People are stupid. The powers that be have a vested interest in making stupid people think they’re correct while taking power away from the smart ones.

They’ve been very successful. We pride ourselves on our stupidity and ignorance now.

People are increasingly relatively poor within their own societies particularly compared to the wealthy and ultra wealthy increasingly visible on the internet.

Charismatic autocrats have done a good job falsly directing blame for this to socialists. It’s maddening to behold people basically cheering for their own chains.

When liberalism fails, people look for alternatives. Historically speaking, the lower classes move towards socialism, and the owning classes adopt fascism to protect their privileged position from socialists. Apart from some important exceptions, libertarian forms of socialism generally haven’t been able to prevail, while one-party states have built third-world countries into superpowers more than once, which makes for an appealing role-model, especially in countries where the system beforehand was a monarchist dictatorship or US puppet pretending to be a democracy.

People are indoctrinated into being vulnerable to authoritarianism very early, it’s a big part of the major religions. Now the vulnerability is being targeted with more and more serious exploits.