what techniques or approaches can I use to explore distasteful concepts while also making them necessary?
In my story democracy crumbles in a nation, replaced by a powerful dictatorship. Our world has been invaded by servants of the elder god, Nyalathotep. Governments have been fighting back for years, only delaying the inevitable loss of our species. The only one successfully holding its own and representing some bastion of safety is this single country boasting a popular and charismatic leader. The problem is that it is an authoritarian, fascist dictatorship, in which civil rights are suppressed somewhat and the state has most of the power.
I want to show the downfall of this democracy and the rise of this fascist dictatorship. This story is about the transition and how the nation becomes so battered that it is forced to make this change, similar to the imperium of man from the grimdark Warhammer 40k franchise. However, that series only looks at the ramifications of an eternal war against the approaching darkness, rather than the journey to that point. This is a challenge, as most readers would have a problem with any positive portrayal of a fascist nation, and would have a hard time believing that the loss of civil rights ( freedom of expression, thought, etc) is ever necessary.
How could I improve the story so that readers would be able to suspend their disbelief?
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Q. How to portray the downfall of [SYSTEM]?
A. Show it.
There are basically two steps:
- first some worldbuilding
- second the writing
A note on worldbuilding.
I'll just say: before even showing it, and before thinking of what could possibly replace it, you need to clarify to yourself what is the logical believable series of events that would bring an end to an otherwise existing and self-supporting [SYSTEM]. We have a great worldbuilding.SE site, which has dealt with similar questions in the past.
Writing.
Treat it like you would treat a hero's journey. The hero is the entire system, and it is about to encounter a (wanted or unwanted) call to change, and resolve it for the better or worse. The interesting fact in this case is that the measure of change is not relative to the end-point, which is revealed in the last chapters, but it is relative to the low-point of the journey, which could be an inter-phase between the two perceived stable states. The difference between the starting point and the low point is what drives your story, and what will justify the choice of the final state both in your plot and to the reader.
What to show depends on your worldbuilding.
Some notes
Tropes are always at play. It may not be your case, but depicting a romantic view of a fascist world just for the sake of it, or because it sounds cool, may be one of the shallowest tropes of these last 100 years. It should suffice to correctly portray the horror of the denial of basic rights, the diffuse violence and the murders to make any sane reader wishing to depart from such a setting. And I am not even mentioning the amount of pointless bureaucracy that you would have come across in the daily life.
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Successful in the sense that it is the only viable solution. In this world, democracy has failed as an institution, with the various powers unable to come together in unity and oppose the invaders.
That seems highly improbable; it seems you are saying that people that believe in "democracy" would rather die by alien invasion than fight. In WW II, millions of men and women from democracies went to fight totalitarianism before it reached their lands. It isn't like "democracy" is incapable of ordering people into the armies and into battle under threat of death, and it isn't like "democracy" means people are unwilling to sacrifice all their comforts in the face of an existential threat.
Democracy only means the people decide their fate, and faced with extinction they will vote to fight like hell and elect leaders and give them breathtaking powers to do just that.
If anything, the risk of the existential threat will make citizens accede to what is effectively totalitarian rule, at least long enough to ensure their own survival: America and the UK did that in WW II, with forced drafts, forced realignment of commercial companies to military providers, forced rationing for the war effort, and all sorts of mandates and powers allowed to the politicians and military.
that the only way to push back against an elder god's forces is to sacrifice our ideals, (freedom, justice, civil rights, etc,) for safety.
Freedom and civil rights and even "justice" will be sacrificed in a democracy if there truly is an existential threat; at least to the extent it can be shown to matter to fight. That is real human psychology and it has played out many times in otherwise free societies.
It is generally not necessary to sacrifice all freedoms, say like dating whom you choose, or getting together to play Gin Rummy, or outlawing cursing. It would be near impossible to justify such social controls as benefiting the war.
You are free to write it how you want, but the premise sounds completely implausible to me. Reducing freedoms in the face of an existential emergency is plausible; making actual totalitarianism the "best" option is not, and I see no fictional way to make it remotely plausible.
I am writing a response to help you avoid writing a story that I don't think will work.
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