Not to get all "human nature", but there's a primal appeal of fascist rhetoric, particularly when it is couched within the urgency of media misinformation and real material economic decay.

People who are overworked, underfed, and deluged with propaganda are primed to accept the "evil foreigners have inflicted this upon you" rhetoric. The states where Republicans outperform tend to be states with large O&G based economies, with people who feel their livelihoods are predicated on petroleum production and export. Downturns in these economies are blamed on Muslims, who just happen to be the majority faith in rival oil exporting nations. The opioid crisis and its socio-economic impacts have very real material consequences to impoverished communities, but the domestic pharmaceutical industry employs and enriches a lot of people. So its easier to blame China than the Sackler Family, in the same way it was easier to blame Jimmy Carter and public housing policies from the 1970s than the Mega-Banks back during the '08 financial crash. High health care costs and housing / education / credit card debts are, similarly, problems that can be displaced onto migrants "stealing" limited resources and PoC getting special government subsidies offered by evil liberal socialists. And "crime" as an eternal bugaboo haunts every local news network and AM Talk Radio show in the country, justifying ever more draconian police and surveillance.

You don't even have to limit yourself to the Republican Party to find this compelling. How many liberals are fully sold on the idea that Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are behind all of America's domestic failings? How many people were willing to throw Muslim and Transgender voters under the bus because Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election?

Fascist rhetoric is appealing because it offers a very simple, straightforward, and violently final solution to a host of perceived social problems. It promises immediate relief from your pain. It promises schadenfreude as a kind of restitution for accumulated injustices. And it promises to make you impervious to future harms, through the terror you invoke in your enemies.

It's an instinctual social response. One that aspiring politicians play on to build popular movements and seize power from sclerotic bureaucracies. And when you're feeling the impulse, it doesn't feel wicked or wrong. It feels justified and deeply satisfying.