15 maggio del 2011, gli Indignados hanno disegnato la mappa ideale storica dei movimenti planetari a cui si sentivano apparentati, il contrario dell'atteggiamento grillino o radicale che non accetta mai di stare in un movimento assieme ad altri. Non a caso sono partiti con un capo carismatico".

Ma allora, sinistra è una prassi o una storia? 
WM1: "Una prassi che ha una storia. Sei quello che fai, ma il tuo fare ha un passato, non l'hai inventato tutto tu. C'è un filone che percorre la storia, dalla parte degli oppressi e dei senza-potere, è fatto di scelte anche radicali, e io sto dentro quella storia, altrimenti la parola sinistra la usiamo nel vuoto. È giusto chiedersi di cosa siamo eredi e di cosa siamo parenti".

Non tutto è scintillante in quella storia familiare.
WM4: "Chi non ha un cugino imbarazzante... Ma puoi rifiutare una parentela abusiva. Non mi interessa cosa uno dice di essere, per esempio in quella storia di sinistra Pol Pot per me non ci sta, la sua idea di società omogenea, senza differenza è pura destra". 
WM1: "Il concetto di sinistra è come un file zippato. Lo decomprimi ed esce una storia con le sue prassi. Ma come tutti i file decompressi ti ritrovi in mano un documento semplificato, ci sono parti rimosse, altre impoverite. Tocca a te modificare, completare, adattare, e salvare il nuovo file".

Yiannis Baboulias - AN INTERVIEW WITH WU MING, THE MYSTERIOUS COLLECTIVE OF ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT WRITERS @ Vice.com

Wu Ming is the nom de plume of a mysterious European quartet of anti-establishment writers. In Mandarin, their name means “anonymous” or “five people” (one of their members left in 2008), depending on how you pronounce it. Which is weird. What's weirder is that, when Wu Ming's five members first commenced their "guerrilla war on the culture industry" – alongside hundreds of other politicised art pranksters back in 1994 – they did so under the banner of "Luther Blissett". You wonder how often the former Watford and AC Milan striker thought of the people out there waging a "guerrilla war on the culture industry" in his name before they killed off the communal moniker in 1999. Was Blissett, as the collective suggested, an anarchist footballing saboteur, delivering bad performance after bad performance in a premeditated situationist attack on the spectacle of football itself? Or was he just a bit shit?

It's playful quandaries like this that the four remaining Wu Ming members continue to concern themselves with to this day. After the success of Luther Blissett's best-selling Q in 1999, the culture warrior diaspora of Wu Ming are trying to repeat that success with Altai, their 2009 novel and the latest to be translated into English.

I caught up with Wu Ming 1 (Roberto Bui) to talk about their history, their refusal to be photographed, Italian politics and sci-fi communist utopias.

VICE: Let’s start from the beginning. Why did you guys choose the name Luther Blissett – a mediocre English football player – for the first incarnation of your collective?
WM1: Nobody knows. It’s a completely meaningless thing – Monty Python-esque. There have been many attempts to explain it, but they were all made up. We spread some myths so people could pick their favourite explanation. There are people who think we picked it as an anti-racist statement because, back in 1983, Luther Blissett was one of the very few black players in the Italian Serie A, so he became a target for racist abuse. But that was also made up. Another one was that Italian radicals believed his bad performances to be a deliberate sabotage of the spectacle of football – that he was some kind of infiltrator playing badly to ruin the show; Luther Blisset, the anarchist footballer. Of course, it’s bullshit.

And you guys were active on the internet since those days, right?
Yes, the internet that had yet to become the world wide web. When I arrived in Bologna in 1989, I met some guys who were very active in the bulletin boards systems – the pre-www computer networks. When the www arrived, we were already using computers in order to spread our message. It was even before the Luther Blissett project. I was in the "Autonomia" movement, as well as being involved in the counter-culture, underground networks and cyberpunk. Cyberpunk in Italy wasn't only a literary phenomenon, it was also a political phenomenon – part of the squatter movement. When we started the Luther Blissett project, we were already in all that, which makes us pioneers in a way, as it goes back 25 years.

So how does the idea of this "visual silence" you maintain fit into this? Your blog is massive and your public appearances are very engaging – you reply to everyone, you talk with people...
Yeah, of course. One of our slogans is, “Opaque to the media, transparent to the readers.” I think, since we started, we’ve done about 2,000 presentations of our books. We keep moving. Another slogan goes, “Keep your ass on the road.” Because we want to meet the readers in person. But we never pose for pictures. There are no “writer” pictures of us – that typical pose of, “I’m thinking, I’m very sensitive, I have ideas right now.”

So what’s the reception you get in Italy? How is political and opinionated writing going down?
There are radically different receptions. There’s a huge community of readers around us – interacting with us – and it’s a horizontal relationship; there are no barriers between us. It’s a community of artists and activists, but also ordinary people who simply like to read novels. That's the good side.

There’s another section of the cultural industry that despises us. Because of this whole collective writing, coming from the working class, coming from a radical milieu – they just can’t dig it. It’s something so strange to them, something they perceive as a threat to the status, to their power. No matter what we write, we’re always wrong. But we don’t give a shit about them. We don’t write for them, we don’t need them. They can do and say anything they want. The literary society is something we really don’t want to be involved in.

I'm interested in your idea of blending fiction and non-fiction into what you call, "unidentified narrative objects". The idea of mixing fiction and non-fiction as an approach to writing seems pretty popular nowadays, but – to get to Altai, your latest book – I've read you say that the technique is a way to tap into a kind of utopia that we're all after. 
Yes, it is. If we stick to the difference between utopian impulse and utopian programme, as we defined it in aGuardian piece recently, utopian impulse is not to imagine a utopian society in the tiniest of details. It is to have a wish for another world in what you do every day. There are people who climb mountains because they can free themselves only when they do that – because they don’t like what they do every day.

And it's also to convey certain messages by placing your story in the little gaps of history in order to provoke this utopian impulse in the reader. In Q, for instance, there was a main character who continually changed names. Those names are all real – they’re names of radicals whose lives are almost completely unknown, but their names pop up here and there in relation to riots, uprisings, etc. Our fictional intervention was to pretend that those names all belonged to one man who pops up here and there in history. The intertwining of those events is fictional, but the events are real. In Altai, the Ottomans conquered Cyprus – we all know that.

And it’s the cracks in history that we build our stories in, to bring out messages. We think that, in Q, for instance, we managed to convey a sense of rebellion, of uprising, that was common to many parts of Europe at the time – something that historical sources don’t convey because they’re all about single events, they’re very disparate.

For one of your next works, you say you’ll be writing about sci-fi communism in the 70s. How's that going to work?
There was this character who we also mentioned in our top ten utopias piece: Peter Kolosimo. He was a very peculiar character. He was clearly a Stalinist, but in a very visionary way. He was in contact with weird scientists in Russia, in Germany, in the Eastern Bloc. And he was very fond of UFOs. He was convinced that, during prehistoric times, there were close encounters of the third kind, between humans and extraterrestrials.

