The appointment of Luca Bergamo as deputy mayor of Rome poses, in my opinion, a political and cultural problem of a certain importance. Luca Bergamo, in fact, is not a technician like Colomban, Montanari or the former budget councilor Minenna, all of whom have left the Casaleggio & Associati team and are loaned to the Municipalities to manage specific problems (environment, transport, budget). And he is not even a computer engineer, like those who in significant numbers (coincidentally) were parachuted via the web into Parliament. Luca Bergamo is a "man of culture", who cannot fail to know who Grillo is and what danger he and his movement represent for Italian democracy. Technicians can perhaps be forgiven for such blindness, but not men of culture and politicians.
Massimo Cacciari, in his eagerness to stand out, went so far as to say that "... fortunately there is Grillo, who at least acts as a barrier to the worst". But Grillo will never be able to act as a barrier to the worst for the simple reason that he is the worst. If even men of culture, greats like Cacciari or less greats like Bergamo, give up building a dam, then there really is no hope!
The 5 Star Movement represents a far greater danger for Italy than the Front Nationale represents for France. Grillo is not a nationalist (he certainly doesn't like Italy), but he is a populist. He does not hate the "foreigner". He hates politics, institutions and democracy! For the 5 stars, politics is a criminal activity, parties are criminal associations and politicians are corrupt. “Everyone to Jail!” cried the legendary fascist Bracardi in the program of Arbore and Buoncompagni, and so says Grillo today. Institutions must be opened like "cans of tuna" (again Grillo) and politicians brought to justice. Finally, democracy must work, like a Web site. This is Grillo's program and the 5 stars. It can be that technicians, even capable ones, don't understand it. After all, Maurizio Ferraris, in his recent essay on Imbecility, when asked whether an intelligent person can also be an imbecile, replies, with a wealth of examples, that, "Yes, he can." But, for a man of culture this is not permissible. His duty is to understand the true nature of a movement of this kind and to signal its danger, as the canaries did in the coal mines. The same goes for politicians. No apologies. Facilitating the rise of such a movement is an unamenable crime for a politician, whatever kind of face he is thought to have. (Jackets versus Hope).
The road to fascism was also paved by willing people of this type, both intellectuals and politicians. Not all though. In 21 Gramsci wrote, with words that sound very topical: "Fascism presented itself as the anti-party, it opened its doors to all citizens, it gave way to an uncomposed multitude to cover with a veneer of vague political ideals and nebulous the wild overflowing of passions, hatreds, desires. Fascism has thus become a custom, it has identified itself with the anti-social psychology of some strata of the Italian people. And Piero Gobetti, in '22, in his early twenties, in his "In Praise of the Guillotine", wrote perhaps the most terrible invective against these willing people whom he wished to truly experience, after having invoked it, the iron hand of the fascist dictatorship.
Do I exaggerate the danger of 5 stars? I do not believe. Italy is not Germany. Germany has mourned: that is, she has expiated her faults and has been able to create sensors and antibodies capable of reacting to the first manifestation of phenomena of this type. You did so also because (rightly) the German people were not considered (and did not consider themselves) a victim of Nazism, but the first responsible for its rise. In Italy things went differently. The terrible civil war and the struggle for liberation have allowed Italians to be able to consider themselves victims of Fascism and not the main responsible for its rise, and this has prevented a real elaboration of mourning and a truthful analysis of the origins of that regime. (E. Galli della Loggia). This is also why we find it difficult to grasp in time the ferments from which authoritarian tendencies can arise. To this we must then add another thing, which is really hard and difficult to say but which is no less true for this, and that is that this type of phenomena, which can then lead to anti-democratic adventures, mainly originate on the left because it is on the left that discontent coagulates, that the will to overthrow the existing state of things is manifested, that antagonism and subversivism originate, that the existing order is rejected, that cultural values and movements are created that break with the presumed mediocrity of bourgeois ideals and behaviors.
Men like Gramsci, Turati and Gobetti were well aware of this and they fought rigorously against these tendencies. Today the front is a little unguarded. There are no more giants, but that doesn't mean we have to behave as if we were dwarfs. I would therefore like to say to Luca Bergamo: no, dear Bergamo, being deputy mayor in a council directed by Casaleggio & Associati (a real humiliation for Rome), with councilors on loan from Milan, Verona and Genoa cannot be considered, as you said, an honor. Instead, it should be considered a fault.
