There's a lot of discourse about how economic downturns directly leads people to fascism or other extremist ideologies, but that hasn't actually played out in history. There have been 30 or so recessions and depressions in United States history and while it's true that Know Nothings and Teabaggers arose after some of them, there were also plenty of similarly-sized extremist groups that arose during prosperous times, and almost all of them petered out without receiving significant political power the way MAGA did. It can't be a coincidence that everyone owning a smartphone with social media coincided with the meteoric rise of far-right movements across the world and it can't simply be explained by material conditions.