The quickest to get on Donald Trump's bandwagon were Beppe Grillo and Matteo Salvini, the undisputed leaders of Italian populism. Vulgar as almost always, the leader of the 5 Star Movement did not miss the opportunity to take the field immediately after Trump's victory: “Crazy. This is the explosion of an era. This is a general Vaffa”. Why be surprised? The former comedian's “progressivism” is so evanescent and eccentric that it has long since led him into the arms of former British nationalist leader Nigel Farage.
The leader of the League is also less effective than Grillo but perfectly in line with Le Pen's enthusiastic comments: "Trump's victory is a blow to globalization and it is the revenge of the people and it is also the end of Renzi and his reform".
Then Silvio Berlusconi and Giorgia Meloni arrived to cheer on the new president of the United States. The leader of Forza Italia, in a long interview with "Corriere della Sera", does not reveal who he would have voted for in the American presidential elections and avoids pasdaran tones so as not to flatline on Salvini, but does not hide the "similarities" between him and Trump and he says he is sure that "the very refusal of closed politics will induce Italians to vote NO" to that constitutional reform that Berlusconi pretends to forget that he openly approved at the beginning. Meloni is more explicit, on the same wavelength as Le Pen: "Trump is music for us," says the leader of the Brothers of Italy.
Will it be a coincidence that all the Italian Trump supporters are lined up on the NO front in the referendum? Come on, we're not kidding. It is the call of the wild that unites them under the sign of populism, anti-global demagogy at bargain prices and the never denied aversion to liberal and democratic reformism. And Trump's success is too tempting an opportunity.
On the other hand, it is sad that characters of a very different political culture such as the D'Alemas and the Bersanis don't ask themselves embarrassedly why the comrades in the Brancaleone army, with whom they joined to support their spiteful NO to the referendum, are cheering for Trump. Personal resentment can play tricks in politics, but closing one's eyes to this extent does no credit to leaders who were once farsighted and now dominated only by resentment of Matteo Renzi.
