Many of these people overreact to good faith criticism and are narcissistic. There are some statistics that people become less self centered as they get older and incels definitely fall into that trap.

As for nazis etc, lots of that comes from like a lack of critical thinking about conspiracy theories. Its fine to think about conspiracy theories but the second you start embracing that like millions of people are conspiring against you to like stub your toe or something thats maybe the time to reign it in.

They get to feel superior to vast swaths of the population without doing anything.

A lot of it comes from experiences they’ve had.

The examined life with all its critical thinking and guarding against bias is hard. The dark side is easier.

That knowledge needs active reaching out, otherwise you’ll just be in the “bigotry is when irrational hatred of group for the sake of doing evil” camp, which can be easily converted with “experiences”, “statistics”, etc.

I grew up in a very prejudiced family, and my family liked to scream off their lungs at me when I called them racists, because racism was supposed to be done for the sake of evil like in a cartoon, and them having “extensive experiences” of Roma wrongdoings against them makes it okay for them to throw everyone of them under the bus, for the illusion of safety.

This youtube series is a great way to show how someone gets inundated and can turn https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ&si=Vi0nUXZmyOhQ1-Pv

But here is somethings I noticed from my journey out of the right wing from my high school days.

First we were religious and we choose good decisions and other people’s choices were unwise and their fault but even though we lived in the same projects, our choices and how we lived their was unfortunate and their’s was their fault. It wasn’t explicit racism it was culture of racism. We were scared because we didn’t understand and thought we were superior since we were trying. Then we got better off and were in church more we got inundated with right wing propaganda on the economy and Frieman econmics blaming the government and socialism. We wanted to protect our jobs and our jobs blamed the government why they had to end manufacturing jobs in America. I graduated high school in 2010. I saw hatred towards Obama and noticed my side was with the KKK and I questioned it. That is how I got out. But if I kept to my beliefs I would have hated black people and others more. Thinking I was superior as a WASP (White Anglo Saxon protestant) since I made good decisions. My parents told me I could work through college and buy a house and everything and not to take out debt. So I tried that. It was impossible.

I blamed myself for not being good enough but I also didn’t do it right because I was testing it out and not using and abusing my connections. Which is how you get ahead. When I figured out I wasn’t enough and started to work with the people I know I was able to do more. But I could have blamed DEI stuff why I couldn’t get into college or get better jobs. But it was I just wasn’t good enough and the market is barren in Delaware.

My few relationships break ups I could have blamed it all on women and got a negative attitude with that too. Also since I was raised in the church a bit I could have said they should be a trad wife. But bleh

Back to being a Wasp. I could have blamed my failures and society failures on racist things or the color of my skin but I was lucky to realize it was the rich who fucked us all and the governments fault for letting it happen.

They are being constantly bombarded with algorithm-fueled targeted media designed to make them feel just good enough about themselves to keep watching the next video of ‘woke woman gets owned on camera and everybody claps’. Source: my childhood friend gets recommended this trash daily on his youtube homepage. I try to push against it without re-enforcing the narrative that The Liberals are the reason why he doesn’t have any friends. I don’t think it’s working.

It’s engineered into society by power people. if you are too busy looking down on someone. You won’t notice them robbing you blind.

If you want something to be true and feel as if it’s true then you’re likely to believe it’s true.

Facts usually don’t change people’s mind and might make them defensive about their views because if they’re wrong it will hurt them personally in the ego and self esteem.

I can fully see how something like feeling superior can fit into that. This includes others being inferior as a corollary.

Then you mix in anger. You are angry and stressed about the current situation and then somebody that speaks well and is smarter than you in your opinion says “blame immigrants”.

This fits in the world view.

Then you can go online and see other people and they say “Nazis didn’t have this problem because they fixed it”. So you in your newfound and knowledge go out and tell people unapologetically and if anybody inferior, that makes you angry, says anything bad things can happen.

There’s a path to become a Nazi. I think people don’t intend to be bad, they care about people, Nazis don’t think everyone should count as people. It’s societal cancer.

It’s a temper tantrum turned into a personality.

I think the basis of this is that it’s not about knowledge. It’s about emotion, and anger and hate are easy emotions.

Here’s a great Ted talk from a guy who got pulled into the neo-nazis and got out.

It’s not a matter of knowledge, it’s a matter of what they want.

One may desire to be advantaged/superior to some others, and particularly nice and easy if race or gender is a convenient shorthand for knowing who is ‘in’ and ‘out’, as long as you are in the ‘in’ group of course.

So life is just plain easier if women are just supposed to sit there and please them. If the ‘natural order’ justifies that convenience, then one may be attracted to that thought. To the extent fairness and equality makes their life harder, they are inclined to be upset at that obstackle. It’s convenient if the legal and labor world gives their race preferential treatment, and other groups are left desperate enough to do whatever they need done but don’t want to do, and scared enough of the government to not get “uppity”.

Sometimes overt evil, sometimes more subconscious manifesting as being very receptive to narratives that correlate with those feelings.

The core of the issue is the “Just World Fallacy” sometimes also called the “Prosperity Doctrine” and a few other things. It boils down to one core idea “Good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people.” Basically, everyone tends to think of themselves as, more-or-less, good people. So when bad things happen, as they inevitably do, these people start going “Huh, more bad stuff is happening to me than I’ve done bad things. WTF?” So, they come to a reasonable if flawed conclusion that “someone ELSE is doing bad things, and I’m collateral damage.” This isn’t entirely wrong, although sometimes bad things do just happen. However, since at least as far back as the Civil War (and probably since time immemorial), the people whose fault it REALLY is (i.e., the people with power and privelege) have pointed at outgroups, commonly immigrants but also slaves or Catholics or trans people, and said “THOSE people are being bad. THOSE people are why you are suffering. Give me more power and I’ll get rid of THOSE people.”

Some people have problems in their life and it is convenient to believe they are do to an outgroup. You mention knowledge against it but these people live their lives and insert their instilled prejudices to explain the flaws, making them have (fake) first hand proof of their beliefs.