From hunting zombies to running the country. The splatter “fan” must now act responsibly. The Salvini shock has led to a metamorphosis
“Let’s be rid of the fan within us”. So wrote Beppe Grillo on 4 October on his blog, 10 years on from the birth of the Five Star Movement and just before the annual rally in Naples. A statement by Grillo featured in a post celebrating the 5SM’s journey so far, including the alliance with Nicola Zingaretti’s Democratic Party (PD) (“a step in our evolution” according to the former comedian). And effectively the 5SM, compared to 2009, is doing its best to seem different, starting with its language: even Grillo no longer resorts to the kind of pulp rhetoric of its 2013 electoral campaign, which featured slogans predicting the Five Stars would soon oust all traditional parties (then termed the “walking dead”) and, believing in the principle “one is worth one”, would “open up parliament like a tin of tuna”. Nor does the 5SM, as the second Conte government sets sail, seem anything like the Movement that in spring 2013, during the Italian Presidential elections, before and after Bersani’s failed “scouting” attempts, assembled outside the Parliament square with a menacing attitude.
This is phase 4.0 of the Movement that came out of nowhere to breach the doors of parliament in 2013, then pulled back slightly between 2014 and 2017, and came back to life in 2018, a rise that culminated in the populist-sovereigntist government contract, anathema to many elected members and activists, with Matteo Salvini’s League. The reversal last August saw the end of the alliance with the League and overtures being made to its former enemy of the PD, which opened up channels for Grillo’s creature to engage in institutional discussions with previously diffident counterparts both in Italy and in Europe. And indeed last July the 5SM’s played a part in the election of Ursula von der Leyen as EU Commission president, offering public opinion a further shift in stance: its alignment with the centre left, unthinkable up to then, was the first sign that the bond between Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini was in trouble.
Having turned a new leaf, a few weeks after the institution of the Conte II government, we find Davide Casaleggio on stage at the UN speaking on digital citizenship, and Di Maio, now Minister for Foreign Affairs, trying to rebuild a new home without knocking down the old one. The process is by no means linear. Agreement with the PD is hard to come by on issues such as employment, with the 5SM still backing its flagship initiatives, (such as the citizen’s income) or rights (which the 5SM has often kept quiet about, except for its left-leaning minority).
But one of the most crucial and self-defining battlegrounds for the 5SM is undoubtedly immigration, especially for such a hybrid political force that claims to be “neither leftist nor rightist”. Its ambiguity, and acting as a vessel for the disillusioned with “those in power for the last twenty years”, is a feature that has enabled the 5SM to grow and gain consensus among the disappointed of all persuasions. The caution displayed over the ius culturae, a guarantee of citizenship for Italian born immigrants, is just a tip of an iceberg of misgivings. The issue is divisive for the 5SM and has been since the days (January 2014) of the grass roots consultation over the abolition of the crime of clandestine immigration, with Beppe Grillo and Gianroberto Casaleggio firmly against it (“if this had been an electoral promise, our consensus would have bottomed out “), while activists were mostly in favour: 15,839 yesses versus 9,093 nos.
Five years have passed, of which one spent ruling with Salvini, and Di Maio, to set himself apart from his former ally without acquiescing to the PD, is trying to position himself to the right of the Democrats while defending the new government’s no longer Salvini based approach and especially Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. However, for the 5SM leader, any mention of a redistribution of migrants in Europe must include ways to “stop departures”. And this despite the inter-ministerial decree on migrants (signed by Foreign Affairs, Justice and Interior ministries), which both Luigi Di Maio and the 5SM Justice Minister Alfonso Bonafede are backing, has had to take stock of the caution shown by the new interior minister Luciana Lamorgese, who is convinced that “immigration is a structural problem” and no “magic wand” is likely to solve it.
