Historian Loris Zanatta has described populism is “the modern expression of an ancient heritage… typical of eras dominated by the sacred, according to which human societies are seen as natural organisms, comparable in essence and function to the human body, whose health and the balance of which involve the subordination of the individual to the collective level that transcends them.” In other words, a holistic view “not comparable to the many ‘isms’ of the 19th and 20th century,” although it can sometimes combine with them, and that “it does not exist in itself, but is closely linked to the historical circumstances in which it occurs.”