Intellectuals in Italy today

Today's post from Beppe Grillo's blog.
I post it here because there is not a specific link for everyday's post's translation, but only the general English link to his blog, which by the way is this.



"What is an intellectual in Italy today? Who still has depth of thought and ethical and moral stature to stand up as a reference point in this national whore-house? How many are there that have survived and why do they stay silent?
In the 1970s the intellectuals used to write in Il Corriere. They were present in everyday news. Montanelli, Pasolini, Buzzati, Montale, Calvino, Moravia. Perhaps they would not have liked to be defined as intellectuals, but they were head and shoulders above the others in relation to culture and often for courage. In an interview, Montanelli said that the principal requisite to be a journalist were the “cosiddetti” {euphemism for testicles}, for an intellectual the same is true. Pasolini would have torn to shreds the psycho-dwarf and his chum D'Alema in a single article. Twenty years of editorials for De Bortoli would not be enough, nor would eternity for PG Battista.
Göring, designated to be Hitler’s successor, said that every time he heard the word “intellectual” he put his hand to his pistol. In the country of the P2 and the permanent mess-up between the PDL and the PDminusL we are more civil. It’s enough to have the position of director or deputy director of a newspaper, a token position in the party, some book published by a publishing house.
The intellectuals, if they still exist, have sold their souls. They have become truffles, courtesans, laughing stocks to be exhibited, scarecrows of the regime TV News or silent shadows, university academics, public charlatans with hand-outs in the left-wing weeklies, authoritative signatures in national newspapers, the gems on the Board of Directors. The intellectual is an extinct species, buried under the tons of shit from the TV and from indifference, by the rooting about of pigs, by Italian society. They have adapted. Better to live a hundred days as a sheep than a day as a free man. The best write a column, responding to readers’ letters and launch appeals for democracy to be supported, even online. Vibrant appeals that are of no bloody use.
The modern intellectual is neither on the right or the left, his cardinal point is his wallet. His distinguishing feature is the adulation of the powerful. He loves to serve and his abilities are available to whoever appreciates them. This political class is disgusting. But anyone who has not lifted a finger for 10 years when because of their role or their intelligence, they could have done so, is even more disgusting.
Italy is in a pre-revolutionary situation. There are all the symptoms. Millions of unemployed at the gates. An abnormal public debt. State spending in a vertiginous rise. Lack of political representation for tens of millions of people. Delirium at the terminal state for Tar Head who has nothing left to lose. Absence of an Opposition. Apart from Kryptonite Di Pietro. A fragile economy. A non-existent civic sense and a disintegration of the State.
La Repubblica’s ten questions on the sex life (whatever of it that’s left) of Wild Bathrobe (Note of Andrea: still Berlusconi), is the most that the Left has managed to express in three five-year periods like an Opposition to the slime that has overwhelmed us. Berlusconi has not been asked ten thousand questions that are much more important on the mafia, the P2, on the origins of his companies. He has been allowed everything. Any conflict of interests. Every filthy law. Every convict in Parliament. With the blessing of the Left-wing intellectuals and the Catholic intellectuals. All bought and happy."