You are correct, they aren’t Nazis, not even close. But they are full of hate. Enough hate that they would prefer to be thought of as stupid, or easily fooled rather than admit why they chose to vote for someone who who is an open fascist, “admirers” Nazi generals, and was best friends with a pedophile. Trump is not some unknown. He has was not only president before, but his presidency was was disastrous and he exited with the worst polls of any president ever. They knew exactly what they were getting. They weren’t fooled. They weren’t conned or hoodwinked. They didn’t even lack for choice. There were plenty of other little fascist wanna bees running around trying to get elected.
Stop infantilizing grown adults. If they “didn’t know what they were getting” it is because they chose not to know. They purposely chose someone that they knew would hurt them because they expect him to hurt the people that they hate more.
I think I understand propaganda well enough. I think you underestimate people’s intelligence and misunderstand how propaganda affects people. In your own story of dealing with propaganda, when confronted with conflicting information, you realized your error, or were at least open to learning more. Or is it that you feel that you are so much smarter than the average conservative that they are just helpless compared to you? You are correct that they are full of fear and anger, but I don’t believe it was something that just happened to them without them being able to do anything about it.
Also, not fascist? He straight out said he wanted to be a dictator, he praised Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and, Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Viktor Orban.
And as for his first term, even if we pretend that his policies and actions didn’t significantly worsen the spread of Covid, and wipe Covid from the slate, his presidency was still a nonstop shit show that separated children from their parents for cruelty’s sake, got service men and allies killed, exposed, got tortured, and got murdered a significant part of our foreign intelligence gathering community. And that is just skimming the top and pulling out the easy stuff.