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TLDR Neoliberalism and fascism are puzzles that can be solved so that people look for actual solutions to their problems. The problem for us is how to reach and educate everyone.

And people still fall for it.’

That's because it isn't an intelligence test. The smartest people you know can fall for these ideologies. They demand that you suspend critical thinking. Religion instills this in people and all the fascist has to do is convince a person their ideology falls under that umbrella of suspended critical thinking.

But it goes further than that. Because people need not be religious in order to fall for these ideologies either. There is wide spread acceptance of neoliberal ideas in the Western world that causes a person to reject socialism out of hand. You've probably heard socialism doesn't work at one point or another, but probably heard little to support this thesis beyond the Soviet Union collapsed.

Many people have partially internalized neoliberalism without considering it's implications and accepted those flaws as virtues. For example, a core principle of neoliberalism is that our societies' institutions, whether they be political or economic, are near flawless and beyond reproach. According to the neoliberal it is not the systems that need to change, but the people leading the systems.

This walls people, who have accepted this idea, off from the majority of progressive and socialist policies which call for systemic change and wealth redistribution respectively. And it leaves them open to a relevant fascist idea. Rather than only changing the people running the system, change the people living within the system. This of course means genocide in the form of mass deportations and when that fails to be feasible mass executions.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, THEY have fucked you over.”

This is a much easier idea for a population, that has been living under neoliberal rule since 1981, to accept than the alternatives. Alternatives that would inherently involve restructuring society to be more inclusive both politically and economically. Such as but not limited to abolishing the electoral college, amending the constitution so that representation in Congress is proportional to the population, the redistribution of billionaire wealth through both taxation and mandated worker owned corporations. These ideas are workable alternatives to fascism, but they are a fundamental restructuring of our society.

Beyond the inherent opposition from the owner class, military industrial complex, Republican Party, the right-wing infosphere the challenge is resolving the partially internalized neoliberal ideology in people's minds. To even begin to rethink a person's relationship to society in terms of work, government, and other people, a person has to understand that these are up for rethinking. Another prevalent neoliberal idea is that we live at the end of history and all social, political, and economic problems have been solved.

If you benefit from the neoliberal society enough it can be trivial to ignore the people who have fallen through the cracks. But under a casual examination it becomes evident that injustice is still prevalent all over the world and that history did not end because politicians said it did. Even under the worst projected outcomes of climate change there will still be people. But unless a person fully internalizes that this neoliberal narrative that we live at the end of history is false, it can be difficult to see the impetus to meaningfully and rapidly change society.

Thankfully, the challenge is not be to be intelligent enough, as we don't even understand general intelligence enough to measure it. Even a rejection of fascism after fully internalizing the ideology and its self-destructive implications, while necessary, is still insufficient. In addition to a rejection of fascism, the challenge is for enough of the population to have the knowledge and critical thinking skills to full internalize neoliberalism as a sales pitch for the scam that is late-stage capitalism and reject it. This is what it takes to even have the open-mindedness needed to fully internalize socialism and progressivism as viable solutions to our problems.

On a side note, the idea that intelligence determines success or failure of a population with fascism is derived from our cultural obsession with intelligence. Everyone knows if you're a 'genius' and make a breakthrough for a corporation like Google, Facebook, or Amazon you make it rich. The only reason we care about being rich is because we know that all of our needs will be met in this society. The reason we know that is because we live in a capitalist society that only cares about profit for the owner class. So ~~the only~~ a main reason we care about intelligence is because we live in a capitalist society where if we make our corporate overlords wealthier we can have a slice of the pie.

So I explained the essence of the problem. But now here's the problem. Maybe I've successfully convinced you or someone with this argument. Or maybe you've solved the fascist and neoliberal puzzles yourself. However you got here, to these conclusions, the challenge becomes an issue of scale. How do we convey this understanding to a national population of 340 million people and global population of 8 billion people before the fascist death camps are in full swing and/or climate change gets us. This is a logistical and educational problem that needs to be solved as soon as possible. edit: typos and clarification