Trends analyst predicts global youth uprising, 'progressive libertarians' in 2011

An American trends analyst told a Russian news service recently that in 2011, young people from industrial societies around the world will unite on the Internet to overthrow increasingly ineffective elements of globalism that have driven their economies into depression.

In a wide-ranging interview with Russia Today (RT) on Monday, Gerald Celente made the bold prediction along with a raft of other prognostications on humanity's growing trends.

As founder of the Trends Research Institute, Celente has made a number of highly accurate predictions in the past, including the rise of gold as an alternative store of monetary value and the popularization of hyper-local, organic food commodities. He also accurately foretold the economic collapse, predicting at the start of 2008 that it would happen later in the year.

Thanks to his track record, Celente has been featured by a raft of mainstream media outlets and has a strong following among American libertarians.

His overall prediction for 2011: Get ready for the cyber wars.

"[The Internet is] exposing the corruptness, the ineptitude and the double dealing going on that [governments] don't want the public to know about," he told RT. "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."

He predicted a rising tide of government and private intervention online, with entities acting alongside each other to shut down speech they dislike.

"But in 2011, the game's gonna run out," he said. "...On one end, it's a wake-up call and on the other hand it's [an effort to] screw the people."

"What we saw in England, again with 'off with their heads,' what we saw in Italy with the students taking to the streets, you're gonna see in Spain, you're going to see in Ireland. You already saw it in France. Figure it out.

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. What's going to unite them in this cause is another major trend: Journalism 2.0.

"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. It's a different kind of social network than the other one, but the same."

He added that cyber war and cyber crime -- the likes of which targeted companies that refused to do business with WikiLeaks -- will escalate throughout the year.

"The worse conditions get, the more you're going to see cyber crime. The worse economic conditions go globally, the more you're going to see cyber wars. It's going to be a new element of warfare. It's an Internet nuclear bomb waiting to go off. You can bring down entire financial systems, stop bank transfers. You can blow apart, without ever having to light a fuse, a whole stock exchange... Every major computer-connected industry or service is a potential target for cyber war."

He predicted that government-sponsored cyber war would ultimately follow economic sanctions that fail to produce desired results.

Celente also predicted the rise of "progressive libertarians" in the US, which had already begun as early as 2007 when Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) became popular among not just conservatives, but progressive youth as well.

The hybridization would be "libertarian in the sense of government staying out of people's lives," he said, and progressive "with the government having control of issues where they can make a difference."

This video is from Russia Today, broadcast Jan. 10, 2010.