What I was getting at is that their platform is not guaranteed. They must be shut down, their speech drowned. Non-violent protest as long as possible, violent only as a last resort. But you don't let nazis speak and shrug and say "it's their right, let's hear them, try to convince them they are wrong".
This is precisely WHY we have freedom of speech as an absolute in this country. Because once you empower people to attack hate speech, the definition of "hate speech" will invariably be expanded and abused in ways that are totalitarian and fascistic, which is EXACTLY what we're seeing from the left today.
It's why every time I respond to people like you, they post openly and I'm forced to use a throwaway. It's reverse McCarthyism. You probably think that's progress too, but you didn't convert me or anybody else, you just made us go into hiding. But we can still vote while we're hiding.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I will vote for a thousand Trumps before I give up freedom of speech in America. If we don't have that in America then it's all for nothing. As long I keep reading this garbage from people on the left, I'll happily be a single-issue voter.
My point is that if left unrestricted, free speech kills itself. Those who speak against it can end it without ever doing anything violent.
You can't wait for something illegal to intervene.
I'm not saying it's somehow "wrong" to have a 1st amendment style law as in the US - I'm saying it doesn't matter. When people speak against the open society and people's equal value, society will try to stop them. If it's in the law as in Germany then those that intervene have police uniform. When it's not law, those who intervene don't have police uniforms, and do formal "right" to do it.
Third option where nazis speak freely and people listen and then meet their opinions with their own? Not happening, anywhere.
Trying to compromise with a nazi is like agreeing to putting a kitten in the blender at half speed instead of full speed. These aren't folks that reason and persuasion is working for, as they think they are reasonable.
But overall, they were fighting a greater evil compared to the times. It doesn't matter if their views are now considered outdated, they were doing the right thing for the time.
You can't change peoples minds by restricting their speech. Those people will always exist, some will change over time. In the mean time let them out themselves.
When we grew up and realized that no, people really shouldn't be marching the street calling for genocide or calling for other groups to be treated as animals. When we realized it is bad to harass others, by surrounding them with torches and yelling racist slurs or by burning freaking crosses in someone else's yard.
When we realized that we don't actually want to spread hate and convince others to think the same.
This won't stop folks from thinking this or spreading it to some extent, but there isn't a reason we have to give them space in the public sphere, with marches on public roads obviously meant for everybody, regardless of background. Nor does an employer have any need to respect the right of their employee to spread hate, a web hosting service to host the websites, and other such things.
Another thing we've realized as we've grown up is that one cannot both protect freedom of speech like this and have any true means of actually overcoming it. This puts actual goals like equality and a more fair society at risk.
And above all, it changed when folks re-thought "Fuck Nazis and Fight them".
Of course, this is all just speaking from the top of my head and nothing in here is known fact without someone factchecking it, as I have not.