"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."
~ Karl Popper
Straw man. It's true because it's true, not because of who said it.
> "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."
"This statement is false." "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."
Karl Popper was wrong, and here's why.
Speech and actions are different. Society can tolerate any kind of speech, because they're words. They don't cause direct harm. And the indirect harm, i.e. violence or firing people or refusing to serve them as a result of their race or religion, can be prohibited, while still allowing the speech.
This position is rejected by many today on the basis of mental health concerns. For example, LBGT activists claim that anti-LGBT speech is inherently harmful because it leads to higher suicide rates and higher incidence of depression among their community.
Popper lived in a time when many far left or far right parties had well organized, sometimes massive militant wings ready to bash skulls of their opponents (think SA). He believed in restricting speech when the intolerant were on a clear path to triumph by violence, not by engaging in an argument.
But AS A LAST RESORT and in limited scope only. This is a part of Popper's philosophy of liberalism. Violence is used as a last resort only.
When you look at the case of Parler, if it was really used to coordinate the attack on the Capitol, and the digital giants decided to take it offline for that afternoon and in the proximity of the rally only (say, 100 km radius), or in a similar restricted way, it could definitely be argued that they used force as a last resort against the possibility of democracy losing control in a certain place and time.
But eternal worldwide permaban of an entire platform clearly exceeds the "last resort" test. It does not even try to be narrowly tailored to the threat, even though the giants have all the ability to do so. It is a blanket, global act meant to constrain speech of millions for actions of hundreds.
Now we can debate whether the giants should have the right to do so or not, but I think that regardless of this question, by swinging the hammer so heavily and so wide they proved that they aren't really fans of Popper-like liberalism at all. Whatever they did isn't covered by Popper's argument against intolerance as a whole.
https://fee.org/articles/why-the-paradox-of-tolerance-is-no-...
This is false; there is no metaphysical difference between "speech" and "action"; I'd check out the work of Fred Schauer or more recently Susan Brison on this point. There are many examples (see citation) of speech having the ability to directly harm without any other action, from psychological harms to contextual harms. Indeed, in many segregationist policies, it wasn't the segregation that made it ugly, it was the effects of the contents of the law which provided denigration through authority.
"Sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me" is empirically untenable[0], and like actions, speech can cause negative involuntary reactions. It also seems unfair to place the burden of "hardening" one's ability to feel this pain on the people whom the words are targeted at.
[0] http://susanbrison.com/files/B.16.-speech_harm_and_the_mindb...
Parler wasn't intolerant. Parler wasn't advocating for Twitter to be taken offline.
Based on his heart tweet, Jack sure was happy when Parler was removed from the App Store. Jack is the intolerant one.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as-pr...