With March 4’s general election, the Five Star Movement (M5S) became Italy’s largest party, winning 32 percent of the vote. Yet its historic opposition to coalitions made it unclear whether it could govern. The breakthrough force on election day was Matteo Salvini’s Lega Nord, a hard-right party which rose from 4 to 17 percent. Cultural clashes between these parties as well as Salvini’s desire to lead a coalition of the Right seemed to hamper any deal.

The subsequent eleven weeks saw deadlock as M5S leader Luigi di Maio sought deals with either the centrist Democrats or the Lega, while refusing a formal alliance with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. However, deals between the M5S and the right-wing parties on the parliamentary speakers, as well as Democrat leader Matteo Renzi’s stout refusal of a pact, increasingly pointed toward a coalition of the “outsiders.”

Some media outlets persist in calling the M5S a party of the “far left” or “alt-left.” In reality, despite its dominance among once-Communist aligned groups like the unemployed, blue-collar, and young voters, it is the fruit of the Left’s collapse. M5S does not speak the language of solidarity but expresses the outrage of the crisis-hit individual, unable to make her way in the world and openly scorned by aloof centrist parties.