Grillo has lunch with Stroppa. Amidst Musk and the dossiers, the anti-Conte offensive continues

Rome. A lunch at the Hotel Forum with Andrea Stroppa, Musk’s representative in Italy, and a dossier on the ‘patronage scheme’ of Alessandra Todde, the Five Star Movement president of the Sardinia region, to highlight how the new M5S bears no resemblance to the original. Beppe Grillo’s anti-Conte offensive begins here: artificial intelligence and whistleblowing. The suggestion of a new party, even more futuristic than the M5S of old, and the old, ever-effective dossiers against the most vulnerable of his former friends.

The founder of the Five Star Movement arrived in Rome on Monday evening to attend the reception organised by the Chinese embassy to mark the appointment of the new ambassador, Hou Yue. He will be leaving today. Yesterday, however, he took the opportunity to make a fresh start following his interview with Fedez – which too many in the newsrooms had interpreted as a step backwards: his decision to abandon the battle against Conte. And so, on leaving the Forum, an old friend of Grillo’s, the former MP Elio Lanutti – who, along with two other former Five Star Movement MPs, Marco Bella and Luca Carabetta, had attended the lunch – replied to reporters as follows: “A new party? Never say never.” Whether it actually happens remains to be seen, but ‘Operation Zero Stars’ – the communication campaign to reclaim, at least in the minds of former activists one by one, all the old battles that were betrayed – has already begun. “It starts with communication, then the people follow, doesn’t it? That’s how the Movement was born, and that’s how Vanancci was born too,” former MP Bella keeps repeating. In short, we’ll give it a go, then we’ll see if anyone follows us. Meanwhile, to keep the newspapers’ attention, we always need new surprises. So what could be better than a lunch with Musk’s man? The initial talks between the two had actually been going on for weeks. On the blog, Grillo had praised Musk’s comments on the need for a universal basic income, whilst on X, at the end of July, Stroppa had offered a sort of endorsement of Grillo’s offensive against Conte: “Casaleggio, for all his shortcomings, created the M5S, a powerful innovation brought to the general public by Grillo and betrayed by wretches. It would be right for the Movement to return to its co-founder and to start afresh from the original idea.” If Casaleggio, as a ‘nerdy manager’, was the mastermind behind the internet-based party, could Stroppa now be the father of an artificial intelligence party made up entirely of young people and algorithms? “We talked about everything,” he said as he left the Forum Bella hotel. No doubt the discussion covered not only intelligence, but also renewables, public water and automation. These are topics that Grillo was already discussing during the early ‘Vaffaday’ events and which led Fedez to remark: “I feel like a posthumous version of myself whilst still alive: the things I said years ago are still stuck in the past.” They remain stuck, because they are ignored by politicians, including Conte’s new party: “The Movement today is something else entirely, in the hands of Reverend Jones, the man who whispered to the quibblers – people who stir things up in a movement that’s progressive only in its progressive paralysis,” said Grillo. And who better than Alessandra Todde and her battle against renewables to embody this paralysis? This is why the president of Sardinia (and Conte’s former number two) is now in the founder’s crosshairs. The first attack came in October 2024 against the decision to impose a moratorium on renewables, followed by another in February 2025 regarding the waste-to-energy plant that Todde authorised in Sardinia. Two further posts on Grillo’s blog in June 2026 again criticised Todde’s anti-renewables stance. She is now held up as the textbook example to show the old Grillo community how Conte’s Movement has become ‘something else entirely’. After energy and waste-to-energy plants, another issue has emerged – a new front to portray the President of Sardinia as the clearest example of a betrayal of the Movement’s original spirit. What is it? The fight against the ‘kasta’. For several days now, in fact, a short dossier has been circulating in the chat groups of disillusioned Five Star members, now buoyed by the founder’s return. It contains a clear accusation: those who opposed the ‘job-creation law’ pushed through by Sardinia’s former governor Solinas are now brazenly abusing it. In practice, it is a list of all the staff members hired by the Todde administration thanks to the regional law introduced by his predecessor. One hundred and five advisers at a total cost of around 28.4 million euros. Like any well-researched dossier, the report breaks down the figures by department. Over the past three years in office, the president’s office has employed 14 advisers at a total cost of almost 7 million euros.

Gianluca De Rosa and Nicolò Zambelli