I didn't vote for Trump, but I know many, many good people that did. I made the mistake of mentioning that once and somehow that turned me into a pro-Trump spokesperson. I can do that for the sake of a rational conversation, but I somehow ended up being the Trump supporter spokesperson despite the fact that I can't stand the guy.

I think the current level of political discourse is downright dangerous.

I hear this. It's frightening how some people can rationalize taking extremely punitive actions in response to encountering mere disagreement or differing identity.

Everyone needs to remember that the people they disagree with are people too, and treat them as they'd like themselves to be treated.

> I think the current level of political discourse is downright dangerous.

I would call it polarization. The discourse is just a consequence of that.

As a liberal atheist who has spent most of his life in the deep red parts of the south, I can assure you that you're wrong.

I find it terrible that when you're only given two options, and both of them suck, choosing one over the other can be seen as such a treason. To me these conversations sound like "You prefer diarrhea to vomiting! I'm never going to sit on your couch again!"

> Because it's hard to unanimously and unequivocally identify those who are intolerant as such. Owing to the beguiling nature of language and rhetoric, the intolerant can thrive and propagate by arguing that they're not in fact intolerant, and appealing to "free speech". This seems to be the MO of this so-called "alt-right" stuff; legal or constitutional barriers are almost impossible to define or enforce.

That is creepy to me. You have the ingredients of a witch hunt.

"can't easily distinguish them" aka "anyone could be a witch", "can't use legal methods to attack or 'regulate' them" aka "something... must be done", that's what I'm reading.

There's no evidence that the altright as a group are plotting to murder other citizens. The reverse, threats to do violence to altrighters, I see that on a daily basis without looking for it online e.g. the "punch a nazi" meme. Going from that to "beat up a nazi" to injury/death is not a leap.

And who are they? It's a large collection of loosely connected right wing groups. A full list would take several A4 pages. Most of them hold beliefs little different to our grandparents or possibly great-grandparents in the case of the monarchists. Anybody to the right of the Republican party could be 'altright'. This isn't true but that seems to be how most people have built their classifier.

It's easy to prove that because if you ask (as Trump did to a reporter) people to define the group, they don't know how to do it. I think there is a definition but nobody in the media has mentioned it AFAIK, it's not something that is well understood and so "Nazis!". That nazi flag at the charlottesville rally? A singular item unless the photographers were holding out on us. There are lots of photographs and it's this one guy walking around with a nazi flag.

There seems to be a curious motte and bailey argument going on here. The altright is a relatively small set, but in the media and twitter they are either a fringe sect of right wing lunatics or they are an all pervasive threat to society. It can't be both. Not unless you have an infinitely extensible definition that you can be using for ulterior political purposes.

https://www.wired.com/story/leaked-alt-right-chat-logs-are-k...

Perhaps not "murder" but certainly "attack and maim". Please don't try excuse this with the "but they're only JOKING" trope - their intent is blatant and clear.

> it's this one guy walking around with a nazi flag

This article has a photo with two different guys holding two different flags - that makes at least 3.

https://azjewishpost.com/2017/hate-in-charlottesville-the-da...

If you're looking for people talking shit about their ideological rivals on the Internet you're going to find it. We can find examples of nazis or tankies threatening people any day of the week. They're nearly always posturing. What's different about "Punch a Nazi" is that it's a widespread meme across Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.

Imagine the reverse for a second. A meme called "Cut a Commie" receiving widespread acceptance from large groups of people across social media, including authority figures and celebrity endorsement.

> This article has a photo with two different guys holding two different flags - that makes at least 3.

Barely getting to plural!

It's the same as with that NPI conference in which 3-5 people raised their arms in a Nazi salute. The rise of the 4th Reich this is not. It's possible even those people are doing it 'for a laugh'. They're edgelords.

Have you any idea how many protests feature the flag with the hammer & sickle? Quite a lot more. I am not worried about Communist infiltrators interfering with my bodily fluids. They're nearly all edgelords, not Bolshevism 2.0

This is a moral panic, we have the media fanning the flames.

