You are discovering that ordinary people simply believe whatever they are told by purported authority figures. This is true everywhere in the world. 80% of Republican voters in the USA believe the last presidential election was "stolen" merely because an obese and intellectually constrained orange creature told them it was. A slender majority of British people voted for national suicide by Brexit merely because a handful of cynical opportunists fed them two easy-to-remember soundbites. And these were in nations where the governing Party doesn't control every aspect of the information space, as the Kremlin does in Russia.

The hard fact is that most people are ignorant, foolish, and intellectually indolent. They are thus easy dupes for whatever demagogues happen to come along.