Giuseppe Piero " Beppe" Grillo (; born 21 July 1948) is an Italian comedian, actor, blogger, and politician.
He has been involved in politics since 2009 as the co-founder (together with Gianroberto Casaleggio) of the Italian Five Star Movement political party. Grillo became one of the most prominent examples of the populist surge which arose in Europe during the 2010s. Beppe Grillo: populist who could throw Italy into turmoil at general election, The Guardian
In the 1980s he appeared in the shows Te la do io l'America (1982, four episodes) and Te lo do io il Brasile (1984, six episodes), in which he narrated his experiences of visits to the United States and Brazil. This led to his appearance as the protagonist of another show, developed especially for him, called Grillometro ( Grillometer). In 1986, he appeared in a series of prize-winning advertisements for a brand of yoghurt.
Soon afterwards, his performances began to include political satire that offended some Italian politicians. In 1986 during the Saturday night television show Fantastico 7, he attacked the Italian Socialist Party and its leader Bettino Craxi, then Italy's Prime Minister, on the occasion of his visit to the People's Republic of China (PRC). As a consequence, Grillo was effectively banished from publicly owned television.
Grillo also took aim at the Italian Socialist Party, which directly led to him having fewer television appearances after the mid-1980s. Grillo also criticized Biagio Agnes, then the director of the STET, for dishonest business practices. By the early 1990s, Grillo was known for his anti-establishment comedy as well as the denunciation of public policies. While it did give him attention and the beginning of his political base, it also directly led him to the lack of television appearances.
In 2007 he collaborated with the italian singer Giorgia for the song "Libera la mente", from her album Stonata.
Despite this exile, excerpts from Grillo's Five Star Movement political rallies are often broadcast on television, especially on political debate talk shows. On 19 May 2014, Grillo returned to Italian public television, RAI to participate in the late-night political debate talk show Porta a Porta as part of his campaign for the 2014 European Parliament election. The program attracted three million viewers. , Grillo performed on stage in Italy and abroad. His themes included energy use, political and corporate corruption, finance, freedom of speech, child labour, globalization and technology.
As of 2014, Grillo maintained a blog in Italian, English, and Japanese that is updated daily. According to Technorati, the blog ranks among the 10 most visited in the world. In 2008, The Guardian included Grillo's blog among the world's most influential. He often receives letters from prominent figures such as Antonio Di Pietro (former Italian Minister of Infrastructures), Fausto Bertinotti (former President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies), Renzo Piano, and Nobel Prize including Dario Fo, Joseph E. Stiglitz, the Dalai Lama and Muhammad Yunus. As Grillo became more and more involved in Italian politics, the use of his blog to convey a political message was accompanied by a strong emphasis on the role of the Web as the harbinger of new possibilities for direct democracy and for a fairer society, making Grillo one of the leading popularisers of digital utopianism in Italy. As of mid December 2017, the English and Japanese versions of the blog seem permanently defunct. The last entry in the English section is from November 2015, and in Japanese from October 2011. The Italian version, however, continues to be updated daily.
Grillo has spoken in support of a universal basic income on both his blog and on social media.
On 22 November 2005, Grillo bought a page in the International Herald Tribune, saying that members of the Italian Parliament ought not to represent citizens if they have been convicted of a crime, even in the first degree of the three available in the Italian system. He maintains a regularly updated list of members of the Italian Parliament who have been convicted in all three degrees on his blog. "Clean Parliament" , list of convicted felons in the Italian parliament. On 26 July 2007, Grillo was permitted to speak to the members of the European Parliament in Brussels, where he drew attention to the state of Italian politics.
According to Internet scholars Alberto Pepe and Corinna Di Gennaro, V‑day was the first political demonstration in Italy developed and promoted via the blogosphere and the social networking services.Alberto Pepe and Corinna Di Gennaro. "Political protest Italian–style: The blogosphere and mainstream media in the promotion and coverage of Beppe Grillo's V–day". First Monday. Vol. 14, Number 12, 7 December 2009. The second V-Day took place on 25 April 2008, in Turin, San Carlo Square, dedicated to the Italian press and the financial support it receives from the government. Grillo strongly criticized the Italian press for the lack of freedom, Umberto Veronesi for his support for incinerators, NATO bases in Italy, politicians (Silvio Berlusconi had recently been re-elected), and the television channel Retequattro for retaining frequencies assigned to Europa 7.[6].
In August 2008, Grillo was the subject of a report on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's international affairs program Foreign Correspondent. Entitled "The Clown Prince", the report profiled Grillo's life, political activism, the V‑Day campaign and use of the internet as a political tool.
At the 2013 general election the M5S won 25.5% of votes, the second most popular one for the Chamber of Deputies, but obtained just 109 deputies out of 630 due to an electoral system which favoured parties running in coalition. In the European Parliament the M5S is part of the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group.
In 2014, Grillo announced that he was aiming to get four million signatures to support his attempts to get a referendum on Italy's membership of the Eurozone. He collected around 200,000 signatures while the minimum is 500,000 but he announced that his project was going on despite the failure.
