We certainly should take into context something like that, yes. For me, that particular thing didn't happen--I was never quite so far to the right wing as to think racial slurs were anything but unacceptable--but I was a shitty libertarian know-it-all. I've never been shitty enough to out and deadname trans people like Milo fucking Yiannopoulos, and I've never been shitty enough to cape up for bad-science racists like Charles Murray, but I've been shitty. I said things that made people mad (because they made me feel superior) and hurt people (because they intellectually made sense, because I was so rational and also had never had a hard day in my life).

Then I grew up, then I realized I was being shitty, and I stopped. And since I have made a point of standing up for the right things, instead, while not ducking that I too have been shitty.

That's more context, and that context, eventually and with hard work, does balance the scales.

It just isn't that complicated.