The first was Ernesto Galli della Loggia with his editorial (“Italian populist atlas”) last Wednesday in Corriere della Sera. "If you wanted to send home an entire political class - he wrote in the newspaper directed by Ferruccio de Bortoli - what other way existed if not the vote for Beppe Grillo's list?". But even the words of Luxottica's owner Leonardo Del Vecchio on Thursday, one of the richest men in Italy who lives in Montecarlo for reasons of "tax optimization", did not fail to surprise: "Grillo premier, why not? I don't think he's more stupid than the ones we've had so far ”. The president of Confindustria, Giorgio Squinzi, does not think so, according to whom, if Grillo's agenda were applied, "Italian industry would be finished".
But the game remains open: how many other prominent members of our ruling class will get on the bandwagon of the winner of the last elections? Also in the Corriere della Sera Dario Di Vico drafted a first census. Among the pro-Grillo supporters of the first or last hour, the names of Francesco Biasion, owner of a hot stamping company of global significance (Bifrangi of Vicenza) who previously voted for the Pdl, and that of Andrea Bolla (president of the Confindustria of Verona), while possibilities on the leader of the 5 Star Movement expressed the CEO of Amplifon Franco Moscetti and – listen, listen – the former big boss of Unipol before the judiciary stopped him, Giovanni Consorte.
Opportunism or realism? Knowing and studying a political novelty like the one represented by Beppe Grillo is proof of wisdom, queuing up to try to gain some benefit is something else. But from a mediocre ruling class like the Italian one one can expect anything. Servility is in the heart of the Italians and an acute observer like Corrado Augias explained its origins in his beautiful essay "The discomfort of freedom": the counter-reform and foreign dominations also counted for something and the absence of a state worthy of this name did the rest.
Precisely on FIRSTonline, on 5 January last Professor Elio Borgonovi ("Monti, the elections and three obstacles to overcome: populism, conformism and defeatism") wrote that among Italy's defects, conformism has a first-rate place, which is " even that of those who do not want to take sides and are waiting to get on the bandwagon of the winner”. Signs of courtship and interested approach to Grillo are certainly destined to multiply among entrepreneurs and intellectuals, in short, among the so-called Italian elite. This also happened with the League and with Berlusconi from the XNUMXs onwards and, previously with the DC, with Craxi's PSI and with the PCI in the mid-XNUMXs: there are always many who serve the winners of the moment. Right or left it doesn't matter, the important thing is to serve.
We do not discover today that our ruling class does not shine in terms of moral and intellectual stature and least of all for independence: rather than thinking on its own, it has often preferred to wag its tail behind the winners of the moment. On the other hand, the desire to liquidate the political caste is strong and in some ways understandable as long as the new advance is better than the old and we remember that Italy has not yet become an island but is an integral part of Europe to which we have to answer. Unless, for Grillo's sake, everyone decides to become poorer overnight by leaving the euro and returning to the old Liretta.
