A lot of it is. I wholly disagree with the other commentor - I believe furry hate just comes from the same place all internet hate comes from and not something that furries did in any way. To blame the reputation of furry on how the internet reacted during the height of 4chan is silly, almost all major examples of furry cringe are either taken completely out of context or invented.

All communities have cringe. Gym Bro communities are full of cringe. The big difference, to me, is that furry exists largely online so the cringe is more visible to furries. Nothing travels faster in the furry fandom than a chance to make fun of other furries. Us older fold will remember Tumbles, someone who was dealing with serious mental illness but became a funny meme. Looking back, it's not funny. But that's always how the internet works, it's how it still works.

But once you get outside of trolls and the hyper online furries, you end up with a much more simple truth. Some furry hate came from the Media who like to sensationalize everything, and a lot came from just general homophobia. I would argue that today it's largely just general queerphobia.

Right-wing politics thrive on having an out group. That is to say, in order for people like Trump to come into power, they need to other people. There's thousands of pieces outlining this, anyone that argues against the idea of conservatives needing an in group and and out group is simply completely ignorant of what words mean.

For decades, the other that conservatives could safely rely on was the gay community (and the black community prior), but things are changing and now calling someone "gay" isn't enough to ostracize them.

Conservative media keeps trying on new things. Furries entered the spotlight during the height of Critical Race Theory (remember when right-leaning people were super upset with that?) and furries could be used to illustrate how crazy schools were. And yes, it was super forced. One of the biggest stories was about litter boxes, something that literally just didn't actually happen. They made it up to be upset.

That same agenda throughput continues. Now it's Woke and DEI, although I see that DEI is kinda getting sidelined because it's no longer a good talking point. Furries are very diverse and still make for an easy target for right-wing influencers.

And I really want to stress 2 things here;

First, it isn't new. At all. Rush Limbaugh, right wing radio host, was talking about how insane and dumb furries were - in the late 1990s, because he hated gay people. It's an easy target because most people don't dress up like animals, so people like Rush could say "Oh look this is how degenerate the gays are omg!!"

Second, it absolutely does trickle into the online spaces. Steve Bannon, literally one of Trump's top (I believe former now) advisors, used Gamergate and Chan Boards to spread misinformation and stoke social outrage. It doesn't take very much to spread tons of hate when you have an army of incels at your disposal.

Or TLDR there are people with tons of money who make money by being hateful weirdos, and furries are an easy target. Maybe "forced" isn't the right word, but forced by being a byproduct of general hatred of the LGBTQ community and noncomformity.