5 ms·

The 5-star movement is, to me, one of the biggest mysteries of contemporary politics. I've read plenty about it, but I recognize nearly nothing. It's Euro-scept

The 5-star movement is, to me, one of the biggest mysteries of contemporary politics. I've read plenty about it, but I recognize nearly nothing. It's Euro-sceptic, but also left-wing. Anti-nationalist and anti-migrant. Anti-authoritarian, but has ties to Putin. It's internet-driven, but it's technical infrastructure is old-school, centralized, and under one (mysterious) entity's control. And it's really popular. Maybe I'm just getting rigid with age and failing to see past an outdated left/right divide. Anyone care to enlighten?

candiodari 9y ago
You mean, it is actually left wing. But you forgot it's main quality: it's NOT those other guys, all of whom sold out something like 80% of the population to economic integration/Europe when it was made VERY clear they didn't want this. Syriza is essentially the same thing, before they sold out. This guy explains the Southern European experience better than I ever could : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UOlJsmvwxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UOlJsmvwxs (while Italy hasn't been quite as bad as Greece, the problems are almost exactly the same. In fact, all of southern Europe has had pretty much the same experience). (also they're "classic" leftists. A lot of their points are shared with leftists from 50 or so years ago. For instance, they're against global markets. Actually against it. That, of course, also means anti-immigration. I find it much more surprising that other supposedly leftist parties aren't. How can you keep a labour market scarce while allowing for large migration flows ? And keeping labour scarce ought to be the central, almost the only, fight a leftist party wants to win: that's the thing that will allow wages to take up a bigger slice of the pie. There is a fundamental contradiction in being pro-poor and being pro-immigration, it is an unwinnable fight) And you might say, no you could win the fight for higher wages as a pro-globalization pro-immigration leftist party. And very, very technically you're right. If such parties win every single large population country around the globe (and therefore outsourcing can't go anywhere), then you can do it. As long as there is a country with lots of labour that won't force those wages higher (ie. China, India, Vietnam, ...) most people will lose, a lot, to immigration.
pabloski 9y ago
Sorry but you should stop reading CNN and MSNBC. I did not vote for the M5S. What I can say: 1. they are not anti-european, they simply hate the current Bankurope 2. They have not ties to Putin (who the fuck is spreading this bullshit ??) 3. They aren't anti-migrant, they want to control the immigration flows. Do you have the faintest idea what it means for a small country like Italy to be forced to import 600.000 migrants in 5 years? Heck, you can build a formidable army with such numbers 4. yes, they are left-wing (hugely statalists) and this is why I have not voted for them 5. yes, the infrastructure is handled by Casaleggio Associates. But AWS is controlled by Amazon. So what is the point? The real point here, is that the radical chic leftist media are purporting them as the devil, while it is their masters who have worked hard for the past 6 years to literally destroy Italy. We have hundreds of thousands of young people who leave Italy (high profile people, people with PhDs). We have foreign companies who take State's subsidies and then close up shop and go to Poland, Slovak, Romania, etc ... Our middle class has been literally destroyed. The number of poors have skyrocketed in the last 5 years. The unemployment is at a whopping 40+% among young people. Corruption is out of chart, with politicians actively working with ecomafias to illegally dump toxic wastes everywhere on our territory. These are the real motives why the people have voted against the status quo. And they have gone to vote in unusually high numbers ( 73%, never seen before! ).
- majewsky 9y ago
  > Do you have the faintest idea what it means for a small country like Italy to be forced to import 600.000 migrants in 5 years? I don't want to get into an argument about immigration politics, but it strikes me as odd that you consider Italy "small". It has 60 million inhabitants, making it forth most populous country in the EU, and is the seventh largest country in the EU by area. [1] For scale, Jordan has taken at least in 650,000 Syrian refugees [2], and it's only a third of the size of Italy, and a sixth of the population. Or take Lebanon. It is a 30th the size of Italy, with only 6 million inhabitants (1/10 that of Italy), but has taken in nearly a million Syrian refugees. [3] I don't want to dismiss or diminish the trouble that Italy is going through because of the tensions in the Middle East, but calling Italy "small" indicates a lack of perspective. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_state_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_state_of_the_European_U... [2] http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/country.php?id=107 http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/country.php?id=107 [3] http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/country.php?id=122 http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/country.php?id=122
oytis 9y ago
I can see no mystery there: avoiding a consistent political stance actually sounds like a definition of a populist movement.
matteuan 9y ago
they are not left-wing. They lack of a common precise set of ideas for that. Some of them are racists and anti-immigration, some are pro-Putin, some are extreme conspiracy theorists. And most of them are not interested in anything more than seeing the old politicians burn in their own shit.

