Is an ideal Libertarian tolerant of the intolerant?

If you asked me 10 years ago when I was younger if I thought that we should be tolerant of Nazi’s and Communists I would of said, yes. Why? Because I thought that the way forward is always through understanding something and engaging it. I still believe that, however, it’s more complicated these days. This distinction between tolerance and intolerance has become muddied as I’ve aged. To put it simply, what are the pros/cons to allowing people who seek to disavow and delegitimize the system you have in place in order to push a form of authoritarianism onto people? There seems to be almost always, far more cons. By accepting their right to freedom of expression, you are also allowing it to legitimize itself to people who don’t know any better. And perhaps more frightening, there might even be a poisoning of the well effect of this were those foolish adopters might actually delegitimize systems enough to produce people who should know better and are dogmatized.

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In my mind there in lies the issue. But I also don’t think it’s as simple as get rid of them and lock them up. These appeals seem to consistently weasel their way into public discourse even though they deal in illogical frameworks. It makes you wonder why, and perhaps more importantly, does banning and fighting said frameworks actually do anything to stop their pervasiveness?

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On one hand I don’t think that we should just allow Nazi’s and Communists to gain more and more power but on the other why are they gaining power to begin with and the answer to that question I think it perhaps the more interesting one.

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In my mind it ultimately comes down to societies moving away from egalitarianism to authoritarianism because of how economies naturally function. But it’s even more interesting then that ultimately; It’s our slide away from communities and compassion based structures into a sort of sick corporatized individualism that seeks to monetize relationships and emotion. It has turned experience into one that is inauthentic and in my opinion the main reason why many feel a pull towards control and authoritarianism.

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Corporate America’s power over how it influences people, and by proxy of that power the Federal Government, is rampant and out of control. We’ve gone from a society that puts people > everything to one that puts currency value > people and you can see that thread in just about every place you look. It’s having dire consequences in the stability of society and is leading us away from libertarianism into authoritarianism.