Why Financial Times is unfit to read Italy

He had to strike, with his stupid vulgarity, the nerve of your political correctness, namely he had to insult the muslim Mayor of London, so that you, dear colleagues at the Financial Times, would finally realize who Beppe Grillo really is. We know him well. In May 2011, during a rally in Bologna, he addressed Nichi Vendola, an Italian gay politician, in the following way: “At salut, buson!”, which in Emilian dialect means more of less – pardon – “Cheers, faggot!”. In January 2015 you, our dear British friends, were writing that the “Five Star Movement comes of age”. In other words while your James Politi was presenting a toned down article dedicated to this comedian who is no longer funny, Grillo had just concluded yet another press conference where he addressed Italian journalists in these terms: “Arse lickers”, “lackeys”, “how are you not disgusted with yourselves?”.

Three years ago, in Sicily, he had a Rai News cameraman pushed off the stage. More recently, he accused newspapers of having murdered Gianroberto Casaleggio. So while the Economist was busy endorsing Virginia Raggi, Grillo’s candidate for Mayor of Rome, explaining that the Five Star Movement was “smartening up”, you all, our dear British colleagues, were turning a blind eye to Grillo’s comments on the economic policy for bringing Italy out of the crisis (“Let’s do like Argentina!”), or those on Iran, the country where “women are at the center of the family”. Notwithstanding the Bin Laden misunderstandings (“my Iranian father-in-law explained to me that the translations were not accurate”), or the dangerous Jewish lobby that controls knowledge. Dear friends at the Financial Times, it seems like to you he can say whatever he wants. But if he touches on Islam he “is losing his instinct for what is funny and what is foolish”. Please.