This is not really responsive to any specific event, but living through the Trump era has really clarified something for me, and that’s how much fascism is a disease rooted in insecurity - not economic insecurity but personal psychological insecurity

It spreads by relieving its adherents of the responsibility to think for themselves or accept any self-critique, allowing them to indulge in their worst, most irrational prejudices in exchange for their unquestioning political support.

For insecure people whose self-doubt and resentments cause them a lot of suffering, this is just too good of an offer to refuse. Once they’re in, there’s coming out. People who subscribe became incapable of self-reflection, that’s the whole point

More insidiously fascism preys on the insecurity of non-adherents - their inability to trust their own mind or morals without outside validation, the terror of finding oneself alone in a room with no one to tell you you’re right. So they acquiesce and collaborate

Dorothy Thompson lived through the rise of Hitler. She wrote that people who believe in something don’t go Nazi. It sounded too simple to me before but now I realize it’s true: it’s security in our own beliefs that inoculates us from ever falling in line https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/