In the country that could make or break the future of the euro with its next election, he described Germany and France as European paymasters who would bleed Italy dry. He called for a referendum on the euro and said Rome should follow in the footsteps of Argentina and Ecuador by suspending payments on the national debt. He called Mario Monti — Italy’s interim prime minister hailed by European leaders for pushing painful economic reforms on a reluctant nation — the “Rigor Monti,” a pun on rigor mortis, that is turning Italy into a corpse.
Last year, opinion polls showed support for Grillo’s movement hovering below 4 percent. But as he fills the political vacuum here, more recent surveys suggest that almost one in five Italians now back it, placing his movement only single digits behind the nation’s two leading parties in popularity. He is touting his Italy-first revolution from open piazzas across the nation, drawing inevitable comparisons to Benito Mussolini. But Grillo, whose left-leaning anti-corruption message more closely mirrors that of American liberal Michael Moore, says those who accuse him of echoing Il Duce are missing the point.
“They are calling me a populist, calling us Nazis, calling me Hitler, but they do not understand,” he said in an interview. “What is happening is that our movement is filling a similar space as the Nazis did in Germany or [nationalist Marine] Le Pen has in France. But we are nothing like them. We are moderate, beautiful people, and we are the only thing left standing between Italy and the real extremists.”
In populist company
Mired in debt, locked in a cycle of austerity and confronting a crisis of leadership, parts of Europe are facing a period of economic and political upheaval that some liken to the disenchantment of the 1930s, when the Nazis rose to power. Across the region, unconventional and unpredictable political forces are taking root. On the streets of broken Greece, the right-wing pseudo-militias of the Golden Dawn organization are menacing immigrants, racial minorities and political opponents. In Austria, the 80-year-old anti-euro billionaire Frank Stronach has 10 percent support in the polls despite not even having launched an official party. Over the past year in France and Finland, nationalists have posted their strongest election results ever.
But here in Italy, Grillo’s core followers are anything but a mob of Il Duce-loving extremists. Rather, his movement began in the mid-2000s as a group of netizens linked by social media and united by a shared disgust with Italian political elites, including chauffeur-driven lawmakers with criminal records and CEO-level compensation. Nevertheless, pundits see his rise as underscoring the political uncertainty in Italy that is quickly becoming one of the biggest wild cards of the European debt crisis.
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