GENOA, Italy — With Italy’s economy stuck in recession and politicians discredited by scandal, a bushy-haired comedian with a passion for the environment and a fondness for expletives is shaking up the country.

Still reeling from his Five Star Movement’s shock success in local elections last weekend when it won 9 percent in the communes it contended, Beppe Grillo pulled no punches in a rare interview granted to AFP at his villa in Genoa.

He dismissed Prime Minister Mario Monti as a “coup leader” and the judgment of financial markets as “bollocks.” President Giorgio Napolitano, he said, was a “party hack” who costs taxpayers 240 million euros ($311 million) a year.

Grillo’s anti-party rhetoric and attention to local issues like public transport and greener cities have drawn crowds and provoked warnings from politicians and even the Catholic Church about the dangers of populism.

Scores of young candidates from his Five Star Movement — nicknamed “Grillini” or “Little Crickets” — have been elected as local councillors, promising a mix of transparency, integrity and eco-friendly policies.

Much of the 63-year-old’s success is down to his ability to harness the power of social networks, and his blog is the most widely read in Italy. His Facebook fan page has 831,656 “likes” and he has 543,000 followers on Twitter.

Speaking to Grillo is like listening to a stream of consciousness peppered with youthful idealism and earthy common sense, but he also has a vindictive streak against media and politicians who for years dismissed him as a sideshow.

“I’m saving the parties’ asses,” a breathless Grillo exclaimed, gesticulating in an open-necked white shirt and cream trousers on a wicker chair in a garden overlooking the Mediterranean on a hillside above Genoa.

“There’s a void and instead of filling it with Nazism, fascism, xenophobia, fear of the other, we’re filling it with hyper-democracy,” he said.

On a European level, he said, he feels closest to the “Pirate” pro-Internet freedom parties that have won popularity in Germany, Austria and Sweden.

His economic rhetoric has been criticized for being on the fringes of the political spectrum and he has called for a debate on whether Italy should pull out of the euro, pointing to the sacrifices forced on it by membership.

The showbiz millionaire funds much of the movement out of his own pocket and has refused public subsidies, which have caused havoc for mainstream parties with investigations into taxpayer money used to fund lavish lifestyles.

Grillo’s movement now has a small-town mayor and one of its candidates is in a run-off vote later this month to lead the city of Parma. The Five Star Movement has a good chance of entering parliament in a 2013 general election.

But the prospect of entering national politics has Grillo concerned.
“We’ll keep one leg on the pavement, in touch with the people. We were born on market stalls and the Internet,” he said, defensively.

He has already been approached by mainstream political parties looking for alliances and even former premier Silvio Berlusconi — who Grillo refers to disparagingly as “a corpse” — has made overtures.

He excludes personal ambitions to political office, arguing that it would break a rule advocated by his own movement about not allowing anyone with a criminal record to enter parliament since he has a prior conviction. — AFP