I strongly suspect if a lot of people on this forum simply turned off their television or newsfeed they'd be in a healthier place.

Ah, there's the "they're only joking" trope we know and love.

> Imagine the reverse for a second. [...] "Cut a Commie"

I know where this is going. I say "Oh, but communists aren't as bad as Nazis, that would never happen" and you bring up that wikipedia page showing that more people died under communism than nazism and we all mark you down as a "whataboutism" sympathiser and the world is a little bit shittier.

> Barely getting to plural!

But definitely more than "a singular item".

> Have you any idea how many protests feature the flag with the hammer & sickle?

Oh, there's the whataboutism.

It's not like that. I don't want to trivialize the death of the girl in Charlotte either, it's a domestic terror incident.

There's a constant background hum of political violent extremism throughout Europe and America. The key indicator for which species is ascendant is whether the popular media narrative is leaning one way or the other. The validation of these group's concerns seem to give them the entitlement they need to turn rhetoric into activity.

There's already been an attempt on one Congressman's life so imagine what will happen if something similar succeeds.

> I know where this is going. I say "Oh, but communists aren't as bad as Nazis, that would never happen" and you bring up that wikipedia page showing that more people died under communism than nazism and we all mark you down as a "whataboutism" sympathiser and the world is a little bit shittier.

I see you've been here before. We can always hold a truce and declare both groups unworthy.

>> Have you any idea how many protests feature the flag with the hammer & sickle?

> Oh, there's the whataboutism.

It does bug me. One gets consternation. The other "meh".

Arguably "good people" don't support nor vote for an individual who openly brags about assaulting women...

...unless you have a different definition of what is considered "good".

/much like christians claim "everything god does is good" - you know, like genocide via a flood...

Indeed, if you were to assume that every vote for a candidate is de facto support of everything they do/are, I don't think I ever could have voted for anyone.

They really don't give a shit about anyone or anything but their investment holdings. Nothing but some numbers on an account.

If you take that stance, then your options are:

1. 45% of the voting people in USA support sexually assaulting women.

Are you OK with that understanding? Do you not find something unsettling about saying 45% people in USA are OK for sexually assaulting women? The same conservative family oriented people, the same law and order people, the same god and sins people are supportive of sexually assaulting women? Can we have survived as a nation so far if so many people supported sexually assaulting women?

2. Hillary still lost to such person. What does that say about Hillary?

If Trump's audio conservation had not leaked, he would have won by even larger margin. What does THAT say about Hillary? Why do you think that was the case?

Unless you can show some evidence for this, it's just an unprovable counterfactual and completely useless.

In other words, if you don't agree, you can safely ignore the comment, or take upon yourself to prove it wrong.

The risk materialized for victims of terrorism.

The risk materialized for victims of drug gangs.

The risk materialized for victims of illegal aliens committing crimes including identity theft.

The risk materialized for victims of outsourcing. The risk materialized of well paying manufacturing jobs disappearing.

It's wasn't fear, it was the materialized risk. Many voted for Obama overcoming fear, choosing hope. But they realized you can't just choose hope, you have to go and bend reality to be what you want it to be. And they put a bend in flow of reality, choosing Trump.

The elite fail to sympathize with their own countrymen in peril, because having compassion for your fellow countryman means you were being a 'xenophobe'. That label is not very vogue in elite circles.

I, for one, am glad that the risk of Trump being elected materialized.

However, you can still have irreconcilable differences in belief systems at an existential level.

That's a quote.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer...

You may not like that fact but it remains a fact. Extra points for referring to himself in the third person because, you know, Obama was so arrogant.

Net neutrality was a disappointment, but myself and others in the tech community will learn to deal with the inconvenience.

The plight of illegal immigrants and the "religion of peace" has zero relevance to me, I simply don't care enough one way or the other to vote in favor of them.

Left wants to hold all whites responsible for crimes of slavery.

