Berlusconi compares Grillo to Hitler

(see related stories on Berlusconi) (ANSA) - Rome, April 29 - Ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi on Tuesday compared comedian-turned-politician Beppe Grillo, the leader of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S), to Adolf Hitler and said the Italian people should fear him.
    "The Italian people should learn to be afraid of Grillo," said Berlusconi, who continues to lead his centre-right opposition Forza Italia party from outside parliament after being ejected from the Senate last year following a definitive tax-fraud conviction.
    "You can see it in the way he organises his sect, which reminds me of characters like Robespierre or Marx and Lenin," the 77-year-old billionaire told one of his Mediaset channels.
    "Grillo is the prototype of these sort of men, Hitler included". Berlusconi has started intense campaigning on television with FI trailing in third place in the polls before next month's European elections, behind Premier Matteo Renzi's centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and the M5S.
    Grillo, who often calls Berlusconi the "psycho-dwarf", hit back almost immediately.
    "Berlusconi is beyond the tomb and you are mediums (for him)," Grillo told Italian reporters, whom he says are biased towards the traditional parties. He also reiterated that the Internet-based M5S, which captured a quarter of the vote at last year's general election, is committed to destroying a political system that he blames for producing corruption and economic decline.
    "This era is over. The era of the parties is over," Grillo said at the fringes of a general meeting of troubled bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena.
    "They should all be sent packing and they know that we will win the (European) elections". Berlusconi, meanwhile, also attacked German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
    "Give us back (Helmut) Kohl," said the ex-premier, who irked Germans at the weekend by saying they denied the existence of Nazi concentration camps.