People are emotional, tribal, creatures. It’s very easy for us to hate the out group. That was probably beneficial for pre-history humans, where the other tribe could be a real threat. It’s not so useful today, where “the other group” is just some people waiting for the train.
I think the best paths forward have to make people believe more people are in-group. That’s a reason why stuff like representation matters. People might be like “who cares if there’s a trans main character in a movie?”, but that helps people be less hateful. They don’t hate the character from the movie, they relate to them, and then a person in real life gets seen in that light.
One time I made a joke to the players, “Yeah watch out, the woods could be full of dangerous things. Like fire bears.”
The players were like “lol right”
And then there were fire bears. Bears made of fire. (Some industrialists had started a forest fire, killing a local druid and wildlife, and now they were haunting the place.)