I would say that the Boxer Uprising was definitely not a "hooligan thing" and really not much of a political uprising either. These two views are ones expressed by the West and the People's Republic of China, respectively. Both have reasons for doing so, and I will address these pieces of historiography first, before moving on to the Uprising itself.

During the New Culture Movement (1910s-1920s) of China, the Boxers were generally perceived negatively. The cultural and social reformers of the period saw the Boxers as representing everything wrong with traditional Chinese culture. The people involved in the New Culture Movement wanted to more or less adopt Western culture, and the Boxers were seen as irrational and superstitious, which they believed was endemic to the society at the time. However, with the rise of anti-imperialism in China, the Boxers began to be repurposed as symbols of the movement, fighters against imperialism and for equality. This became particularly big during the Cultural Revolution. This was most pronounced with the view of the Red Lanterns Shining (the women Boxers/martial artists) as an integral, powerful, non-traditonal fighting force for the rights of women. Illustrations depict women holding lanterns and killing Europeans. In reality, the Red Lanterns were more like spiritual guides for the male Boxers, where they gained their strength, but that was not important to the crafters of an anti-imperial view of history.

On the European end, the Boxers almost immediately became a prominent example of the "Yellow Peril", the idea that the Chinese and other Asians were barbaric, cruel, irrational, xenophobic, and superstitious. During the aforementioned anti-imperial and nationalist movements, these views were used by Westerners to denigrate and de-legitimize the movements, comparing the anti-imperialism or anti-foreignism to rises in "Boxerism". Really, these views formed part of the foundation on which many of the popular views of Asians, past and present, sit. The views were typical of Western imperialists then and problematic views of Asian men and women still are very popular and not really addressed much in popular discourse.

Now, as for the Boxers themselves. One thing that sticks out is that the Boxer Uprising had little to do with any kind of feeling of xenophobia. Rather, the Uprising's roots lay in the way in which the Western powers behaved in China, and in this case, Shandong province. Essentially, the Boxers were a local response to local events. What is sometimes glossed over is the inextricably tied nature of trade and Christianity in Western empire building. This tie goes all the way back to the Spanish and Portuguese in Malaya, and was the major factor precipitating the Boxer Uprising as well. As an aside, since I didn’t earlier, “The Boxers" is really an English term for practitioners of regional martial arts. In this region of China, the arts that the Boxers practiced were tied to the religions. The Boxers did not start as a violent group, they started as the "Spirit Boxers". Eventually they turned into the "Boxers United In Righteousness", which was the term of the people in the movement. It should be noted that the Boxers were not the first popular uprising of martial artists in China either; there is actually a long history of it, particularly in Shandong province. I will return to this later.

In any case, Christians possessed extraterritoriality rights, and the imperialists took advantage of this legal position to commit crimes against non-Christian Chinese. So, these may not have been the formal acts of the Western governments, but the actors were 100% supported by the governments of their countries in their endeavors because it was advantageous for the governments. To the Boxers, they quite rationally equated the acts of the Christians with the acts of the foreign governments; after all, the governments were sanctioning this behavior. Effectively the missionaries and the foreign governments were one in the same. In addition, the Western opinions of the non-Christian Chinese took on racist terms, often talking of the "corruptness of 'pagan' society". Now you can see that this isn't really a xenophobic or anti-Christian movement; rather, Christianity was not peaceful and cooperative, it was antagonistic. And, in the case of the Juye Incident, the Christians actively started a conflict so that their government would have an excuse to expand into more Chinese territory, as retribution. Further, as I already mentioned, there was a long line of uprisings in China, but they were fundamentally grounded in popular culture; that is, the Boxers would become become possessed by gods that were huge in popular stories. Gods such as Sun Wukong, Zhou Cang, Zhao Yun, etc. These heroes were meant to relieve the people of their economic troubles (Shandong was a relatively tough place to live), and to defend themselves. The choices in gods reflect the values in the martial arts. These people were not rebelling against the Qing and the West, as some communist narratives hold, they were fighting against their regional exploiters in the name of the Qing Dynasty, in a very traditionally Chinese way.

Also, just as a note, the very vast majority of deaths were actually Christian Chinese, not Westerners. Also, as the movement became successful (breaking out into all-out battle in Beijing!), the Qing Dynasty under the rule of Empress Dowager Cixi threw their weight behind the Boxers as well.

Sources:

History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth by Paul Cohen

The Origins of the Boxer Uprising by Joseph Esherick