Left wants to give clean sheet to DACA recipients for crimes of their parents.

Why do you want to hold kids responsible for parents crimes when it comes to white people?

I myself tend to get along with people with a wide range of political views. But I've always assumed it's because I'm a bit of a sociopath. I don't care enough to put other peoples' struggles above my personal relationships.

Also I think lowered emotional connection to the issues can actually be a huge benefit to understanding them rather than just "feeling" what side to pick.

So maybe you aren't a sociopath. :)

What are these viewpoints that are claimed to be conservative in nature? I have read the Texas GOP platform. Is that representative of conservatism?

https://www.texasgop.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/PERM-PLA...

This is a fair question at this point. I would posit answering this and also answering "What does liberal mean?" would be great things to address in high school political science classrooms, however it doesn't seem to be in the curriculum. We've had the better part of 30 years where media pundits have been doing their best to conflate these terms with concepts which are tangential at best or completely unrelated at worst.

First, I think it's important to understand that concepts like "conservative" and "liberal" refer to overarching political philosophies, and the actual ideology a person holds that describes themselves as such is probably a subset. Since we're focused on conservatism, I'll provide examples from there. So, in this case there may be broad differences in beliefs about particular political issues between an evangelical conservative Republican and a Libertarian, however both are conservatives. This type of difference arises with the concept of liberalism as well. Fundamentally, the liberal/conservative distinction is a line, and therefore each person falls at some point on that line within a broad spectrum.

Second, let's address the most simplistic explanation of the overarching philosophy, and then we'll get into some specifics of how this might manifest when applied to an individual. Conservatism is effectively a combination of three ideas:

1. Individuals know best about their own situations and working together can improve things better than a central authority (i.e. "government sucks at doing things" 2. Broad social and political change should be infrequent and considered fully, and therefore an adhesion to our founding charter (Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution) is critical to correct governance (i.e. "we've done it this way and it's worked out so far, why change?") 3. In order to ensure that both of the above are true it's essential to have a small central government which is only empowered and funded minimally at the bare necessity to achieve those general aims (i.e. "the best government is a small government")

Third, it's important to understand how much upbringing and experiences in life affect an individual's political ideology and the philosophy from which it is derived. It is no mistake or surprise that cities tend to be more liberal and rural locations tend to be more conservative in the United States. It's a result of somewhat unintended consequences of democracy conceptually and the realities of optimizing for bureaucratic efficiency. We know that basic rules of optimization (the Pareto principle) says that 80% of the job requires 20% of the work. This is true of many things when it comes to urban/rural divides, all the way down to broadband Internet connectivity. Democracy in its simplest form becomes rule by the majority, so larger concentrations of people (cities) hold more sway.

These two items result in people inhabiting rural areas being felt that not only do they not have a voice but that nobody cares to help them with their problems. The response to this is "clinging to traditions" because those traditions are by and large what has helped get them and their families through hard times for many years. In a fit of irony, the more underfunded the government the more heavily the government focuses on cities as that becomes the most rational pathway.

Finally, conservatism is rooted in two additional beliefs that are about the conduct of a person individually. That is, that generally everyone should be treated as an individual rather than via group identity (individualism as a loose philosophical base) and that because of this personal responsibility and hard work are the most important factors in success. This is one reason why people with conservative beliefs are less likely to approve of social safety nets, even though they would likely qualify as beneficiaries. The philosophy includes a belief structure of the self that would refuse the help out of shame at personal failure, and at the same time would judge others as failing for taking that help. In this mindset all that matters is taking responsibility for your self, including the outcome/reaction to a bad situation, and working hard to better things.

I've touched briefly on a lot of different things, and I've provided basically no sources for these statements. I'd like to write something much more thorough, but the reality is it'd be entirely too lengthy and I should be doing work right now. The topic is very complex, political ideologies themselves are complex, and this is one reason why I find it distasteful when someone is painted in broad strokes because of their political ideology (regardless of what that ideology is). Hopefully this comment is helpful to the discussion though.

