The level of sophistication in marketing of all sorts of stuff, especially politics and ideology, has skyrocketed over the past 20 years. We’ve gone from people merely being unaware of how they’re being manipulated to want stuff to people being effectively enlisted to be a foundational part of the manipulation.
An insidious technique, it leverages people’s preferences, fears, and insecurities, to program people’s selectivity in their skepticism. The psychology behind this is taken directly from research into what compels people to join and then become stuck in cults.
In a cult, people become convinced to irrationally worship the leader (or leadership). At the same time, and critically, they're programmed to identify two broad sets of enemies. One set of enemies is anybody who might provide rational counterpoint to the messaging (e.g. parents). Another set of enemies is people who can be very easily demonized because of the fears inherent to a particular cult's membership.
A big part of the approach is to assert as much control over people's skepticism as possible. Effectively dictate who and what people should trust and distrust.
It's very powerful psychology. It's obviously a big part of how political parties and lobbyist firms, working on behalf of special-interest groups, work today.
But we've also seen adopted by certain corporations as a marketing tool. Relevant to this thread, Tesla is a great example. We can clearly see the distrust programming in how the Teslerati have such an outsized persecution complex - like a cult member - everyone's out to get them.
That didn't happen by accident.