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The Five Star Movement

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Abstract

This chapter takes a closer look at the story behind the Five Star Movement. It looks at its roots, in 2005, its relation with its then main leader, Beppe Grillo; its transformation from civil society to political society; two of its defining campaigns in 2005 and 2007 that lay the ground for the birth of the movement; and at its electoral successes. In conclusion, the chapter suggests that the Movement, contrary to its original promise, to give democracy back to the people, it has created a perfect model to achieve the opposite: a crowd-pleasing plebiscitarian system of governance potentially exploitable by the few against the will and interest of the many.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Grasso 2008, 467–68.

  2. 2.

    For a transcript of that night’s events, see: Grasso 2008, 462. For the video of Grillo’s joke see: oxo88/YouTube 2007.

  3. 3.

    Grillo 2005a; 2005b. NB: All the quotations from Beppegrillo.it and other Italian sources are in Italian in the original text, and, unless otherwise specified, the translation is mine.

  4. 4.

    Natale and Ballatore 2014.

  5. 5.

    Amadori and Ferraris 2016.

  6. 6.

    La Repubblica 2006; Bologna et al. 2018.

  7. 7.

    Grillo 2005i.

  8. 8.

    NB: Following up a series of internal disputes for the leadership of the Five Star Movement, in 2018, Grillo and the Movement agreed to separate the M5S from Beppegrillo.it Between the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, the site underwent a major restructuring and restyling and though the majority of the blog’s archive discussed in this book is still available, the comments are not. However, a copy of the old site can still be found via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine: https://bit.ly/2ANsExu.

  9. 9.

    In August 2007, when I conducted the final survey, the blog’s post were archived according to ten topic categories: Citizen Primaries, Ecology, Economics, Energy, Health/Medicine, Information, Politics; Technology/Internet; Transport/Getting About; Wailing Wall. See: Navarria 2009.

  10. 10.

    Grillo 2006c.

  11. 11.

    Grillo 2005f; 2005g.

  12. 12.

    Source: Meetup.com.

  13. 13.

    Personal communication with Ethel Chiodelli, Organiser of the London Beppe Grillo Meetup Group, 10 October 2007.

  14. 14.

    Arosio et al. 2013.

  15. 15.

    Grillo 2006a.

  16. 16.

    The video of La Settimana n. 48 is actually the third video uploaded under the account of StaffGrillo; however, the first two were videos of Grillo’s performance in theatre. La Settimana n. 48 was the first video directly related to the topics discussed in the pages of the blog. See: Grillo 2006d—YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=StaffGrillo.

  17. 17.

    The comment is dated: 29 November 2005, 15:39. See: Grillo 2005h.

  18. 18.

    Comment posted by Viviana Viva, 13 September 2007, 18:05. Grillo 2007b.

  19. 19.

    Grillo 2005c.

  20. 20.

    Gomez and Travaglio 2006.

  21. 21.

    The Italian Parliament is divided into two Chambers; the Chamber of Deputies has 630 members and the Senate 315.

  22. 22.

    Gomez, Lillo, and Travaglio 2008.

  23. 23.

    Grillo 2005e.

  24. 24.

    Grillo 2006b.

  25. 25.

    Grillo 2005d; 2005e.

  26. 26.

    See Comments in Grillo 2005h.

  27. 27.

    As Grillo himself ironically put it during his appearance at a rally in Piazza Maggiore in Bologna, the day was chosen because it is ‘when [the] King of Italy left his people adrift; since that day nothing has really changed […] People, given the present-day state of things of our country, we better laugh’. ACUstaff/YouTube 2007. See also: Grillo 2007a.

  28. 28.

    The V-Day web page with links to various sources is only available at Archive.org. See: https://bit.ly/2HnEYdI.

  29. 29.

    Povoledo 2007.

  30. 30.

    On the issue of plebiscitarianism, Urbinati notes an important overlap between the term ‘populism’ and ‘plebiscitarianism’. The two phenomena ‘overlap in scourging intermediary institutions like political parties and parliaments and in promoting personalistic forms of representation and the call for strong executive power’. In this contest leaders make ‘public opinion a game of words and images that transforms politics in a process of verticalization, all the while claiming they intend to bring politics to people and people to politics’. Urbinati 2014, 7.

  31. 31.

    Povoledo 2007; Corriere Della Sera 2007.

  32. 32.

    The Italian term qualunquismo (which derives from Giannini’s party name and used derogatively) cannot really be translated in English. Generally speaking, the term refers to a cynical approach towards politics and political leadership as potentially dangerous for the stability of the life of the common man. For a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of qualunquismo and the history of Giannini’s movement see: Giannini et al. 2002; and Setta 1975; in english see also: Corduwener 2017.

  33. 33.

    Eugenio Scalfari 2007.

  34. 34.

    Arendt 1958, 7.

  35. 35.

