Italian Populists: Style or Syndrome?

In recent years, Italian politics is facing enormous changes. As far as we were concerned with the populist messages generated by center-right and territorial parties, such as Forza Italia and Lega Nord, the framework of analysis was enough commonly shared with the European countries’ political landscapes. Then, after 2009 (but with important roots in the previous years), with the top-down creation of a political movement from the digital world, we entered a new era of Italian politics, that is still in need of much in-depth research. But this is only one of the events which contributed to increase the substantial differences with all of the other European political landscapes. Shortly after the official birth of the MoVimento 5 Stelle, founded by the former Italian comedian Beppe Grillo, a critical action started inside the Partito Democratico, with the mayor of Florence as its main leader: the “rottamatori”, whose harsh and clear proposals reached the public opinion, becoming part of the national political debate without any internal filter from their own party. The aim of this paper will be answering the main research question, whether or not Italian populism should be addressed as a style or a syndrome, comparing the key discursive elements adopted by the most prominent national political forces of the last 30 years, in order to verify/falsify this initial hypothesis.