He also believed that these extraterrestrials were communists. Because if they had the technology to travel from one galaxy to the other, of course they had to be in a higher level of economy, and of course they had a planet economy, and of course there was no private property or class division in their society, etc, etc. He wrote these best-sellers – they sold hundreds of thousands in Italy – and then tried to trace these extraterrestrials in ancient history and prehistory.

Okay, I see why you want to write about him.
His daughter, who lives in Sweden and is a fan of ours, got in touch with us after we wrote a profile of Peter Kolosimo for the Italian GQ without knowing we wanted to write a book about her dad. She told us, “For the first time, someone understands the political side of my father's work.” I wanted to interview her and her mother in order to write this biography, but they didn’t feel comfortable with it, so we dropped it and decided to write a novel that took Kolosimo’s work as a basis to write about this milieu of crazy people beyond the Iron Curtain. And also in Italy, speculating about the role of aliens in building our civilisation, about socialism in outer space and stuff like that. 

Let’s turn to the political situation in Italy. The comedian Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement (5SM) recently got itself a Greek branch. How's it doing in Italy? What’s the role they’ve played in the formation of the new status-quo?
Beppe Grillo usually says that, if they weren’t there – if the 5SM didn’t exist – we’d have an Italian Golden Dawn on our hands. Which is highly debasing for his voters, because he's admitting that many people who voted for him would vote for the Nazis in another situation. He's calling his voters crypto-fascists.

The 5SM is actually very racist. They try to hide this aspect of their rhetoric under layers and distinctions, etc. But if you get to the core of their politics, you can see it. What they did was to stabilise the political situation. They prevented a proper radical movement from emerging. They hijacked the people’s energy towards a simplistic discourse of, “The good people against the corrupt politicians." Which is very simplistic because they never analysed the causes of political corruption – there's no critique of capitalism. They never criticise the bosses, they only criticise politicians. Its different from what's happening in Spain, for instance. Even if it’s confused there, at least they understood that the problem is in the system itself.

So you mean Grillo is just spectacle – a facade of radicalism?
Exactly. That’s why we call it a, "Confusionist movement". The guy is a – if you look at his body language, at his rhetoric, the way he shouts on the stage, the relation between him and the masses – it’s absolutely fascist, in a broader sense. He's not a fan of historical fascism, of course. It’s more of an anthropological fascism. He establishes a very vertical relationship between the leader and the crowd. He swam from Calabria to Sicily for the regional elections, surrounded by cameras. That's the kind of thing Mussolini used to do. There are photographs of Mussolini bare-chested, cutting crops with a sickle, during the Battle for Grain.

The leader showing his body is typically fascist in the Italian tradition. It’s kind of a fetishistic thing. It’s a distortion of the utopian impulse. The people who vote for these clowns do it because they want to live a different way – impulses hijacked and distorted and turned monstrous in the process. And that’s what Beppe Grillo is all about. His success is entirely due to that. Many people from the left voted from him, but he’s saying left-wing things in a completely different context, and that makes him void of all real content.

Follow Yiannis on Twitter: @YiannisBab

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6 domande - a Wu Ming 1, Maurizio Lazzarato, Lapo Berti e Alberto Toscano - sul populismo, sul fenomeno M5S e sulle elezioni italiane del 24 e 25 febbraio 2013

6 domande - a WM1, Maurizio Lazzarato, Lapo Berti e Alberto Toscano - sul populismo, sul fenomeno M5S e sulle elezioni italiane del 24  e 25 febbraio 2013:

“Fascismo di banda, di gang, di setta, di famiglia, di villaggio, di quartiere, d’automobile, un Fascismo che non risparmia nessuno. Soltanto il micro-Fascismo può fornire una risposta alla domanda globale: “Perchè il desiderio desidera la propria repressione? come può desiderare la propria repressione?”

(Gilles Deleuze, Millepiani, pg.271)

1. Sul micro-fascismo: Partiamo dall'analisi di Wu Ming, esposta nel breve saggio per la London Review of Books intitolato “Yet another right-wing cult coming from Italy”, che legge il M5S e il fenomeno Grillo come un nuovo movimento autoritario di destra.  Come è possibile che il desiderio di cambiamento o di speranza di buona parte del corpo elettorale si stato vanificato e le masse abbiano di nuovo anelato - ancora una volta - la propria repressione? Siamo fermi nuovamente all’affermazione di Reich: sì, le masse hanno desiderato, in un determinato momento storico, il fascismo. Le masse non sono state ingannate, hanno capito molto bene il pericolo autoritario, ma l’hanno votato lo stesso. E il pensiero doppiamente preoccupante è il seguente: i due movimenti populisti autoritari-aziendali, M5S e PdL, sommati insieme hanno più del 50% dell’elettorato italiano. Le tossine dell’autoritarismo e del micro-fascismo quanto sono presenti nella società italiana contemporanea ?

cfr: 
Wu Ming: "Yet another right-wing cult coming from Italy" @ Wu Ming Foundation website

Wilhelm Reich - Psicologia di massa del fascismo - Einaudi, 2002

Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari - Millepiani - Castelvecchi, 2010

Gilles Deleuze - L’isola deserta e altri scritti - Einaudi, 2007 (cfr. pg. 269, Gli Intellettuali e il Potere, conversazione con Michel Foucault del 4 marzo 1972) “Questo sistema in cui viviamo non può sopportare nulla: di qui la sua radicale fragilità in ogni punto e nello stesso tempo la sua forza complessiva di repressione” (intervista a Deleuze e Foucault, pg. 264)

1. 1919, 1933, 2013. Sulla crisi: Slavoj Zizek ha affermato, già nel 2009,  che quando il corso normale delle cose è traumaticamente interrotto, si apre nella società una competizione ideologica “discorsiva” esattamente come capitò nella Germania dei primi anni ’30 del Novecento quando Hitler indicò nella cospirazione ebraica e nella corruzione del sistema dei partiti i motivi della crisi della repubblica di Weimar. Zizek termina la riflessione affermando che, ogni aspettativa della sinistra radicale di ottenere maggiori spazi di azione e quindi consenso, risulterà fallace in quanto saranno vittoriose le formazioni populiste e razziste, come abbiamo poi potuto constatare in Grecia con Alba Dorata, in Ungheria con il Fidesz di Orban, in Francia con il Front National di Marine LePen e in Inghilterra con le recentissime vittorie di Ukip. In Italia abbiamo avuto imbarazzanti “misti” come la Lega Nord e ora il M5S, bizzarro rassemblement che pare combinare il Tempio del Popolo del Reverendo Jones e Syriza,  "boyscoutismo rivoluzionario" e disciplinarismo delle società del controllo. Come si esce dalla crisi, secondo Wu Ming1 e con quali narrazioni discorsive “competitive e possibilmente vincenti”? Con le politiche neo-keynesiane tipiche del mondo anglosassone e della terza via socialdemocratica nord-europea o all’opposto con i neo populismi autoritari e razzisti ? Pare che tertium non datur...

cfr.

