I've told this story elsewhere, but your last sentence reminds me of a postdoc from Germany in my lab. Once I was talking with him and his wife at a lab party and the subject of the German economy came up. His wife is from a city in East Germany, and she was going on about how German media was not just incorrect about the state of the economy there, they were actively lying. He kept trying to defend the media "You're overexaggerating. Why would they lie? What would they have to benefit?" Her answer was "I don't know why but I know they are"

This then went to Merkel and the immigration, and when asked they both agreed that Merkel was great and the immigrants were needed because the German media said so. I asked (and in retrospect this was an extremely risky thing to ask) what if the media was lying like they were about her home city. Suddenly she sounded exactly like her husband only a minute earlier and any sense of logic about it went out the window. I didn't challenge it any more, but it made a lot of sense how people can so blindly walk into authoritarianism.

I find it weird how these people can be so educated and informed about our field, and I respect their opinions in that regard, but be so utterly clueless about everything else to the point I can't stand to listen to them speak.