They’re easily brushed off until they start becoming a major demographic or unite with other fascistic groups. It’s like any religious group, they are harmless as a minority but when the ideology takes hold at a large scale it starts to become a problem.

The US has, unfortunately, been stuck with religious fundementalists since its inception. Not exclusively, but the element has always been here.

Over the last century our Republican party was quickly losing political relevance, so they switched their primary target demographic to southern religious groups and racists, building on those groups’ sense of aggrievement that fewer and fewer people believed in their ideas. It was called The Southern Strategy and it explains a lot about what’s happening in the US currently and how these fringe groups become mainstreamed.

The evangelicals in the US also concoted a kind of toxic mixture of capitalism and religion, they built massive mega churches that run like corporations, and they did so in areas where there wasn’t a whole lot going on economically or culturally. They run almost like company towns where everyone in the surrounding community is part of the cult.

Take it as a lesson, it can happen wherever you might be however far fetched it seems, be assurred that fascism is a global effort and the fascist fringe groups in your country are taking notes whenever there’s a fascist victory in some other country. They learn from eachother and will exploit whatever form of irrational fundementalism, latent racism or culture of tradition that exists in your country.