Look up Time Ghost’s ‘The Rise of Hitler’ series on YouTube. They’ve also done a shorter one about Mussolini.

1. Mass of people stop learning/being taught how to deal with their emotions (and frustrations).
2. Instead of being in control of their emotions (it’s ok to disagree with anyone, to no like them or not be liked by them, that doesn’t mean we should want to kill them or fear them to kill us) they let their emotions control them.
3. They elect the one (who has been pushed forward by highly educated people, mind you) that is promising them all they wish for which, more often than not, revolves around giving them more money/power and a free pass to make hell out of the life of some other group(s) of persons they have long been hating on without any mean to meaningfully hurt them.

Education, or the absence of it, is key im_v_ho.

Which is why, this kind of news should worry and trigger urgent and radical answers from any country in which this happens. I’m not US, I’m French but we have the exact same tragedy that’s unfolding here too and, beisde an few individual/isolated attempts, we have an almost exact copy of a total absence of nation-wide reaction. Everything is fine…

(How many US citizens have read the Project 2025? It’s a book (not a cheap book, sure but the PDF is officially available for free)? I’m willing to bet not that many, as most people can’t be bothered to read at all (they believe scrolling some headlines and tweets, and to have feelings and emotions, is more enough to understand and be the expert they are on absolutely any subject—which is another huge weakness that the lack of of working educative system is helping spread in the general population, one that is over-exploited by highly educated people). And they will even less so be willing to read a 900+ pages brick… even if that book may help them better understand who/what they may be about to vote for.)

Education, self-education at the very least, should be a top priority in a working democracy.

Try reading Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti. Early on, it explains how fascism comes to power, who supports it and what can done to resist it.

there are many ways it can happen.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a5JgD8AhRjs

watch that and you’ll have a better idea to the answer you’re asking.

Does musk count?

It depends on blaming a minority group for problems that people face instead of addressing the problems. It’s the natural progression of a system that enables sycophants.

Wealth is finite, the amount of currency in existence is finite. The rich benefit at the expense of the poor, the poor benefit at the expense of the rich.

If a leader is benefitting from worsening the lives of the poor, and doesn’t want to change their goals, they need to distract the poor from the problems they need addressed. The most common way is to trick them into thinking an “expendible” minority is the cause, and the only solution is to erase them. This distraction also allows the leaders to further erode the rights of the poor in the process.

Until it all inevitably collapses, because a society where things only get worse for the vast majority are not sustainable

Wealth redistribution kills fascism

From They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933 - 1945, in which the author Milton Mayer got to know and interviewed 10 Nazis (the mentioned “friends”) about the rise of fascism:

Because the mass movement of Nazism was nonintellectual in the beginning, when it was only practice, it had to be anti- intellectual before it could be theoretical. What Mussolini’s official philosopher, Giovanni Gentile, said of Fascism could have been better said of Nazi theory: “We think with our blood.” Expertness in thinking, exemplified by the professor, by the high- school teacher, and even by the grammar- school teacher in the village, had to deny the Nazi views of history, economics, literature, art, philosophy, politics, biology, and education itself. Thus Nazism, as it proceeded from practice to theory, had to deny expertness in thinking and then (this second process was never completed), in order to fill the vacuum, had to establish expert thinking of its own— that is, to find men of inferior or irresponsible caliber whose views conformed dishonestly or, worse yet, honestly to the Party line. The nonpolitical pastor satisfied Nazi requirements by being nonpolitical. But the nonpolitical schoolmaster was, by the very virtue of being nonpolitical, a dangerous man from the first. He himself would not rebel, nor would he, if he could help it, teach rebellion; but he could not help being dangerous— not if he went on teaching what was true. In order to be a theory and not just a practice, National Socialism required the destruction of academic independence. In the years of its rise the movement little by little brought the community’s attitude toward the teacher around from respect and envy to resentment, from trust and fear to suspicion. The development seems to have been inherent; it needed no planning and had none. As the Nazi emphasis on nonintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, “blood,” “folk- ishness”) seeped through Germany, elevating the self- esteem of the “little man,” the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. Germany was preparing to cut its own head off. By 1933 at least five of my ten friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon “intellectuals” as unreliable and, among these unreliables, upon the academics as the most insidiously situated.

Anti-intellectualism isn’t the only ingredient, but it’s one of the most important. It’s a reactionary movement that injects hate into people’s hearts in order to consolidate power for the privileged. Those “little men” who support the regime feel that they were elevated above the people whom they hate, and were often the beneficiaries of the cruel treatment and dispossession of the victims.

This book has helped me understand:

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo27509064.html

There are two things you’ll want to read to get an idea of how and why fascism happens. The first is the essay Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco. The second is the free ebook The Authoritarians by Dr Bob Altemeyer.

Between these two, you get a clear, measurable definition of what it means to be fascist and an explanation of the psychologies behind it.

There’s an essay titled “Ur-Fascism” by Eco Umberto. It’s available online for free, you can Google it. It might give you some good insight on the subject. It’s mandatory reading, imo.

As I’m sure many have already told you Stalin was not a Fascist. I’m not sure if you’re asking about fascists in specific and used a wrong example or about totalitarianism in general and used the wrong word.

For fascism in specific it’s usually about a common enemy and economic crisis that can be pinned on that enemy. But there are other stuff as well, there’s a great movie called “Die Welle” (The Wave) which is based on an actual scientific experiment called The Third Wave in which a teacher showed how fascism is able to take root.

For totalitarianism in general the answer is a lot more complex, each dictator grew to power their own way, but populism and fear mongering are common practices.

Fascist propaganda is highly effective, and no one is immune to propaganda. Humans are emotional creatures, prone to being whipped up into a frenzy. You identify a(n imaginary) threat, and offer a very simple solution to it. The logic of whether or not the solution sounds morally correct doesn’t matter because 1.) The problem is made up anyways and 2.) The propagandist is appealing to the id, not the superego.

Remember that thinking is the greatest threat to fascism, exercise your brain as often as possible.

If you’re seriously wondering then I’d highly recommend reading Daniel Guerrin’s Fascism and Big Business. And Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebook, particularly the section The Problem of Political Leadership in the Formation and Development of the Nation and the Modern State in Italy.

Any political extremism is propagated by providing easy answers to complex problems.

Read the little book “The Wave” by Morton Rhue. He showed howit starts, with an impressive little example.