Revolutions keep surprising us. Each brings something new and retains for itself a distinct flavour that sets it apart from others. No two revolutions are alike. The Bolshevik Revolution had a character of its own, as did the French, the American, the Maoist and Nasserist revolutions, as well as each of the revolutions of the Arab Spring. Today, Italy's “Five Star” revolution confirms the rule: every revolution is unique. The Five Star Movement — “M5S” as abbreviated in Italian — is a thoroughly Italian phenomenon. It is a sarcastic, direct revolution. It is also a locally grown one, in the sense that it first germinated in small and midsize towns. In fact, you could almost say that it is a one-man revolution because when it started three years ago it relied on the determination of a single person. M5S broke the moulds of all previous forms of protest in Italy. It did not depend on the support of an existing party or social movement. It did not engage in mass work; in fact, until now it has never held a single rally in a square, street or alleyway. Online social media is its chosen means for communication, meeting and exchanging ideas. Its initial core was made up of people who had not known each other before and who would never meet each other face-to-face. As we would eventually learn, M5S is quite a heterogeneous mixture of people. More than a third of its members are women, which in itself is a precedent for Italy. The members' average age is 32, yet another precedent for political and syndicate work in Italy. Some 80 per cent are university students and 15 per cent are unemployed. This amalgam of people, who had never marched in the streets, never met in a single place, never obtained funding from anyone, or enjoyed the backing of a newspaper or satellite TV station, succeeded in winning around a quarter of the votes in Italy's recent parliamentary elections. In the process, they succeeded, perhaps without intent, in sending tremors throughout the rest of Europe, forever dismissive of Italian youth and Italian women. The aims of M5S are few, but loud and clear. Prime among them are free Internet connections for every citizen, a law obliging members of parliament to make their financial disclosures public, reduction of the workweek to 30 hours, and a referendum over Italy's continuation in the Eurozone. Even after the elections, it is unlikely that its aims will stop there. Like other protest movements, M5S has and will continue to accumulate demands the more it grows and expands. But what is absolutely clear is that it is a totally anti-establishment movement. Barely a statement or communication of Beppe Grillo, the comedian turned political activist who sparked the movement, is free of some barb or taunt that voices a deep and widespread aversion to establishment politicians. It therefore came as no surprise to see a group of youths carrying an effigy on which was written, “The political elite is dead,” or a throng of protesters shouting at some minister or MP, “Give in! Give up! And go home!” Commentators in Italy and elsewhere in Europe held that M5S embodied the Italians' desire for change and a revolution against the status quo, and that perhaps Germany, the EU and Brussels were being eyed as agencies that supported the status quo in Italy and prevented change. It has also been suggested that the movement may have arisen to keep Italy from sliding into an abyss of violence such as that of the 1970s and 1980s when a proliferation of terrorist gangs brought a wave of political assassinations, bombings and other such acts that rocked the stability of the country. Or, maybe the movement was meant to prevent Italy from falling into the grips of anarchy in the manner of the societies that experienced the revolutions of the Arab Spring. M5S carries the banner of change, just as did the Arab youth that took to the streets to protest against corrupt regimes. But it parted ways with the Arab revolutionaries when it opted, early on when it was still in full vigour, for the ballot box as its first big step instead of the square. In so doing, it also differed from the protest movements in Greece, Spain and Portugal. M5S is a rebellion against greed and corruption in Italy. It is not unlikely that a major factor that prompted Grillo to shift from a protest stance to direct participation in the political process was former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's decision to make a return to the political arena. To a large segment of the Italian public, Berlusconi is the epitome of the corruption, political manipulations, hypocrisy, lies and deceptions that the movement sought to fight. More dangerously yet, the former politician combines, in his own person, the worst in the nature and behaviour of the most opportunistic segments of Italian society. Berlusconi has no time for the truth. He doesn't want to see it and he doesn't want anyone to remind him of it. There are quite a few here in our own culture that share his attitude: everything in this world is “ephemeral”, so everyone has the right to grab what he can before others and to indulge themselves in whatever riches and pleasures are available. In Berlusconi's philosophy of how to manage a state, honourable people in the judiciary, bureaucracy, educational system and elsewhere in government and society obstruct the wheels of work and production, and stand in the way of prosperity, apart from being dull and boring. Whoever said that Berlusconi was not a phenomenon but an “institution” of government in Italy hit the nail on the head. Equally appropriate is the M5S decision to make the defeat of Berlusconi and his elimination from Italian political life one of its chief goals. Countries to the north in Europe, led by Germany, fear that the contagion of the current Italian crisis will spread to other countries that are already reeling under waves of strikes and protest movements and are vulnerable to instability. These countries, along with the European Commission in Brussels, realise that the recent developments in Italy have delivered a powerful blow to the solutions proposed by Germany to resolve the crisis of the Eurozone and possibly, too, to the very idea of the EU itself. Perhaps more than others, German officials are also aware that Italy will have to face some painful truths in the upcoming months. The first undeniable and unavoidable truth is that Italy has enjoyed the easy life for decades, pampered by the EU and the international community that have not burdened it with a serious role at either the continental or international level. It thus emerged as the third largest economy of Europe without having to sustain the costs of responsibility, such as those borne by the UK, Germany, France and even Sweden and Norway. Italy has lived on the glories of its past, the glories of thousands of years ago, of a civilisation that died out and an empire that collapsed, leaving the remnants of roads, temples, palaces and statues to testify to that downfall and demise. It lived in an imaginary world fabricated by the fascist leader Mussolini many decades ago and remanufactured by Berlusconi and his financial and media elites in a manner tailored to arouse the instincts of greed, plunder and fraud. Having lived some years in Italy, I have experienced some of the dreams of the Italian people and some of their disappointments. I know exactly what it means to see the truth die every day on the alters of beauty and elegance, the passion for art, wit and fun, and la dolce vita.
The writer is a political analyst and director of the Arab Centre for Development and Futuristic Research