It's essentially a generalised theory that explains left/right (liberal/conservative) differences in terms of a single underlying intuition about human nature. Because it's an intuition, you can't alter people's point on the political spectrum through an interesting fact or argument, it's only experience that can change people. And yet he shows how starting from this one basic assumption you can logically extrapolate all conservative and liberal political positions from it, in an entirely rational way.

I found it amusing that a man who was going to take an oath to defend the Constitution thought it was reasonable to call me un-American and try to beat me into silence. He left when I laughed at him instead of fighting back.

I had friends un-friend me on Facebook after my sister married a woman and I posted pictures and congratulations to them. I had colleagues who stopped talking to me after the same. They talk to me now (2 years later), but only professionally, formally. No more informal or loose friendship happening between us apparently.

This shit definitely happens on both sides.

If Trump hadn't done that, I would have gone for eternity judging those people as war mongers no matter the cost.

If Trump hadn't said "I want some punishment for the woman" on abortion, I would have gone for eternity judging all anti-choice folks to be for incarceration of women for exercising choice.

It wasn't a great policy before. It's not great now. Hiding who you are to avoid ridicule doesn't solve the problem. If the majority opinion is safe to express, but your opinion isn't, then being forced to hide doesn't actually solve the problem. Even if you hide your views, you may get asked why you don't support the majority's viewpoints.

As others have said, it goes both ways: liberal in a red state, conservative in a blue state.

At the end of the day, the people you meet at work are not there because they want to be friends. They're there for one reason: to make money. If you respect other people's boundaries then they respect you.

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3028664/lgbt-programmers-speak-o...

How is this different to what the OP said?

The gay employees of Mozilla were understandably upset when he became CEO, and since the Bay Area in general is pretty progressive, many other employees were also upset. They were looking for new employers.

I gave an anti-miscegenation analogy earlier. How is this different from a CEO making a public donation to The Daily Stormer (perhaps pointing to the stories of Judas and Cain as justification) and the Jewish and non-white employees and their allies not wanting to work for him? You cannot take public action to vilify your employees and deny them civil rights and expect them to keep working for you.

[1] https://youtu.be/pSb3jiuIhUM

[2] http://observer.com/2012/04/tech-celeb-makes-prop-8-donation...

Unpopular with a powerful lobby within the liberal tech industry, yes.

You already see why posting that was a bad idea because you're primed to argue, even though you know it won't go anywhere.

I bring it up because the outrage is clearly so manufactured, not because I'm "primed to argue, even though I know it won't go anywhere."

I went to Texas and wasn't looking for it - but the first bar I walked into had photos of Obama and Hillary duct taped to the urinal for people to aim at :P

Coworker: "My younger brother was killed in Iraq in 2007."

You: "I voted for Bush."

I'm sure you can see why Coworker wouldn't be pleased by your statement in this instance. I'm on the Left working at an oil company, so I feel your pain. It helps if you want to talk about these things to shift their Overton window slowly, not to expect tolerance for unthinkable actions right out of the gate (it's not right, but that's how it is).

Liberals and Left-wingers are people too, and thus are vulnerable to the same tribal bullshit that some (luckily few) people on the Right and (luckily) fewer people on the Left are proud of. Despite all effort, you (general and specific) and they can't stop from feeling these tribal in-group feelings any more than they can just stop feeling thirsty after a day of not drinking any water.

EDIT: One of these days I should write a post, How to Talk About Politics with People Who Disagree With You.

Your conversation leading to upset is based in the assumption that the coworker already shares your worldview in regard to the Iraq war. It's one I share too, so I can see why that'd be automatic, but I've met and known people who fought in Iraq. They didn't exactly seem ashamed!

It's been my experience that each region has its dominant sociopolitical culture and that there are always people who are unable to see beyond that and who become angry when confronted by anything other.

