My mum is like this. She's in her late 70s now, it's getting worse and becoming a real problem in our relationship. She has this almost hysterical fear and dislike of immigrants, but she can't really say why. Just random stuff about how they are taking away our traditional way of life. She lives in a very white area, I live in a multicultural inner city, and on the rare occasions she visits she is shocked - "Look, she's wearing one of those hijab things!"
She was always politically naive and a bit racist but never this bad. I suspect it's largely due to the media she consumes and the people she hangs out with.
I'm pretry much on board for replacing *ist/*phobic with just plain weird now. Enough of them seem to equate being called racist/sexist/transphobic or whatever with eliciting anger, which is what they thrive on.
There's still a time and place for the specific (and accurate) labels, but many of these clowns are just sad and, well, weird attention-seekers.
I'm with this and have started at it myself when applicable. It also saves you time because it doesn't trigger that 3 hour pre programmed rant even though you said the exact same thing.
The other day in a meme channel of all things, in reply to some dumb Taco Bell "in the ad, in reality" image dude goes off about how the right image is actually a Weiner that identies as a taco, so i replied with "pretty fucking weird to be that obsessed with what strangers have in their takeout bag"