"I may not agree what you say, but I'll fight for your right to say it." is an excellent, appropriate expression for the narrative of liberal philosophy in western culture. What happens, however, when this starts to go south?
Let's first talk about "love". Love has little use for logic or reason, a person simply loves what he loves. We find aesthetic beauty in all manners of things, from other people to artistic expression to the simple things in nature as the patterns in leaves or in clouds. Telling someone what they should, or can, love is destructive. It leads to a deep welling of resentment and, generally ultimately, outright rebellion. On misplaced moral authority, humans throughout history have punished people for who and what they love, and that's pretty terrible.
Conversely, every person has a sort of comfort zone, a bubble surrounding each what they specifically do not love, do not find attractive or appropriate, feel is wrong for themselves and, by extension, those with whom they identify (in the given time). This should not be confused with hate, because hate is not the opposite of love, but apathy. Similar to what people love or like having little use for reason, what people dislike or in which they do not find the same love (you might feel) has little use for reason. Obligating or enforcing one to care for or embrace such concepts found abhorrent has exactly the same effect on the individual's psyche as obligating or enforcing what to love.
Now, you or I could tell each other we're wrong (really an abridged version of "you're wrong for me", unspoken), we can say, "that idea" or even "you" is/are stupid, and when it ends there, granted there's been some conflict, or friction, but both sides have been reasonably respected, opinions shared, and we walk away. However, when one side of this becomes destructive, or when one side is manipulated, by virtue of censorship, threat, intimidation, property or personal damage, destroyed art/literature or death, that is when the premise of hate (real hate, not label of hate for hyperbolic depiction for intentful dismissiveness) and fascism become legitimate arguments.
Because that type of practice is implicitly anathema to the principle of liberal thought in western culture.
One can "call himself liberal", but he is not practicing the ideals of liberalism if he is doing these kinds of things. Look at protests blocking speakers from speaking, demonstrations by people in pink piggy hats with the expressed intention of causing economic hardship, physically attacking or ripping the hats off of people who support a political opponent, breaking windows or setting fires in cities because one's not comfortable with the status quo, defacing property, shaming a multitude of followers into boycotting events as the Sochi Olympics or voting for whom they choose, denigrating or otherwise being critical in a libelous fashion toward people with whom you disagree...
These are all mannerisms, behaviors, practices of what one would do if actively seeking to suppress or impair other's (what we consider God-given) right to free thought and free expression. That is anti-liberalism. That is fascism. Agreeing to these actions, and becoming complicit in them, is equally anti-liberal and fascist agenda.
I will tell you I see identifiable forms of fascism from some sectors or the religious right, telling people how to live, who and how to love, how they can or should direct their lives, and by God I'm so sorry they have taken a beautiful idea of one's connection with the existential and turned it into a method of harm and destruction on others. It's shameful. That does not grant you license to push that pendulum so far in the opposite direction that you become the equally guilty practitioner. If you believe people have the right to think and feel as they, themselves, feel appropriate, then you lead by example, espousing those principles, showing how it's properly done.
Becoming the fascist doesn't somehow make you anti-fascist or wise to the idea. It just makes you as wrong as they are.
Agree to disagree.
Or just let the idea of free thought go out the window.
