Writing someone as being extremely charismatic suffers from the same problem that writing somebody as extremely intelligent; it's hard to write somebody with more of it than the writer themselves has. And most writers aren't silver-tongued devils any more than they are geniuses.
Does it even need a brainwashing effect? Given the kinda people who are supposedly charismatic, such as people getting voted into power, actors who frankly ought to be shunned by society at best, and whatever the hell people's obsession with serial killers is, "being a neurodivergent baby having a tantrum" evidently seems to be taking people by storm somehow. So in a weird way? That's believable. It shouldn't be, but for some reason society seems to gravitate towards people like that.
It's a "reality is unrealistic" thing. It happens in real life, but in a story it would be denounced as absurd.
Morons and evil people don't have strong convictions. They lie about what they have, but saying that people are cartoonishly evil is nothing more than an attempt to whitewash various idiots.
Uhh. I would like to contest this considering how fanatics exist in both religious, political, and racial terms. Christ. They have some convictions.
Not to mention the more fanatical Nazis and Communists in history.
Of course.
Yes. Psychopaths lack convictions, but not all evil people are psychopaths.
Fanaticism isn't a belief, it's literally a mental illness. Fanaticism is literally what makes people cartoonishly evil.
This isn't even a smart decision. Like, it's easier to discredit your political enemy if they're alive and well. For example, a journalist is digging into your dirty laundry? Then just leave them alone. At the very least, it gives you the logical leeway to think, "So why are you alive if it's in my interests to kill you for what you're looking for?" and ultimately, without murder in a criminal case, you'll get out of prison faster (by the way, this is one example of how to determine whether a villain is an idiot. A smart villain will never kill their opponents, and if they do, it's only to provoke the enemy into attacking, essentially creating a typical self-defense situation).
Ok fuck you. Fanatism can happen to those without mental illness and yhinking only the mentally ill can be fanatics is stupid and reeks of ableism. Frankly its thinking like that makes people think Fanatics are all insane. Sometimes even rational people become fanatics with sound of mind. Letting them do horrible things.
Yes. They don't just want characters to act like psychopaths; they want characters to act like low-functioning psychopaths. The sort of people who end up in prison or dead at a young age because they aren't just ruthless, but stupidly ruthless.
Reminds me of Stephen King's The Dead Zone, whose protagonist is a precognitive who foresees that a particular politician will cause a global nuclear war, and is eventually pushed into the situation of trying to kill the politician or letting it happen.
Guy suffers brain damage and spends years in a coma, wakes up with clairvoyant and precognitive abilities. I don't really recall much more, it's been literally decades since I read it. I do recall it being pretty good, though. Probably available from a library, King isn't an obscure author.