No, Beppe Grillo is not Coluche. Michel Colucci would never have argued that “AIDS is the greatest hoax of the century”, made up by the West, denying the fact that it is a transmissible virus. Neither would have claimed without any proof, that a respected Italian neurologist who won a Nobel Medicine Prize, Rita Levi Montalcini, had received her Prize by having the jury corrupted by a pharmaceutical firm. He would not have said that tests for the early diagnosis of cancer are dangerous, or that information technology is the invention of the devil. He would not have dismissed both a right-wing party run by a businessman, smooth talker and corrupt, owner of the major part of the national media, who has before dragged Italy to the bottom by leading the country, and a left-wing party, led by an honorable man but with no charisma, having an honest and lucid program.
If a quarter of Italians voted for him, this is not, of course, to support such nonsense. But just to say that they are tired of seeing the old political class refuse to make room for talented youth.
And they exist, such is the case concerning a young mayor in Florence, defeated in uncertain primaries of a left as conservative as the right. It is also because the Italians have only seen from the politics of Mario Monti the bitter pill to swallow without having had time to judge the impact over time of the few structural reforms that he has initiated.
It is also, and probably most importantly, because citizens, in Italy and elsewhere, are sick and tired of seeing politicians lack courage and not tell them the truth.
And the truth is very simple: in the world to come, which will soon reach 9 billion people, eager to learn, produce, create and consume, our old European nations will not be able to maintain their monumental standard of living but if a clear choice between two strategies is made: withdraw into city-states closed off and inward looking, while letting their environment bleed, or merge into a true European power, politically united, the size of the large nation-continents of tomorrow.
For this to happen, one needs to be aware of the fact that the necessary deleveraging has to do as much with growth as rigour. That rigour alone worsens debt; that the euro cannot be the mere pretext of an austerity that leads to nothing, but mass unemployment; that without major institutional reform, giving it the resources for growth, the entire eurozone will soon have the status of Greece, and then it will have to renegotiate with its creditors, in extremely harsh conditions.
Overall, growth requires a proactive policy that only a continent-nation or a city-state can decide. Being China or Singapore. Being Venice or the United States of Europe.
This is what this rise of uncertain populism means. It represents a call to action. If democracies do not rise to the occasion, they will be swept away by authoritarian governments, who will decide, and take at face value the proposals of Grillo and those like him.
There is no longer room for half-measures. Deceptions.
Tiny. Or huge. We must choose. And quickly.