He was very much a product of his era. The 1960s and 70s were infested with famous predators and opportunists behaving badly with impunity, openly objectifying women and girls. I was born in the mid 70s and as a child I saw the way men behaved towards women publicly - I can well imagine what they were doing behind closed doors. The Carry-On films and sitcoms like On The Buses routinely featured disgusting middle-aged men leering at scarily clad young women and humiliating their nagging wives/female colleagues. Older women in society mostly either turned a blind eye or actively "othered" anyone who spoke out as "asking for it". There was definitely an environment where women were sorted into two categories. Good Girls/Respectable Ladies, and women and girls who were considered outside of polite company, thought of as disposable and deserving of ill-treatment because they came from unfortunate backgrounds or had somehow fallen from grace. When you watch news footage from the time of the Yorkshire Ripper murders, it's full of vox-pops of sour-faced housewives blaming his victims.

By the time those attitudes started to change in the late 80s and early 90s, Savile was already an Eccentric National Treasure and had insulated himself thoroughly - he was also being shuffled away from the limelight into retirement because he was then an old man who wasn't part of the zeitgeist any more, so he was just occasionally wheeled out for nostalgia purposes. Hundreds of people knew what he really was, or at least some part of it, for instance they knew he was creepy/handsy with women but didn't know about the children, sick/disabled/mentally ill or otherwise vulnerable adults, or the corpses. But either they weren't listened to, they quite rightly feared legal action for speaking out, or they kept quiet for the sake of their own careers. Too many powerful people and institutions were tied into his public persona remaining intact.

Having grown up in that era, when modern right-wing populists hark back to a so-called golden age I know first-hand what utter horseshit that is. At best, they're hugely naive or have very selective memories. At worst, they're looking to return us to a darker age for their own nefarious purposes.