candiodari 9y ago

You mean, it is actually left wing. But you forgot it's main quality: it's NOT those other guys, all of whom sold out something like 80% of the population to economic integration/Europe when it was made VERY clear they didn't want this. Syriza is essentially the same thing, before they sold out. This guy explains the Southern European experience better than I ever could : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UOlJsmvwxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UOlJsmvwxs (while Italy hasn't been quite as bad as Greece, the problems are almost exactly the same. In fact, all of southern Europe has had pretty much the same experience). (also they're "classic" leftists. A lot of their points are shared with leftists from 50 or so years ago. For instance, they're against global markets. Actually against it. That, of course, also means anti-immigration. I find it much more surprising that other supposedly leftist parties aren't. How can you keep a labour market scarce while allowing for large migration flows ? And keeping labour scarce ought to be the central, almost the only, fight a leftist party wants to win: that's the thing that will allow wages to take up a bigger slice of the pie. There is a fundamental contradiction in being pro-poor and being pro-immigration, it is an unwinnable fight) And you might say, no you could win the fight for higher wages as a pro-globalization pro-immigration leftist party. And very, very technically you're right. If such parties win every single large population country around the globe (and therefore outsourcing can't go anywhere), then you can do it. As long as there is a country with lots of labour that won't force those wages higher (ie. China, India, Vietnam, ...) most people will lose, a lot, to immigration.

pabloski 9y ago

Sorry but you should stop reading CNN and MSNBC. I did not vote for the M5S. What I can say: 1. they are not anti-european, they simply hate the current Bankurope 2. They have not ties to Putin (who the fuck is spreading this bullshit ??) 3. They aren't anti-migrant, they want to control the immigration flows. Do you have the faintest idea what it means for a small country like Italy to be forced to import 600.000 migrants in 5 years? Heck, you can build a formidable army with such numbers 4. yes, they are left-wing (hugely statalists) and this is why I have not voted for them 5. yes, the infrastructure is handled by Casaleggio Associates. But AWS is controlled by Amazon. So what is the point? The real point here, is that the radical chic leftist media are purporting them as the devil, while it is their masters who have worked hard for the past 6 years to literally destroy Italy. We have hundreds of thousands of young people who leave Italy (high profile people, people with PhDs). We have foreign companies who take State's subsidies and then close up shop and go to Poland, Slovak, Romania, etc ... Our middle class has been literally destroyed. The number of poors have skyrocketed in the last 5 years. The unemployment is at a whopping 40+% among young people. Corruption is out of chart, with politicians actively working with ecomafias to illegally dump toxic wastes everywhere on our territory. These are the real motives why the people have voted against the status quo. And they have gone to vote in unusually high numbers ( 73%, never seen before! ).

majewsky 9y ago
> Do you have the faintest idea what it means for a small country like Italy to be forced to import 600.000 migrants in 5 years? I don't want to get into an argument about immigration politics, but it strikes me as odd that you consider Italy "small". It has 60 million inhabitants, making it forth most populous country in the EU, and is the seventh largest country in the EU by area. [1] For scale, Jordan has taken at least in 650,000 Syrian refugees [2], and it's only a third of the size of Italy, and a sixth of the population. Or take Lebanon. It is a 30th the size of Italy, with only 6 million inhabitants (1/10 that of Italy), but has taken in nearly a million Syrian refugees. [3] I don't want to dismiss or diminish the trouble that Italy is going through because of the tensions in the Middle East, but calling Italy "small" indicates a lack of perspective. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_state_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_state_of_the_European_U... [2] http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/country.php?id=107 http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/country.php?id=107 [3] http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/country.php?id=122 http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/country.php?id=122

oytis 9y ago

I can see no mystery there: avoiding a consistent political stance actually sounds like a definition of a populist movement.

matteuan 9y ago

they are not left-wing. They lack of a common precise set of ideas for that. Some of them are racists and anti-immigration, some are pro-Putin, some are extreme conspiracy theorists. And most of them are not interested in anything more than seeing the old politicians burn in their own shit.