“… to create a tolerant society” “… must not be tolerated” These two ideas seem to conflict, but I kinda get where you are going here. I don’t think you have to accept an idea in order to discuss it in a rational manner. That said, “fascist ideology” is a pretty broad umbrella that people like to fit certain ideas into when they don’t like those ideas. People on the left and right both do this. I think you do need to allow people to discuss taboo or controversial ideologies and topics in order to shut them down in the light of day if they are, in fact, “fascist”. Shutting down the conversation altogether does more harm than good because it allows bad ideas to fester outside of the normal discourse. You are right that not all opinions are created equal, but the best way to stop bad ideas from coming to fruition is to open them up to criticism.

Yeah it’s definitely much easier to do it from behind a keyboard in an anonymous setting lol, probably another reason you get such extreme viewpoints spewed all over the internet.

I’m actually saying the opposite, that MOST people on each side are sane, rational, and willing to have good faith conversations. The batshit crazies from each side only constitute the 10% but they are the loudest on social media so they get the most attention. It leads to this weird situation where everybody on the right looks at those posts from the small minority of leftists and says “wow all dems must be child grooming open border pro-hamas idiots” while everybody on the left looks at the batshit crazy stuff posted by the minority of republicans and think “wow all the republicans must be Trump loving pro life purist gun nuts who didn’t make it past 3rd grade”.

This is the unfortunate reality of all of politics in the age of social media. As a republican, the same can be said about the right and all of our unhinged nonsense. I would say 90+% of people on the left and right are more moderate and could probably agree to most things, but the most extreme 10% are the most vocal ones who are out there on social media spouting extremist nonsense, and unfortunately they get the most notoriety.