Paradox of tolerance

Except if you view tolerance as what it is, a social contract. I'll tolerate you as long as you tolerate me.

Thus I get along great with the religious person that just wishes to practise their religion in peace, and respects my existence as a connoisseur of cock outside of it, but we don't have to put up with the neo-nazis calling for both of our heads.

And so the paradox dissolves.

Its not a paradox.

Tolerance is a social contract.

If you refuse to be part of the social contract, then you do not receive its protection.

it is not paradoxical to be intolerant to those who want to destroy the contract to harm individuals or society. Being violently intolerant against them is nothing but acting in the defense of our own personhood, the personhood of our fellows, and the good of our society.

It's only a paradox because the creator of the infographic has oversimplified what intolerance is.

When nazis are intolerant of a minority group, or whatever their target is, are violent towards them.

When the general society is intolerant of nazis, they are not usually calling for nazis to be killed or harmed.

And the creator does not differentiate between how a government deals with nazi versus the people. A government may "tolerate" nazis when it comes to free speech, and then be "intolerant" of nazis when they commit violence, and arrest or prosecute them. The general populace, unlike the government, cannot prosecute nazis (legally), they can only shun them. The creator clumsily does not differentiate between legal consequences and social consequences.

Basically, the infographic creator is trying to both-sides this shit, when one side want ppl dead, while other side just want nazis to go away. They are not the same. Moronic, sophomoric, low IQ. Too bad this may actually work on some people. That's the sad part.

Fully agree. The only catch with this is it can be distorted with propaganda to point to anyone as being intolerant, with enough saturation. The bar for recognizing intolerance needs to be fairly high.

Why?

• We don't want to risk further radicalizing those still within reach and not completely indoctrinated.

• We don't want to risk a false accusation and provoke witch-hunts.

• We don't want the intolerant to use this against the tolerant.

It's why I'm always a bit leery of the knee-jerk punch-a-nazi movements.

I've always disliked how this is described as a paradox. It only highlights a broader point found in many systems, a just system is never about "the good" outnumbering "the bad". It's about a balanced equilibrium, as are most relationships. Besides, allowing intolerance is not a tolerant act, that's not the way we define that term. To make such a claim would be as ridiculous as a racist person saying they are practicing tolerance by not challenging or question any of their bigoted thoughts and instead just letting them play out.

The problem is that people label everything and everyone "Nazi" or "fascist" these days and with that they justify not tolerating any type of experience or opinion they find uncomfortable.

This leads to basically ignoring a whole bunch of people. But their problems won't stop simply because you ignore them. Instead you now have people who were on the verge to vote right wing, now definitely voting right wing because they feel the left ignores their problems (which is true).

This gets abused a lot by people who claim agency over what is intolerance and what isn’t. It would seem an easy and straightforward enough distinction but in reality there seems to be a lot of wiggle room.

It happened with the UK.

Our political landscape went to shit when mainstream platforms started giving highly right wing and racist parties like UKIP and the BNP platforms.

If twelve people sit at a table with a Nazi, you have thirteen Nazis

It's not the paradox, it's the common sense.

From what I've seen people use this as an argument for censorship. Personally I believe in proportional responses.

The paradox of the paradox: there wouldn't be a paradox if the philosopher wouldn't be stuck in the logic of a limited model and a distorted assumption about growth.

Only because there exists the possibility that a movement can grow doesn't mean that it will grow.

Intolerance is also not real, like the war on hunger. There is no enemy, but instead there are people to feed.

This leads all to a simple answer that hides that 'let' s give them a chance' was driven by intolerance for socialists and communists, which should ring a bell.

People are so proud that they are allowed to hate the right enemy that they don't ask what those humans actually need to become friends. (Which doesn't mean apeacement!)

*edit: could the downvoters please leave a note and state where they disagree, please?

Thatms why I always say that i'm intolerrant towards intolerrant people

For those that haven't seen it, the speech in Team America discusses adjacent nuances of this in the most eloquent and poetic way possible.

I sometimes make fun of reactionaries by saying "Anti-Racists are intolerant of Racists. They're the true racists!". Didn't know there was a point to be made in that joke!

IMO the issue with this is that it's a binary: tolerant vs intolerant, and nothing in between. If you think of what it is if it's a spectrum, that's just called "having opinions", and letting your opinions decide how tolerant you are of others.

An Italian left-wing comic author once said that neo-fascism has been normalized so much that Nazi is the only term left, but perhaps that applies only to his country.

Whatever you think, youre right and superior and others are wrong.

https://youtu.be/goePYJ74Ydg?si=sunG6ESBoNsEsxNC i feel like everyone should watch this video

I like that this most important point is at the top. It reduces the chances someone will skim and only ready the way to not do it.

Let’s put it plainly.

If you tolerate something, it is implicit you disapprove of, or disagree with, the subject requiring tolerance.

People exhibiting behavior necessitating said tolerance know this. And they don’t like any reminders that just maybe they might be really, really wrong and there are people willing challenge their behavior but are holding back.

So instead of changing their behavior, they eliminate the challenge to their behavior.

I dislike the framing of this, specifically:

"When we extend tolerance to those who are openly intolerant the tolerant ones end up being destroyed"

Implies that the intolerant are guarenteed victory. I vehemently disagree that this is true, and therefore would argue tolerating the bad actors is often a necessary evil to ensure that good actors are not unjustly censored. The risk of 'another hitler' is accepted this way of course but unless we as a society can demonstrate (if at all) that risk would be mitigated by the censorship of hate speech we have no good cause.