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CHIERI, Italy \u2014<\/span><\/p>\n Born on a comedian\u2019s blog as an irreverent and profane call to arms against a corrupt and complacent political establishment, Italy\u2019s Five Star Movement has long cherished its image as the ultimate renegade.<\/p>\n But the outsiders could soon be marching in. With national elections only weeks away, Five Star consistently tops the polls. Its leaders, meanwhile, say they would consider teaming with rival parties to form a government \u2014 breaking their own\u00a0long-held taboo.<\/p>\n After nearly a decade of raging against the powerful, this Netizen band of rebels says\u00a0it is ready to reign.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the beginning, we were representing just one part of the country,\u201d said Manlio Di Stefano, Five Star\u2019s 36-year-old point person on foreign affairs. \u201cNow we want to represent the whole country.\u201d<\/p>\n The idea of a Five Star-led government is enough to send shivers down the spines of Italy\u2019s political and financial establishment \u2014 and Europe\u2019s, too.<\/p>\n Given the party\u2019s melange of ideas from right and left \u2014 including skepticism toward the euro, embrace of Russia and enthusiasm for Internet-enabled direct democracy \u2014 the euro zone\u2019s third-largest economy would be in for a jolt if Five Star gets the chance to govern.<\/p>\n Most analysts say that is possible but unlikely. Even if Five Star tops the March\u00a04 vote, other parties are expected to team up to try to box the movement out of the government.<\/p>\n That won\u2019t be easy, however, given that the party\u2019s share of the vote in\u00a0pre-election polls<\/a> hovers at nearly 30\u00a0percent \u2014 well ahead of any other in Italy\u2019s fractured political landscape. Without Five Star involved, efforts to form a government could founder, with the deadlock ultimately ending in a rerun of the vote.<\/p>\n The potential to disrupt Italian politics, either from within the government or from outside, is exactly what Five Star activists were seeking when the party got off the ground in 2009.<\/p>\n An outgrowth of a blog penned by the\u00a0bombastic comedian Beppe Grillo, Five Star tapped a rich vein of discontent in a country where politicians and corruption often have seemed inseparable, and where the economy had been ravaged by a global recession.<\/p>\n [In Italy, a comedian getting the last laugh<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n In the early days, followers of the blog came together in vast public demonstrations \u2014 dubbed \u201cV\u201d days, a reference to a popular Italian vulgarity \u2014 and listened as the wild-haired Grillo colorfully told Italy\u2019s political and economic elite to get lost.<\/p>\n The movement soon fielded candidates, selected via online polls of its members, and in 2013 stunned the political establishment by placing second in national elections.<\/p>\n This year, it\u00a0is gunning for more. But the mood in Italy has shifted, and so has the party.<\/p>\n Although household income and employment numbers have yet to bounce back to where they were before the crisis, the economy is ever so slowly returning to life, taking a bit of the edge off the public\u2019s outrage.<\/p>\n Five Star, meanwhile, is seeking to prove it can be a responsible party of government,\u00a0not just one of protest.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve become more institutional,\u201d Di Stefano acknowledged.<\/p>\n The change can be seen at the party\u2019s top. The 69-year-old Grillo has given up\u00a0any active role in Five Star and has been replaced by the clean-cut,\u00a0buttoned-up\u00a0Luigi Di Maio<\/a>, 31.<\/p>\n The new leader lately has been on a charm offensive targeting\u00a0European investors, meeting them in closed-door London sessions and\u00a0granting interviews to business news broadcasters<\/a> in which he insists that the party has no plans to hold a referendum on Italy\u2019s euro membership \u2014 despite years of Five Star promises to do just that.<\/p>\n It is hardly the first time the party has shifted positions.<\/p>\n \u201cFive Star is a chameleon undergoing continuous metamorphosis,\u201d said Massimiliano Panarari, who teaches politics at Rome\u2019s LUISS university. \u201cIt\u2019s really a post-ideological party. The platform changes according to the circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n Although successful populist parties abound in Europe, Five Star is unlike any of the others, with stances that straddle the political divide. It believes in massively ramped-up investments in renewable energy, for instance, but also has taken a hard line on immigration, with Di Maio calling rescue efforts in the Mediterranean a \u201csea-taxi service\u201d that must end.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/img.washingtonpost.com\/rf\/image_480w\/2010-2019\/WashingtonPost\/2018\/02\/05\/Foreign\/Images\/AFP_WE2LR.jpg?uuid=AlW62ArGEeiLDYkWAiBvtw\")
Di Maio, right, poses for a selfie with a young man in Turin. (Piero Cruciatti\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/div>\n