Both myself and my other housemates didn't understand it at the time, but I didn't lose respect for him as a person. In the most recent election, I've come to at least understand more of his views. I wish I could talk to him about it, but he passed away a few years ago.

I currently hold a controversial opinion myself, that the parties are essentially the same and the elections simply do not matter. I do not think anything would be different under either potential candidate. You can say some of the social issues would be affected (trans people in the military), but if you focus on those, you view the current government as just stupid. But they're not. They knew banning trans people would cause outrage. You add a stupid reason, and you need to realize they knew that was an intentionally stupid reason, and people focus their hate. It is literally the 2 minute hate from Orwell's 1984, except it's been around for over a decade and it's now the 24/7 hate from all the news networks.

http://fightthefuture.org/articles/the-fallout-of-american-a...

In big tech areas, I cannot get over the number of people who would say, "No there is a difference [between the parties]!" whenever I expressed this view. Over 60 million people voted for Trump. That doesn't mean those 60+ million are uneducated or stupid or racist. Over 60 million people voted for Clinton. That doesn't mean those 60+ million are compromising or ignorant. Over 40% of those eligible chose not to vote. They all get clumped together, even though their reasons are greatly varied.

And keep in mind, there is a 2014 Princeton Study that shows the the opinions of the average voter in America have a statically insignificant, near zero, effect on all policy decisions (unless you're part of the top 10% of income earners):

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...

America, and even many European nations, are becoming increasingly polarized. But human beings don't fit into two categories. There is no real left or right. Someone might be supportive of gay rights, be for gun control and yet still think trans people suffer from mental illness. Another might be against gun control and affirmative action, and have other libertarian-ish beliefs, yet believe strongly in public transportation and universal health care.

We do not fit into the nice cylinders of political categories, and we certainly don't fit into the false dichotomy of the left/right. But we're taught that's where the line is, that we have to take sides, and keep fighting each other instead of the real players, the _eminence grise_ of Exxon, BP, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Boeing and all the other players who really control what's going on and who are systematically implementing policy that increases tension, increases conflict and escalates war throughout the would.

That's a bit of a point towards what libertarians and conservatives (but, to be clear, not alt-righters) think. If fewer issues were national and more were left up to individuals, even, you wouldn't have to lament what the national government does. You could move to a more sane place. And your opinion would matter more in a smaller jurisdiction.

Interestingly, we're seeing this symptom happening more in tech companies, which are not the government but they certainly govern in some respects, at least the things they are responsible for. There is starting to be appetite in conservative and libertarian circles for discussion about what to do about unelected corporate bureaucracies having this sort of power.

There IS a difference between the political parties.

All you have to do is look at their voting records on key issue. Here's a comprehensive breakdown, for proof:

https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6pc5qu/democrats...

Neither party ever even tried to do anything about:

- term limits, limits on money in politics

- getting rid of lobbyists (their own sponsors)

- punishing Wall Street criminals

- reforming business law to give shareholders more control over executive compensation

- stopping the runaway train of national debt - etc.

Both parties were/are mostly:

- anti-privacy (anti-Snowden, anti-Wikileaks, etc)

- pro-war, the military budget is untouchable, whether it is McCain or Hillary

- ever-increasing spending (despite Reps rhetoric)

- happy (Dems) or uninterested (Reps) in lowering healthcare costs

- corrupt, with "foundations" and "speaking fees" flowing freely

There is much more, but this thread is off-topic, so I will stop here.

Term limits are a horrible non-solution, but Republicans did push a Constitutional Amendment for them them on Congress in 1995, securing a majority but not the supermajority required for a Constitutional Amendment.

> limits on money in politics

Bipartisan finance reform has passed several times, only for the most significant measures to be struck down by the courts.

A number of your other points are similarly ill-informed.

both parties are corporatist, neoliberal, military-interventionist, and in general anti-democratic in that they are very happy to allow wealthy interests to set policy without deferring much to the will of the people.

