There are some valid arguments to be made, and a vote shall be based on the greater good; here is what i consider, in order of significance:

• The moral argument: What would closing myself off from others make out of me? Would building a wall toward people who are hateful not be a hateful act the same? After all, these are the type of people who want to build walls on borders to their neighbouring countries … these are also the types who want to ban specific literature which they hate from schools, so would i be any better if i were to ban their scribblings now?
  Then there’s the rightful argument that intolerance can not be tolerated. I think this is often misunderstood, as “the intolerant” (people) must be banned, not the intolerance itself. Did i witness them doing unbearable acts of intolerance or harrassment outside of their home space? – Not that i’m aware of.
  Is nurturing the cultural schism that is dividing the global population actually giving me a good future perspective for human civilisation? – No it isn’t. I can do better. It’s actually hurting my intelligence if i just shut the door on someone, just because i don’t like what they are doing in their own space.
  It should also be mentioned here, that people who have grown such a mindset may be psychologically challenged. Abused children who lost contact with part of their souls. It’s counter-productive to deny them access to what i believe to be a more sane society.
  1 point for not defederating. The moral argument alone would actually suffice but let’s also see the others.
• The legal argument: Does exploding-heads have any content that must not be replacated on this server because it would create a legal liability in Canada? – I don’t know that, so i’ll have to pass this question on.
• The actual purpose of the tool: Defederation is mainly a method to protect the network and servers from malicious actors, alongside legal reasons. So, did the inhabitants of exploding-heads attempt disruption of the network or in communities in a significant amount that would warrant denying all of them access to this server? – Not that i am aware of. If it wasn’t for a handful of campaigners pulling my attention to that server, i would perhaps not even be aware of it’s existance. Of course, i do not especially track those people, so if there are examples of nasty behaviour i would kindly ask to bring forward direct links to posts and comments they made on this server.
  In the case of “they are becoming a bot farm”, the right way to take would be to first ask them to do something about it, and only if there is no sufficient reaction, defederate.
  +1 for not defederating.
• Would defederating solve anything? – Well, there’s the argument that “i don’t want to help them spread their message by replicating it”. That might seem valid until we notice that their server is doing the same with our content. And we have far more content than what they produce.
  To the contrary i would argue, because if someone from exploding-heads would seriously want to troll this server, then it would become harder to recognise them if they needed to make another account somewhere else.
  Further, defederating from one right-wing server would create a precedent which would call up the same discussion every time a new community of that kind would come along. We wouldn’t be able to stop it. And what would we do when finally a per-user instance ban became available, would we revert?
  Adding to that, i see this more or less as a symptom of the USA-internal kind of civil schism they have, that is democratic against antidemocratic. Coming from a country that has it’s own share of extremists and also a history of fascism, walls and fences between countries and all – i ask myself if i would want to react the same way if those people would turn up with their own instance: demanding from my Lemmy instance to defederate from them? … Or similar things coming from any other country? How much support would that get, and why would i support the US-internal divisiveness?
  +1 for not defederating.

So i think it’s clear. Too much text. …
As much as i find exploding heads despickable (alone the name makes me want to stay away) – defederation is just not the way to go. We should better have clear guidelines for the use of that tool, so as to not turn it into a weapon, and so as to not have political campaigners draw too much attention. I’d also suggest to use the bounty program to incentivise developers to make better management tools available.