It's a product of the two party system and FPTP.

Then you have actors like Russia who correctly identify it as a weak spot, and therefore dump as much fuel on the fire as they can.

And profiteers like the church, who keep their cash-cows enraged and engaged by building big blue strawmen.

It's not any kind of coordinated effort, just the end result of lots of different flavors of bullshit thrown in the same pile... but there are definitely people who benefit from it.

And it feels disingenuous to even mention that it can go both ways, but look at things like presidential elections and how many vote not for a candidate based on their merits, but against the other bastard based on how horrible they are.