I had been wondering how to begin this piece explaining why I have changed my mind about Italy, why over the last decade I have become increasingly indignant about a country and culture that used to delight me so much, and why I now almost do not care if I ever set foot in the place again. But I need not have worried, a Guardian story gave me my cue.

John Hooper's report from Coccaglio near Brescia brought together much of what is wrong with modern Italy in one seasonal package, all perfectly presented in extravagant wrapping paper and tied up with a great bow in the way that only Italians can manage. Christmas in Coccaglio, Hooper reports, is being marked by a house-to-house search for illegal (ie black) immigrants. The search, which is sponsored by the local Northern League-controlled council, has officially been dubbed Operation White Christmas and finishes, ho ho ho, on 25 December. One Coccaglio councillor has said Christmas is a feast of Christian identity, not a celebration of hospitality. The whole crackdown has been complimented and backed by Silvio Berlusconi's government.

As a northern European, I grew up with a northern European's readiness to have a love affair with Italy. It had warmth instead of cold, brightness instead of dark, extroversion instead of introversion, passion instead of repression. To go to Italy, as I did most years for a large part of my life, was somehow to be released into a world of the senses, where the heart ruled the head, where beauty replaced ugliness and where easygoing moral naturalness replaced all the buttoned-up severity of the protestant world. As I got older I became more interested in the language, the art, the history and of course the opera and the women. I became fascinated by the politics too. The Italian left seemed to possess a uniquely learned and subtle way of looking at its country and the world. It offered a beguiling combination of socialism and style. In Bologna they seemed to have invented the perfect modern city, combining intellectual dynamism, excellent local government and some of the best cooking in Europe. Like others of my generation, I lapped it all up and wondered why we in Britain could not be more like Italians.

That was a long time ago. I see things differently now. The easy thing to say would be to blame it all on Berlusconi, on his grotesquery, his corruption, his shamelessness and his racism – and of course to some extent I do. As George W Bush did to the global standing of the US, so Berlusconi has done to that of Italy. But with this big difference: at least the rise of Bush made possible the eventual corrective rise of Barack Obama. On the contrary, the rise of Berlusconi seems only to feed itself and to propel Italy ever faster down the track of media-dominated, media-controlled politics. I sometimes fear this may be our future in Britain too, if we do not watch out. My Christmas quiz to readers is this. Who would be the British Berlusconi?

Back to Italy. When British observers looked at the US a decade ago and asked how could they elect someone like Bush, there was at least a fairly clear psephological answer to their question (and it was not simply the obvious retort in 2000 that they didn't elect him). Americans elected Bush twice because American voters, especially white male American voters, tend to be culturally and politically more rightwing than white male voters in most of Europe.

We must ask a similar question about Italians. How could they elect someone like Berlusconi, and then do it again, and then do it a third time? They do so, I suspect, for much the same psephological reasons as Americans chose someone like Bush. Look back over 150 years of Italian history and you have long periods of rightwing rule, each followed by a short period of catastrophe and then by a reassertion of the right. Italy has never been the liberal Eden that progressive Europeans sometimes delude themselves into imagining it to be. It is actually a majority rightwing country. It is a much more corrupt, smut-driven, racist and lawless country than the middle-class tourists, armed with their EM Forster fantasies and seeing only what they want to see, imagine. Coccaglio is not merely a corrective to this. It is the way Italy is. Forget the Italy of Dante. Forget the Italy of Verdi. Forget the Italy of your fantasies. Welcome to the Italy that calls a raid on migrants Operation White Christmas, to the Italy that says the American president has a good sun tan – and to the Italy that then sniggers about it.