I find many reactions by leaders

bear comparison to reactions from historical personae in the 1770’s, 1850-60s, and 1930’s.
For instance, the Democratic Party ran George McClellan against Lincoln, on a Copperhead platform, in 1864 and, in 1933, there were good people in the Reichstag arguing that National Socialists should not be referred to as Nazi pigs because, civility. The threat, tyranny, has always been the same. I suppose the reactions to it are the same, too.