I would hesitate to call many of them poorly educated. While there are plenty of those people in there. Your socialist friend was likely decently educated. But still manipulated and taken advantage of. It's can happen to any of us despite how much we would protest and deny it.
One of the biggest problems left or right. Is people putting ideals over reals. It was rampant here for instance. All the people screaming about Biden and Gaza but quiet on everything else. Whose own ideological Purity was more important than everything else. They were fine that more children would starve die and be murdered so long as they could maintain their ideological purity.
Ideology short circuits intellect. And makes you easy to manipulate. Providing simple but wrong Solutions to complex problems of life. Much like cults. We all want to have Solutions or at least appear knowledgeable. Too many people are afraid to say that they don't know. And defer to people who actually might.
We got ourselves an optimist here! I sincerity hope you're right. But 40 years on and they still worship terrorists like Reagan. Call me sufficiently jaded. But I would love to be surprised.