Slavoj Zizek - First as Tragedy, then as Farce - Verso, Uk, 2009 (pg. 17)

1. Sull’organizzazione. Daniel Guèrin nel suo “La peste brune” mostra come la conquista del potere di Hitler nella Germania del 1933 sia avvenuta grazie anzitutto a “micro-organizzazioni che gli conferivano un mezzo incomparabile, insostituibile per penetrare in tutte le cellule della società”. Il movimento di Grillo si è ramificato nella società grazie alla formula territoriale dei meet-up mutuata direttamente dal mondo politico statunitense, i meet-up di Howard Dean (vedi qui http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/dean.html) . Ma il M5S è altro ancora dai Meet-Up. Si potrebbero valutare serie spettacolari quali Reagan/Schwarzenegger/Grillo, serie autoritarie quali Mussolini/Hitler/Grillo, oppure serie populiste quali Giannini/Poujade/Grillo o altre ancora come la serie comica Coluche/Grillo. E’ possibile tentare un’analitica dell’esplosione M5S come neo-vettore energetico in mutazione vorticosa (Félix Guattari l'avrebbe chiamato "il movimento assoluto della macchina-Grillo")? Quali sono per Wu Ming le componenti, i fili, i flussi, i segmenti, gli slanci e le eterodossie della “macchina da guerra astratta” grillina ? 

cfr:

Gilles Deleuze- Félix Guattari - Millepiani (Castelvecchi, III edizione, Novembre 2010): Nono Piano: 1933 Micro-politica e segmenterietà. (pg.265 - “Daniel Guèrin (La peste brune, 1933) ha ragione nel dire che Hitler, e non lo Stato maggiore tedesco, ha conquistato il potere in quanto disponeva anzitutto di micro-organizzazioni che gli conferivano “un mezzo incomparabile, insostituibile, per penetrare in tutte le cellule della società”, segmentarietà flessibile, molecolare, flussi capaci di irrorare cellule di ogni genere”

Daniel Guérin - The Brown Plague - DUP, Usa, 1994
Gilles Deleuze-Félix Guattari - Apparato di cattura - Sezione IV di Millepiani (Castelvecchi, I edizione, maggio 1997): Piano 15: Regole concrete e macchine astratte (pg. 150 - "Un movimento è assoluto quando, quali che siano la sua quantità e la sua velocità, rapporta "un corpo" considerato come molteplice ad uno spazio liscio che occupa in maniera vorticosa)

“Ogni vita è, si capisce, un processo di demolizione” (Francis Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack Up, 1936)

1. Sulle onde anomale: Franco Berardi in un suo recente post sul sito di Micromega afferma che, con il voto del 24 febbraio 2013, la sconfitta dell’anti-Europa liberista comincia in Italia. Gli italiani, secondo la sua particolare lettura, avrebbero detto: non pagheremo il debito. Insolvenza. Che cosa è accaduto in Italia, secondo il vostro punto di vista, il 24 febbraio 2013? E poi, un recentissimo studio dell’Istituto Cattaneo - Gianluca Passarelli, il ricercatore - ha dimostrato che il M5S è il partito più “nazionale” delle elezioni del 24 febbraio; il suo scoring (0,90 sul top vote di 1,00) dimostra che il suo dato elettorale è il più omogeneo, nei termini di percentuale di voti, su tutto il territorio nazionale, più del PdL (0,889) e del PD (0,881). Ma come è potuto accadere ? (come è stato possibile che in quasi tre anni, dal 2010 al 2013, questo partito-movimento abbia potuto non solo competere, ma addirittura battere, macchine elettorali ben rodate quali quelle delle formazioni berlusconiane e della sinistra organizzata ? )

cfr: 

Franco Berardi - La sconfitta dell’anti-Europa liberista comincia in Italia - Micromega website

Istituto Cattaneo -  http://www.cattaneo.org

Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari - Millepiani - Castelvecchi, 2010 (pg.249 - 1874. tre novelle o “che cosa è accaduto”?)

1. Sul popolo che manca: Mario Tronti afferma che “c’è populismo perché non c’è popolo”. Tema eterno, quello del popolo, che Tronti declina in modalità tutte italiane in quanto “le grandi forze politiche erano saldamente poggiate su componenti popolari presenti nella storia sociale: il popolarismo cattolico, la tradizione socialista, la diversità comunista. Siccome c’era popolo, non c’era populismo.” Pure in ambiti di avanguardie artistiche storiche, Paul Klee si lamentava spesso che era “il popolo a mancare”. Ma la critica radicale al populismo - è sempre Tronti che riflette - ha portato a importanti risultati: il primo, in America, alla nascita dell’età matura della democrazia; il secondo, nell’impero zarista, la nascita della teoria e della pratica della rivoluzione in un paese afflitto dalle contraddizioni dello sviluppo del capitalismo in un  paese arretrato (Lenin e il bolscevismo). Ma nell’analisi della situazione italiana ed europea è tranchant: “Nel populismo di oggi, non c’è il popolo e non c’è il principe. E’ necessario battere il populismo perché nasconde il rapporto di potere”. L’abilità del neo-populismo, attraverso gli apparati economici-mediatici-spettacolari-giudiziari, è nel costruire costantemente dei "popoli fidelizzati" più simili al "portafoglio clienti" del mondo brandizzato: quello berlusconiano è da vent’anni che segue blindato le gesta del sultano di Arcore; quello grillino, in costruzione precipitosa, sta seguendo gli stessi processi identificativi totalizzanti del “popolo berlusconiano”, dando forma e topos alle pulsioni più deteriori e confuse degli strati sociali italiani. Con le fragilità istituzionali, le sovranità altalenanti, gli universali della sinistra in soffitta - classe, stato, conflitto, solidarietà, uguaglianza - come si fa popolo oggi ? E’ possibile reinventare un popolo anti-autoritario? A mancare, è solo il popolo o la politica stessa?

Mario Tronti - C’è populismo perché non c’è popolo - in Democrazia e Diritto, n.3-4/2010.

