[bitwize]

Read Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" to see why this is the case:

https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repr...

The tl;dr is that if you actually want to move toward a society of free and equal human beings and eliminate oppression, "free speech for all" is not how you go about it. One side of the political spectrum supports equality and emancipation, the other is opposed to it. Therefore the speech of one side must be tolerated and supported; the speech of the other must be squelched and restricted.

The internet has had its time to experiment with free speech for all, and now we have Nazis. Social media companies saw greater value in muzzling the Nazis than they did in hewing to outdated libertarian internet values.

[petermcneeley]

> Therefore the speech of one side must be tolerated and supported; the speech of the other must be squelched and restricted.

This sounds like a distinction between say a friend and an enemy. Sounds like a political concept I have heard before.

[cfraenkel]

Too true. "Do as I say, not as I do." also comes to mind.

[hutzlibu]

"of free and equal human beings"

The problem starts with how you define those two(or any political expression). Because by many definitions, they are contradictory.

Equal chances? Money gives people advantages, so all should have the same money? Even if all would have the same money, some are born smart and some are born dumb. Genetic equalisation?

Pretty much against the idea of "freedom" like I know it.

When people are free, some will party all day, some will work like a dog.

So some will get rich. Some will get by, some will starve.

Unless you mean strictly "equal in front of the law", which we supposedly have, but we all know that the one with the more expensive lawer (or any lawer at all) has a big edge. So de facto we are not even equal in front of the law.

The big question is, how and what would you change about it?

I would actually start with free speech, because when people cannot speak freely, they will start speaking in code. And this will just make the whole political discussions even harder, as it will blur the definitions even more. I think this is mainly what we have on the internet. Lots of talk and lots of people thinking they are right, but only little actual communication and adressing the core problems because people are mostly talking about different things.

[sien]

And read Marcuse for gems like this :

"They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements that promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or that oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc."

That is, if you oppose the expansion of government you should have your right to free speech removed.

From : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse

Which shows the problem with idea of 'we must remove free speech for hate speech' because one of the originators of the idea intended that free speech should be withdrawn from people he disagreed with in ways that many or even most people in most Democratic states would find abhorrent.

[kneebonian]

> The internet has had its time to experiment with free speech for all, and now we have Nazis.

Interestingly enough did you know that the original Nazis came about before the internet ever existed, way back in the 1930's, further did you know Nazis existed prior to the internet as well. It is true, in fact one may argue that there is no real correlation between the existence of Nazis and the internet, just their visibility.

But in a less sarcastic vein, I can only speak from my personal experience, but from what I see the more we try and suppress speech that some do not like, whether labeling it as hate speech, misinformation, or whatever else has produced in fact the exact opposite of the intended result, where more people are willing to tolerate actual Nazi's, question official information more readily and tolerate real racism more because the label became so broadly applied that it lost any meaningful effect.

Finally I also heard one interesting theory that part of the reason one side of the political spectrum is currently struggling so much is because the other side had even their moderate views censored from twitter, whereas another side was treated in a much more lenient fashion. The result was only the most reasonable and centerist voices of one side were shared, whereas the other side had many of their most radical and vocal members airing their views for all to see, which was a turn off to many, whereas the most extermist content on the other side was hidden and squelched.

[nostromo]

This is the exact logic used by Joseph McCarthy, and I think it's safe to say that was a failed experiment.

> Therefore the speech of one side must be tolerated and supported; the speech of the other must be squelched and restricted.

This is actually how you get Nazis. You know, the real ones that existed before the internet. Not 4chan weebs trolling boomers online, but the ones that would jail or kill you for having the wrong opinion or wrong affiliation.

[ska]

That seems a-historical. The way you get the real nazis is by not acting soon enough when they target/vilify/'other' marginalized groups, or attempting to get a foothold in political institutions.

[bitwize]

It is ahistorical. Germany outlawed Nazi ideology and went 80 years without renazifying; the danger of such was very real after WWII. Marcuse, a German Jew, was considering the real, immediate, terrifying problem of how to prevent another Holocaust.