In June 2018, Grillo published a post on his blog in which he called for selecting the members of the Italian Senate through sortition, and possibly eventually replacing elections with sortition altogether.
In 2003, he settled a libel suit for defamation filed against him by Rita Levi-Montalcini. During a show, Beppe Grillo called the 94-year-old winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and Italian Senator for Life (2001–2012) an "old whore".
When Italian judges were investigating the Parmalat scandal, which was then the world's largest corporate bankruptcy scandal, Grillo was called to testify because he had anticipated the imminent collapse of the dairy conglomerate in one of his shows. When the judges asked how he had been able to discover that, he said that Parmalat's financial holes were so evident that anybody who had enough ability to see them would see them, since the corporate accounting was easily accessible. Grillo testifies on Parmalat crack: "I brought also Fiat and Telecom [Italia]", from La Repubblica, 16 January 2004
In 2012 Grillo was convicted of having defamed Fininvest in an article published in 2004 in the Italian magazine Internazionale. The compensation, equal to 50,000 euros, in addition to the costs of the proceedings, was established by the judges of the first section of the court of appeal of the court of Rome.
In September 2013 he was sentenced for defaming the former mayor of Asti and parliamentary for Forza Italia, Giorgio Galvagno. In 2003, Grillo had called Galvagno "a briber" during a performance at the Teatro Alfieri in Asti. Grillo had to pay Galvagno 25,000 euros and interest from 2003 as compensation for damages, plus compensation for legal costs.
On 12 December 2013 the Tribunal of Genoa sentenced Grillo in the first instance for defamation against Antonio Misiani, treasurer of the Democratic Party. In May 2012, Grillo published on the front page of his blog a mosaic of pictures with photographs of the PdL (Rocco Crimi), PD (Antonio Misiani) and UDC (Giuseppe Naro) administrators, along with those of former Lega Nord (Francesco Belsito) and The Daisy (Luigi Lusi). The judge has provisionally recognized a compensation for Misiani and a compensation for the Democratic Party of 5000 euros.
On 14 September 2015 he was convicted by the tribunal of Ascoli Piceno for aggravated defamation against Franco Battaglia, professor at the University of Modena, to a term of imprisonment with suspended sentence, €1,250 fine and a provisional fee of €50,000 to the offender. In that occasion Grillo compared himself to Nelson Mandela and Sandro Pertini.
On 31 March 2017 Grillo was formally investigated along with Alessandro Di Battista for defamation following a police report filed by Marika Cassimatis, former candidate mayor of the M5S in Genoa.
On 11 July 2017 Grillo was convicted at the third and higher judgement level by the tribunal of Ancona to a payment of 6,000 euros, a provisional amount of 50,000 euros and payment of legal fees, raised to 12,000 euros for defamation against Professor Franco Battaglia.
Over the years, Grillo has accumulated a number of fines and/or convictions for building abuse and other crimes, such as attempted instigation to disobedience by inviting police officers to stop protecting politicians.
Grillo was also criticized for having taken advantage of the Condono Tombale, a tax amnesty granted by the first Berlusconi government in 2001, which Grillo had publicly opposed. "Grillo, the 'Great Moralist' seduced by the fiscal amnesty", from Il Giornale, 18 November 2005. Note that Il Giornale is owned by Silvio Berlusconi's brother, Paolo Berlusconi. Grillo said during the V‑Day demonstration that he had personally benefited by only €500.
Grillo has proposed that members of the Italian Parliament who have a criminal record should be banned from public office. Because Grillo was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter caused by a car accident, he cannot run for public office as a member of his own party, which prohibits those who have a criminal record from being candidates. He says he is not interested in becoming a member of the Italian Parliament. Despite this, in July 2009 he announced his intention to present himself as a candidate for the PD's primary elections, which does not imply automatic presence in the Italian parliament. He also proposed that MPs should be limited to two government terms of office, after which they may not stand again.
Grillo is also criticized as being a demagogue who attacks politicians on superficial issues and their private lives, while being unable to provide a valid alternative. For example, stand-up comedian Daniele Luttazzi criticized him in 2007 in an open letter published on the website of the news magazine MicroMega. Luttazzi accused Grillo of being a "demagogue" and a "populist", suggesting Grillo should choose between satire and politics. Daniele Luttazzi talks about Beppe Grillo on Micromega, from Il Corriere della Sera, 13 September 2007.
In March 2013 a commentary piece in Der Spiegel called Grillo "The most dangerous man in Europe", described his rhetoric as anti-democratic, said he derived his energy from resentment, and cited the British writer Nicholas Burgess Farrell who has drawn parallels between Grillo and Benito Mussolini.Jan Fleischhauer, "Green Fascism: Beppe Grillo of Italy Is the Most Dangerous Man in Europe" – Spiegel Online (15 March 2013). Retrieved 24 August 2013.
In 2008, Grillo was featured in the documentary The Beppe Grillo Story, produced by Banyak Films for Al Jazeera English. He also appeared in archive footage in the 2017 movie Call Me by Your Name.
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