Radical free speech is important and a cornerstone of the US. Yeah, you've got some real shitheads on voat but also a lot of decent people that just don't hold the previously approved PC opinions. The internet was way better before it began to coalesce into megacorps like google, fb, and reddit. Instead of defending free speech they caved to advertisers. The issue w/ that is someone is always pissed off by something and the smallest groups shout the loudest. Now we've got a situation that's gotten out of hand and even regular conservatives are targeted. Voat is basically a concentration camp for free speech online. They've rounded up all the "wrongthinkers" and sent them to one place.
Before reddit and that Mountain Dew (the hitler did nothing wrong naming contest) troll happened /pol/ was libertarian more or less believe it or not. The PC left is Frankenstein and Voat's their monster. Assholes were fewer and farther between online before they all got shipped to the same place.
When you start inventing shit like "micro aggressions" and telling everyone their racist nonstop... I could provide a thousand other examples. The left has even managed to bring back segregation on college campuses only this time they're called "safe spaces" and black only dorms.
The Radical Left and the Far Right are every bit as bad as each other and more alike than they are different. They both have a need to be authoritarian in order to stay in power. (Horseshoe Theory)
Reddit, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, etc. have no shortage of racists. They've just got the "right kind" in our weird double-standard culture.
you are close, but people on voat have a core of people who like liberty/libertarian ideas. Many of us started on Digg, were chased out by the authoritarians (way before the mass migration, i think the 2008 eleciton cycle, so 2007), and found reddit.
So back then reddit was very libertarian. Even if you were left or right you could agree that the freedom to choose to do something (that didn't hurt anyone else) was the proper path (fine with gay marriage, guns, drugs, anti-corruption, pro-transparency). That is why you could have people like aaron working along side the right-wingers. remember that snowden, manning, assange, etc. are typically left leaning, but are sometimes hated by the left simply because it hurts their position by shedding light on their misdeeds, they would have all fit in fine with early reddit, early digg, and phuks; they most likely would be turned off by voat, but i think that they would use it as a platform regardless of the mean words said there, simply because it is very libertarian (NAP).
I'll leave you with a harvard prof talking about how the alt-right isn't really a bunch of racist meanies, they are simply people who are upset that everyone is lied to. Remember Kucinich (the most left leaning politician I can think of) has to do interviews on fox now, they don't go so far as to call him alt-right, but they do put him in the alt-right camp.