It's complicated. I think we have a few layers of feedback loops here. While the alt-right is scarier and more viscerally dangerous there is a bit of a "negati

It's complicated. I think we have a few layers of feedback loops here. While the alt-right is scarier and more viscerally dangerous there is a bit of a "negativity laser" phenomenon going on here. The far left and far right are each others' bogey men and thus are driving each other off the deep end. I'm not saying they'll stop if we hug them but I'm saying that directly attacking them might give them more energy. The real danger is that their dangerous nuttery will drive liberals into nutty territory themselves as a counter-reaction (and vice versa... that's how a laser works). Meanwhile we are neglecting the economic issues and those are IMHO the real cause. This kind of xenophobic hate stuff always comes up when people feel economic hardship. Scarcity triggers atavistic tribal "band together and raid the neighboring tribe" behavior patterns. Our brain stems don't know what century this is. The Nazis came to power during a deep economic crisis, remember? The irony is that neglecting the economic underpinnings of this to focus on the social issues is creating precisely the environment that led to the rise of fascism the last time around. Edit: I'm also not advocating accepting fringe racists, just not expending too much energy fighting them directly (which feeds them) and instead re-focusing that energy on asking "what happened in 1973 and how can we fix it?" What's kind of interesting about that graph I posted is that there is a ground zero. Whatever went wrong went wrong in 1973 plus or minus a year or two. If we can fix that I really think the Nazis will go back in their holes. People only listen to that kind of craziness when they feel desperate and they feel like the system has failed them.