The Five Star Movement, or M5S, is a popular anti-establishment, populist political party in Italy. One of its key features is the Rousseau platform, an online space designed to enable direct democracy. Named after the eighteenth century thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau, it banks on the idea that the traditional state is corrupt, while the people's will can be more directly polled and executed as a governing force. However, Rousseau has also been critiqued for defending despotism and characterised as the enemy of liberty. This paper takes a closer look at Rousseau's 'Emile' and 'The Social Contract', and points out how a critical reading could raise questions about the platform's true meaning. The analysis focuses specifically on the illusion of autonomous choice and covert authoritarianism. The platform becomes a powerful tool of both preventive as well as repressive social control. As an anti-modern public sphere, it holds inherent threats to democracy itself.
Since 1989, when the Berlin wall fell, criminal organizations have undergone to deep changes. Globalisation has indeed brought about new opportunities for new criminal organizations, as well as creating new illegal markets. For most scholars, the Sicilian mafia, or Cosa Nostra (CN), has suffered the blows of these changes and entered a deep crisis. This article aims to show that CN is not in crisis, but it is rather experiencing the changes from a fordist to a psotfordist regime of capitalist accumulation. In order to demonstrate this thesis, the author will analyse the flaws of previous mafia theorists, the changes in economy and also in culture.
Two people, a policeman and a football supporter, died in Italy in 2007 after clashes between police and football supporters. Italian public opinion asked for more repressive measures to fight football related violence. Both politicians and football clubs supported this view, thus blaming ultras, as Italian organized football supporters are called, for wrecking football. That does not acknowledge the place of ultras in Italian football culture. Ultras are organized groups with an independent subculture that enjoys the legitimacy of other football supporters. Their organization, their reputation, made them suitable for a role of intermediation between supporters, politics and clubs. As a consequence of this, both politicians and football clubs use ultras for their purposes.
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