TLDR; Nobody has the right to be hateful.
Partisan politics is a disease in our planet. However it's not a disease that affects our bodies physically, humans aren't going to get immune responses by being exposed to partisan politics.1
What is so toxic about partisan politics?
It's divisive in nature. Partisan politics has the side product that all political parties seek to divide and polarize the masses.
Turns out, politicians gain influence, power and greatly benefit by creating categories and convincing people they belong in certain categories.
Okay? But what's wrong with categories?
The "us vs them" mentality, PP doesn't work without conflict, people influenced by it have to believe that their "opponents" are moralless antagonists, or something similar.
Conflict however requires two parties, the solution is: "just stop".
Partisan extremism #
Wowweee if it isn't the consequences of the partisan political system, extremism.
That's where the influenced believe that they are absolutely correct AND their opponents are absolutely incorrect.
It goes way further with "oh we're right and they're wrong", in PE, it goes "our opinion is the only one that is correct, the other opinion is literally hitler" 2
Partisan extremism results in human rights violations, hate and an overall backwards effect on any sort of peace or tranquility.
Partisanship is directly incompatible with peace.
On one side you have a political group which calls for horrendous human rights violations on their opponent group.
And the other group which is also hateful, and can be a little extreme in their response.
So one thing I want to say being part of a currently oppressed group, doesn't give you the right to be hateful.
Partisanship is a mental illness. #
"open source is political" "software is inherently political", these are statements dreamt up by the utterly deranged.
If you think "everything is political" or you always feel the need to inject partisan political discussions into every discussion, I'm sorry, but I think there is something wrong with you.
If I use suckless software (I don't, I'm on GNOME at the moment), it doesn't mean I support the Nazis.
However if I am talking with somebody about the suckless suite, I don't think it is literally at all useful for anybody to bring up suckless's developers being Nazis (or at least sympathizers) 3.
"software is political", yeah nope, and we don't need to bring partisanship into software at all. We don't need to bring partisanship anywhere, claiming otherwise in order to "make a safe place" is absolute bullshit.
What can I do?
Have a fucking Code of Conduct, enforce Code of Conduct. I don't care if my open source projects have a nazi contributor in them, as long as they don't violate my Code of Conduct and make anybody in my communities feel unsafe.
THAT's the point of the Code of Conduct, if you can't provide safety to your users without involving partisanship, you're doing it wrong.
Here's a decent enough Code of Conduct contributor covenant