> But here it is for certain that this specific coup hings on the absolute leader figure Trump is for his followers. And what he says all the time.
Even there it's both, I think. Trump is part of a trend towards valuing immediate power over everything else, and being willing to play dirty to keep that power. His followers listen to him in large part because they've been primed by the media for decades to distrust the "mainstream" (where "mainstream" apparently doesn't include some of the people with the largest audiences, but actually just means "people who disagree with you").
The mystery is just how those people maintain the cognitive dissonance of being "pro speech" and "pro democracy" when they've tuned out everything else and are just focused on power in what they perceive as a war...
> Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napolean went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander desired his destruction, and he who says that an undermined hill weighing a million tons fell because the last labourer struck it for the last time with his pickaxe. In historic events the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself.
> The mystery is just how those people maintain the cognitive dissonance of being "pro speech" and "pro democracy" when they've tuned out everything else and are just focused on power in what they perceive as a war...
Yes, that is a fascinating mystery. But one has to keep in mind: Many of the people that just tried a coup today and effectively tried to dismantle the democratic system in the US by installing a dictator will think of themselves as defenders of democracy. There will be of course hard right wing nationalist terrorists in that crowd - the last pro-trump protests have shown that - but there can only be so many of those.
I doubt that this is a technical issue. Sure, the internet, social media and filter bubbles will have an influence. But there are so many political forces at play, so many angles under which the situation could be explained.
> How many previous presidents would be inciting this sort of thing? How is that the result of less free speech?
That's an old debate in history - are specific events caused by specific people, or are the political currents so strong that no matter who would've been in a specific position, history would have likely taken the same course?
But here it is for certain that this specific coup hinges on the absolute leader figure Trump is for his followers. And it follows what he says all the time.