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This Is an Open Access Document Downloaded from ORCA, Cardiff University's Institutional Repository This is an Open Access document downloaded from ORCA, Cardiff University's institutional repository: http://orca.cf.ac.uk/105369/ This is the author’s version of a work that was submitted to / accepted for publication. Citation for final published version: Trere, Emiliano and Barassi, Veronica 2015. Net-authoritarianism? How web ideologies reinforce political hierarchies in the Italian 5 Star Movement. Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies 3 (3) , pp. 287-304. 10.1386/jicms.3.3.287_1 file Publishers page: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jicms.3.3.287_1 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jicms.3.3.287_1> Please note: Changes made as a result of publishing processes such as copy-editing, formatting and page numbers may not be reflected in this version. For the definitive version of this publication, please refer to the published source. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite this paper. This version is being made available in accordance with publisher policies. See http://orca.cf.ac.uk/policies.html for usage policies. Copyright and moral rights for publications made available in ORCA are retained by the copyright holders. Net-authoritarianism? How web ideologies reinforce political hierarchies in the Italian 5 Star Movement Emiliano Treré, Autonomous University of Querétaro Veronica Barassi, Goldsmiths University of London Abstract This article responds to current critiques about the myths of digital democracy drawing on the case study of the Italian Movimento 5 Stelle/5 Star Movement (5SM) lead by comedian- turned-politician Beppe Grillo. We argue that the political success of the 5SM was largely dependent on a process of technological fetishism of the Net as an autonomous political agent. We also contend that this process has enabled the party leaders to build an ideology of the movement and represent the 5SM as a grassroots movement based on horizontal networks, participatory democracy, and characterized by the absence of leadership. Conversely, we claim that the digital rhetoric of horizontality, lack of leadership and spontaneity of the party is used to mask, facilitate and reinforce the authority of Beppe Grillo as political leader, thus forging a new type of authoritarianism that is supported and legitimated through the everyday construction of digital discourse. Keywords net-authoritarianism web ideologies Italian politics 5 Star Movement Beppe Grillo Gianroberto Casaleggio 1 digital utopianism technological fetishism Introduction The relationship between political discourses and technological advancements has defined the historical development of the Internet. During the mid-1990s – as Internet links and networks were being strengthened and shared, and the first ‘online communities’ were being formed – different scholars were quick to come to conclusions on the so called revolutionary and transformative impacts of the Internet. Negroponte (1995) wrote about a radical cultural change and the moving away from the politics of the nation state. Rheingold (1994) discussed the emergence of new forms of social life, the virtual communities, which were [to be] self- governed and horizontal in essence. Toffler and Toffler (1995) believed that the Internet was creating a third way, a new civilization, which was based on information highways and which clashed with older forms of politics, and political engagement. Castells (1996) instead contended that the world was witnessing the rise of a network society, based on autonomous information and communication networks that was different from older forms of society. All these works saw the Internet as a transformative and even revolutionary force and believed that the new technologies had a radical impact on creating new forms of social and cultural organization, with positive and democratic consequences for political practice. With the burst of the dot.com bubble at the beginning of the 2000s, venture capitalists lost confidence in dot.com businesses and the ‘hype’ over the so called revolutionary qualities of the Internet slightly decreased (Mosco 2004: 3–5), and in social and communication research we have witnessed the rise of more critical and nuanced understandings on the social impacts of Internet technologies (Woolgar 2002). However, as Mosco (2004) argued, technological 2 hypes often function in cycles, and this is certainly true if we consider the history of the Internet. By 2005, when the term Web 2.0 became widespread – mostly through the discourses promoted by the O’Reilly Media Group (2005) – the ideological discourse on the new democratic and revolutionary qualities of the Internet re-established itself with surprising force. Benkler (2006) argued that the world was witnessing a moment of opportunity and change as well as the rise of a new, networked economy, based on co-production and participation. Tapscott and Williams (2006) revived the concept of prosumer coined by Toffler (1980) over twenty years before. They argued that the new web technologies enabled the making of a new type of social organization, which was based on the disintegration of old hierarchies and power relations. A few years later, Shirky (2008) claimed that new web platforms were radically transforming the ways social groups organized themselves and were re-defining the ways in which people and collectives worked. In the following years, with the explosion of protest movements across the world, technological understandings have been entrenched with techno-optimistic analyses of how the new web was allegedly transforming social organization and political life (Castells 2009). Within current communication and social research, one feels the urgency to deconstruct these techno-optimistic understandings about the democratic potentials of Internet technologies and to reflect critically on the myths of digital democracy (Mosco 2004; Hindman 2008), their meanings and their impact on political processes (Morozov 2011; Curran et al. 2012). This article responds to such urgency, and argues that a pivotal question of our time is to analyse the construction of web ideologies, and to reflect critically on how these ideologies can influence everyday political practices by legitimizing authoritarian and hierarchical forms of political organization. In this article we draw on the case study of Beppe Grillo and Casaleggio’s 5 Star Movement (5SM) in Italy, and we analyse and critically deconstruct the technological rhetoric 3 of Grillo and Casaleggio’s party/movement. In this article we show that the cyber-libertarian discourse of the 5SM was translated into political practices that, far from being horizontal and participatory, legitimized authoritarianism, populism and leadership.1 Our research focuses in particular on the 2012–2013 period that preceded and followed the electoral success of the 5SM. It combines a discourse analysis of the media content produced by the 5SM with an historical analysis of Italy’s political practices and events. Moreover, our research also draws on reflections emerged from an in-depth interview with Giuliano Santoro, author of the book Un Grillo Qualunque/‘An ordinary cricket’2 (2012), one of the most profound analyses of the 5SM from its origins to its 2013 electoral triumph. While the technological discourse of the 5SM inspires a growing scholarly literature (Natale and Ballatore 2014; Dal Lago 2014; Treré and Barranquero 2013), we think that what is currently missing in the public debate is an exploration of how the web ideologies promoted by the 5SM translate into and eventually legitimize top-down, authoritarian political practices that invite reflection upon democratic processes, accountability and the role of old and new media. In the first section of this article we briefly describe and contextualize the emergence and the development of the 5SM, starting from the mainstream background of Beppe Grillo and all the way to the electoral triumph of the 5SM in the Italian 2013 national political elections. In the second section, we provide a critical analysis and deconstruction of the web ideologies that sustain the technological discourse of Grillo’s and Casaleggio’s party-movement. In the third section, we examine how these web ideologies are translated into political practices and how they legitimize top-down, anti-democratic and authoritarian politics. Beppe Grillo and the 5SM: A brief overview 4 The construction of Beppe Grillo as political leader: From mainstream media to digital conversion Before entering politics Grilllo was a well-known Italian actor and comedian who became famous with his shows at the end of the 1970s. He was especially famous for his performances as a stand-up comedian, in which he blended political satire with social and environmental campaigns, consumer rights and other topics. He also participated in television shows like Te la do io l’America/Here’s America for You (Trapani, 1981) and Te lo do io il Brasile/Here’s Brazil for You (Trapani, 1984), where he commented and made jokes about the lifestyle and culture of United States and Brazil. During these shows, Grillo commented pictures of his journeys to the United States and to Brazil, making abundant use of racist and cultural stereotypes about women, Jews and black (often called ‘negroes’) and Arab people, as well as exploiting every possible cliché about minorities and subcultures. Grillo also starred in television advertisements, and appeared in several movies (Santoro 2012; Scanzi 2008). In 1986, while he was performing on the variety show Fantastico/Fantastic 7, he
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