For the past few years, I've seen a dozen of friends or acquaintances turn "ideologically crazy", and they can be roughly grouped into:
A) Onset of schizophrenia or other serious mental illness, followed by psychosis. This is actually the most common I've seen. But it is also the easiest to spot.
B) Some crisis event in life, followed by finding / joining a community. Some were hit hard by this during COVID.
I've yet to personally see people that have their, well, shit together and live busy lives turn into ideological crazies or extremists - where there is no mental illness. Of course, it could be that they just hide it better. Don't use their public accounts, etc.
I also think it is much easier to become radicalized today. Once you search for any extremist views on say social media, you'll be bombarded with it. Just belonging to a certain demographic could trigger a non-stop barrage of extreme wing influencer content in your feed.
Don’t agree actually. Have seen many busy working professionals fall into “extremism” and it’s pretty much always the same. They have a few issues they are firm on and align with one party, they don’t like the other side because of this, then they only hang out with people aligned with their views and only consume media aligned with their views. Quickly turns into lunatic talking points, and I’ve seen it happen to both the left and right.