Thorns

Hmm. Just so you know, paradoxical as it sounds I have a bit of a kneejerk reaction against being seen as "one of the tolerant activists" since such statements often come with a dodgy subtext, this is a post which kind of pokes at similar issues. I imagine that many of the people you see as ranting trolls seem (at least mostly) reasonable to me, just expressing themselves differently than I would.

I have to say the right wing activism I am involved with has nothing like the culture of aggression and internal warfare that left wingers seem to have

I have actually been involved with leftwing activism which isn't very aggressive, but it comes with it's own different set of issues: cliquey groupthink for example, and a tendency not to criticise those within the group. I think that beyond the usual general flaws of human nature (selfishness, powermongering, hypocrisy, bias towards the ingroup etc) the right has a different set of flaws it's prone to than the left. I'm not really qualified to say what they are, but for example get the feeling there's a tendency not to confront/exclude those within their group who are guilty of grossly immoral behaviour even when they should.