Answer asap! will mark
read the excerpt below, and answer the question that follows.

"what happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. and their sense of identification with hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
"this separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. and all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

"those," i said, "are the words of my friend the baker. ‘one had no time to think. there was so much going on.’"

"to live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it— try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic german’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. one day it is over his head.
from they thought they were free by milton mayer

question: the author is describing the slow march towards nazism in germany during the 1930s, which ultimately led to the holocaust. based on the excerpt, what do you feel is the best defense against the rise of fascism?