I learned a German expression for what universally drives people into the arms of the extremist right: Verlustangst [View all]

Verlust means "loss," and Angst means "fear." So: "fear of losing something/everything."

The National Socialists (NSDAP, or "Nazis" for short) effectively made the population afraid that the Jews and the Bolsheviks were coming (or were alredy there) to take away what the people had. This was particularly effective in post World War I Germany, when economic conditions were dire.

In present-day USA, it's again, money, but also weapons, God, daughters, "freedom," or the "American way of life," which is definable by exactly no one.

It doesn't matter what, or which combination or even all of the above. The Republican tactic is to convince voters that "they" are coming to take something away from them. Anything. Their internal combustion engines, their right to dump Roundup into our drinking water, their right to put innocent people into jail and leave them there, their churches, their "freedom" to force their religion onto others, and, of course, their freedom to not have anyone else force their religion on them.

The Republican line is to convince their voters that we "libbruls" are coming to take all that away from them. It's theirs to "lose," and the Republicans are saying, "we're here to protect you from that." And since they own most of the media people listen to, enough otherwise rational people believe it. When it's such nonsense, then WHY do people believe it? I can't really explain it, other that the fact that too many people hear nothing BUT this line, and have come to accept it as the truth.

No one understood this phenomenon better that Hitler's buddy, Hermann Göring:

"Naturally the common people don't want war . . . but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or parliament or a communist dictatorship. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

"People don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? The common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany."

My father in law WAS that "slob on a farm." He didn't want war, but was drafted at age 17. He was sent to Stalingrad at age 18. He returned at age 19. He was not in one piece. But that is one loss that the extremist right will not be warnig you about.