How Italy's Techno-Utopians Came to Power

Italy's political scene has always been complex and strange, but it hasn't gotten much stranger than the last decade, when the Five Star party came to power. A loose coalition of techno-utopians and radical leftists, it soon found itself co-opted by the alt-right and having to make choices that betrayed its radical beginnings.

Wired has a long article about how Five Star came to power and what happened after it did. It's a remarkable read and a sobering look at how easy it is to disrupt social and political norms using modern technology and social media.

ON MARCH 4, 2018, Five Star participated in its second national election. This time, Nugnes, the architect turned parliamentarian, watched the coverage on TV alongside activists and representatives in a hotel in central Naples. Unlike in 2013, everyone knew Five Star would do well. But the final results were nevertheless stunning—with 33 percent of the vote, and after just five years in parliament, Five Star had become the largest party in Italy. While her colleagues celebrated, Nugnes worried. “I just saw right away that the overall picture was very disquieting,” she says. Right-wing parties—particularly Lega—had performed well too, off the back of a fiercely anti-­immigrant campaign.

Nugnes watched uneasily as Five Star tried to form a government, seeming to go against the movement’s original “no alliances” principle. From the start, it was clear that Di Maio—who had criticized the previous, centrist government for presiding over a corrupt, NGO-run “sea taxi” service for migrants to Italy—favored a deal with Lega. Nugnes, who had made a name during the previous five years as an outspoken senator, wrote a scathing post on Facebook about the prospect of an alliance with “he who wants to end immigration,” referring to Lega’s leader, Salvini. “I wouldn’t get into the same elevator,” she went on, “or breathe the same air.”