A punch to the face would solve that attitude pretty quickly. Can't do that over the internet though.
I used to break this whole thing down into simple terms: Simple and Complex.
Real life is simple. I'm 6'3", 240 pounds, if I'm walking down the street with my friends and some random dude jumps in my face and insults them, I can hit that person and he will go away. That is not the best solution, but it is a quick, easy solution that acheives the end result. Simple
Dealing with the internet is more difficult because the only weapons you have are words. You can smith those words to the best of your ability but at the end of the day, they have their limits. So when someone insults my friends on the internet and I try to jump in front of it all and absorb some of that damage, not only do I find myself limited in effectiveness, but my actions can easily be turned around on me quite easily as the people I'm fighting both don't care whether they're right or wrong and are pleased by the fact that someone is giving them attention. Complex.
Now that I'm older and I've experienced more about life, I've been able to break things down in different ways, keeping an emphasis on excluding the complex.
If some random dude jumps in my face and starts badmouthing people I like, I walk past him. Simple.
If some random dude on the internet starts badmouthing people I like, I close that page. Simple.
Because the complex outcomes of both real life and digital life both are ineffective and more harmful to me and those people I care about than simply ignoring the haters. That isn't satisfying, but that's the only way to diffuse this stuff. Deflect. Thick skin. That kind of sucks but...that's the way it is.