Conte archives the Grillino totem: “One is worth one is the wrong message”. And he receives the applause of the Lombard 5S assembly

At the end of perhaps the most famous slogan of the 5 Star Movement since its foundation, that isone is worth one, only the sensation of a great misunderstanding, of a great lightness or collective illusion will remain. This is demonstrated by the applause that the Lombard regional assembly of the M5S, more than 500 people gathered in Milan, gave to Giuseppe Conte in a passage from his speech today: “This thing we said in the past, ‘one is worth one’, does not mean that if you have to assign such a complicated and public task, anyone can do it; this is the wrong message. ‘One is worth one ‘ means that ours must be a community in which everyone must be able to count.”

Conte even downgraded it to ‘this thing’. But who remembers the anthem of the M5S, the one of meetups and Vaffa-day? “Everyone is worth one, everyone is worth one, everyone is worth one – They are worth, they are worth one – We are not a party, we are not a caste – We are citizens, period – There is a Movement without leaders or masters – you can find it under the heading not associations – a network of people in direct connection – we are the people of the web live with webcams”. Written and published in 2010, for many years the rap song was blasted at full volume before every rally. The anonymous mass of citizens angry against the system elected municipal and regional councilors, deputies and senators: they called themselves ‘spokesmen’ for that, they were only bearers of a voice, of a will decided through the network.

Those were incredible times when on the blog of Beppe Grillo the practical application of the concept was really theorized, whereby the elected person did not have to ask himself too many questions, nor ask them to his own conscience, but follow the instructions of the activists received via the internet when faced with each choice or assembly vote. “One is worth one when he is aware that the unique opportunity that has been offered to him is not for his merits, but to serve a country in need of gas and its desperate citizens. When instead he believes he has become honorable thanks to who knows what fortunes, for who knows what divine investitures, and uses the project of millions of Italians to promote himself and secure a place in the sun, then he is someone who is worth nothing at all”, wrote Grillo in 2013 in the face of a very first case of rebellion against the idea of being a kind of automaton, that of Adele Gambaro.

After that, Conte’s words do not represent the destruction of a totem, that had already been destroyed with new statutes with the designation of absolute leaders, exceptions and counter-exemptions, plebiscite votes and absolute rules bent to contingency and the interests of the ruling group of the moment. Thus, even on the level of public discourse, year after year we have moved away from the paroxysm of an impossible direct democracy. Like when Luigi Di Maioformer dominus of the 5 Stars, as Foreign Minister he changed it to “one is worth one but one is not worth the other”, a concept later reiterated by definitively removing one is worth one when it was time to make the split and found Insieme per the future in 2022. “I’ve never particularly appreciated that rule”, she said quite recklessly that day Carla Ruoccoone of the five members of the Movement’s directorate appointed shortly after the death of Gianroberto Casaleggio, when at least formally the religion had not been abjured. On a practical level, however, yes: Grillo and Casaleggio were more equal than the others, and Ruocco too (along with Di Maio, Alessandro Di Battista, Roberto Fico e Carlo Sibiliathe five of that directory) was slightly more so.

Three years ago Conte, who had just been given the task of giving a new future to the faded 5 Star Movement by the colonels of the Movement, reiterated that the polar star remained the same, one is worth one: “It is the foundation of democracy, it is the goal of suffrage universal”. Even if “when it comes to appointing the people’s representative in a position of public importance, we need above all honest people but also people with specific skills and, I add, capable”. Nothing too different from the concept expressed today; the difference, however, lies in the reaction of the so-called base, today fully aware that although seductive the claim foundation, which allowed a nobody without any previous experience in politics to be catapulted into Parliament, was precisely a great simplification. Or a chimera, who knows, and it took almost 15 years to admit it so blatantly to oneself.