Reading Asor Rosa’s Scrittori e popolo today: Populism as Universalist Political Approach

The left-wing literary critic Alberto Asor Rosa provided one of the first analyses of populism in Italy with his book Scrittori e popolo (1965), which criticised the communist post-war cultural politics. He stated that universality of culture was a populist issue and welcomed any cultural expression taking a stand in favour of the working class as opposed to society as a whole. This chapter uses his idea of populism to investigate today’s populism in Italy and especially the Conte I Cabinet between 2018 and 2019, supported by two populist parties (Movimento Cinque Stelle and Lega), considering it unintentionally universalist.