Italy has now elected a far-right extremist who also happens to be a woman for its next leader, and this led to a bizarre exchange between Newsmax host John Bachman and podcast host Sam Sorbo on Bachman’s show, John Bachman Now. 

Italy’s new presumptive Prime Minister is Giorgia Meloni, and Sorbo, for one, was ecstatic.

“All right. Sothis is a glass ceiling being shattered, for a first time for women. Where are all the liberal femists out there celebrating this milestone,” Bachman asked.

“They are fully displaying their hypocrisy. And I think it’s a very sad thing because this is really an amazing, phenomenal day,” Sorbo, who is the wife of actor Kevin Sorbo, said. (How cute!  Two equally stupid people met and married each other.) “Brava! Brava! Giorgia Meloni! I’m so happy I have been speaking Italian all morning.”

And then Sorbo plods on, getting a few things wrong along the way. Well, I mean, if you’re going to make an idiot of yourself you may as well do it on Newsmax where you’ll be in good company.

“And frankly, what we see here is we don’t see neo-fascism because this is not at all what this is,” she said. “The Democrat party has more in tune with the fascist agenda than anything conservative.”

She was trying to blur the lines between actual history and the connections Meloni’s party has to fascism and added:

“And so we really ought to understand that. In fact, that’s partly what my book, Words for Warriors is about,” Sorbo said. “I wrote it because they’ve changed the definition of fascism to mean populism.

“And that’s not what fascist is, fascism has everything to do with socialism. That’s why Mussolini joined with Hitler during World War II. And Hitler was not a fascist. Hitler was a socialist. Mussolini was a fascist. And that is not what we’re seeing in Italy today.”

But as any historian who knows their stuff will tell you — Hitler was absolutely, positively NOT a socialist. Perhaps Sorbo is confused since the term “Nazi” is actually short for “National Socialist.” It’s a phrase that some right-wingers (Dinesh D’Souza, Candace Owens) have latched onto. Hitler, however, was an expert at employing propaganda when he saw fit, using this to propel his anti-Semitic agenda, and in 1933 when Germany’s President Paul Von Hindenburg appointed him Chancellor, the Third Reich was born, Encyclopedia Britannica reports.

While Sorbo is either uninformed or dense as concrete isn’t clear here, but as Mediaite notes, that’s not the only problem here.

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy Party has embraced their heirs of Mussolini enthusiastically, even to the point of pushing for “streets to be named in honor of Giorgio Almirante, a former fascist official, and secretary of the Italian Social Movement, in several cities,” according to Foreign Policy.

But that’s not all.

Meloni “in 1992 at the age of 15, joined the youth wing of the Social Movement, a party of fascist nostalgists founded by officials from Mussolini’s army. They made no secret of admiring Mussolini and his views but didn’t want to bring his regime back. Their motto was ‘Neither Destroy Nor Restore’ — advocating participating in democratic life based on Mussolini’s ideas without wanting to organize a coup to restore fascism,” Foreign Policy notes in regards to Meloni’s apparent admiration for Mussolini.

I hope Fascism never takes a foothold in the U.S. but at least some right-wingers, perhaps spurred by former President Donald Trump’s obvious leanings toward this dangerous ideology, seem to have taken it to heart.

Once again, we are living in dangerous times, and this makes me think people really do forget the past. And then recreate it all over again.

Sam Sorbo tells Newsmax that "we don't see neo-fascism" with Giorgia Meloni before adding this:

"Fascism has everything to do with socialism. That’s why Mussolini joined with Hitler during WWII. And Hitler was not a fascist, Hitler was a socialist. Mussolini was a fascist." pic.twitter.com/Ut9jtTbKtW

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) September 26, 2022