The world of hatred that is going on on the internet is frequently and conveniently glossed over by reactionary right-wingers (aka fascists), most of whom are highly active on that very same internet.
It’s dismissed as “not real life”, when it very much is, and has the severest consequences for non-online life.
When are internet-based reactionary right-wingers going to acknowledge that their very hate speech, driven and amplified by the internet, is creating, reinforcing and driving that world of hatred that is going on the internet, and is frequently and increasingly spilling over into non-online life? The answer is never.
The reactionary right-wing internet is the parallel world, the Pandora’s Box of hatred, that is poisoning societies.
Fascism creates a double bind - if you platform it, you legitimise it. You can’t “out-debate” it, because fascists are never there to debate, they’re only ever there to lie and distort reality, and spread fear and hatred. That’s as true of Trump and Boris Johnson as it is for some basement dweller on 4chan.
If you de-platform fascism or fascists, you feed into the imagined victimhood narrative, you feed into their conspiracy narratives.
If you fight fascists with violence, you feed into every single one of their narratives.
Fascism is a self-reinforcing loop, a flesh eating virus which eats everything in its path - it never stops until it ends up eating humanity whole, and every single thing you can think of, no matter what it is, whether it’s a banal comment on a forum or a grotesque fascist massacre, acts as a reinforcer of fascist “victimhood” and fear and anger.