This is a great question and I wish I could distill the main take-aways into tangible things that could be used to effectively guide people away from fascism. Here’s my experience:

• Went to a decent university. Met people all over the political spectrum. Made friends with other far-right people and found them to be bitter, weird and kind of dense over time.
• Studied abroad for a semester, getting first-hand experience on what life in a foreign country could be like. Got help from a lot of decent folks.
• Met people from groups I used to hate. Realized they were just ordinary people and not sinister demons out to get me.
• Moved away from my far-right family.
• Got fucked over by other far-right people, who used shady tactics and unfair practices they were accusing other groups of.
• I used to love debating, so I had lots of discussions over a few beers with incredibly patient and validating people from other parts of the political spectrum. These arguments made the first cracks in my belief system.
• My country shifted from a left-wing government (in name, at least) to a right-wing one. I thought the left-wing government was corrupt and incompetent. The right-wing government quickly turned out to be that and more. When they started to agitate people against people fleeing from war-torn Syria to win the next election, I did a full 180, volunteering to help and going to protests, remembering the time when I was trying to get by in another country (as a privileged brat, not an asylum seeker).

I think that’s it, but there are probably many more minor bits that contributed. Ask me anything.

When I was younger, I was libertarian because I hated what the government did. It took me a while to figure out why the government does those things.

Not me but I’ve known three people now that would swing to absolute extremes on a kinda half year to three year cycle. Like their thing now is they are an ultra atheist and then in a couple months they were the most devout Muslim possible and then ultra this and ultra that, seemed kinda like undiagnosed manic behavior. Very impassioned individuals, pretty intelligent, absolutely convinced in whatever their thing was at that moment, always trying to fight the “enemy” and save the world type stuff but seemingly totally unanchored. The switches would come with some sort of epiphany or a sense they were being tricked or fooled. I bring this up because two of them had done that swing from ultra right to ultra left and then one into kinda political no man’s land conspiracy they’re both out to get you. Haven’t run into the other guy in a while so I’m guessing he has a new crusade by now.

Never was full fash, but was pretty deep into the right wing libertarian stuff in my mid to late teens.

Definitely started getting fed the typical alt-right algorithm pipeline, “leftists triggered” compilations, Sargon, Steven Crowder, Jordan Peterson, etc.

A few things shook me out of it:

• Went to University, got exposed to different perspectives and people.
• Started dating somebody who was open-minded and would gently but effectively challenge my views.
• Graduated and started having to pay off student loans, food, rent, got treated like trash at my first job and saw how Capitalist hierarchy screws people over unless you’re the owner.

It wasn’t a quick switch that flipped for me. It was a slow, gradual series of realizations that my worldview just didn’t make sense and didn’t line up with reality.

I live in the South.

I had a salvation experience after a drug problem in my teens. I was from a broken home and the love bombing was the best experience of my life. I went all in on faith. Worked for the church for a number of years. I think I saw the machinations of the church and politics and tried to talk to people, but the faith bit of the church is actually pretty minor.

Most of my issues with the church, I only have because I experienced life outside of the church first.

It’s a group of individuals just like any other. Among the fundamentalists is a hard line that taught something called young earth creationism. This is the belief that the record of creation in the Bible and it’s genealogy is literal records of individuals and time. This makes all of recorded history and science almost a malicious lie against the reality of the Bible and anyone who believes.

Now, here in the South the church still holds genuine power, so this throws in the racists who primarily are opposed to school integration and education (read wages). Because these are the landowner class that has been able to hang onto wealth for generations they have access to capital they are largely able to shape political policies just with jobs and stuff.

This slipstream (social networking or corruption) can then be used to elevate proper behavior and elect officials (a typical mega church can put out a sign up by the coffee bar for community events and such and get free labor and keep the kids off the street).

My only other real social group was the drug trade which was pretty much merit based lol, but honestly how many people see that another world is possible? If I had a sheltered childhood and a kid at eighteen, I’d better get in line and worry about the morality later. People can’t live off of unconnected wages down here, again real economic power.

This marriage of money power and faith struck me. Once you look at that geographicly it gets ugly. Its why conservatives are so pissed off. They have a working parallel social group that’s actually quite a bit nicer. So, not escaped, but aware.

