I think it's the internet. Stupid people tend to be gullible and the internet and the 24 hour news bullshit just feeds on them. Plus, the stupid people no longer think they're stupid because they can google anything and confuse knowledge with intelligence.
what people don't realize is that google is designed to amplify confirmation bias. these companies all track you and feed you back what you hope to be true, which is so nice and easy to believe. People want to be scared of barefoot migrants (for some reason that I can't figure), so they see something on TV and when they go to read more about it, all their search results confirm exactly what they were scared of.
everything is bullshit and everybody is too stupid and lazy to realize it.