To be clear, I am only talking about people like the average working class Trump voter. The ones who just got caught by misinformation, and just haven’t been able to find a way out. Trump and all his mates are terrible people, and should be held accountable.
The average voter is another thing. My attitude is that I got lucky, and found out that Trump and his mates are terrible, instead of getting sucked down a rabbit hole of supporting them. Knowing how fascism works, I don’t know if I’d be able to reliably land on the right side if fascism happened in my home country. And if I don’t believe I could reliably spot fascism, I’m not comfortable acting like those who support Trump could have.
This isn’t a discussion of “just be a good person”. I know plenty of amazing, caring people who believe they’re doing the right thing.
This whole idea of “I can’t say is reliably avoid fascism” is based on this, the school that became fascist for a week. As bad of an experiment that was from that teacher, it was an effective way of teaching how people fall for what should be obviously a bad thing.
I’m pretty torn on this to be honest.
On the one hand, propaganda is a hell of a drug especially if you’re already sympathetic to the ideas of one party or another. You want to be able to agree with them or you’re left realizing you have no options at all. It’s a similar thing to those on the left being “forced” to support Democrats even if they basically loath the current party. If not for them then they have absolutely nothing, no hope of any representation at all.
On the other hand, how many times can you be confronted with outrageous situations and such a large, essentially global, consensus that “your team” is just straight up wrong before you realize you’re supporting actual bad people? You’re making a choice to support people doing actual bad things, but again, based on the propaganda you might never believe bad things are actually bad, or are even really happening.
I’ve had many many arguments with my father and I’ve come to realize he absolutely will not accept information that is not what he already wanted to hear. Fox is good when it says “Trump good”, fox is bad when they say “Trump did something wrong.” I pleaded with him to at the very least stop watching the fox primetime peanut gallery where they lie with impunity, that he would be better served watching Fox journalists like (at the time) Shepard Smith. His response was “Smith is too opinionated, I prefer Hannity.” … Sean Fucking Hannity, the guy who’s show is literally an opinion show. He just wants confirmation bias. When a Republican committee release a document it’s gospel, when a Democrat lead committee release something it’s fake news lies.
I blame them collectively for supporting fascists, but I can’t really blame an individual human for being a stubborn ignorant human. It’s our nature to be thick headed. Some way more than others.
“No one is the villain of their own story.” My stubborness is that I choose to believe this quote is true. 99% of people believe they’re doing the right thing, it’s why we even have the cliche of “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”