Okay. Again and simpler.
People naturally want to belong to a group, to identify with it. It is a pretty strong feeling, common for nationalism, soccer clubs, and many other fields. The group identification and cohesion is more important than the group’s other properties.
The desire to belong to a group is magnified for people who don’t have any, who are lonely. It hurts to be lonely. Therefore they find a group they can identify with, and stick with it and gradually invest more of their emotional bonds to it. You don’t need any special meaning for the group to have such function.
Meanwhile some tangential associates do something wrong.
Then somebody comes and tells them that their whole group is a wrong one. Natural reaction is not to disassociate from the group - instead it is circling the wagons and starting a defense. The alternative is to go to the lonely state before. The ones who can disassociate easily usually have other groups with strong enough bonds to compensate the loss of that one. But many don’t. And they will argue and fight back to defend the by-then already pretty significant emotional link with the group.
You won’t change that by attacking them. You will only make the group more threatened, and more cohesive, providing them with an external enemy as a powerful uniting factor. Maybe the group gets a bit smaller, but in the prevalence of loneliness in that demographics I wouldn’t bet on much further shrinkage.
That’s the adversary you are dealing with.
So that’s the situation as I see it, said in more words. Hope it is clearer now.
