The anti-establishment M5S leader,
Beppe Grillo, outraged Italy's Jewish community Monday with a
blog poem entitled "if this is a country" - a play on Holocaust
survivor Primo Levis's classic If This Is A Man - in which he
called President Giorgio Napolitano "a frightened old buffer"
who "ignores the Constitution".
Former comedian Grillo, whose movement captured a fourth
of the vote at last year's general electiion, decried Italy as a
country in the hands of the mafia and the now-disbanded
subversive P2 masonic lodge, which he said had chosen a leader
who was "a vulgar liar," and a "provincial buffoon," referring
to Premier Matteo Renzi, the Democratic Party (PD) leader and
former mayor of Florence.
The ditty's title, inspired by Jewish-Italian writer Primo
Levi's masterpiece memoir about the Auschwitz Nazi death camp,
was surmounted by a copy of the famous photo of the gates of
Auschwitz with the phrase "P2 Macht Frei" superimposed instead
of the original Nazi slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei," (Work makes you
free).
The secret Propaganda Due (P2) Masonic lodge was banned as
a threat to an open society after a membership list was
discovered by magistrates in 1982 containing names of nearly
1000 Italian politicians, generals, police officers,
journalists, judges and businessmen.
Italian Jewish Communities President Renzo Gattegna slammed
Grillo's outburst as an "infamous provocation" and "an obscenity
about which one cannot be silent".
The long blog poem was intended to "arouse the lowest
anti-semitic feelings to take advantage of popular discontent
intensifying at this time of economic crisis," said Gattegna.
"This is a criminal profanation of the value of the Memory
of millions of innocent victims that offends all Italy".
Grillo has repeatedly and vainly tried to have Napolitano
impeached for allegedly overstepping the limited scope of his
Constitutionally mandated powers.
He has slammed Renzi for allegedly promising sweeping
changes without delivering, despite the PD leader's only being
in office two months, and has likened him in this to former
centre-right premier Silvio Berlusconi.
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