Any effort to counter fascist movements through logic and education is bound to fail. Fascism is not an "-ism" in the way that communism, anarchism, or socialism are. There is no intellectual world-building behind fascist movements. Only pathos, and power, an appeal to a mythical past greatness.
Karl Polanyi, who had a close-up look at the eruption of fascism in Europe last century, had a theory
A spectre is haunting the US, parts of Europe and the world — the spectre of Fascism and authoritarian Neoliberalism, veiled as “defensive democracy” and “common-sense patriotism&…
I would like to plaster "FASCISM IS AESTHETICS" into the sky itself
Fascist movements, from the KKK to the Nazis to MAGA, rely on an ever-changing and flexible set of conspiracy theories, fueled by motivated reasoning. ANY out-group can serve as the Enemy. Jews, queers, Roma, communists, socialists, BLM, antifa, intellectuals, meteorologists, Big Media.
I oddly feel absorption of this truth—consciously or not—drives some of the disparity in coverage of the campaigns. Even if they wouldn’t use this frame, reporters’ understanding that Trump’s targeting a limbic response that only minimally ties to the text drives them to grade him on his own rubric.
I have a faint hope that universal anti-propaganda education in schools might help. But I'm not sure if it was tried before
People crave coherence. They want there to be a rational philosophy somewhere under all that noise and violence, because that could be countered with reason, or negotiated with.
Respectfully, it seems like you're conflating "counter" in the sense of fighting the existing members or breaking the existing members out with "counter" innocence of preventing the recruitment of people not already members.
Very much like a lot of "performance art." And similarly, not entirely consensual either.