The 5 Star Movement has lost its historical function. Born as a reaction to the privileges of the political caste, it was intended as a spiritual, cultural and moral renewal of the country. The underlying pact with potential voters was: let’s send these idle thieves home and bring the people to power. And by virtue of this tacit pact, the 5 Star Movement was able to nominate a poor and improvised ruling class to lead the country. This is the original spirit, widely supported by the mass media which, fifteen years ago, at the dawn of social communication, brought this cultural drive to everyone’s attention. There was fertile ground, especially after a period of tears and blood, which culminated with the Monti government, the evident decline of Berlusconism and the centre-left which, like Corrado Guzzanti’s Prodi gag, remained firm and faithful to itself “like a stoplight”.

Renzism after Grillism

To shake the antagonistic Grillina hegemony came Renzism, a sort of antidote – also cultural – to 5 star fascism. On the one hand there was Matteo Renzi, representative of that quasi-shopkeeper medium-small bourgeoisie, not yet impoverished, moderate and vaguely liberal (but still Tuscan corporatist), on the other Beppe Grillo, head of that impoverished small and medium bourgeoisie and of an almost suburban class, poor and outside the job market. The centre-left was in the middle, almost representing the new Christian Democracy (the new DC was never Forza Italia, but the majority-oriented PD founded by Walter Veltroni. This topic deserves a separate discussion). The ascending and then descending parable of Renzism has a lot to do with the fascination of the left wing of the Democratic Party for the 5 Star Movement. There has always been an underlying passion for that 5 Star Movement that filled the squares with the Tsunami tour, with Grillo carried in his arms on a rubber dinghy, with that basic statism invoked as a panacea for all ills. Which then, in the government, translated into the substance of rain bonuses, if not super bonuses – which we will all pay for the next ten years. Just as, for that society outside of any market law, so much so as to fear in the future – always Grillo with his post apocalyptic times – a society in which work would become superfluous and the prerogative of a few.

So much right in the Movement

So as to give shape and substance to the infamous citizen’s income and the “defeat of poverty” (copyright Luigi Di Maio). And precisely in relation to this latest Grillina idea, there was a part of the Democratic Party – the Renzian part – totally against such a poorly conceived measure and a half of the Party which, instead, would have very much liked to be the architect of this measure of “social equity”. Citizenship income was the touchstone for understanding who was here and who was there in the Democratic Party. Grillino populism – from “Clean Hands” style justicialism, through the rain-fed funds for all (without ISEE discrimination), up to the basic anti-Amerika foreign policy (with the “K” of course) – has always had a great impact on a good part of the political class and the electorate of the Democratic Party. The only element that kept the Democrats from clamoring for an alliance was the right-wing component of the Grillo-Casaleggio-led 5 Star Movement. There was at the time – an element that many of the Democratic Party today forget – a large right-wing component in the Movement, so much so as to allow, for example, Beppe Grillo to open a poll on whether or not it was appropriate to abolish the crime of illegal immigration (for the news, it was 2014 and the “Yes” won among the members of the Movement).

Conte and Trump

And it was always that conservative orientation that allowed the then Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, during his first government, to have nothing to object to Matteo Salvini’s decrees regarding migration policies. Just as, always that fascination for the international right that allowed “Giuseppi” Conte himself to forge deep relationships with Donald Trump (it was the time of Ed Bannon who rented the Trisulti Charterhouse to found his own school of sovereignism) and with Vladimir Putin (remember the Russian troops visiting northern Italy during the most acute phase of Covid?). There was, therefore, a 5 Star Movement of Grillo and Casaleggio, one with Di Maio and, finally, the one in the Giuseppe Conte version. A Movement, gradually, increasingly watered down in its positions, so much so that nowadays it is a sort of political reality that aspires to be left-wing, without however having a real pedigree. Conte has already been Prime Minister of a centre-right government, then of a centre-left ousted by an almost technical government, that of Draghi, which ousted him from the control room.

Reality presents the bill

And it is precisely this element of revenge against the Count of Monte Cristo that characterizes the leader of Volturara Appula: he wants to return to presiding over a government. And to do this he is willing to do anything. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party – to date de-Renzianized and more devoted to a “woke” culture with Elly Schlein – is looking for a coalition component necessary to reach an arithmetic sum that will allow it to beat the center-right. And this Count of Monte Cristo, in the meantime, is trying to take over the Movement, ousting the founder Beppe Grillo, just as he has already tried right up until the end to take over the left (yes really, he really tried to do this, confusing the dream with reality), hoping to outclass the Democratic Party, and then present himself as a candidate for the Presidency of the Council in the next elections. But while the first undertaking will probably succeed, leaving him with an empty box of votes, the other failed miserably. Reality is taking its toll on him. And the 5 Star Movement, by dint of incessant metamorphoses, has ended up being watered down into a representative party, whose strength is now represented only by the symbol. From the logo. A condition of strong dissociation from the reality of things that led Giuseppe Conte to dictate to the Democratic Party, the main centre-left party, the conditions of the alliance, not understanding that – in the short term – the presence or otherwise of the Movement in the coalition will be superfluous. What is certain is that, to make the reality of the facts understand not only to Conte, but also to the various leaders and thinkers of the Democratic Party, the Ligurian mess will not be enough.