[asfarley]

Trotting out the paradox of tolerance isn't an auto-win for pro-censorship "anti-facism" arguments.

Imagine, one day, one of your own beliefs becomes lumped under the umbrella of facism. Imagine that you disagree with this categorization, but nonetheless, the categorization is made.

How would you feel about someone telling you about the paradox of tolerance in this case? Don't you think it's a bit more complicated than this?

[swivelmaster]

Yes it’s more complicated, obviously, but OP was implying that any censorship at all equates to hypocritical intolerance, which is a simplistic absolutist position.

[falcolas]

This (that is, PayPal's TOS fines) isn't censorship. It's punishment for deeds that PayPal may hand down on a whim.

[bergenty]

I’m willing to take the chance with slightly eager censorship than rampant fascism. It’s a literal no brainer and it’s disingenuous for you to ignore that.

[jimlongton]

> rampant fascism

Honest question - do Americans really believe fascism is increasing? By most (all?) metrics Western societies are radically more tolerant on racial, LGBT and religious issues than even 2 decades ago.

[bergenty]

Absolutely. Elimination of voter rights laws, gerrymandering, rejection of election results, advocacy of violence, tacit support for hate groups, support of authoritarian leaders etc. is happening at a large scale and is devolving quickly.

[Kye]

It's the reaction in reactionary. That increasing tolerance is why they're getting louder, angrier, and more violent.

[nathanaldensr]

If by "Americans" you mean "the vocal extreme minority on certain social media sites," then yes.

[swivelmaster]

This isn't the only way to measure it, and IMO not appropriate right now. The real problem is the balance of political opinion taken as a whole; The percentage of the population that holds what one might call far-right fascist views seem to be higher than it's been in the last 50 years if you assume that voters' views are more or less aligned with the politicians they vote for.

Assuming that just because Things Are Okay Now that there's no problem is exactly how we got Trump elected in 2016, and why Italy, Brazil, and the Philippines have all elected far-right or outright fascist leaders since then as well.

Also consider that Republicans have been perfecting a legal minority rule for decades via gerrymandering, court-packing, closing polling locations, enacting (unnecessarily) stricter voting requirements, and focusing on winning states with disproportionate federal representation by population count, and are now proposing state-wide abortion bans, taking over school boards to ban books and alter health and science curricula, and more.

This is all to say that even though the majority of Americans ARE far more tolerant than they were before, the fascists or fascist-adjacent contingent have been not only been growing, but have been amassing power at a rate disproportionate to their size.

[nsxwolf]

> The percentage of the population that holds what one might call far-right fascist views seem to be higher than it's been in the last 50 years if you assume that voters' views are more or less aligned with the politicians they vote for.

My impression is this is a story being told by the media and seems true when you spend a lot of time on Twitter. If it weren't for 24 hour news telling me so, and occasionally spotting some weirdos like the "Patriot Guard" walking around a city, I don't think I'd have any sense of this being real in my day to day life.

> and are now proposing state-wide abortion bans, taking over school boards to ban books and alter health and science curricula, and more.

The abortion issue has been being battled forever now, and it's odd that one side is being seriously labeled "facist" all of a sudden, now that the tug of war game has pulled the flag a bit to their side. And I have seen books "banned" (i.e., excluded from small public school libraries) for one reason or another by "both sides" my entire life.

[soundnote]

It's not sudden - Bush Jr. was called a christofascist back in the day. He's just been rehabilitated now that the press has a new, Cheeto-flavoured Hitler to scream about.

[_-david-_]

The fact you think half of the things you listed Republicans are doing are either fascist or fascist adjacent shows why this is such a bad idea. Most of those things are things every ruling party does or aren't fascist.

Not to mention, just calling Brazil, Italy and whoever else potentially fascist is ridiculous.

Fascism has no meaning anymore because people like you. If you want to actually fight against fascism don't call everybody fascists.

[bergenty]

Fascism has a lot of mean, you trying to minimize it doesn’t change anything. The silver lining is the fascists in power are failing fast, hopefully before we fully end up in the fascist endgame of all out war.

[_-david-_]

Fascism doesn't have a lot of meanings. That is the problem I am trying to point out. When everyone who is right of center can be a fascist because they oppose abortion and whatever else the post was saying, it loses all meaning.

Do you take the same view when it comes to socialism or communism? Would it be fine to label the majority of the Democratic Party socialist?

[yucky]

It's easy to think fascism is rising when you change the definition of fascism to mean "anything right of Lenin".

[swivelmaster]

Straw man alert

[inawarminister]

What kind of fascism? The one where corporations run rampant in alliance with the state?

Why, sounds like what's going on here.

[bergenty]

No just regular right wing fascism with majority rule and violence and disenfranchisement of minorities.

[inawarminister]

I see, compared to left wing fascism with majority rule of violence and disenfranchisement of class minorities.

Thank you, I will update my fascism definition card.

[swivelmaster]

Class minorities? You mean the super rich?

[inawarminister]

Not just the super rich as Pol Pot and Lenin showed...

[swivelmaster]

Yes, exactly, thank you. Framing every mention of the paradox of intolerance as some kind of slippery slope to totalitarianism isn't constructive or realistic, and basically misses the point of it being called a paradox in the first place.

[nathanaldensr]

Nice false dichotomy.