No Stupid Questions

Cognitive dissonance is a lot of it.

Maybe don't actually realize they are Nazis. I like to talk to these types and describe the events of the Boston Massacre (kid got shot after throwing snowballs and possibly rocks at the police, then a riot broke out and some rioters got shot) the Boston Tea Party (government raised taxes in an obvious money grab, so a bunch of protesters broke into a warehouse and destroyed a bunch of private property). Get them to take the side of the British, then tell them which events I'm talking about. They know from school, hopefully, at least as to those two events, how they felt about them when they learned about them, and you can see the dissonance contorting their faces.

Others are Nazi sympathizers. I knew a dude who felt that the coolest thing he owned was a Nazi dagger from WW2. It was his "everyday carry" knife. Only visible as a Nazi knife if you looked at the hilt. He thought the Holocaust was a ln exaggeration and that the Nazis had a lot of good ideas that would translate well to today's problems; he thought Jews controlled the media, that blacks and browns were taking jobs from better qualified white people (hated "DEI"). He was delusional, living in a world that wasnt real. Brainwashed. Maybe not his fault, but he's responsible for his behaviors. If an alt right style cleansing or war breaks out, he'll be the first non-open Nazi to get excited to kill minorities.

Then there are actual Nazis. Two types. Dumb, racist poor people who feel comforted by Nazi rhetoric. And intelligent, wealthy people, who want to steal all wealth from minorities and send them to ghettos (or worse), so their companies and investments have no competition and their personal wealth may go unhindered. These are people who want to use racism to bring about oligarchy and a new age of imperialism, and they recognize the oath of least resistance is a friendly dictator, brought to power based on Nazi rhetoric. This is Musk and Bannon. The people who now feel emboldened to do Nazi salute in public, as a homage to the group above, who might get caught up doing them in private.

My hot take, anyway.

There are people who proud themselves in kicking puppies and more would come forward if they felt it's acceptable.

It's mainly a mix of economic frusturation and a divide and conquer strategy by the rich in order to have the masses blame immigrants and people of other races/religions/genders/sexual orientations/etc. for all of their problems instead of blaming the elite class and capitalism. The lie of meritocracy being real also plays a big role here ("temporarilly embarrassed billionaires").

There is another angle, though, and that's sexual frusturation. When a teenage male has issues getting laid and they look online for some kind of support, they find people like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson who tells them that men who "get laid" are "alphas" or whatever and that women should be treated as subhuman or as slaves. These incels have likely never actually attempted to make friends with any women outside of a sexual or romantic context, because if they did, they would learn that women are the same as them, even when it comes to their struggles (even pertaining to dating/sexual frusturations).

I think the latter reason (specifically Gamergate) sparked the fire that made the first truely possible on a scale that we haven't seen in our lifetimes.

There is also the additional piece of info that the majority of people won't take action against what is happening in politics until it personally affects them, which is a very unfortunate reality.