The can of tuna fish is still intact. The rise of five star movement in twenty-first century Italy

Abstract

The recent years have witnessed the rapid rise of an unconventional political movement/party that represents a sore thumb in the European political scenario, a combination of direct democracy, populism, euro-scepticism and environmental battles: the Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S). But how has it succeeded in gaining such a position in less than 10 years since its foundation? The history of the Five Star Movement cannot be understood without some information about its founder, the comedian Beppe Grillo, who was a real TV celebrity during the first half of the Eighties, but was later banned from the public space owing to a gag injuring Bettino Craxi’s Socialist Party: in that moment Craxi was a powerful politician, the protector of Silvio Berlusconi’s media empire. Later on, in the early nineties, he became the symbol of the widespread system of corruption that emerged thanks to the investigations of Milan magistrates