    Another V-Day, on April 25, 2008, was among the blog’s most successful campaigns . This time the V-Day was about freedom of information, that is freedom from political influence. Using the same playbook they had used one year earlier, Grillo and his followers this time tried to collect enough signatures to propose three referenda to reform financing and political influence of the media in Italy. Though Grillo claimed to have collected more than 1.3 million signatures (500,000 were needed for each proposal to be legally binding), the referenda were never held because the Courts found procedural errors in the collection of signatures. Grillo 2008b; 2008c; La Repubblica 2008; Corriere Della Sera 2008.

  36. 36.

    Grillo 2007c; 2008a.

  37. 37.

    Ministero dell’Interno 2008.

  38. 38.

    Sonia Alfano and the magistrate Luigi De Magistris, candidates in the lists of Italia dei Valori (the party of Antonio Di Pietro, the former Public Prosecutor of the Clean Hands scandal and then a favourite of Grillo’s blog) were both elected.

  39. 39.

    All data about the 2008 and 2009 elections retrieved from the Italian Interior Minister historical archive: https://elezionistorico.interno.gov.it.

  40. 40.

    Rizzo and Stella 2010.

  41. 41.

    Mov5StelleTo/Youtube 2012.

  42. 42.

    Tormey 2015.

  43. 43.

    The original link was http://www.beppegrillo.it/movimento (no longer working). Grillo 2009b.

  44. 44.

    Grillo 2009c.

  45. 45.

    Pallante 2009; Petrella 2009; Incerti 2009; Gotta 2009; Grillo 2009a.

  46. 46.

    Pedrazzani and Pinton 2015, 74–75.

  47. 47.

    The 2013 campaign was not only about Internet. Grillo’s appeal and showmanship, in fact, were key factors in leading the movement to success. During the months of the campaign, as part of his vastly popular ‘Tsunami Tour’, Grillo visited more than 100 cities to support the M5S’s candidates.

  48. 48.

    See: Garzia 2013, 1100–1102.

  49. 49.

    Passarelli and Tuorto 2018; For the concept of Critical Citizen see: Norris 1999.

  50. 50.

    Davies 2014.

  51. 51.

    Scacchioli 2015.

  52. 52.

    Navarria 2016.

  53. 53.

    Demos & Pi 2017.

  54. 54.

    Buzzi 2018.

  55. 55.

    Horowitz 2018a; 2018b.

  56. 56.

    ‘The 5SM is neither right, nor left-wing, it is on the side of the citizens. Fiercely populist. If a law is good we vote it, if it is bad we do not vote it. Whoever proposes [the good law] and whoever votes [our] proposals [….] is welcome. No alliance with those parties [Democratic Party and Forza Italia] who have transformed [Italy] one of the world’s industrial power into a wreck’. Grillo 2013d.

  57. 57.

    Tormey 2015, 29.

  58. 58.

    Grillo 2013c.

  59. 59.

    Casaleggio 2018a.

  60. 60.

    In his classic work, The Social Contract, Rosseau writes: ‘There is often a difference between the will of everyone and the general will; the latter is concerned only with the common interest, while the former is concerned with private interests, and is the sum total of individual wants: but if you take away from these desires their excesses and insufficiencies, the common element remaining from the different desires is the general will ’. And it follows that ‘If, when properly informed, the people were to come to its decisions without any communication between its members, the general will would always emerge from the large number of small differences, and the decision would always be good’. Rousseau 1999, 66.

  61. 61.

    See: https://rousseau.movimento5stelle.it/faq.php.

  62. 62.

    Mosca and Vaccari 2017.

  63. 63.

    Casaleggio 2018a.

  64. 64.

    Casaleggio 2018b.

  65. 65.

    Grillo 2012; Il Fatto Quotidiano 2012.

  66. 66.

    It must be clarified here that the PD Primaries are open, that is voters don’t have to be subscribed members of the party (in 2016 the membership amounted to about 405,000 and only 59% of these voted in the primaries). Vittori 2017.

  67. 67.

    Casalini and Custodero 2017; MoVimento 5 Stelle 2018.

  68. 68.

    Atte 2019.

  69. 69.

    See: https://rousseau.movimento5stelle.it/trasparenza.php.

  70. 70.

    Deseriis and Ruescas 2017.

  71. 71.

    “Secure Voting—A Definition” 2017.

  72. 72.

    Tripodi 2017.

  73. 73.

    Garante Privacy 2017; 2019.

  74. 74.

    For an exhaustive analysis of the functioning of Rousseau see: Deseriis 2017.

  75. 75.

    Sampedro and Mosca 2018, 166–67; Mosca and Vaccari 2017.

  76. 76.

    Iacoboni 2018.

  77. 77.

    Horowitz 2018a; 2018b.

  78. 78.

    Maio 2018.

  79. 79.

    Perrone 2018.

  80. 80.

    Grillo 2013a; 2013b; Iacoboni 2018, 115–38.

  81. 81.

    Caruso 2019.

  82. 82.

    Nardelli and Silverman 2017; Horowitz 2017.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom

    Giovanni Navarria

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  1. Giovanni Navarria
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Navarria, G. (2019). The Five Star Movement. In: The Networked Citizen. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3293-7_8

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