September 2008: Beppe Grillo's Blog

The Blog of the Month for September is Beppe Grillo's blog. The Italian comic-activist is a huge star in his own country. He deals with financial scandal and political corruption, which makes him a sort of continental Mark Thomas. Given the recent political history of his native land, Signor Grillo is unlikely to run out of material any time soon.

But Grillo isn't just playing this for laughs. Like Thomas, he is an angry man. He's also very serious about wanting to change things. On September 8 2007 he organised V Day, (V being shorthand for an Italian curse word. In English we would have called it F Day.) V Day was a country wide protest and the start of a popular movement to resist the culture of patronage and venality that has blackened the name of Italian politics for decades. Grillo organised a petition of over 250,000 signatures to promote the idea of laws to clean up politics. He wants to see the imposition of fixed term limits for senators and the expulsion from parliament of politicians with criminal records. Young activists around the country are now beginning to follow his lead and are campaigning for changes.

Grillo's blog, available in Italian, English and Japanese, is the most popular in Italy and is, as I write at Number 19 in Technorati's list of the most popular blogs in the world. There is all sorts of impassioned invective here on topics from economics to health and technology. And it's not all from Grillo. Journalists, activists, citizens and politicians have all contributed. Some of the blog is difficult to follow, unless you happen to be very clued up on the players and events in Italian politics. And some of the language seems to be badly translated, although that does add to the appealing idiosyncrasy of it all.

If you believe that leaders are becoming less and less accountable then this blog will be of interest to you. If you are concerned that ‘democratic capitalism' in its current Orwellian form is robbing us of our souls than take a look. This kind of atomblast of intelligent rage, aimed at those who appear to be interested in little but the preservation of their own position, is inspiring.