An important part of making a better world is learning to talk to people who aren't your enemy differently from talking to people who are your enemy.
if you (the general 'you') believe in breaking cycles of abuse, you need to also re-evaluate your policies of (justified or not) proportional-response when you ARE talking to people you think are your enemies.
that doesn't mean abandoning it, but it is how we get these cycles of escalation between people who don't actually disagree from the outset.