Paul Klee - Diari 1898-1918. La vita, la pittura, l’amore: un maestro del Novecento si racconta - Net, 2004

Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari - Millepiani - Castelvecchi, 2010 (pg. 412-413 - 1837. Sul Ritornello)

1. Sul Controllo: Gilles Deleuze nel Poscritto delle Società di Controllo, scritto nel maggio del 1990, afferma che, grazie alle illuminanti analisi di Michel Foucault, emerge una nuova diagnosi della società contemporanea occidentale. L’analisi deleuziana è la seguente: le società di controllo hanno sostituito le società disciplinari allo scollinare del XX secolo. Deleuze scrive che “il marketing è ora lo strumento del controllo sociale e forma la razza impudente dei nostri padroni”. Difficile dargli torto se valutiamo l’incontrovertibile fatto che, dietro a due avventure elettorali di strepitoso successo - Forza Italia e Movimento 5 Stelle - si stagliano due società di marketing: la Publitalia 80 di Marcello Dell’Utri e la Casaleggio Asssociati di Gianroberto Casaleggio. Meccanismi di controllo, eventi mediatici quali gli exit polls, sondaggi infiniti, banche dati in/penetrabili, data come commodities, spin-doctoring continuo, consensi in rete guidati da influencer, bot e social network opachi, digi-squadrismo, echo-chambering dominante, tracciabilità dei percorsi in rete tramite cookies, queste le determinazioni delle società post-ideologica neoliberale. La miseria delle nuove tecniche di controllo rivaleggia solo con le miserie della “casa di vetro” della trasparenza grillina (il web-control, of course). Siamo nell’epoca della post-politica, afferma Jacques Ranciere: Come uscire dalla gabbia neo-liberale e liberarci dal consenso ideologico dei suoi prodotti elettorali?  Quale sarà la riconfigurazione della politica - per un nuovo popolo liberato - dopo l’esaurimento dell’egemonia marxista nella sinistra ?

cfr:
Jacques Ranciere - Disagreement. Politics and Philosophy -UMP, Usa, 2004
Gilles Deleuze - Pourparler - Quodlibet, Ita, 2000 (pg. 234, Poscritto sulle società di controllo)
Deleuze and New Technology - edited by Mark Poster and David Savat - EUP, Uk, 2009

Franco Berardi: La sconfitta dell'anti-Europa liberista comincia in Italia @ Micromega website, 27 febbraio 2013

Franco Berardi: La sconfitta dell'anti-Europa liberista comincia in Italia 

@ Micromega website, 27 febbraio 2013

Read more on Micromega website

L’unione europea nacque come progetto di pace e di solidarietà sociale raccogliendo l’eredità della cultura socialista e internazionalista che si oppose al fascismo.

Negli anni ’90 le grandi centrali del capitalismo finanziario hanno deciso di distruggere il modello europeo, e dalla firma del Trattato di Maastricht in poi hanno scatenato un’aggressione neoliberista. Negli ultimi tre anni l’anti-Europa della BCE e della Deutsche Bank ha preso l’occasione della crisi finanziaria americana del 2008 per trasformare la diversità culturale interna al continente europeo (le culture protestanti gotiche e comunitarie, le culture cattoliche barocche e individualiste, le culture ortodosse spiritualiste e iconoclaste) in un fattore di disgregazione politica dell’unione europea, e soprattutto per piegare la resistenza del lavoro alla definitiva sottomissione al globalismo capitalista.

Riduzione drastica del salario, eliminazione del limite delle otto ore di lavoro quotidiano, precarizzazione del lavoro giovanile e rinvio della pensione per gli anziani, privatizzazione dei servizi. La popolazione europea deve pagare il debito accumulato dal sistema finanziario perché il debito funziona come un’arma puntata alla tempia dei lavoratori.

Cosa accadrà? Due cose possono accadere: o il movimento del lavoro riesce a fermare questa offensiva e riesce a mettere in moto un processo di ricostruzione sociale dell’Unione europea, o il prossimo decennio vedrà in molti luoghi d’Europa esplodere la guerra civile, il fascismo crescerà dovunque, e il lavoro sarà sottomesso a condizioni di sfruttamento ottocentesco.

Ma come fermare l’offensiva?

Le elezioni italiane sono una risposta che può evolversi in maniera positiva o in maniera catastrofica. Dipende dai progressisti, gli intellettuali e gli autonomi del continente, dipende da noi. Il 75% dell’elettorato italiano ha detto no al progetto anti-europeo di Merkel Draghi Monti.

25% si sono astenuti, 25% hanno votato per il movimento 5 Stelle di Beppe Grillo, 25% hanno votato per il partito della mafia e del fascismo, e per il più geniale truffatore della storia, Berlusconi, nemico giurato di Angela Merkel perché la mafia non può più accettare il predominio economico di Berlino.

Il movimento di Beppe Grillo è la novità di queste elezioni. Raccoglie soprattutto voti dai movimenti di sinistra e raccoglie anche voti anche dalla destra. Beppe Grillo – che ha una formazione autonoma antiautoritaria – ha detto più volte che il suo movimento intende sottrarre voti alla destra, e ci è riuscito.

Non credo che il movimento 5 stelle potrà governare l’Italia, non è questo il punto. La funzione importante e positiva che il movimento ha svolto è rendere il paese ingovernabile per gli antieuropei del partito Merkel-Draghi-Monti.

L’elettorato italiano ha detto: non pagheremo il debito. Insolvenza.

La governance finanziarista d’Europa è finita, anche se Berlusconi e Bersani si metteranno d’accordo per sopravvivere e continuare a impoverire il paese spostando risorse verso il sistema finanziario. Non durerà. Ma allora può cominciare il peggio.

La classe finanziaria tenterà di strangolare l’Italia come ha strangolato la Grecia. La crisi politica si farà convulsa e violenta. L’esito può essere spaventoso. Mafia e fascismo hanno mostrato di controllare il trenta per cento dell’elettorato italiano, e la sinistra non esiste più. La secessione del Nord si riproporrà anche se la lega è crollata.

Epperò invece può iniziare un processo di liberazione d’Europa dalla violenza del capitale finanziario, una ricostruzione d’Europa su basi sociali. Fuori dagli schemi novecenteschi può diffondersi dovunque un movimento di insolvenza organizzata e di autonomia produttiva. Un movimento di occupazione può trasformare le università in luoghi di ricerca concreta per soluzioni post-capitaliste. Le fabbriche che il capitale finanziario vuole distruggere vanno occupate e autogestite come si è fatto in Argentina dopo il 2001. Le piazze vanno occupate per farne luoghi di discussione permanente.

Il programma lo ha enunciato Beppe Grillo, ed è un programma molto ragionevole:

Salario di cittadinanza

Riduzione dell’orario di lavoro a 30 ore

Pensione a sessanta anni.

Restituzione alla scuola degli otto miliardi che il governo Berlusconi ha sottratto al sistema educativo.

Assunzione di tutti i lavoratori precari della scuola, della sanità e dei trasporti.

Nazionalizzazione delle banche che hanno favorito la speculazione ai danni della comunità.

Abolizione immediata del fiscal compact.

Il movimento cinque stelle ha impedito alla dittatura finanziaria di governare. Ora tocca al movimento della società. Avrà la società l’energia e l’intelligenza per gestire la propria vita con un movimento di occupazione generalizzato?

Se non avrà questa energia avremo meritato il disastro che ne seguirà.

