Obsolete Capitalism: The explosion of digital populism (Pt. I - The Birth of digital populism)

The explosion of digital populism

On 24^th and 25^th of FebSruary 2013, the general elections for the XVII legislation of the Italian Republic were held in Italy. The election result was defined by most political observers as an earthquake of unprecedented dimensions. For the first time in the history of the West a newly born political association, the Five Star Movement (5SM), which define itself to be an anti-party, ran in a parliamentary electoral competition and won it by a narrow margin; it became the first party in the Italian Chamber of Deputies5 with 25.5% of the votes. Despite the fact that, considering the total amount of votes (including those from Italians living abroad) the Democratic Party (DP) - the leading center-left party- received only 150,000 more votes than the Five Star Movement, the Italian electoral system conferred a substantial ‘majority premium’ on the DP. Regardless of this action, the infant movement led by Beppe Grillo affirmed itself firmly enough to deeply subvert the Italian political panorama. It is suitable, if not even obvious, to define Grillo’s anti-party as a new form of digital Populism. To understand this one only need look at the sharp innovation of the devices used by politics, which has been introduced by the Five Star Movement, such as the extended and innovative use of communication channels provided by the Internet. This has been combined with both the brutal simplification of the political message, in order to attract political consensus, and the dissipation of all acquired forms of institutional-systemic ratio. It is clear that following the unsettling result of Italy’s general election in February 2013, a new time has violently knocked on the door of Italian society, and it is now interrogating real problems with unusual and fast-paced questions.  (...) 
Read more @ e.book The Birth of Digital Populism