Spite politics is the ultimate form of post industrial vanity. People are so well off and have so little to worry about that their biggest ask from their leaders is to bully those who they don't like.
Though I don't agree with it, I think many conservatives feel the same way about e.g. trans rights - that it's a form of post industrial vanity.
Some don't like anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-climate rethoric. Others don't like trans-rights, anti-hate-speech, anti-christianity rethoric. For either side, those are not real problems which their opponents are concerned about.
That's an underappreciated aspect of current public discourse.
And the basis for that power is that they are supposedly right about things.
Group X does action A_x due to belief B_x. That B_x isn't logical or whatever doesn't matter. Members of group X generally don't know that group X is wrong, and instead think their own biases are common sense etc.
People are not perfectly rational spheres in a vacuum.
That you can substitute in a lot of different values for X, doesn't change any of this.