Nota

Leggo su Internazionale che i Wu Ming si lamentano del fatto che il movimento di Beppe Grillo amministra l’assenza di movimento in Italia. Ragionamento bislacco davvero. Dal momento che la società italiana è incapace di muoversi allora debbono stare tutti fermi? Dal momento che gli amichetti di wu ming sono stanchi allora tutto deve restare ad attendere i tempi del loro risveglio? Fate movimento invece di lamentarvi perché qualcun altro lo fa al posto vostro, magari in maniera un po’ più rozza di come piacerebbe ai raffinati intellettuali.

Franco Bifo Berardi

Wu Ming - Grillismo: Yet another right-wing cult coming from Italy @ Wu Ming Foundation, 8 marzo 2013

Grillismo: Yet another right-wing cult coming from Italy

by Wu Ming @ Wu Ming Foundation, 8 marzo 2013

Read more on Giap website

Read more on London Review of Books

[A week ago a prestigious British magazine asked us for a long piece on Grillismo. We wrote it and submitted it, but there was some misunderstanding, and they edited it too heavily for our own taste. We clarified the matter with them, but at that point we were way beyond the deadline and the issue went to print without our contribution. Too bad, but no grudge held. The piece was too long - almost 5,000 words - to submit it to any other mag or newspaper, let them do all the editing all over again and have it published in a reasonable lapse of time. Over here the situation is very bad, and people abroad are completely disinformed about it. Every day we read nonsense and bullshit on Grillo by people who completely ignore the reactionary, authoritarian nature of his movement. A harsh reality is biting our arses and we need to send a message in a bottle right now. In the end, having no other possibility, we decided to publish the piece on this ugly, obsolete, long neglected blog, which is in bad need of complete reconstruction and a new start, but even in its present form is better than nothing. Of course it isn't as authoritative as that London magazine, and potential circulation is ludicrous in comparison, but what else can we do? Please feel free to copy our analysis and republish it wherever you want. Thanks.]

«Marriage is a bond between a man and a woman. How can you institute marriage between two persons of the same sex? Why not marriage between three persons then? Why not marriage between you and your animal? Some people have a strong relationship with their animal, would you allow them to marry it?»
(Francesco Perra, 5SM candidate at the recent national election, 8 June 2012 ) 

There is much confusion in other countries about what has been taking place in Italy in the past five years – the era of Late Berlusconism – and what is going on after the latest national election. At the time of writing, nobody knows what government Italy will have. No stable government can be formed without the vote of confidence of the Five Star Movement, the political organisation led by former stand-up comedian Beppe Grillo and web marketing guruGianroberto Casaleggio. The 5SM, which stood for national election for the first time, gained 25.5% of votes for the Chamber of Deputies and 23.8% for the Senate.

Several Left-wing and progressive commentators tend to look with a certain sympathy to the Five Star Movement. They heard that even Dario Fo, a famously leftist Nobel Prize Winner, endorsed Grillo during the campaign. They think that Grillo’s fiery, pied-piperesque speeches are just a bit of theatre – he used to be a comedian after all.
Indeed, news from Italy are baffling as usual, but in the end, many have the impression that the 5SM is a populist movement oscillating between the progressive and radical quarters of the political spectrum. A movement having features in common with other anti-austerity movements and mobilisations across southern Europe (Portugal, Greece, Spain, Slovenia).
People who make that assumption should – literally – know better.
Trouble is, many Italians should know better too.

Simone Di Stefano: «Are you an antifascist?»
Beppe Grillo: «This question doesn’t concern me. 5SM is an ecumenical movement.»
(Conversation between Grillo and one of the top leaders of neofascist party CasaPound, 11 January 2013 )

Some of you may have Italian friends who used to place themselves to the Left and recently chose to vote for the 5SM, or even become 5SM activists. We bet they didn’t tell you about the more right-wing aspects of the movement, because you’d certainly ask them: «I beg your pardon? You’re doing political work side by side with fascists? You’ve joined a movement that rejects the very notion of antifascism? A movement that wants to abolish trade unions?! You voted for a guy who praises Ron Paul and US-style ‘libertarianism’? Mate, what’s wrong with you?», and they’d have to scramble for self-justifications.

«Before it degenerated, fascism had a sense of national community (which it took directly from socialism), the highest respect for the state and a will to protect the [institution of] family.»
(Roberta Lombardi, 5SM member of Parliament, 21 January 2013 )

Your friends are probably aware of those aspects, but either underestimate them or instantly remove them, because they’re too disquieting. Such is the disgust toward «the old political system» that criticising a «new» movement is deemed as a manifestation of pedantry and intellectual luxury: «First of all, let’s give a shoulder push to the rotten political establishment, then we’ll talk about Grillo’s faults. We can’t afford that now!»
To us, this is a very dangerous approach.

1. How rancour towards «The Caste» helped prevent social conflict

Many factors can explain Grillo’s success. The Zero years were a decade of social devastation, in which social movements encountered thundering defeats, while Late Berlusconism was fostering cultural and moral bankruptcy with the complicity of the long-discredited «centre-left».
Then, at the beginning of the new decade, the Euro crisis hit us between the eyes.
During the summer of 2011, the capitalist class and the European Central Bank decided that Berlusconi’s government was completely dysfunctional and unfit to enforce the «necessary» austerity measures. Despite a vast majority in both branches of Parliament, with a sort of legal coup the «centre-right» government was replaced with a «technical» government led by Mario Monti, a neoliberal economist long associated with Goldman Sachs and the Trilateral Commission.

Monti’s government was supported, albeit grudgingly, by both the centre-right and the centre-left. To tell the truth, the centre-left gave the impression of supporting Monti less grudgingly than the centre-right. In the end, the Democratic Party appeared more responsible than Berlusconi for the aggressive austerity measures which worsened the condition of the working class and the lower middle class in 2012. Something similar happened in Greece, where Papandreou’s Socialist Party was more strictly associated with cuts than the right-wing party New Democracy was.
The difference is that Greece witnessed mass demonstrations and general strikes against austerity, the IMF, the European Central Bank and so on, whereas in Italy social discontent was channelled toward a different target: the so-called «Caste».

«The Caste vs. the Honest People» is the most powerful conceptual frame in today’s Italy.
The Caste: How Italian politicians became untouchable is the title of a best-selling book written by two journalists, Gian Antonio Stella and Sergio Rizzo. It was published in 2007 and covered the ways in which national and local politicians used taxpayers’ money to become parasitic oligarchs. The book’s title provided the perfect metaphor to frame the debate on politics into a new version of a classic right-wing dichotomy: «ordinary people» are «clean», whereas «politicians» are «dirty». Indeed, they are not only dirty, they’re the biggest problem in the country. Let’s get rid of politicians, and everything will be ok!
The fact that politicians are in office precisely because the good ordinary people repeatedly voted for them is rarely mentioned.

