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No more or less than the man who yells "Trump deserves to die" and then doesn't shoot at him is politically irrelevant rather than an extremist. I'm not a political activist, but neither are the vast majority of people, and yet all the voices do add up. An awful lot of activists and politicians and media are emboldened by the prevalence of people supporting them and saying the same thing. Rather than being one more of the millions of voices shouting "you're scum, you deserve to be killed" to their political opponents, I am one of the thousands shouting "No you. You are scum, you deserve to be shamed and mocked but not killed, not because of which side you're on but because you are an uncivilized thug who resorts to violence over words." If it were reversed, if there were millions of us and thousands of them, a lot less violence would happen because they would find less comfort and confidence and public support.
Activism is useless, and in many cases actively harmful, unless you're actually supporting the right cause. Even if my words turn out to be entirely useless because nobody listens to me, literal 0 is still higher than a negative number. And if I'm lucky then maybe my words and my sane representation of ideas that are usually misrepresented by insane extremists will help people realize that their political opponents aren't all nutjobs, even if some of them are, and be less violent and more forgiving as a result.
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