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There's a famous Austrian philosopher named Karl Popper, who saw the rise of the Nazis, how they abused the freedoms extended to them and what horrors that brought. Shortly after the end of WW2, he came to this conclusion: > Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. [...] > We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal. Personally, I agree with this logic. Uncurtailed freedom only works as long as people don't use it to curtail the freedoms of others and that sort of abuse has to be stopped in the interest of freedom. |
> In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
Hard to describe posting awful garbage on twitter as "[forbidding] their followers to listen to rational argument" or answering those arguments "by the use of their fists or pistols". One might make the argument that it isn't "[meeting] us on the level of rational argument", but one could easily make the argument that all of twitter by it's very nature of tossing bumpersticker sized sound bites over the walls at each other isn't anything remotely approacing "rational argument".