Commies. Too much commies
See, this is just the right wing version of the use of descriptors as ad hominems like "nazi" or "white supremacist". If you think more about it, were they reaaaally communists? I'm pretty sure you'd come up with the answer "no", if one considered most members' policy ambitions.
Unless it was somehow ironic, in which I'd have to apologize for not getting it. That said I would view the authoritarian and revolutionary spirit (not action, but spirit) as a big part of both extremist growth in both the right and left wing communities. If that was your intention, then I could see that.
A big problem with the political environment nowadays, which another member described as
"always assuming the worst in people", is that there's no place for nuance in position and the identitarian us-or-them paradigm places everyone on the other side as the extreme. That goes both way, and yes, both sides. I could write pages on the fallacious use of the snarky "both sides riiiiight" that some use as well, to avoid coming with a counter-argument.
In some cases people will simply disagree on a fundamental level, in terms of guiding principles. The question is how that can be tempered in civil society, in regards to clear disagreement. Generally my answer for that is that it's usually practically done by moderates being a bigger force. If a community either has a disproportionate power distribution or a lack of moderates, then it's easier for polarization to take effect. It's also kind of complicated, because suffrage and moderate reforms have tended to lead to temper extremism in a lot of countries. That's not to say it's an argumentation against a historically positioned "extremist" position on a normative basis. Just in regards to the dynamics in civil society. There is as I see it no "perfect position" to take, but I prefer the position that allows people to come together and discuss in civil society, over polarizing rhetoric.
In regards to GAF, it's hard to pinpoint a specific thing, because you had people driven by different principles. Some cared more about results than the mean and vice versa. Some tried to have it both ways depending on what suited them and unabashed oozed hypocrisy. Since everything was done in a way that lead to an either-with-us-or-against us attitude, it was doomed to explode sooner or later. With the clear position held by certain community members in terms of their influence, their ambitions, all it needed was a little spark.
In hindsight the EviLore incident was really no big thing, with enough leeway to be a big nothing in its "assumed best" form or a small incident across large part of the spectrum. However, with the use of influence and in line with ambitions, it was easy to make it be all about the "assumed worst" form. Since EviLore was too slow in shutting down the forum in reaction, it lead to a big rebellion and a sense of "rats fleeing a sinking ship". He also made the mistake of trusting his moderators too much and focusing on wrong things in his message.
A good advice is to avoid an approach of aggression and instead attempt trying to get people to understand each others' point of view, even if you disagree with each other. Approach a subject as a discussion and not a debate, as the latter tends to be purely a rhetorical exercise. You can see this in some of the self-proclaimed "skeptic" community on YouTube where they're somehow obsessed about debates. A community shouldn't lock itself into viewing conformity as virtue or view your opponent as some simple noun. That just leads to us-or-them. That leads to militant behavior. When it affects your real life, like disowning people close to you because they don't conform to your standards, it also leads to crippling your security nets. And for general little pay-off. The Thanksgiving whining from both the left and right was to me a tragic sign of the state of the US, with people being hostile to each other and planning on disowning each other.
