There are two reasons why authoritarianism is an easy sell.
First, the authoritarian flatters and valorizes their potential supporters by making them the decider of what’s true. The authoritarian says “Don’t listen to the experts, you know more than they do, whatever you believe is right and it’s the ‘experts’ who are wrong.”
Second, it reduces the tension they feel. The real world is complicated, and you can’t always get what you want. The authoritarian says there is a simple solution to every problem, and that you can have whatever you want. You just have to trust ‘the leader’.
These are lies, of course, and always have been, but people want to believe them because they’re more attractive than the reality.
Opponents of authoritarianism have to take the opposite position: they have to say “No, your opinion is not always better than the expertise of people who are smarter and better informed than you, and no, there aren’t easy solutions to everything.” That’s a message no one wants to hear, so they go with the despot.
