The party swept the poor Mezzogiorno, or southern Italy, where a culture of dependency on state handouts is deeply ingrained; unemployment is high; and corruption is rife. The money that long oiled the crony politics of the South has dried out. The Christian Democrats, patrons of that system, are gone. The Five Star Movement has stepped into a void with its inarticulate ire and its very southern opacity.

When TV was what mattered, Berlusconi, who still owns several channels, was the man. Now that the internet has risen, the Five Star Movement is its natural Italian child. The digital world was supposed to bring people together. In fact, social media has hurled them apart, less bridge-builder than disintegrator.

In the north, it was the League that triumphed – and was promptly praised by the rightist French National Front of Marine Le Pen. Its leader, Matteo Salvini, is an anti-immigrant bigot who has called for cities to be “cleansed” by the police. For Northern Italy, which is rich, the Mezzogiorno, particularly Sicily, was once “Africa,” a place from which the poor came north seeking jobs. Now Africa is Africa.

It will not be easy to form a government. The League and Five Star Movement have the numbers to govern, but Salvini has waved away such suggestions. Steve Bannon thinks it’s a good idea — “a bigger mandate to govern” and presumably generate the havoc he seeks. (Bannon was also impressed that the League “got 20 percent of the votes in Tuscany, which is traditionally a turf of the left or the center left: This is equivalent to Wisconsin going to Trump,” as he opined to the Swiss publication Die Weltwoche. Well, if you insist, Steve; had never thought of the Green Bay-Florence axis.)

Other possibilities, none of which look stable, include a center-right coalition that would need outside support to have enough seats to govern and would presumably see the odious Salvini as prime minister; a far-fetched coalition of the Five Star Movement and the Left; or a German-style grand coalition that, as in Germany, would see the defeated mainstream parties trying to govern and would thereby fuel rage against democracies that refuse to heed what voters say.

Putin is certainly happy. Trump is likely happy. The giants of European unity and freedom — Alcide De Gasperi of Italy, Konrad Adenauer of Germany, Robert Schuman of France — are turning in their graves. The almost three decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall have been a long strange trip to the politics of the mob.

The wise Mario Draghi completes his term as governor of the European Central Bank in October 2019. He’s the best answer to Italy’s problems I can see. Rome has seen empires come and go; it can see out the 19 months until then.