«The Caste vs. the Honest People» proved to be the perfect diversionary narrative. Anger and frustration were channelled toward members of parliament, their salaries, public funding to political parties etc., all of which are real but lesser problems of the system. Meanwhile, austerity measures and eurocratic neoliberal policies were ravaging society, encountering no opposition. Unlike in Greece, Spain and Portugual, there was no mass movement fighting back.
It goes without saying that the real «caste» – the caste of millionaires, top CEOs, financial speculators and the likes – didn’t pay any price for the situation they had created. We even heard such tycoons as Flavio Briatore making anti-Caste statements, slagging off politicians and so on.

To name but one concrete consequence of the «Caste vs. the People» frame, this depoliticising narrative made the idea of a «technical» government acceptable, indeed, even desirable. Public opinion was brought to believe that a government with no politicians would be better than any traditional government. That’s why Mario Monti took advantage of an extended «honeymoon period» and was able to pass draconian acts that impoverished the majority of the population.

The «Caste vs. People» frame was activated in the political debate slightly before the 5SM came into existence, and paved the highway for it.
What Grillo and Casaleggio did on their own was extending the concept of «Caste» to include almost all civil servants, whom the 5SM rhetoric turns into mere parasites. In one of his most infamous blog posts, Grillo demanded that «tens of thousand of public employees [be] laid off». As Rossana Dettori – a leader of CGIL trade union – correctly pointed out, behind the phrases that Grillo uses in an abstract way (eg «public employees») there are hospitals and emergency rooms, firefighters, schools and kindergartens, social services for the elderly and the gravely ill, «as well as democratic institutions which ensure that such services keep working».

Truth is, Italy’s public sector has the highest rate of union enrollment and activity. 78.79% of public employees take part to the election of their workplace union representatives (RSU). Therefore, the real targets of Grillo’s invective against public employees are trade unions. He called for the utter «elimination» of trade unions more than once.

2. Mock «anti-austerity», mock radicalism

Not that Grillo doesn’t mention capitalism, the faults of bankers etc. He does it. However, there’s no peculiarity in that part of his discourse, he simply revives all the cliches of European right-wing populisms. The issue is framed in a simplistic neo-nationalist way: «real» capitalism (ie productive capitalism) is described as good because it is rooted in the territory, whereas financial economy is degenerate because it’s in the hands of evil transnational cliques and lobbie groups. Since the Euro is the main cause of the present crisis, if Italy leaves the Eurozone and gets rid of politicians and kicks «tens of thousands» of (unionised) employees out of the public sector, then we’ll have the conditions for entering a new golden age.

We all know that there’s often an antisemitic streak underlying this kind of talk about «nationless» enemies. Is it a coincidence that antisemitic tirades and insults are frequent in the below-the-line section of Grillo’s blog? In November 2012 a guest-blogger on beppegrillo.it attacked Gad Lerner, a Jewish journalist who dared criticise Grillo, by calling him «Gad Vermer». Verme is italian for «worm», a classic insult in the antisemitic repertoire.

The most important thing to say about Grillo’s «anti-austerity» and anti-financial stance is thatit’s just a façade. It’s a joke. At the end of the day Grillo is a multi-millionaire, for Christ’s sake!
Whenever a conservative populist movement is voted in office or takes over, their «anticapitalist», anti-finance rhetoric evaporates very soon and they end up administering the present state of things, financial capitalism included.

Maybe that’s why Jim O’Neill, the retiring chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, recently wrote:

«I find the [Italian Election] outcome quite exciting because it seems to me for a country whose GDP has basically not changed since EMU started in 1999, something big needs to change. Maybe this election outcome and the peculiar mass appeal of the Five Star movement could signal the start of something new?»

Did we say «Goldman Sachs»? A few days ago, Grillo stated that the 5SM parliamentary groups were willing to vote for a new «technical» government including no politicians, because they would never vote confidence in any political government. They were even willing to support a «Monti Bis», a second Monti government, albeit with a limited mandate and strictly controlled by the new parliament. After months spent calling the premier «Rigor Montis», Grillo implicitly said that the former international advisor for Goldman Sachs is the «lesser evil» compared to political parties.
It was just a fleeting glimpse of naked truth, then the former comedian changed position one more time. Now he’s saying that he wants to conquer «100% of parliament» so «citizens become the state» and the movement «will no longer need to exist», which of course doesn’t mean anything but is good for causing a sensation.

[N.B. The last political leader to conquer 100% of Italian parliament and overlap his movement with the state ended up hanging upside down in a Milan square. It happened twenty-six years too late, but nowadays things happen faster, you know, there's the Internet and so on. Jokes apart, Grillo should study the history of his country before making such provocative statements, they aren't known to bring good luck to anyone.]

In case you still cling to your prior impression that Grillo’s movement is anti-austerity and radical, or at least a force for concrete change, why not take a look at what 5SM has been doing in the towns and cities they administer? For example, let’s look at what mayor Federico Pizzarotti did in Parma.
The key point of Pizzarotti’s campaign was opposition to the construction of a big incinerator whose impact on the environment and the health of citizens was considered catastrophic. In June 2012 Grillo himself stated: «They will never build that incinerator, if they want to build it they will have to step on the mayor’s dead body!». When journalist Marco Travaglio asked Grillo about the penalties the city would have to pay to contractors and subcontractors, he gave this answer: «Let’s not be silly: If paying the penalties is obligatory, we’ll find a way to pay them.» Well, the incinerator was turned on on 3 March 2013. The city couldn’t pay the penalties. Nobody had to step on Pizzarotti’s corpse.

During his campaign, Pizzarotti also promised that he wouldn’t raise the house tax and the boarding charge for public kindergartens. After he was elected, he raised both and explained: «We couldn’t do anything else». Like any other politician.
Now he’s planning to cut the salaries of city employees.

3. Right-wing influences on the Five Star Movement

Grillo’s rhetoric is chock-full of elements that can be traced back to different right-wing traditions, which he and Casaleggio meddle into a toxic jumble.
The most recognizable tradition is that of European conservative populism. In France this approach is known as poujadisme, after its main 20th century promoter Pierre Poujade. In Italy, we usually call it qualunquismo [which we could translate as 'anyoneism'], after a mass petty bourgeiois movement founded by playwright Guglielmo Giannini in 1946.
Another tradition is US «libertarianism» / «anarcho-capitalism»: Ayn Rand, Ron Paul, that kind of stuff. This influence is detectable in several parts of the 5SM programme. One of the movement’s freshly elected MPs, Vittorio Bertola, explicitly stated «I like Ron Paul».
Of course, in Grillo’s rants we can also find the usual set of Thatcherite tropes and cliches which have become commonplace all over the West.
All these traditions have some basic features in common, one of which is hatred for trade unions and, generally, for the workers’ collective organisation and conquests, like national contracts etc. This hostility permeates all of Grillo’s speeches.

