I'm reminded of something I read on Larry Corriea's blog a couple months back:
A friend of mine who is a political activist said something interesting the other day, and that was for most people on the left political violence is a knob, and they can turn the heat up and down, with things like protests, and riots, all the way up to destruction of property, and sometimes murder… But for the vast majority of folks on the right, it’s an off and on switch. And the settings are Vote or Shoot *expletive deleted*ing Everybody.
source blog post
I think that's more on point than a lot of people think. DudeBro in the black shirt, I suspect, honestly believes that he only nudged his knob from 5 to maybe 5.5 or 6, and now that the racist has been shown who's boss, it's back down to 5. No big deal. I, and I suspect a bunch of folks on the right, watching that consider the morality of just shooting him in the face. (note, I said morality, not legality. Separate things) I mean, he's clearly willing to use unprovoked physical violence to abridge the freedoms of someone else, why should not violence be turned on him? It would cut way down on future assaults by that DudeBro.
And therein lies the rub: He thinks he made a small, temporary, adjustment to his political behavior, and we think he crossed a large, red line. Him and his friends would be shocked, and would truly not understand why some of us consider him punching a fellow student and him getting shot pretty even in morality.
I'm not sure how to explain it to them in a fashion they'd understand either.