"Grillo’s Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) should be a template for similar populist leftist movements across Europe and could provide a road map for how to build a significant alternative party in the US as well using the web and grass roots democracy. The party’s popularity is exploding in Italy in response to the lockstep march of the Italian legacy parties towards suicidal austerity (sound familiar?). I’ve been a follower for three years now and it has been exhilarating watching a populist movement grow from a tiny seed relentlessly ridiculed as inconsequential and unserious into what is polling as the second largest party in Italy behind Pier Luigi Bersani’s gutless and irredeemably corrupt PD, which is a very close analog of the pseudo-left American Democratic Party.
Anyone saying an emergent party can’t quickly grow in an austerian environment into a political force hasn’t been paying attention to Italy. Particularly today where the mainstream press can be circumvented by clever use of the internet. Why this explosive and remarkably successful political phenomenon has been almost completely ignored by the American left is, to me, baffling.
The American ground, given the palpable lack of real alternatives, seems well prepared for a similar emergent party to explode onto the scene. I think once the pain of mindless austerian policies begins to be felt, it will be a pretty easy sell. The Occupy Movement was an indicator of the latent discontent available, now all we need is a political entity to translate that discontent into political action. Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/10/links-102912.html#Xu07li40ug3lJI8D.99 "
Joanna