Contrarian
Many people call themselves "free thinkers" but are actually contrarians who define most of their positions in opposition to a perceived enemy rather than their own reasoning or evidence.
"Inside every cynical person is a disappointed idealist." -George Carlin
Trolls are the classic contrarians, and their influence on social media and Internet culture has infected a significant amount of normal discourse. Atheists are contrarians when it comes to religion. And a lot of the right wing internet is contrarian because it exists as a critique of liberalism rather than the promotion of any positive alternate ideology.
While references to contrarianism in this wiki do not refer to Peter Thiel's investment strategy, there is significant overlap between those who employ it as investors, libercontrarians who believe selfishness is altruism, the right-wing manosphere that thinks misogyny is sexy, propaganda and misinformation intended to deceive, and trolls who just do it to mess with people before eventually becoming the very thing they originally sought to mock. All of these groups share a fundamental mistrust in institutions and the liberal democratic world order, and reflexively reject any ideas they associate with it.
The result of this coalition of cooperating contrarians is that a platform based on the destruction of democratic institutions is able to gain majority support. If enacted, it will undo decades of social progress, and open the door to all kinds of corruption and calamity that those institutions were created to prevent. If the balance of power is significantly disrupted, it can create a feedback loop of authoritarian power consolidation that will be difficult to break.
Contrarianism is also having a huge impact on public health. The loss of trust isn't wholly unjustified, since there have been so many cases of FDA regulatory capture by the pharmaceutical industry, private health systems that prioritize profits over patients, and a media that puts ratings and sponsorships over consistent, evidence-based advice. However, that is really not a good reason to question vaccines, which are one of the few places that affordable one-time cures are actually produced. Expensive long-term treatments of the symptoms are much more profitable, and research priorities reflect this. Our healthcare system tends to overmedicate, but that doesn't mean you should ignore doctors while taking the advice of anyone who professes a skepticism of "western medicine." Sometimes the regulatory authorities say something is bullshit because it really is, not because they are trying to suppress the herbal cure for cancer.