Outraged by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell family or friends. The one person he told was a ProPublica reporter.
biggest thing i think is that the state hasn't been murdering and imprisoning right wingers en masse for the best part of a century
This can't be overstated. Compare the treatment of the Black Panther Party to the Sovereign Citizen movement. The BPP created lunch programs, healthcare clinics, tutoring centers, etc. and yet they were completely vilified by the media as a gang of black supremacists. The FBI carried out decades-long campaigns of dismembering the organization with a network of informants and multiple attacks (notably the assassination of Fred Hampton).
Meanwhile, Ted Kaczynski (a.k.a. the Unibomber) killed multiple FBI agents. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nicols carried out the largest domestic terrorist attack ever on US soil by blowing up a government building. All three men were part of the Sovereign Citizen movement. Despite this, sovcits were able to take over a town in Oregon and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge HQ in 2016.
So you have a group with a history of violence against the federal government who do an armed takeover of an area, who provide zero community assistance or outreach, and yet it took weeks for the feds to do anything serious. When the BPP protested (while armed) against discrimination in Sacramento on May 2nd. 1967, they were arrested and dispersed that same day, despite breaking no laws.
There continues to be targeted attacks against Black Lives Matter leaders (resulting in the deaths of over a dozen local leaders), while sovcits are free to continue planning mass shootings, bombings, and other forms of terrorism. If you're leftwing in the US and try to help your community or ask maybe the government should give you a trial before they execute you, the state will come down on you with every resource available as swiftly as possible. If you're a rightwing, literal terrorist who vocally advocates for the murder of government officials and violence against the state, you get treated like you parked illegally.
The left (the real left) in America can't use violence not because it is unwilling, but because it doesn't have a state apparatus to do so. We have to get a critical mass of people to the point where reactionaries will be unable to simply send in a SWAT team and run a smear campaign on the evening news. A leftwing, American revolution will essentially require entire cities and counties to come under leftwing control before it even thinks about using violence against the state.
And life is too comfortable here for leftists to seriously pick up arms or do anything more than organizing book clubs and mutual aid. I'll take it over nothing but let's not fool ourselves.
But fascism is the false solution to class conflict. By this logic, why are right-wing groups proliferating?
I think in addition to what MayoPete said there isn't really any media to speak of out there telling people shit is bad and it's because of marxist explanation. Instead we have a right wing media that tells people shit is bad because of immigrants and the elites and a liberal media that tells people things are fine stop worrying so much. Unions are basically non-existant and third places no longer exist so unless you actually go looking for it and actually do some reading the closest thing to class consciousness you're going to land on is fascism because it's the most readily available in life.
A few possibilities:
The kinds of people who radicalize on the right seem to be more rural, less smart about money, and more fearful of economic and cultural changes hurting their way of life. Rising gas prices and inflation hurts the person with a $800/month payment on a truck that gets 10 miles per gallon, on top of keep a gun hobby that costs thousands of dollars for all the latest parts and ammo. We think "time to cut back on meat and finally pull the trigger on that hybrid/EV". They think "Soros wants illegals to replace our jobs and make us eat bugs." No, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't have to.
These folks may be class conscious in a sense that they see "elites" as the ones holding them back, but they don't recognize the bourgeois on the right. They love Elon Musk and Trump and hate Soros and anyone from LA or Hollywood. They may also see this as "a few bad ones" or "not real Capitalism" and fall into the same mental trap Democrats do that if we just get rid of X everything will be fine.
They think their "culture" is under attack, and they think they are losing some Culture War. Every time a major TV show, movie, or video game has non-white characters or anything LGBT or anyone this isn't white and Republican like them they call it "woke" and freak out. These are not people that can simply "not watch" because to them they need control over ALL media. They can't tolerate some media catering to people besides them!