people began to think that we had entered a phase in which the power
war was such that the communication tools were no longer adequate
to act on this terrain. In 2004, there was a final meeting in Senigallia,
in the studio of a Telestreet closed by the police, etc., and a split in the
Telestreet circuit occurred since a certain number of Telestreets, such as
the one in which I was participating, proposed to seek out relations
with local institutions, with the township of Bologna or different
townships in Tuscany, that had shown themselves able to obtain
financing. The other Telestreets, in Rome for example, more closely
linked to Indimedia, rejected this institutional manoeuvre. And at that
point I was allied to the first group, but today I realize that the second
one was right because, well, I spent a year waiting for the available
funding to appear, and in reality, the imbecility of this ruling class on
the Italian Left is such that they had said ‘Great idea’, but never let it
be realized. I would like to see when there will be a Centre-Left govern-
ment, if they will be able to deal with the fact that Berlusconi will still
dispose of six television networks, because how can we think of doing
the same epuration of the RAI that he did when he came to power? No,
I do not think it will be possible.^9GM:Neither do I. They did not have this willpower.Bifo:No, and in any case, the power that Berlusconi accumulated in
the communication field is not solely the power of organizing the tele-
vision programmes, but also the power of advertising contracts, and
the corruption of the leadership structure in the entire communication
system. So, strengthening the Telestreet circuit would also serve, I
think, the Centre-Left, but as usual, this was not understood, and lately
the Telestreet circuit has been in the process of shutting down. But it
may be redeveloped later and in any case, it was an important experi-
ment, a liberatory one on the political and cultural levels, and also on
the technological level since there were thousands of persons who
learned how to do television, to raise an antenna, to do editing, and
really learned the spirit of televisual communication.GM:Which does not necessarily need to be centralized since it can be taken
in hand ...Bifo:Correct. However, Autonomedia is publishing a book dedicated
to the Telestreet experience, the title of which should be Medio-
democracy. I read its proofs recently.Interview with Franco Berardi (Bifo) 1539780230_221192_14_inte.pdf 10/3/08 11:37 AM Page 153