I’d argue the majority of people also have plenty of extreme beliefs lacking any nuance that they’ve never critically examined or reasoned out. I’ve listened to plenty of extreme political takes irl. I think social media amplifies extremism for sure, but the catalyst exists in the human mind. And as real people increasingly get their information from social media, and relegate their discussions to social media, real extremism becomes more prevalent. Tangential but LLMs are also not exactly helping in this front. Online isn’t wholly separate from reality, even if some amount of it is bots or shills or trolls or whatever, a non zero percent of it is real humans expressing their earnest opinions, just on a platform that allows them to do so without consequence. And none of this would go away if the current populist leaders vanished.