An Italian version of this article can be found here.



The leaders of Italy’s most popular political party, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, have built a sprawling network of websites and social media accounts that are spreading fake news, conspiracy theories, and pro-Kremlin stories to millions of people, analysis by BuzzFeed News has established.



Amid growing concern across Europe over the impact on democratic processes of fake news and Russian interference, Italy is shaping up to be the continent’s next major battleground thanks to the sophistication and wide reach of the Five Star Movement (M5S) propaganda machine.

This machine includes not just the party’s own blogs and social accounts, which have millions of followers, but also a collection of profitable sites that describe themselves as “independent news” outlets but are actually controlled by the party leadership. These sites relentlessly regurgitate M5S campaign lines, misinformation, and attacks on political rivals – in particular, centre-left prime minister Matteo Renzi. One of them, TzeTze, has 1.2 million followers on Facebook.

Under lurid, all-capped headline phrases such as “THE TRUTH THEY ARE TRYING TO HIDE FROM US”, the party’s blogs, TzeTze, and other sites in the network have crossposted scores of fake stories. These include claims that the US is secretly funding traffickers bringing migrants from North Africa to Italy, and that Barack Obama wants to topple the Syrian regime to create instability across the region so China cannot get access to its oil.

Stories are often sourced to Kremlin-owned sites such as Sputnik, and the M5S editorial line is sympathetic to Putin and highly critical of the US and mainstream EU leaders.

“The drumbeat is incessant. Every day, all day,” one Italian journalist told BuzzFeed News.

The party, co-founded by former comedian Beppe Grillo and internet entrepreneur Gianroberto Casaleggio, has ridden the same wave of anti-establishment, nationalist anger that carried the Brexit vote in the UK and Donald Trump's US election victory.

M5S sent shockwaves through Europe when it won votes from both left and right to secure more than 100 parliamentary seats in 2013, the last time Italians went to the polls. It has now thrown the might of its propaganda infrastructure into defeating constitutional reforms backed by the coalition government that will be voted on in a referendum on 4 December.

With Renzi hinting he could resign if the reforms are rejected, victory for M5S would also put the party in a strong position to win the parliamentary elections that would follow.

Grillo has compared his party to Trump, and welcomed the Republican's election victory as a "big Fuck You to the world".

His blog is the most popular in Italy, and BuzzFeed News found that posts on his Facebook page – which has nearly 2 million followers – enjoy engagement comparable, on average, to one of Italy’s largest newspapers, Corriere della Sera.

The official M5S Facebook page has 900,000 followers, while some of the party’s top MPs also have hundreds of thousands of followers. There are then dozens of loosely affiliated pages and groups such as local M5S affiliates and MP fanclubs. Some of these accounts, such as W Il M5S (405,000 likes) and Perche’ votare Movimento 5 Stelle (21,000 likes), almost exclusively push content from the network of sites.

The leadership of the party also controls TzeTze and another supposedly independent site, La Cosa, which translates as “The Thing” and has 125,000 likes on Facebook.

Although La Cosa was launched in 2013 to livestream Grillo’s nationwide campaigning, claiming to present a “unique social and political vision”, it insists it is a news site and has responded to criticism by claiming all posts are verified and reliably sourced.

But the most shared content from both sites over the past 12 months has been links aggressively pushing M5S campaign lines or attacking Renzi, the BuzzFeed News analysis found. While La Cosa’s direct reach is smaller than the other sites, its content is massively amplified by being crossposted on Grillo’s blog, TzeTze, and the party’s other outlets.