Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake took to Fox News to express excitement over the win of the extreme right-wing and newly elected prime minister of Italy, Georgia Meloni, “This is someone I can relate to,” Lake told Tucker Carlson.

Meloni has been the Italian version of extreme right-wing candidates that spew loud and virulent criticisms of vaccinations and strict lockdowns, even though Italy recorded almost 120,000 deaths due to Covid 19, making it the country with the highest death toll in the EU.

With an already fragile economy and when Covid 19 devastated Italy, Meloni seized on fear.  Through social media antivaxxer platforms, she took a page from U.S. Covid-19 antivaxxer and conspiracy theorists, to make it her election rally cry and an obvious hero in the U.S. pro-Trump and QAnon camps.

Reportedly Meloni has “weaponized” disinformation through social media memes—and in an all-out campaign that was ramped up by Meloni weeks before the election.

A recent report from the European news agency Euractiv, cites that the antivax communities and pandemic-related spaces were “vectors for disinformation” for Meloni’s claims.

A report for Foreign Policy “Italy’s Anti-Vaccination Movement is Militant and Dangerous,” describes how strict lockdowns moved antivaxxers engaged by social media’s “far-right wing gangs and trade unions, rankled by the country’s extremely strict ‘green pass’ system, mobilized on Facebook and Telegram and ended up storming the country’s parliament building.”

Carlo Gianuzzi, a member of the Brescia chapter of the National Association of Italian Partisans (ANPI) an antifascist organization reportedly said that the photos on the social media sites of the antivaxxers clashing with police officers, “evoked identical scenes from exactly a century ago, as Mussolini’s Black Shirts were building up the momentum which would lead to the March on Rome and taking of power in Italy.”

Meloni reportedly spoke at the 2019 World Congress of Families, described as an umbrella group by the Southern Poverty Law Center with ties to a “massive network of interconnected organizations” designed to undermine LGBTQ rights.

Lake is apparently not the only one that can “relate to” Meloni, as other GOP right-wing candidates and elected officials like Ted Cruz have repeatedly applauded Meloni on her win.

Newly indicted Steve Bannon, presented on his podcast, War Room, the head of the American Conservative Union, Matt Schlapp who also applauded the Meloni victory and described it as “a warning shot coming from Italy.”