That's the massive understanding I see when people who don't live in Germany complain about German censorship of speech:
It's not about feelings.
It's about shaping other people's opinions.
If someone says "jack9 is a kiddy fiddler" the damage is not that it might make jack9 upset, the damage is that others might think it's true and take actions that harm him.
If someone says "kill the kikes" the damage is not that Jewish people might be upset, the damage is that others might agree and commit violence against Jewish people.
It doesn't even have to be a convincing argument, it just has to give other people the impression their hatred is socially acceptable and their violence has public support.
Hate speech is like broken windows: the more a certain hateful sentiment is tolerated in society, the more socially acceptable that sentiment becomes, the more likely it becomes someone will act on it and that society will tolerate those actions too.
Hitler's rise to power was not a coup d'etat. Hitler didn't overthrow the government by killing generals and politicians and installing himself as leader. Hitler rose to power by manipulating people's sentiments with language. He created scapegoats and convinced people it's okay to channel their hate and frustration towards those scapegoats. When the Nazis first called for people to be killed or that their neighbors were inferior, few thought they meant it, but saying it over and over normalised the idea. They dehumanised their victims and their future enemies.
A lot of that rhetoric is normal in many places today and Trump's campaign wasn't even a special example. The rhetoric after 9/11 made Germans feel icky because it was so familiar but even then it wasn't new. Americans worry about racism and sexism, Germans worry about xenophobia -- hatred of the foreign, the different, the "other".