I feel like it’s the norm nowadays to violently oppose an opinion that you disagree with an extreme version of your opinion whether or not you actually feel it to that extent. I myself have been guilty of this. I've been thinking about this a fair bit lately and have come to the conclusion that nothing exists purely in extremes.
A lot of politics nowadays is just arguing side A vs side B without much thought for the inbetweens. If you listen to debates you won't hear much talk of coming to a compromise of any sort, instead it’s a lot of people going into a conversation with an existing idea of what the opposing opinion is, and generally will refuse to actually listen to what they have to say. This goes both ways, and leads to people assuming that because someone said something that they disagree with everything they're saying must be wrong. People end up in their own echo chambers and will eventually shut out any range of opinions other than theirs.
One of the hardest things someone can do is accept they were wrong, even harder is to come into a discussion with the intent to improve their understanding of an issue from multiple sides. It’s for reasons like this that opinion extremism has reigned rampant. Not only does it stop progress towards improvement as a whole, it also helps those in power at our expense. If you take anything from this I hope that it is this: you can be a voice of reason.