Make an asshole character charismatic and you’ll have people taking their side or at least liking them unless the story spares no effort to make it resoundingly clear that they’re not justified in their positions or actions. Similarly, take a character who’s cringe in their mannerisms and expressions and you can paint them as the antichrist, and far fewer readers/viewers/players will critically examine if your framing is appropriate for what the character actually does.

This is because humans are wired to associate good aesthetics (in looks, speech, symbology) with moral correctness, and that sips down into how people relate to media. It takes a bit of effort to reason your way out of blind accepting what your instinct is telling you about someone, which is why you can find so much people willing to say “I love people from [backwater shithole], they smiled so much to me when I visited” despite [backwater shithole] being racist as hell, having just outlawed abortion and being perfectly fine with rampant bullying in their schools, and a lot of people just don’t put in that effort.

I liked Rorschach when I was a dumb teen by the way. The good news is that, even if humans are inherently flawed, we have tools to overcome those flaws.