Democratic public opinion climates enable totalitarian movements through electoral means

Evidence

The mood of a populace can create a climate of public opinion that promotes totalitarian movements. It can intimidate politicians, journalists, and religious leaders who might otherwise oppose repression. It can elect a dictator into office, as it did most notably in Germany in 1933. It can encourage a bold, illegal grab for power, as it did in Italy in 1922, and has violently done in so many other places since. And once the power is grabbed, who will resist? Who will love democracy enough to face the tank in Tiananmen Square, versus those who will cheer for the dictator? That is an individual difference. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 127

Categorization

• XREF: Mechanism for how mass attitude climates convert into institutional capture — the exact causal pathway the reader wants to connect to Christian nationalism and Cooper’s authoritarian claims.
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘who faces the tank versus who cheers’ as the individual-difference hinge in democracy’s collapse — how disposition, not just structure, decides resistance.