The reason why it is such an ungrateful task to expose the right-wing elements of Grillo’s rhetoric, is that confusionism is an intentional strategy. Grillo repeatedly screams that «there are no Left and Right anymore!». Meanwhile, he and Casaleggio skillfully intersperse the right-wing elements with left-wing ones, reproposing buzzwords, concepts and claims they hijacked from the previous social movements. These concepts are reprocessed, they receive a treatment that strips all articulations and leaves them void of all content. The most striking example is «direct democracy».

4. Direct democracy, Führerprinzip and character assassination

Despite all the talk about direct democracy or online liquid feedback, the 5SM is a top-down organisation with no intermediate bodies between Grillo and Casaleggio and the populace of fans/activists. Every major decision is taken by those two wealthy sixty-somethings, and «direct democracy» only amounts to calling on the base to approve it in a tele-plebiscitarian way.

In the 2011-2012 period, the 5SM of Emilia-Romagna (the region whose capital is Bologna, the city in which we live) was stormed by a wave of expulsions. «Dissidents» like Giovanni Favia, Valentino Tavolazzi, Federica Salsi and many others dared question the absence of internal democracy. As a consequence, they were kicked out and exposed to angry online mobs. Expulsions were decided by Grillo and Casaleggio and communicated to the world by short posts on beppegrillo.it.
Local activists expressed solidarity with the expelled and organised meetings in which the majority voted in favour of readmission, but their vote was completely overruled by the two bosses.
The final step was the use of the Internet to slander the expelled in all possible ways. «Loyal» grillini devoted their time and efforts to disrupting all online conversations in which anyone defended the «traitors» and criticised Grillo and Casaleggio for their clearly autocratic behaviour.

5SM local leaders seem to have no hesitation in using «lynching» as a positive concept. On 2 March 2013 Andrea Defranceschi, 5SM representative at the Emilia-Romagna council, stated: «If some of us betray the movement, the Internet will lynch them.»
By «lynching», of course, Defranceschi means the character assassination of dissidents. If anyone dares disagree with Grillo and Casaleggio, their reputation must be destroyed, and this destruction shall continue long after the expulsion. These people cannot be simply left alone, their blog or Facebook page must be bombarded with derogatory comments every day. In a matter of few months, local councillor Giovanni Favia shifted from being revered as the very incarnation of 5SM values to being described as the vilest traitor. And if the dissident is a woman, sexist insults will rain on her: «whore», «bitch» and the rest of the repertoire. That’s what happened to Federica Salsi.
This is a clear manifestation of cult mentality and, in fact, the 5SM is often described as a cult. It is often compared to Scientology. Scientology rejected the comparison.

You may ask: how can Grillo and Casaleggio get away with all that?
Well, it’s all written in the movement’s  «Non-Statute».
The «Non-Statute» is a very short text which, for years, has been the only written document regulating the movement’s internal life. It mainly says that the 5SM’s name and logo are the sole property of Beppe Grillo and that the movement’s «headquarters» are located on Grillo’s weblog, beppegrillo.it.

If you already think that the 5SM notion of «online direct democracy» is bizarre to say the least, well, wait, you haven’t seen anything yet! We suggest you to watch a sort of video-manifesto which Casaleggio authored and produced in 2007. It’s entitled Gaia: The Future of Politics. «Creepy» is the right adjective for the anarcho-capitalist future Casaleggio enthusiastically envisions.

How do pro-Grillo leftists or former leftists react when someone points out these serious problems?

5. Fascists in Grillo’s (and Berlusconi’s) Fatherland

Before answering that question, it is necessary to make clear that the vast majority of both 5SM activists and sympathisers do not come from the radical Left. Most of them are quite young and have no previous political experience (or even position);  others come from the right and even the radical right.

In several areas of the country, the backbone of consent for the 5SM is formed by people who previously supported Berlusconi, the xenophobic Northern League, and in some cases utterly neofascist parties such as New Force and Tricolour Flame. In 2012, when the 5SM won the election in Parma and managed to elect Federico Pizzarotti as mayor of the city, the biggest chunk of votes (25.9%) came from people who had previously chosen the Northern League.
After all, Grillo’s and the 5SM position on immigration and minorities is very close to that of the NL. We quote from one of his blog posts , its title was «The Desacred Borders» and was published on beppegrillo.it in october 2007:

«A country cannot PASS THE BUCK TO ITS CITIZENS in dealing with the problems caused by tens of thousands of Roma gypsies coming to Italy from Romania. Prodi’s objection is always the same: Romania is in Europe. But what does ‘Europe’ means? SAVAGE MIGRATIONS of jobless persons from one country to another? Without knowing the language, with nowhere to put them up? Every day I receive hundreds of letters on Roma gypsies, it’s a volcano, A TIME BOMB, and it must be defused… What is a government that doesn’t guarantee the safety of its citizens good for?… The borders of the fatherland used to be sacred, politicians have desacred them.»

Last but not least, Casaleggio himself is a former sympathiser of the Northern League.

According to attorney Vincenzo Forte - an ex-leader of the neofascist Italian Social Movement and now a supporter of Grillo – three of the new 5SM MPs and one 5SM senator (all four elected in Lombardy) have a radical neofascist background. Forte didn’t reveal their names but added:

«These are not isolated cases, it’s a much more vast, deep-rooted phenonemon, a carefully organised strategy to penetrate Grillo’s movement. This strategy is being carried out with maximum discretion by local neofascist groups. »

The 5SM has no ethical or theoretical defence against this, because Grillo and Casaleggio have staunchly refused to adopt antifascism as a differentiating value. Grillo wants the movement to be «ecumenical» and antifascism «doesn’t concern him».

It is far from incomprehensible that many fascists, berluscones and leghisti are now looking to Grillo. Not only they like many of the things he says, but he also embodies their idealtype of the Strong Man mesmering enthusiastic crowds. To these people, Berlusconi and Bossi were no longer strong/fascinating enough, for they became too compromised with «old politics« and «the Caste». That’s why these angry petty bourgeois are making an emotional investment on someone they see as a new leader.
Moreover, there are deep similarities between Berlusconi and Grillo. They are both living testimonies of how the 1980s entertainment and television industry reshaped Italy’s national life. Journalist Giuliano Santoro wrote a very interesting book about this, it is entitled Un Grillo qualunque: Il populismo digitale nella crisi dei partiti italiani [A Grillo whatsoever: Digital populism in the crisis of Italian parties].
As a matter of fact, one cannot fully understand Grillo if s/he didn’t understand Berlusconi. Three years ago, in a piece for the London Review of Books, we easily predicted that after the fall of Berlusconi there would be a Berlusconism-without-Berlusconi. Nowadays things are even worse, because Berlusconi «fell» but is still around and 29.1% of voters have chosen him for the umpteenth time. As a result, we have both old, classic berlusconism-with-Berlusconi, and a new kind of berlusconism without him. Giuliano Santoro wrote that «Grillo is the continuation of Berlusconi by other means.»

