5 Star Movement

The 5 Star Movement (M5S) is a liberal political party in Italy that once was populist before shifting toward the Left. It was founded in 2009 by comedian Beppe Grillo as an anti-establishment protest party, but it quickly gained support and became Italy's largest single political party in 2018.

Electoral success

While the M5S performed poorly in Italy's 2017 mayoral elections,^[1][2] the year earlier, it captured the mayorship of Rome.^[3] Virginia Raggi, the M5S mayor of Rome called for a suspension of immigration into the city.^[4] The M5S performed well in the 2017 Sicilian regional elections, a region heavily impacted by the migrant crisis.^[5]

In the 2018 election, M5S along with Lega Nord performed very well, and M5S became the largest single party in Italy.^[6] along with massive losses for the Italian left-wing.^[7] The party performed so well that in Sicily it won more seats than the number of candidates it put up in the region.^[8] Overall, populist and Euroskeptic parties received over 50% of the popular vote.^[9] In May 2018, M5S anti-establishment Lega Nord agreed to a common platform, one that promoted strongly nationalist and anti-establishment policies.^[10] Both parties allowed their voters to choose whether they approved of the coalition agenda.^[11] Despite this, Italy's establishment president rejected the coalition government as it supported nominating a Euroskeptic finance minister.^[12] However, a few days later, the two parties were able to reach a compromise with Italy's president and finalized their governing coalition.^[13] The new government, Western Europe's first one completely run by populist and anti-establishment parties, was sworn in on June 1, 2018.^[14] Giuseppe Conte was named the government's prime minister.

Decline and left-wing coalition

After government coalition's beginning, the M5S found it difficult to keep momentum and maintain its polling numbers as the more conservative Lega Nord took the spotlight.^[15] By early 2019, the party was performing significantly worse in various regional elections than it did in the general election, while the League's popularity surged.^[16] The division between the League and M5S increased.^[17] The M5S performed poorly in the 2019 European Parliament election, nearly halving its 2018 election support.^[18] Some M5S members and politicians defected, or considered defecting, to Salvini's League.^[19]

Despite repeatedly claiming it would never form an alliance with the far-left Democratic Party, the M5S did just that in August 2019, with the sole purpose of ousting the conservative Salvini from the government.^[20] The new coalition began reinstating status-quo, open borders immigration policies.^[21] The Italian government worked to align itself with France's globalist president Emmanuel Macron,^[22] and M5S shifted even further toward the establishment left when it announced a local-level alliance with the Italian Democrats.^[23] The M5S's coalition partners also called for the establishment of birthright citizenship in Italy.^[24]

By the end of October 2019, Italy's unemployment rate had risen to nearly 10% under the M5S–Democrat government.^[25]

In November 2019, the coalition government required all Italian public school students to study climate change.^[26][27]

The coalition government considered giving 400,000 euros to the Italian Communist Party for its 100th anniversary and making that day a national day.^[28]

M5S is considered a populist party, but unlike right-wing populist and Euroskeptic parties, it is more centrist overall on issues related to immigration and the European Union, having moderated as it became a more established force.^[29][30][31] It has defined itself as an anti-establishment movement.^[32][33] The party has attempted to join the left-wing environmentalist "Green" faction in the European Parliament.^[34]

In contrast to Matteo Salvini's Lega Nord, the 5 Star Movement is hostile to Israel. Manlio Di Stefano, one of the leader of this party has accused Israel of committing a "genocide" and claimed that Hamas is apparently just a political party that has resorted to terrorism solely because of "the isolation of Gaza." The party has declared that it would officially recognize a "State of Palestine" when they get into power and condemned the settlement program in the West Bank. Its founder Beppe Grillo believes in 9/11 conspiracy theories and party leaders have supported the Chemtrail conspiracy theory.^[35] The M5S has taken a critical stance toward certain liberal French policies, and criticism from M5S leaders partially led France to recall its ambassador to Italy in February 2019.^[36]

The M5S takes left-wing stances on social issues, and in 2019, it condemned a pro-family conference as being "medieval."^[37]

On October 20, 2022 former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and leader of the Five Star Movement party (M5S), urged against new arms deliveries to the Zelensky regime and called for a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine conflict.^[38]