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Alien Landing: Beppe Grillo and the Advent of Dotcom Politics
Direct democracy can no longer be thought of as something that belongs to the future.... This is the scarcely believable story of how, in just over three years, a political dotcom grew to become one of the most powerful forces in the affairs of a country of 60 million people. At the general election in Italy this year, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, which has its headquarters on a website, took a quarter of the vote - more than Silvio Berlusconi’s party.
Such is the weight of Grillo’s following in the new parliament that his movement was able to block the formation of a new government, paralyzing the politics of the nation for more than two months.
In a fast-moving narrative, John Hooper tells the story of how an unlikely partnership between an angry, exhibitionist comedian and a retiring Web consultant took Italy by storm.
Drawing on extensive interviews with Grillo and his publicity-shy co-founder, Gianroberto Casaleggio, he looks at the reasons for the Five Star Movement’s giddying rise and highlights both its revolutionary aspirations and inherent contradictions. He considers whether Grillo is - as the German magazine Der Spiegel branded him - "the most dangerous man Europe", or the pioneer of a digital transformation that will change all of our lives.
John Hooper is Italy Correspondent of the Economist and Southern Europe Editor of the Guardian. He has reported for almost 25 years from the countries of the Mediterranean. His book, The Spaniards (since revised and updated as The New Spaniards) won the Allen Lane Award for a best first work of nonfiction. Hooper is also the author of the best-selling Kindle Single Fatal Voyage, which tells the story of the wrecking of the Costa Concordia and was described in The New York Times as "equal parts thriller and elegy".
Such is the weight of Grillo’s following in the new parliament that his movement was able to block the formation of a new government, paralyzing the politics of the nation for more than two months.
In a fast-moving narrative, John Hooper tells the story of how an unlikely partnership between an angry, exhibitionist comedian and a retiring Web consultant took Italy by storm.
Drawing on extensive interviews with Grillo and his publicity-shy co-founder, Gianroberto Casaleggio, he looks at the reasons for the Five Star Movement’s giddying rise and highlights both its revolutionary aspirations and inherent contradictions. He considers whether Grillo is - as the German magazine Der Spiegel branded him - "the most dangerous man Europe", or the pioneer of a digital transformation that will change all of our lives.
John Hooper is Italy Correspondent of the Economist and Southern Europe Editor of the Guardian. He has reported for almost 25 years from the countries of the Mediterranean. His book, The Spaniards (since revised and updated as The New Spaniards) won the Allen Lane Award for a best first work of nonfiction. Hooper is also the author of the best-selling Kindle Single Fatal Voyage, which tells the story of the wrecking of the Costa Concordia and was described in The New York Times as "equal parts thriller and elegy".
Audio CD
Published July 6, 2021
About the author
John Hooper
89 books24 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
John Hooper is currently the Rome correspondent for the Economist and the Guardian. Born in 1950, Hooper was educated at St Benedict’s Abbey in London and St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. At the age of eighteen, he travelled to Biafra during the Nigerian civil war to make a television documentary. Since then, he has spent more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent, working for - among others - the Economist, the Guardian, the Observer, BBC, NBC and Reuters. For several years in London, he was a presenter of BBC World Service’s ‘Twenty Four Hours’ current affairs programme.
For three years, he covered Spain’s eventful transformation from a dictatorship into a democracy. That posting and another, from 1988 to 1994, produced two books on Spain for Penguin, The Spaniards, which won the Allen Lane award for 1987, and its successor, The New Spaniards.
In 1997, he uncovered the so-called “ship of death” migrant trafficking disaster and was a member of the award-winning Observer team that investigated its aftermath.
John Hooper is currently the Rome correspondent for the Economist and the Guardian. Born in 1950, Hooper was educated at St Benedict’s Abbey in London and St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. At the age of eighteen, he travelled to Biafra during the Nigerian civil war to make a television documentary. Since then, he has spent more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent, working for - among others - the Economist, the Guardian, the Observer, BBC, NBC and Reuters. For several years in London, he was a presenter of BBC World Service’s ‘Twenty Four Hours’ current affairs programme.
For three years, he covered Spain’s eventful transformation from a dictatorship into a democracy. That posting and another, from 1988 to 1994, produced two books on Spain for Penguin, The Spaniards, which won the Allen Lane award for 1987, and its successor, The New Spaniards.
In 1997, he uncovered the so-called “ship of death” migrant trafficking disaster and was a member of the award-winning Observer team that investigated its aftermath.
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