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That's a question for the ages for sure. I'm worried it's going to get quite a bit worse before it gets better.
As far as I can tell, there are multiple ongoing components to what's going on.
There is definitely some Russia-driven agitprop going on, with the apparent aim of weakening the West through division. But on its own I think it's not a sufficient explanation, for two reasons. The same research showed that Russia is also pushing left-aligned agitprop points to increase division. And Russia was not similarly involved in the 1930's, which nevertheless saw a somewhat similar trajectory.
But it's still a factor either way of course.
The main force, I think, is the collapse of capitalism. That capitalism is its own self-destruction mechanism has been observed for centuries; it's kind of one of the main takeaways from Das Kapital. With the ceaseless rise of wealth capture by the ruling classes, discontent rises correspondingly among the general population, and the beige centrist neoliberals that tend to occupy power seats in most democracies keep onboarding more and more far right talking points in an apparent effort to keep this discontent from getting an actual left wing government elected: drawing false equivalency between left and far right policies, forming coalitions with the far right to prevent even a mildly left wing party from forming a government, etc.
The latter seems particularly driven by the flow of donor money from the wealthy elites.
But it also looks like in many countries, the national media are disproportionately captured by said wealthy elite, who also increasingly push the same far right societal framing for the same core reason.
Historically speaking, this private capture of wealth and power does not stop on its own, and it goes to some pretty bad places before it gets better. It's bleak as hell, but we can take hope, I think, from another historical observation: it always gets better, eventually.
Till then, take care of each other, y'all.