I don't think it was necessarily hate-fueled. It was Influencers and other paid actors making it seem like an ok thing to do, and to stick it to the establishment/elites (misidentified as left, instead of ultra rich), and Dems as evil as GOP. There is a reason that recruitment age for military is 18yo - it is the age where people know alot but understand less and can more easily be influenced. As the first gen fully raised in an online world, they didn't stand a chance of knowing how to combat the algorithms. Not any more than their grandparents knew how to battle the new 'TV ads'. Outside the USA, much of American thought is understood as weird and driven by state propaganda - a different version of North Korea.