After the dress rehearsals of the PD-Five Star Movement’s alliance prefaced by the appointment of Ursula von der Leyen, the 5SM has tried to dismiss its European isolation of the previous years, an ever present isolation that was worsened by the alliance with Salvini. Joining the extended political families in Brussels and Strasbourg was always going to be tough for the “hybrid” 5SM, which since 2014 has wavered between Nigel Farage’s anti-Europeanism and the (unfulfilled) dreams of an agreement with the liberals of ALDE and the Greens. The obstacles are still there: in early October the leader of the German Green party Robert Habeck, still wary following the previous 5SM-Salvini alliance, has said an agreement may be possible, but has highlighted the transparency issues posed by the Rousseau platform. And however much the Five Stars underline Conte’s institutional pedigree, Europe still recalls last winter’s meetings between former Italian Deputy President Luigi Di Maio and the leader of the “gilet jaunes” Christophe Calencon.
After the electoral debacle in May 2019 and the recent ‘U’ turn in its relationship with the centre-left, both the perception of the Five Stars and their own understanding of themselves has changed. They are anxious not to appear too set in their ways, have shown to be moderately pro-European, no longer populist and rapidly shifting towards the more acceptable parts of the system which they previously rejected offhand. But there are still some misgivings within a political force that enjoyed its liquid, unmediated and ‘grass roots’ status, and is now in such an exalted position that it is having to come to terms with a reality that can hardly be summed up in a Facebook post. And while one side of the 5SM, the one aligned with the Speaker of the House Roberto Fico, is relieved by the change of government alliance, the other side is chomping at the bit. The various manifestation of the movement, so sparking and undefined at the outset, are having a hard time fitting together, as the many deferrals to the movement’s arbitrator would seem to indicate, especially locally, where exporting the PD-5SM alliance has not been so easy, in Umbria as in Sardinia.
“Who are we, where are we headed?” seem to be asking those in the 5SM who never felt represented by the rambunctious media assaults so dear to Salvini. And with Salvini in the driving seat of the first Conte government, the 5SM experienced a slide into much feared irrelevance, risking a loss of further consensus and a watering down of their identity. Now they’re in a new cocoon, but how the chrysalis will develop is uncertain: the 5SM doesn’t care to be identified with the sovereigntist right, but can’t afford to be too quiescent with the left. It’s softer approach to trade unions and the truce reached with its former enemies does not remove the difficulty of having to set one’s self apart from the parties previously identified as one of the causes of Italy’s ills. The split among the Democrats, with the resulting three way division of governing powers between the PD, 5SM and Matteo Renzi’s Italia Viva, complicates the picture further for Di Maio, who can’t feel safe in this new government (especially with the budget on the horizon). And the Movement, torn between government responsibility and street opposition, internal requests for the review of powers handed to the political leader and tensions over Russiagate and relations with the US, is therefore starting to relinquish those restrictive beliefs, first amongst them its own infallibility (“we’ve brought hard times upon ourselves”, as Roberto Fico has pointed out).
@mariannarizzini
This article is also published in the November/December issue of eastwest.
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From hunting zombies to running the country. The splatter “fan” must now act responsibly. The Salvini shock has led to a metamorphosis
“Let’s be rid of the fan within us”. So wrote Beppe Grillo on 4 October on his blog, 10 years on from the birth of the Five Star Movement and just before the annual rally in Naples. A statement by Grillo featured in a post celebrating the 5SM’s journey so far, including the alliance with Nicola Zingaretti’s Democratic Party (PD) (“a step in our evolution” according to the former comedian). And effectively the 5SM, compared to 2009, is doing its best to seem different, starting with its language: even Grillo no longer resorts to the kind of pulp rhetoric of its 2013 electoral campaign, which featured slogans predicting the Five Stars would soon oust all traditional parties (then termed the “walking dead”) and, believing in the principle “one is worth one”, would “open up parliament like a tin of tuna”. Nor does the 5SM, as the second Conte government sets sail, seem anything like the Movement that in spring 2013, during the Italian Presidential elections, before and after Bersani’s failed “scouting” attempts, assembled outside the Parliament square with a menacing attitude.