I have 2 GOP parents, one that voted Trump originally and one that did not. Over the last 9 years, I have watched them both travel down the MAGA pipeline to become visibly fascist. The parents who taught me racism was wrong and to have empathy for others, have become openly hostile about immigrants, Muslims, and even parrot the Nazi “great replacement” theory.
Part and parcel with this, they refuse to have any discussions about the facts – like immigrants not stealing and eating people’s pets. They won’t hear it, they won’t even engage in the conversation…they just get angry and loud the second they hear anything that doesn’t fit into the Fox News narrative. Can you relate? How are you dealing with it in your relationships with your parents?
This is probably the best answer based on the stuff that I’ve heard.
During the first term, a local talk radio show had a woman on who grew up in a cult. She was born into it. She described her own story about how she learned what was happening and eventually got out. IIRC, her parents cut all ties with her, as that was the way of the cult. Anyhow, she described the process of “deprogramming” someone and it is basically along the same lines of what you describe.
Sadly, it’s easy to “mass convert” people to cults, but deprogramming is a one on one conversation over a long period of time.