The Media Doesn’t Matter, the Internet Does

Just as the advent of television changed political campaign strategies forever, so the Internet will shortly revolutionize the entire political process.

The spectacular showing by Beppe Grillo’s Movimento 5 Stelle, which just won more votes in Italy’s general election than any other single party, represents a brand new, powerful, double-barreled trend that will reshape the way political campaigns are run and, in so doing, will reshape the future.

The unanticipated results sent a shock wave across Italy and rattled world equity markets. Taking 180 of Parliament’s 630 seats, Grillo’s party amassed enough votes to not only deny front runner Pier Luigi Bersani the clear majority needed to form a working government, it also sent an even louder message to the entire eurozone: Adesso basta – enough is enough!

Faced with the prospect of still-higher taxes and more German-inspired austerity-as-usual, the Five Star Movement’s anti-establishment/anti-austerity populist showing far exceeded the predictions of the media, pollsters and politicians.

The resurgence of the embattled and disgraced media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi was also unanticipated. But his strong showing was less a sign of popular support than the consequence of the mogul’s overt multi-media-vote-buying campaign, promising amnesty for tax evaders and a $5 billion tax refund to property owners.

Trend 1: Media Doesn’t Matter. Beppe Grillo, unlike all the other candidates, spurned Italian TV and instead built his personal presence and party strength via a 73-stop barnstorming tour and a brilliantly orchestrated Internet campaign. Nine months ago he was polling only 5 percent nationally. With the largest social media following of any politician in Europe, Grillo’s “head on the Internet, feet on the ground” rise to prominence was generated through his one million Facebook and Twitter friends and followers.

This is the trend of the future!

It is also a new millennium megatrend Gerald Celente forecast in detail in the December 1999 Trends Journal. Moreover, in terms of presence, platform and personality, it is as though Beppe Grillo had been invented for the role of the Italian version of the “Internet Candidate” Celente predicted:

The Internet Candidate

Starting in 1999, the opening salvos will be fired in the battle against the hegemony of America’s two-party political system. A combination of technological advances and seething public opinion has set the stage for the Internet candidate – a political newcomer beholden to no one and able to reach everyone.

Free At Last

No longer bound by conventional political rules of engagement, freed from the necessity to raise mega-millions to wage campaigns and no longer solely reliant on media approval for coverage, the Internet candidate will be a new-millennium voice speaking a new-millennium language that appeals to the politically disenchanted and disgusted.

Just as the advent of television changed political campaign strategies forever, so the Internet will shortly revolutionize the entire political process.

The potential Internet candidacy awaits its real-life Internet candidates…. (The Trends Journal, Winter 1999.)

Moreover, while The New York Times (and the rest of the mainstream media) now maintain that “Few experts anticipated the depth of anger displayed by Italian voters over the austerity” measures imposed by the Technocrat Monti, the fact is that nearly a year before the election Gerald Celente not only anticipated the “anger,” he singled out Beppe Grillo as the man who would give voice to it and transform that anger into a coherent force. (See: Gerald Celente on CJAD, Montreal Canada, 29 May 2012.)

Trend 2: Throw the Bums Out. The dire political conditions that made it possible for Grillo’s ascendance in Italy also prevail in countries big and small around the world. The “politically disenchanted and disgusted” citizenry Celente postulated as a pre-condition for the trend he predicted all those years ago, has essentially become the norm: polls report that 88 percent of Italians distrust political parties, as do 80 percent of the British, while 85 percent of Americans distrust their government … and so on around the world.

Standard, entrenched political systems everywhere – ostensibly democratic, autocratic, left-wing, right-wing or monarchical – are ripe for revolution, non-violent or otherwise. The Internet Candidate is an “idea whose time has come.” Adesso basta, the message from Italy is being heard around the austerity-ravaged world.

Perhaps it is no more than coincidence, but Italy, where the European Renaissance first took root and flourished, may be the breeding ground for Renaissance 2.0.

Gerald Celente is founder and director of The Trends Research Institute, author of Trends 2000 and Trend Tracking (Warner Books), and publisher of The Trends Journal. He has been forecasting trends since 1980, and recently called “The Collapse of ’09.”