[nostromo]

You're cherry picking.

Look at Joseph McCarthy and see a counter-example. He used the exact same logic: to prevent a Soviet-style totalitarian government in the US, we had to be intolerant of everyone left of mainstream Democrats.

It destroyed many peoples' lives, most of who were not at all sympathetic to Soviet-style communism.

Similar to your example, we could also argue that McCarthy was indeed effective at preventing Soviet-style communism in America (since the US still has free speech and there has not been another holocaust). But in both cases we don't have convincing evidence that suppressing speech was actually helpful.

[woooooo]

Worth adding on that McCarthy knew exactly what he was doing and didn't care. It raised his profile. (Source: master of the senate, caro)

Those who validate dirty pool in pursuit of the greater good will always be enabling people like that.

[pixl97]

Being moderate is a delicate balance where foes seek power in whatever way possible. With this said I get quite concerned when someone says it's their freedom to plot the end of my existence.

[int_19h]

Germany still has plenty of open Nazis for all their efforts at censorship. Something like the infamous march in Charlottesville was breaking news when it happened precisely because it's so unusual, but much larger neo-Nazi marches happen in Germany on a regular basis.

[trillic]

A bit of a paradox, but a tolerant society does not tolerate intolerance.

[HPsquared]

It's a logical contradiction. There seems to be some overloading of the word "tolerance".

[googlryas]

It's not, it is just a term in common usage taken to the extreme in an attempt to be clever, in contravention of all conversational norms. I don't think there is any definition of tolerance that is mathematically sound and absolute.

It would be like saying "a peaceful person would never punch someone in the nose". But what if you needed to punch someone in the nose because they were trying to kill you for no reason? That doesn't mean peaceful people don't exist, or that peaceful people need to let random people murder them. It just means that the determination of peacefulness is contextual.

[petermcneeley]

Yes such overloading leads to paradoxes. My favorite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox

[drdeca]

Huh, does the unexpected hanging paradox come from such an overloading? It isn't obvious to me how it is. I don't mean that in a way to suggest that it seems unlikely to me. It seems quite plausible to me that it is. I just don't see in what way. Could you elaborate on how it comes from an overloading?

[SideburnsOfDoom]

FYI, I think that you missed that this idea that "a tolerant society does not tolerate intolerance" is better known as "Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance" You can find it under that name, numerous articles, from Wikipedia on down (1). Since 1945. it's widely known and accepted. It's not an actual contradiction, most "paradoxes" only appear that way on a superficial inspection.

it would be like saying, as the sibling comment did "a peaceful person would never punch someone in the nose" ... except that a society that aims for peace, and is beset with violent people, is going to have to quell that violence. This might involve reserving the right to punch the punchers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

[Andrew_nenakhov]

You are conflating protection from violence with protection of free speech. Paradox of tolerance is a hypocritical concept used by people to excuse their own intolerance.

Restrictions on free speech are much more dangerous than any hate speech. You won't get a new Hitler by blocking speech you don't like. It's the opposite: new Hitler will start with blocking free speech. That's what every authoritarian regime does first.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> You are conflating protection from violence with protection of free speech.

No, I am saying that they are "like" each other. It's a comparison not a conflation. Mr Popper is absolutely not conflating anything - his original formulation is very much about speech.

> blocking free speech. That's what every authoritarian regime does first.

You mean, after they become the regime, and get a lock on the power to block free speech; which in turn is after using the free speech ability to emit the divisive populist rhetoric that propels them to that power? There is no regime ever, that blocks free speech before it is voted into power. At that stage they're only to happy to use it. The shutting it down comes later.

So, not first at all then. That was Popper's point.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

> There is no regime ever, that blocks free speech before it is voted into power.

But there is, we've seen it just recently! Take the US presidential elections in 2020: big media companies, bigtech all were favouring one political party and have successfully suppressed crucial damaging information against their side and baselessly labelled it as 'fake news', which helped the favoured party take power. It immediately proceeded by shutting down the media accounts of the defeated opponent.

