A trends analyst who made his reputation by predicting the 2008 economic crash appears to have scored again -- at least in part.
A year ago, Gerald Celente told Russia Today that 2011 would be marked both by young people around the world coming together on the Internet to combat political and financial corruption and by government attempts to control dissent by shutting down free speech online.
“[The Internet is] exposing the corruptness, the ineptitude and the double dealing going on that [governments] don’t want the public to know about,” Celente told RT in a January 2011 interview. “The more freedom of information that goes out, they’re going to start using cyber war and the war on terror to take that Internet freedom away from America.”
“But in 2011, the game’s gonna run out,” he continued. “On one end, it’s a wake-up call and on the other hand it’s [an effort to] screw the people.”
After pointing to protests already taking place in Europe, Celente went on to predict, "The US is going to be slower, but it’s going to happen here at a different level. Remember, the US has been beaten down and pushed down. You’re going to see a revolution world-wide. ... The Internet has become the great connector. They all know what’s going on. They’re all Facebook. They’re all together. They have a system where they’re interacting and relating. "
Although Celente was correct about the great ferment of 2011, in certain respects his prophetic vision fell short of the actuality. He focused on the advanced industrial nations as a center of protest and did not take account of the effect of the Arab Spring, which was just getting underway as he made his remarks. He also did not foresee a protest movement like Occupy Wall Street, which has not been confined to Anonymous-style online hacking but has made its mark through the unexpected tactic of occupying physical space in the heart of major Western cities.
Photo by Sunset Parkerpix from Flickr
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