The Five Star Movement: an anthropological revolution?

The Five Star Movement has been the great novelty of the Italian political landscape. The paper seeks to highlight the core content of its doctrine, which calls for a sort of anthropological revolution based on the advent of the “Net” in which the “new political order of the communities” will replace that of individuals, offering fresh forms of direct democracy. The consequence would be the end not just of traditional western political parties, but also of the self-referential man of subjectivity. The paper also gives an account of the research in the Communication and Social Research Department of the “Sapienza” University of Rome after the Movement's outstanding success in the 2013 political elections. The aim of this research has been to study both the original communications of the Movement, based on a combination of public rallies and the internet, and its composition in terms of forms of psychological organization, on the basis of the innovative approach of dynamic sociology. The research consisted of an ethnographic study conducted in Rome during the administrative election campaign of May-June 2013, along with the administering of an online questionnaire to Movement voters. Results have shown that people of all three forms of psychological organization (i.e., subjectivity, post-subjectivity and re-ascription) are present among Movement voters, even though attitudes, motivations and purposes differ widely.