From an Ordinary Man the seed of anti-politic

Published: 2008 - February/March, Dossier

Anti-politic feeling is not born with Beppe Grillo, with the Lega, with the Veneto mayors with drifters’ ordinances or with the entry on the political scene of Berlusconi and the party-enterprise. The seed of dissent against parties and centralized power comes from much, but much farther. The first warnings of the phenomena were felt by the editorial and political experience of Guglielmo Giannini, founder in December 1944 of the weekly magazine “the ordinary man”, through which the Neapolitan comedy writer and journalist gave finally voice to the ordinary every day man. Symbolic was the cover, which depicted a little man flattened by a press which made so many little coins squirt out of his pockets.   A too evident metaphor of an abusing State, a State which sucks life-lymph from the poor tax payer.
The editorial success of the Giannini weekly magazine is explained through the examples coming from the civilized society. In an Italy, coming out of the hashes of a world conflict, which had abased and humiliated it before the international system , after the experience of the fascist dictatorship period  lasted two decades and rifts within the factions pro and against the Republic, Giannini seized the urgency of being the echo of the general widespread dissatisfaction. His weekly paper could have become the loud-speaker of the Country silent majority, allowing the belly of Italy to express all of its aching.  For the Director of “The Ordinary Man”, the paper represented something much bigger than that of a simple editorial objective; it was above all a political tool. From Rome, where the editorial head office of “L’uomo Qualunque”, Ordinary Man, was located, the saturating enrollment campaign started, which brought to the establishment of the nation’s wide politically indifferent persons clubs.  The director of the  ‘L’Uomo Qualunque’ had initially attempted to involve in the political project even the liberal free-thinker Benedetto Croce, a giant of the Italian idealism and theoretician of the “absolute historicisms”, but the refusal by the philosopher prompted Giannini to move  ahead autonomously.
The word  of the Ordinary Man was masterfully summarized by the Neapolitan journalist in a sentence, which today would have grass-root movement activists  and Grillo followers have a laugh: “There isn’t and cannot exist mass politic”.   A slogan which insured for the father-founder of an Ordinary Man significant sales for the weekly paper, which, from the 25 thousands copies printed with the first issue, came close to 850 thousands copies in May 1945. After earning for himself a place in the limelight of the journalist and editorial panorama, Giannini did not waste anytime and plunged headlong in drawing the manifesto of his party. The first congress of “Front of the Ordinary Man” was held in Rome in February 1946. At the base of the politically indifferent person manifesto, there was, besides the will of finally give voice to any Mr. Smith, also the desire of erecting a wall of dissatisfaction against the republic of the parties and growing nationalizations. Antifascist and even anti-communist, after the attempt of getting close to the Christian Democratic Party of Alcide De Gasperi in 1947, the Front of   the Ordinary Man  was dispersed and merged with the liberal party, partly in the growing C.D. party and part in the Social Movement, which was trying to give consistency to the Right.   Around the new paper came also the business world, the low and middle class, layers of sub-proletarians united by the anti-Communism, fears of subversions, and  need for order and efficient governments – subjects handled and defended by the Ordinary Man – and even by Confindustria, whcih financed it in 1947.  
The political manifesto of the ‘Fronte dell’Uomo Qualunque’, read in light of the current events, has some embarrassing similarities with what is being preached by Beppe Grillo up to Michael Moore. Giannini had laid the bases for building a political party, or possibly a movement, which would conceive a state structure not of political nature, but simply administrative role, and without any ideological base. A technical Statehood which, by sheer chance, would have the function of organizer of a crowd and not of a nation. The square, populism without mediation, government extending horizontally and not vertically without representations   or filters, was also for the Ordinary Man an almost dogmatic creed. 
It was Giannini opinion that to govern was sufficient “a good accountant who would take on the mandate on January 1 and leave on December 31. And not reelectable for any reasons”. In short, a good technician who would draw-up an economic plan, today we would say a financial law, without too many quibbles and mediations and have it approved in Parliament without too many dragging.
Reading Giannini again today is at least useful to comprehend that certain ingenious uproars, although accompanied by ready circulating technological instruments, such as Internet and blog, are not particularly original, if nothing else for their content. 
Even for Giannini the State had to be less invasive and present, as much as possible, in the society. Economy had to be left totally to privates in a truly exclusive liberal system. If this had not occurred, according to the ideologist of the Ordinary Man, the system would have risked of donning again the clothes of the ethical State and, according to Giannini, this would have generated the oppression of the individual free-thinking, forced to abdicate to a totalitarian vision of the centralized organization. From the thinking of the Ordinary Man, the term “political indifference” was born, and then remained as political term with obvious negative meaning. The “political indifference” waved in squares and by semi-clandestine blog defines it as mistrusting attitudes toward democratic institutions, of suspicions and hostility against politic and parties system, of indifference to general interest, which are translated in simplistic and basically conservative opinions about the State and government problems.
Truthfully, the movement led by Giannini, rode the general dissatisfaction that spread throughout Italy after the War and was skillfully fuelled by a reshuffling Right and by a Left looking for seats in the Parliament. At that time, in the core of the pleading, there was also a strong sentiment of contempt for the party system, defined today as “party-domination”, faulted with the political distancing from the real problems of the people. The peculiarly started Ordinary Man   would have been able, instead, according to the proclamations by its founder, fill this gap or absence.  The Front of the Ordinary Man did not last long, three years of fire culminating with the triumph of the Christian Democratic party, which dominated from the benches of Montecitorio with all its mighty party apparatuses and ruling groups. The White Whale governed Italy for over forty years. A sign that even the anti-politic can last the time of a square protest, capable certainly to wake up the sleeping politic, but not meeting the real needs of the citizens.   Read history to comprehend the present. We should do it more often.