I think it's worth noting that the wave of fascism that swept the world during the early 20th century coincided with radio and television being widely deployed.
This may be correlation that does not imply causation. But demagogues had, for the first time, a way to reach into people's homes directly with their messages all the time, if they had access to microphones, video cameras, and broadcast towers. And it was a mechanism that excluded the ability of any antithesis messages to reach people on those same channels (once the government had control of the channels). Mussolini and his ilk certainly knew how to take advantage of these tools.
Going further back, the Protestant Reformation was enabled by the spread of the printing press. In its wake, the 30 Years War. Upon utter exhaustion of the parties involved, the Peace of Westphalia set the stage for the modern nation states.
And an often passed over part of the Protestant Reformation is that it was fueled by rabid anti-Semitism and scapegoating. Martin Luther wrote a 65,000 word treatise called “On the Jews and their Lies” that’s widely considered to have been the basis for Nazi ideology:
> "I think it's worth noting that the wave of fascism that swept the world during the early 20th century coincided with radio and television being widely deployed."
This may be correlation that does not imply causation. But demagogues had, for the first time, a way to reach into people's homes directly with their messages all the time, if they had access to microphones, video cameras, and broadcast towers. And it was a mechanism that excluded the ability of any antithesis messages to reach people on those same channels (once the government had control of the channels). Mussolini and his ilk certainly knew how to take advantage of these tools.