They're just ignorant, scared people who have been carefully studied by master propagandists marketers and deliberately fed a diet of misinformation; all carefully crafted to take advantage of their psychology to scapegoat the wrong villains for their problems. Fascism is the dictatorship of the middle class. It happens when it feels threatened politically, socially or financially and demagogues sense it and mobilize them with lies. Read your history, this has all happened before. This is exactly what happened in Italy, Spain and Germany in the 1930s. Its not new, and its not unusual. Its older than Babylon and as evil as Hell.

The textbook, as I've mentioned before, is William L Shirer's highly detailed "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". Alternatively, an excellent popular video survey is Rick Steves' (yes, the PBS travel writer) "Fascism", available on Youtube.

An excellent, straightforward introduction, and he doesn't once tell you to be ashamed you're an American. Not even once. And the parallels to today's events are so obvious you will never again have to wonder why "I see Fascists everywhere".