Unfortunately, it will take years (if ever) for most people to realize this.

trump is just randomly going from one to another mostly unconsequential decision.

bush went to war, purposefully let torture be instigated (while trump say ok for torture motsly to look tough) and promoted hugh oil conglomerates.. he's also the governor who order the most inmates to be sent to death row

Learn to see the difference between talk and action.

I do have to say this part has amused me the most, as a registered independent who leans heavily socially liberal (I'm more conservative when it comes to economic issues - but more in the sense that I want money going to things that advance the species, rather than destroy it).

I certainly expected after the last election to see a steamroller of conservative GOP legislation being passed left and right. Instead, we got a bunch of EOs - and a stalled Congress. I was not expecting that.

Not that I like it, mind you...

I think it is great. If we could stick the Senate and the House onto vacation for 364 days a year the country would be able to adjust quite quickly.

I'm curious if any nation has experimented with a hybrid of direct and representative democracies: people choose their stances on actual issues, and the candidate most matching the spirit of society is elected.

Parliamentary systems with proportional representation and "coalition" governments exist throughout the world. The U.S. just isn't one of them and would require a big overhaul of the Constitution in order to change that.

While there still exists voting along party lines, having more than 2 major parties there tends to be a little more variety in official platforms.

Recently, Alberta which is traditionally more conservative voted for a Muslim mayor in Calgary, and the NDP (Canada's socialist democratic party) into provincial office. Even our Green party gained a seat in Victoria/Saanich (British Columbia) last election.

In 00 I thought Bush voters were just sort of clods, hopelessly partisans with a poor understanding of the dangers of nepotism and monarchy. (I thought the same about Clinton voters in 08 and much of 16, to be fair)

In 04, Bush voters were supporting a guy who responded to the 9/11 attacks by invading _the wrong country_ (secular Hussein working with bin Ladin? honestly), and okaying the torture of human beings for information. You can’t chalk this up to “some people like chocolate, others vanilla,” Abu Ghraib doesn’t fit under a comfy blanket.

If you had admitted voting for his re-election to me at lunch I would have gotten up and left the table without saying a word.

((Not that it matters, but I grew up in Montana, I understand conservatives and conservativism))

I can understand feeling this way, but do you see this as a response that improves the situation? Is your impulse to silent action just that it's easier than engaging, or is there a positive outcome of silently leaving that would not be also achieved by explaining your reasons for leaving?

Engaging in a discussion of why you feel the way you do seems like it might have the best chance of a possible outcome. If their response is that are in favor of our behavior at Abu Graib that you despise, then I can understand giving up and leaving.

(Ironically, this responseless post was voted below zero when I found it, and dead from user flagging when I tried to reply, which I think is equivalent to the "silently leaving" approach espoused by the author. I'd be interested to hear from those who flagged it why they did so.)

No. I don't think "just leaving" would have improved the situation. A screaming match and fists wouldn't have improved the situation either.

American culture has found itself in this weird space where arguments that were supposedly settled in the last century are apparently still up for debate. In the case of torture, there are two questions at hand: One, does it work, and two, if it works, is its use defensible. Believing the first is ignorant; believing the second is inhumane.

I don't see any sort of constructive middle ground or even argument to be had over such a basic conversation of good vs. evil. Since I spent most of 2004-2008 in a state of rage over the presence and defense of actual evil in a country and society that I love, I would not have had the self-control necessary to engage in a dialogue. So I would have left.

(The down-voting was weird but predictable.)

The idea that there are points of view (not actions or laws but ideas) that warrant violence is a large and growing problem.

Wasn't the passivity and meekness of the opposition the exact reason fascists were able to rise relatively easily in the intrawar period?

Personally, I think the concept that there aren't ideas worth throwing a punch over is equally as repugnant as saying you should punch anyone you disagree with.

No, it wasn't. I can't speak to what passivity would have caused, maybe things would have been even worse in Germany, but we can't really know, because 'passivity and meekness' didn't happen.

