What I've learned from talking to people is that though people say they support freedom (specifically, freedom of speech) almost no actually does. Almost everyone wants to restrict what other people say, even if they're never going to hear it or see it. People want to destroy everything in the world they don't agree with, including discourse itself.
This isn't a new trend of course, but I personally find it sad that the very people who claim to champion freedom and civil liberties are now actively trying to destroy them.
I think the diversity of people and their opinions in the world are scary. In the past, you could ignore or were unaware of just how different other people seemed. Now, this diversity is in the forefront, and people are scared shitless.
Ultimately, I believe that being exposed to people that disagree with you existentially shakes you and exposes you to the most scary thing imaginable: that nothing is actually true and that nothing matters. After all, if some guy believes everything I don't believe and vice versa, then maybe what I believe is arbitrary, made-up, and confabulated. And if that is the case, maybe none of us know anything at all. Or, as Heidegger would put it, this contradiction of beliefs removes us from being-in-the-world, and replaces it with being-towards-death.
