[roqi]

The worst mistake these naive proponents of free speech absolutism make is assuming that everyone is arguing in honest, good faith instead of exploiting founding liberal democratic values to undermine it.

Time and again we see fascists demanding their fascist and outright racist views are entitled to all the air time they can possibly get because "to defend free speech you must defend our right to defend our views everywhere we can". Yet, when the subject of defending views they oppose pops up, they are quick to try to silence those with threats of violence and intimidation as they see entitled to it.

Worst, when their threats of intimidation are faced with threats of violence, they cynically hide behind the very same liberal and democratic values they undermine, arguing that their oppression campaign should not be subjected to any form of oppression because they are only defending what they believe.

This loophole is known for ages, and so is the antidote.

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

[rgoulter]

I often see "Paradox of Tolerance" cited along the lines of "if we tolerate the intolerant (e.g. racists), they will silence everyone else and this will destroy society; hence, we shouldn't tolerate the intolerance". -- In this interpretation, it makes sense to put "fascist and racist" in the same bucket.

But, Popper's "Paradox of Tolerance" is about what should be tolerated at the government/society level. You want "what the state silences" to be very small. The threshold for "who the government should silence" should be a high threshold of "society would be destroyed if they're not silenced"; and silencing should be a last resort, only after reasoning/argument fails. -- In that sense, putting "fascist and racist" in the same bucket is absurd.

[jaredhallen]

Regardless of how it's framed, I just cannot get behind that whole concept. When I point out the extremely obvious (to me, at least) hypocrisy, people get hand-wavy. "Well obviously, it's different." No. It's not. You're making a judgment call about what's "good" and what's not and still somehow manage to do enough mental gymnastics to convince yourself that your intolerance is righteous and fundamentally different.

And yeah, I get that there are terrible ideologies out there that really deserve no respect. But this "don't tolerate the intolerant" thing gets trotted out and applied to such huge swaths of the population that it just loses any shred of credibility it might have had.