Fake news, the latest in an unbelievably long line of similar smears. Reporters went to check it out but it wasn't true, (not that propaganda needs to be to work)
The 5* pass my sniff test, but I am not the biggest expert on politics and was temporarily fooled by early Blair, B.Clinton and even when-campaigning Obama (triple ouch) so I checked out some contrasting views to have a sniff over there too.
The hard right intellectual view is that they are a centrist regurgitation of the Christian democrats, a mushy big tent party whose role is to be the finishing touch in destroying the nationhood so as to be more easily swallowed by the oligarchal EU monster.
The PD was the gentle decline of sovereignty and the 5* are the coup de grace whose poisonous incompetence will flush the country finally round the bend into the sewer of oblivion.
Jungker stooges, basically! (Facepalm).
So I checked out the view from the hard left and read a Jacobin article by David Bruder that harps on their rightist voters, implying they are Salvini types with a little more style and savvy, a slicker version. A mysteriously common misapprehension in foreign journalists attributable to lazy research and simple scaremongering as rightist talking point.
Then as if to allay some of my fears (that they were wolves in sheepskins and I had been 'had' again), there arrived a poll of whose voters had pulled the lever for before 5* and a high percentage (60+% IIRC) had voted left before, and only 10% from the right. This rings true and gives the lie to these theories they are a rightist party, after all voters had a choice of 4 centre-to-extreme right parties to choose from so why 5*?
They are quite frank (and modest imo) about saying their rapid ascent was not due to their great politicking as much as the implosion of the PD and Berlusconi's increasing senescence/dementia (he made some royal gaffes in the middle of his usual endless stream of obsessive self-promotion on countless channels, mostly his own).
There is a rumour Di Maio is considering forming an (d)alliance with Salvini in order ONLY to change the electoral law from one that favours coalitions to one more FPTP, to then go back and vote again in the autumn.
This will freak out a lot of followers with possibly tragic results - or maybe not. Things are fluidly unpredictable right now, so no one knows and the punditicracy is tying itself in knots trying to second-guess all the different possible permutations available to all. Salvini swears he'll never ally with them, and so does Renzi's faction of the remaining PD which has been strategically placed to make them harder to remove (details needed, Ed).
Then just when your head spins right off its axis, Renzi announced his resignation but only when a new government is installed (ie possibly never with the complexity of the situation and always the easy out of 'These guys will never get along so we'll put in another technical interim government like Monti's so to keep up Italy's slow crawl out of recession' (1-2% growth, woot!)
The markets have been surprisingly tranquil having obviously done enough homework to judge 5* less apocalyptic a destiny for Italy than had been so breathlessly touted by their opposers and detractors. Prolonged indecision could attract financial speculation and force the spread to rise, so Mattarella can't just twiddle his thumbs and hope it all settles down by itself with time. Too risky. Already having to have another election may well have the same effect too.
Salvini feels his coalition won fair and square and he should be president (shudder).
Di Maio feels he has a better-than-equal claim as Salvini won only 15% for his own party and the 5* won 33% so deserves to be leader.
If the PD could de-Renzify itself thoroughly there woukd be a pretty solid chunk willing to play nice with 5* in order to give them a majority bigger than Salvini's coalition.
The problem is Renzi staying secretary (and behind-the-scenes Chief Whip) of the PD. He has evaded trouble with the law so far, but if he loses parliamentary immunity there are a couple of cases still pending, one of which involved some shady banking with his father involved which could get messy, and a big one involving CONSIP, an agency that oversees humongous government grants and he is close to. If that one blew up he may end up in the pokey. So similar to Berlusconi (Mediaset lost 5% in share value the day after election), he has not only exile but possible judicial problems potentially in the offing, good reasons to keep a seat, except the 5* want to abrogate parliamentary immunity as well as legislate a conflict of interest law that is decades overdue. Both will be sweating about this as they should.  
Maybe sharing a cell with Berlusconi!

Di Maio, flush with victory, has a difficult choice too. Some pundits are screaming at him to join with the Left remnants as it will be suicide if he allies with Salvini with the latest polls showing his new share of the vote swings left, and others screaming similar prognostications if he uses Salvini's support to attain majority.
With Salvini it would be like two duellists re-arranging the rules of engagement before going at it, almost gentlemanly if you want to see it like that.
The problem with that solution is that Renzi's government Was tasked with that priority too and managed always to push it to the bottom of the pile, finally enacting a worse one only weeks before the end of his polite stooge Gentiloni's government (and slamming it through by decree most undemocratically). He did have the support of everyone except the 5* though as any fool could see they all wanted to hang on to their jobs and all feared the 5* might do much better than the polls indicated, (Brexit/Trump rerun).
 Under Renzi's frenzied attempts to fix Italy's problems years were wasted going around in circles slamming through decrees to bail in banks, ordering F-35s, a slicker new presidential helicopter he uses to take his family skiing... in France, kissing up to Merkel while pretending to act tough for the domestic media, fooling no-one. No party has ever ruled so much by decree in history, I heard (citation needed, Ed).
My inclination were I Di Maio would probably be to ally with the non-Renzi left. This way he subdues the gossip about 5* being closet fascist Putin puppets, though theoretically it could lose him that 10% who came in from stage right if another election is held.
Either way he risks a chunk of his electorate dropping off into abstention.
It's an impasse, so a 'technical' makeshift government is just possible, the upside for plutocrats is for Europe's will for continued neo-lib austerity reforms, (yuck).
The downside is that if Mattarella chooses Di Maio, Salvini's voters will scream foul and possibly act out with violence. If vice-versa, violence is much less likely but more people will be passed off to a very high degree and respect for the institutions will take another slippery step downhill.
A last note, Bannon came over to study the election and made a speech here about how over the moon he was that 2 populist parties were going to shake Italy where it hurts and further his hopes for the coming Trumpian chaos wave infecting Europe too.
It's quite funny watching how now it's over how many talking heads are saying nicer things about them - after trying them by fire for years. There's still a gobsmacked feeling in the air though, people are reeling in shock.

Whew... I'm done for the night. Thanks for reading.


'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty