Anyway, demagogues are products of their respective times. To focus on them and their personalities and their rhetoric is to completely miss the forest.
Edit: In fact, that approach is part of what gives them their power. And it certainly makes avoiding their ascent nearly impossible.
I agree with you about demagogues being products of their times. In this case it seems the forest being missed is social media platforms allowing intolerant content and the organization of domestic terrorism.
If that is your point, then I agree. Social media companies need to do more to fight against the pressures that allow demagogues rise to power. Deplatforming them seems like a good place to start.
Two years of lots of shouting and no accomplishments by Democrats, with more covid deaths in 2021 than in 2020, is going to powerfully depress their turnout in 2022. Also there is a new thing called "Movement for a People's Party" [0] that will take more votes from Democrats than from Republicans. Don't be discouraged about Republican political prospects!
Americans have not worn masks, for ten months during which it was clear wearing masks would save many lives and shorten the economic downturn as well. Now the anti-liberal and anti-vax and anti-thought camps have joined forces (some would say the latter two camps have been at least associated for some time) to decline vaccines. Millions of doses are expiring in their very-cold freezers. Morons like Gov Cuomo are scheming to make it more rather than less difficult to receive vaccines. Also people still aren't wearing masks, which (when pressed) experts will admit are and have been actually more effective at preventing infection than vaccines. High-quality masks are still more difficult to obtain than they should be.
All of that is to say that the "effective reproduction number" (R) still far exceeds one, and will for the foreseeable future. Since that hasn't changed, the salient difference between 2020 and 2021 is that on 2020-1-1 there were very few infected and contagious Americans. On 2021-1-1 there were millions. My prediction is simple arithmetic, though it's not allowed on all-wishful-thinking-all-the-time TV news.
Of course R could be changed dramatically by dramatic action. Other nations such as Taiwan opted for that early last year. I really do hope we do that. We could make masks mandatory for all public interaction. We could pay people enough money ($1000 a week might do it?) to stay home. We could make covid vaccination mandatory in the same way that e.g. measles vaccination is. We could actually make enough high-quality masks (currently, massive government/corporate/whosever failure to do so is hidden behind the fact that lots of easily duped people have been persuaded not to wear masks). We could actually make enough vaccines (ditto).
Surely I don't have to finish the argument? No currently-conceivable USA government, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, is going to take one of the eminently reasonable steps I've suggested above, while invalidating my prediction will require several of them.
Also, you're completely wrong about 2009. Allowing firms to die is "capitalism" as it's always inaccurately presented. Allowing humans to die is inhumane.
Do you see how rediculous that is?
I know it is hard to swallow, but you are on the wrong side of history here. Just admit you made a mistake and try to move on.
You aren't alone, he lied to the entire world and at least 74 million people in the the US bought it.
And, probably, you were "on the wrong side of history" in 1930s Germany.
In other words, it's a poor argument for anything and only interesting when used ironically.
A demagogue came along and used mass media platforms to destabilize the norms of civil society and give a large platform to previously marginalized views. Being able to air those views on mainstream outlets perpetuates the problem and shifts norms.
We need to at least try to put this genie back in the bottle. Most people will revert back to previous mainstream views. The significant segment needs to go back to an insignificant segment. That insignificant segment will be angry that they didn't win, and likely some of them will be violent. But they've always been that way anyway.