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.