"As I'm no anarchist, I prefer to think that challenging ideas and asking for evidence is the way to go."

Those are very consistent with Anarchist ways of thinking and behaving. But it needs a lot of patience.

The frightening thing about the Trump followers is that most of them actually appear to find him someone to admire. For people to line up behind a leader much of the time means making a warts and all decision to put up with the less pleasant stuff they because on balance that seems a better choice.

But what's sick is when the attraction is to the warts themselves rather than the balancing factors. It's one thing when people put up with a leader being responsible for doing terrible things, or mean and nasty things, along with perhaps lowering unemployment, or building great enterprises - but it's something else when the terrible or nasty things are seen as admirable in themselves. "Evil, be thou my good."

If that's actually how it is in the States with Trump followers it's a sad prospect. It'll take a lot of patient work at an individual level to talk them down from the edge of the cliff, because they are clearly a very frightened bunch, and all the more dangerous for that.