The ongoing hate-campaign against musk that started after him buying twitter can absolutely be interpreted as a reaction to breaking the monopoly on the flow of information.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

"paradox of tolerance" is a hypocrisy. If you are intolerant only to the intolerant you are not tolerant, it is as simple as that.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

There's absolutely nothing hypocritical about e.g. "defending peace". It's realistic. between Karl Popper's well-known writings on the subject, and one accusatory sentence from someone on the internet, I'll take Karl Popper.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

To your knowledge, you have just used a fallacy called "Argument from authority", a popular demagogue technique.

Just because someone wrote in length that white is black, white does not become black. Likewise, intolerance does not become tolerance.

You do not tolerate something => you are not tolerant.

You oppose free speech only for really horrible people => you oppose free speech.

It's really binary, and wherever Popper wrote, it does not change this simple truth. But, of course, you can hypocritically pretend that it does.

[tpm]

You probably should read Popper before dismissing his ideas. If you don't want to, it's fine, but in that case it's hard to take your dismissal seriously.

Like more or less anything real, this is not a simple binary problem.

[MrPatan]

"...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..."

That's Popper.

Does that sound like "we can't let people speak"?

Or would that actually be more in the lines of "we should expose their followers to the arguments their leaders don't want them to see"?

[Andrew_nenakhov]

I've read him, thank you, quite a few years ago. Wasn't impressed.

Some of people here who take free speech for granted do not know its value. I live in a very authoritarian country, that once had free speech, and I have seen how restrictions on it creep in. And what I see happen in US and Europe follows a far too familiar path.

[marcosdumay]

No, it's hypocritical. You defend the Rule of Law, or Democracy, or some people's self determination.

But if you start framing things as "defending peace (by force)", you may quite possibly have your arguments taken over by the people attacking whatever you want to defend. Because they can use the argument just as well as you.

[P5fRxh5kUvp2th]

It's still a hypocrisy, but so what.

People say it like it's a damnation of the idea. Things in life are fuzzy, that's why it's literally called a paradox.

The most tolerant people in the world are not going to be ok with a 20 year-old having a sexual relationship with their 12 year old daughter because of the danger involved. That's the paradox of intolerance, that everyone has a limit, and if you have no limit, someone else will pick it for you and cause damage on their terms.

We don't generally tolerate violence in the west. Yes, it's an intolerance, but it's for the greater stability of society.

but I have absolutely seen people use the paradox of tolerance to argue for some shitty opinions, so it must still be dealt with care. You can imagine a KKK member using it to defend their choice of not allowing blacks to be free of lynching.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

It's ok to be intolerant at some things. What's not ok is to be intolerant and still claim to be tolerant. That's hypocrisy.

Also, do not equate actions and speech - and we're mostly arguing about free speech here, right?

[P5fRxh5kUvp2th]

When the only way for you to be "right" is to argue the absolutist version of the definition of a word (tolerant in this case), you've lost.

Furthermore, such black and white thinking is often a sign of mental illness.

[bryanlarsen]

You do realize that both "paradox" and "hypocrisy" have the same basic definition, don't you? They both mean "self-contradictory", the biggest difference is in connotation, not meaning.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

No. These words do not have the same basic definition.

Hypocrisy: The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness. [0]

Paradox: A statement that seems to contradict itself but may nonetheless be true. [1]

Every time I see someone here mentioning someone the paradox of tolerance, it is to support restriction of speech for someone else. (someone really bad, of course - fascist, antivaxer, racist, you name it), and these people always hypocritically consider that they support free speech, just not for those bad people.

[0]: https://www.wordnik.com/words/hypocrisy

[1]: https://www.wordnik.com/words/paradox

[bryanlarsen]

I'm not sure how you can accuse people of hypocrisy for being intolerant of the intolerant when they just told you they're being intolerant of the intolerant.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Because they consider themselves tolerant, but with an escape clause, and fail to admit that this clause makes them intolerant too.