There’s a cost and it is high. Shunning is real and fucks people’s lives up. It’s much worse in smaller towns where the police are sheriff and therefore good church going evictors are on side. Plus, it’s not stuff that you can really be honest about because people are living their lives and pretty trapped.

I think that’s where the molestation stuff comes in, then it’s a secret and we have to protect the church and stuff and you sort of have to because kids gotta eat, plus his dad owns have the dealerships in the county.

It’s sort of like that bell curve meme: it’s racists > it’s a different but unequal social networking > it’s racists.

I grew up in integrated schools though, even in a fervor there was only so far that I could go with it as id deconstructed some of that already. Plus I was really patriotic, so overthrowing the government seemed a bit much.

What people forget about the South is that these power structures predate and supercede pretty much everything in the South. Even though I’m white, I’m a part of a rebellion that stole generational wealth from them and if I want to reproduce and have my children have any sort of financial independence I need to bend the knee. That’s why all the groveling is just washing over conservatives, it’s just a part of life down here.

A guy I worked with was far-right, but drew the line at violence, so not a fascist, per se.

All that fucker needed to cure himself was a passport and to get out of his ends. Soon realised that the vast majority of humans are all after the same basic needs and we have more in common than we don’t.

My 3 day mood swing passed.

Was a teen.

Grew up in an extreme right wing ‘Christian’ church. It never sat well, even as a kid/teen. I don’t know if I ever considered I was fascist, but certainly had to unlearn a lot of internalised thought patterns. Ended up leaving centralised media a few months ago after realising how much alt-right content was being pushed in my face despite following mostly left leaning accounts and queer creators.

I was sliding down the alt-right rabbit hole, mostly out of loneliness. Algorithms and echo chambers love loneliness.

I think there’s a really important threshold, and I’m ashamed to say I reached it, where you know it’s propaganda. Where you stop falling down the rabbit hole and start walking down it of your own accord.

The first propaganda, you believe. Some people commit crimes, or hate you, or are dangerous. Capitalism is freedom. The stuff an uncurious and uncareful person can believe all of and still be internally consistent, if wrong.

Then there’s the propaganda that requires you to acknowledge the lies you believed earlier were lies. No, it isn’t Hispanic people that commit crimes - it’s Jewish people! Capitalism isn’t freedom - libertarianism, or state capitalism, or whatever buzzword for company towns is in vogue.

And you know the stuff you believed before isn’t true. But you still say it in polite company, you mask and start to pretend you aren’t someone who believes what you do. You know it’s unacceptable.

That’s what got me out. Realizing that I was in a dark cycle of self-isolation and internet addiction, and trying to be deliberately social and empathetic and present. Therapy helps, but you’ve gotta want it.

Psychedelics were a huge key for me.

Just want to point out the Alt-Left also have their fascists.

Wasn’t a fascist but was maybe 30% baked into one around 2015. One day I was in my room, listening to a Sargon video, when I was stuck by a moment of clarity and thought “Jesus christ, all these people are unbelievably whiny fucking dorks who never stop complaining about shit that doesn’t matter, and also the bigotry was never actually a joke.”

Then I found CTH and never looked back. Just generally growing up and maturing helped too.

not truly fascist but i was raised reactionary and held these views for a while on and off as a kid.

there weren’t fascism influencers back then, but when i thought of following the rabbit hole to its logical conclusion, the overt racism and swastikas started coming out and that’s what shook me awake. the leftists in my life who talked to me helped a lot.

my country had to project a fascist into the mainstream who openly said the quiet part out loud and i had to see a lot of people around me falling for the rabbit hole i almost fell into myself for me to truly radicalize though. i looked up what that scary phenomenon was, and finally knew for sure what side i wanted to be on.

I was raised fascist and bought into it. But the inherent unfairness of capitalism can’t be hidden. My first thought was that the people who said “capitalism is the only way” weren’t wrong but just outdated, that even if capitalism had been a go of system it was obsolete. This cracked open the door to Marxism which lead to a whole transformation over time.

I share this because I think it provides us some hope: even if the fascists won their ideas would only last so long before their own children became anarchists.

I feel like the Venn diagram of Lemmy users and (current or ex-) fascists has very little overlap.

Happy to be proved wrong though.