The night of the shooting stars is on August 10th. Some say it’s on the 12th, but Grillo and Conte have been exchanging blows every day during this unforgettable summer for the M5S – and I believe there’s no going back. As we await the constituent assembly convened by the current President for October, we can expect some surprises.
Even Di Maio has broken his silence, and now Castellone, a prominent figure in the party, says that the symbol, the name, and the second term are untouchable. In short, they might as well take away the silverware from the “Elevated One,” but that trio is a sign of the connection to the roots and thus to the founder. The risk is that the true Grillini might count themselves before the assembly and go their own way. I’m not sure if Conte has considered this, but this final step to take over the whole movement is certainly a difficult one.
The internet wing, Casaleggio, is gone; the radical wing, Di Battista, is gone; the institutional wing, Di Maio (who then canceled himself out by mistiming his group’s premature exit, a month before Draghi’s premature end); now it’s a matter of canceling the Father, who, for all his eccentricities and being more tragicomic than comic, is still a Father.
We must acknowledge that good Beppe had a vision, perhaps even a political hallucination. The 5 Star Movement received 33% of the votes in 2018 not by chance. They had a vision of the world that fascinated a part of Italians, from legality to poverty, from the environment to hyperdemocracy. Right and left were mixed in something objectively new where everyone, truly everyone, could have access to Power. Good and bad, sure, but revolutionary in our country.
Conte’s party is different: it’s leadership-driven, populist, and southern-centric. In certain areas, as shown by various local elections, it almost doesn’t exist anymore. Perhaps it really is right that it goes its own way, with all the new symbolic liturgy included. Shooting stars bring wishes for ordinary citizens, but for the ex-citizens of the 5 Star Movement, they risk being a rapid journey into the dark.
