Hatred of the outsider, of the foreigner, of the 'enemy of society' – however 'outside' or 'foreign' or 'enemy' is culturally defined – may be hardwired in homo sapiens. But it seems such hatred can be either damped down or cranked up. One of the methods of cranking up is to create narratives or perspectives that associate every member of a particular group with one or more negative characteristics. For example, Jews in 1930s Germany were accused of possessing 'unfair' levels of wealth. (While antisemitism is often characterised as being about contempt, the truth may have more to do with jealousy and resentment.)
In 1973, when I emigrated from Germany to Britain aged ten, hostile narratives – in relation to groups that are now 'protected' – weren't much in evidence in my country of destination. What was visible to me from popular culture wasn't negative narratives about (say) Blacks, or women; on the other hand, there was a certain amount on the topic of Germans. In practice, I rarely had to deal with seriously anti-German prejudice – but I did find it irritating that practically every German I encountered in fiction or drama was unpleasant.
The efforts of the last four decades have made the use of narratives that are hostile to protected groups, or of any wording that comes even remotely close, prohibited in public discourse. While this has seriously impacted free speech in the broader sense, you could argue that there's been some benefit to members of minorities.
But to suggest that hatred in general has been reduced is surely overstating things. What seems to have happened instead is that hatred – to some extent a free-floating emotion, always on the look-out for targets – has been shifted around.
There are new objects of hatred, and new narratives/perspectives to support that hatred.
For example, in America, groups identifying with right-wing or other anti-leftist positions are now routinely characterised in terms of adjectives that amount to labelling them as evil – and as deserving of contempt, cancel culture, and even violence. Those who identify with such positions are supposedly 'driven by hatred' – which (apparently) makes hating them okay. Anti-leftists, so the story goes, want to oppress minorities. They are misogynist, racist, phobic of sexual minorities. Other than hatred, their principal motives are selfishness and greed.
These leftist-populist narratives receive important support from academia, which has been busy over recent decades generating theories that buttress such sentiments. Non-leftists (described as 'right-wing', 'conservative', 'neoliberal', and so on – automatic insults in an academic context) are oppressive, ideological, prejudiced, phobic of change, and so on, according to 'research' published in respected peer-reviewed journals.
In shifting the focus of emotions – "don't hate those people, hate these people!" – academics, highbrow commentators and other intellectuals have gained important power. Power over thought, morality and speech. Ideological power, in other words.
Such power was once held by the Christian Church. By now it has largely passed to the Church's successor. I see plenty of signs of the Church bowing to the new religion of wokeism, but not vice versa. Transmission of moral ideology has become largely a one-way street, between those two Western hegemonies, the old and the new.