From around the time hyperinflation started, Weimar Germany was torn apart by openly violent factionalism. There was no significant period where fascists propagandized and recruited freely, or even did so without violent opposition. Bear in mind that the Beer Hall Putsch saw 16 Nazis and 4 police officers die, plus a large number of arrests.

The Sturmabteilung, the Nazi paramilitary arm, was only one of many streetfighting organizations pushing to violently resist and silence its opponents. The RotFront was a famous paramilitary group advocating total communist revolution, which led major actions against the SA. The Stahlhelm were reactionary, monarchist conservatives who opposed the Weimar government, communists, and Nazis. The Iron Front were center-leftist paramilitaries whose 'three arrows' logo represented opposition to fascists, communists, and monarchists alike.

All of these groups engaged in extensive streetfighting and propagandizing, and everyone who wasn't the SA hated the Nazis. There was no shortage of anti-fascist violence in Germany - most visibly in the early thirties, but beginning well before that.

The lesson of interwar Germany isn't that tolerance breeds fascism. It's that streetfighting violence can fail completely. Fighting Nazism with rocks and clubs was tried, to no effect - it turns out that beatings neither dissuade nor deconvert people. In the end, the violence which solved the problem was a war, which proceeds on rather different lines - it changes views by killing people with said views.

I agree that there are plenty of ideas worth fighting for. But the claim that passivity is what enabled fascism in Germany is factually false; passivity simply wasn't the state of affairs in the Weimar period.

This is the paradox enabling many to blindly say Antifa is a racist or fascist organization. No, they are the intolerant side of tolerance laying down the law. Without them, any tolerant society devolves slowly to fascism.

The key is to realise that the "Antifa" agenda has nothing to do with tolerance, regardless of what they claim.

This isn't as complicated or confounding as you seem to think. The "fascists" that Antifa think they're fighting aren't attempting to overthrow the government or build armies of SS-style street thugs. They are usually just protesting, or sometimes trying to give a speech at a university.

Speech should be countered with more speech. Violence, with violence in the proportion needed to stop it.

Antifa's agenda is to use violence to suppress speech. Like a lot of self-righteous activity it is rooted in hypocrisy. Their goal is to stop people from disagreeing with their political agenda by labelling any such disagreement as "Nazi" or "fascist" and then claiming their violence is justified as otherwise they'd be "tolerating intolerance". It is doublethink.

Secondly it is a component of decision theory and yes philosophers can propose mathematical propositions that do get rigorously investigated by real mathematicians. Saying a philosopher can't do math is probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Those ones who would not tolerate those with intolerant ideas, have intolerant ideas too, and they must be convinced their ideas are wrong.

One thing that it is important to distinguish is holding an idea versus acting on it. The fascists were acting on their views, not merely holding them and talking about them. And violence may demand violence. And action, passing laws that enslave and oppress, that may demand violence too in some circumstances. But speech, even organized speech, demands speech not violence. It may demand a LOT of speech. But it does not demand violence.

If a person is willing to use violence to silence an opposing view that is being non-violently spoken, then that is the worse thing in my view. This includes the violent suppression of racist and sexist and other discriminatory views. Though I detest those positions, I detest violence more.

Now, inciting people to violence. Calling people to violence. I do believe that that is a different issue. And one that I do not know how to deal with.

Holding different opinions is natural to everyone. It is the treatment of how one listens, your body language while listening, the amount of time given after one stops speaking before a counterpoint is given. Fights erupt when people do not listen, and of course when one side can't articulate their position and the conversation devolves from mature.

Two respectful mature adults can talk about any painful subject. If you can't, that's an indication of a need to mature, either yourself or your attitude towards others.

If you're voting to take away people's healthcare, or to discriminate against them based on who they love, or their gender, then of course they are angry!

But it's fair to expect that you won't get into a fistfight with someone just because they make you angry.

Some people won't be cowed by a publicly aggressive racist... I'd tell my boss that I'm uncomfortable working with them. I'm not a snowflake, if someone else can't handle my speach and the resulting consequences of their own.