Let me explain the question:
If fox news and religious propaganda are exactly that, propaganda, then they are victims.
If, however, every person is free to listen to what they want and then rant against liberals, migrants, Muslims, Arabs, trans, gays, atheists, you name it, then they are just gullible.
I’d have more patience for a victim than a gullible person.
Everybody is free to believe what they want to believe. What I don’t get is why they have to stir things up and why they believe they are the only ones getting it and everyone else is dumb, woke, a communist or is going to hell. Why can’t they keep their opinions to themselves?
I think the “people are free to believe what they want to believe” is a mistake. This is the very statement that relativitises opinions and belief systems with facts and creates the illusion that they are all equal.
Look at the “facts don’t care about feelings” crowd that believe wholeheartedly that statements pandering to their feelings are facts and disregard any actual facts as fake news. I don’t think it’s because they decided one day to pick and choose what is a fact and what is not, but they actually can’t tell that there is a difference in opinions, beliefs and facts in the first place.
People need to accept that sometimes the truth is painful, that it contradicts what you want it to be, and worst of all - that you may have been wrong.
Edit: that said, I think people are free to believe whatever they want to believe when it comes to unprovable existential esoterica like personal values, afterlife, religion, whatever. As long they accept it is a personal belief and not an universal truth.