6. TINA, TITA and the 5SM’ «neitherism»

Now let’s focus on those leftists and ex-leftists who are – critically or uncritically – giving their trust to 5SM. We want to focus on them for two reasons:
First, it is important to understand what consequences the Left’s absence or bankruptcy can have during a crisis like the current one;
Secondly, we have noticed that the representation of Grillo’s movement among radicals and progressives abroad is more or less a synthesis of the two typical discourses uttered by Italian pro-Grillo radicals – only with much less information available.
We call these discourses «5SM TINA» and «5SM TITA».

These days, each time we talk with veterans of yesterday’s struggles who voted for the 5SM, and try to reason with them, the most likely words we manage to extract from their mouths is:

«Yes, I do know it’s an ambiguous movement. I’m not at ease with everything they say and do. Yeees, yes, their agenda is partly neoliberal. Their statements on migrants are unacceptable. I don’t like the blend of populism and corporate jargon either. I’m suspicious of the personality cult surrounding Grillo, and the role played by Casaleggio isn’t clear. I agree with you, there’s more than a little bit of fanaticism within the movement. I did see pro-5SM trolls in action on the Internet. I agree with you, those mass expulsions make me think of 1937 stalinist purges. Do you think I’m blind? Of course I see that fascists are also joining… And yet some of the 5SM claims and proposals are exactly the same that we’ve been making for years! Their program includes the «citizens’ income», the defence of commons, ecology… I know many decent people who’ve become 5SM activists. Maybe we can tactically use the 5SM in order to smash the old political system, they’re doing that, aren’t they? Nobody managed to do that before. Why not try and see what happens after the shoulder push? There Is No Alternative anyway. The left is dead.»

This is what we call the Five-Starred Leftist «There Is No Alternative» Discourse. It is based on a classical Yes/But device: people say they agree on all the critical issues, which are many, then they say something like «but» or «and yet», and even if the adversative is sustained only by wishful thinking, it wipes out everything they just acknowledged.

In short: they understand that the 5SM is a confusionist movement with a dominant right-wing approach to many key issues, but the movement’s success and the fact that some proposals have Left-wing origins make them hope this is a good opportunity to «do something».
To us, «doing something» is not necessarily a good line of conduct. It depends on what you do. Sometimes it’s better not to do anything than doing something stupid. Mistaking a right-wing movement for a left-leaning one is definitely stupid.

Other former leftists are buying whatever story Grillo and the 5SM tell them. They utter another discourse, the Five-Starred Ex-Leftist «This Is The Alternative» Discourse:

«What you’re saying is false. You believed the vicious lies that the Caste spreads around. There are certainly some racists, because the movement is open to everyone, but they’re minorities. The majority are people like you and me who want to fight the system. We’ll keep racists in check. Those who were kicked out of the movement were opportunists and infiltrators sent by the old parties. They violated the Non-Statute. Grillo is not a leader, he’s nothing other than a megaphone. The fact that he legally owns the movement’s name and logo is only a guarantee that local sections will respect the Non-Statute. I trust him. When the movement is strong enough, Grillo will step aside. Casaleggio only suggests communication strategies, there’s nothing dark or ambiguous about that. This Is The Alternative, at last! I’ve been waiting for something like this for years, don’t ruin everything with your usual criticism!»

Notice the classic faith in a «two-stage» process: in the current situation Grillo has necessarily to play a major role; later on, he will surely step aside.
In the history of communist movements, all personality cults were invariably described as merely «transitional».
In 1958 Mao Zedong famously argued that there is nothing wrong in personality cult in and of itself. It depends whether that personality represents revolutionary truth or not.
Eighty-seven year old Dario Fo, to mention but one name, was very close to maoism during the 1970s.
This mindset facilitated the conversion of former communists to Grillismo. In this way, we think they ended up on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
When did such a thing happen last time?
It happened in the early Twenties.

Exactly.
The 5SM’s catch-all programme cannot but remind us of early fascism’s Programme of San Sepolcro (1919). In those days, fascism was still a «neitherist» movement («neither left nor right») launching «revolutionary» slogans in every direction.
In 2011, when we started citing that historical precedent, many people sneered at us. Then, on 5 March 2013, Roberta Lombardi – fresh president of the 5SM group at the Chamber of Deputies – made an explicitly positive reference to the Programme of San Sepolcro in order to explain the unacceptable statement we used as one of the epigraphs of this article.

Are we arguing that, when all is said and done, the 5SM is a fascist movement?
The answer is: no.
For sure there are fascists in there, and certainly the right-wing elements of the programme are more relevant than the left-wing ones. However, the 5SM is indebted with different right-wing traditions, a part of its constituency is still on the left, and labelling the movement as merely fascist would be too simplistic.
What we’re trying to say is that, especially in Italy, confusionist «neitherism» always thrives on economic and political crisis, and a part of the Left is tempted to listen to that siren song. Those who don’t resist the temptation invariably end up on the Right, be they aware of it or not.

7. Now what?

Why aren’t foreign correspondents living in Italy saying these things? They write about Grillo every day, but they rarely provide insights on the movement’s inner contradictions. Maybe these contradictions are less visibile if one doesn’t have a deep knowledge of our national history? And yet racist, homophobic or aynrandesque statements should be recognizable in all contexts. We don’t have a clear answer for such questions.

What’s going to happen now?
As far as «change» (that empty word) is concerned, probably much less than everyone expects. As we tried to demonstrate above, the 5SM is far from being a radical force and its programme is full of «solutions» that are actually part of the problem. Even on the very day of the election, while many commentators were jumping on Grillo’s bandwagon, we wrote that, despite its incendiary slogans, the 5SM acts as a diversionary movement and prevents social conflict from erupting. Grillo says that himself, although of course he calls conflict «violence»: «If violence doesn’t start here, it’s because of the movement».
As often happens with populist movements, Grillo’s movement will apparently destabilise national politics, but it will only ripple the surface, and in doing so it will stabilise the system. That’s why pro-Grillo excitement can be found in such an unlikely place as Goldman Sachs.

We hope that progressives and radicals who joined the 5SM, or sympathise with 5SM, or at least voted for it, understand that the tiresome «neither left nor right» stance can no longer hide all the contradictions we highlighted.
We recently wrote that «we’ll side with rebellion inside the 5SM». What does that mean?
It means that we expect these contradictions to get ever sharper, to intensify until they explode. The movement’s «Left» must overcome TINA and TITA, manifest itself in a clear way and reject both the agenda of the «Right» and Grillo’s blank, confusionist rhetoric. Internal conflict is not an implausible outcome of this phase. We must look at that process with great attention, and be there when some of the energies that Grillo and Casaleggio captured will manage to get free from that grip. Those energies can be invested into a more consistent, unambiguous, radical movement. That’s why we tifiamo rivolta , we «cheer for a riot» inside the 5SM.

Bologna, 4-8 March 2013