Ah, this again.
People who are intolerant only to the intolerant are intolerant, period. And if they consider themselves tolerant, they are also a hypocrites.
People who are intolerant only to the intolerant are intolerant, period. And if they consider themselves tolerant, they are also a hypocrites.
Because popular opinion in the 1940s (even after France's collapse into pro-German "Vichy France") was "Stay neutral and don't join the war". That is to say, we were "tolerating" the events and trying to keep our hands clean of it, and we ultimately only joined after Pearl Harbor forced our hand.
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Its not hypothetical. There were other groups who "tolerated" the Nazis. IIRC, its a common criticism of the Catholic church for not going more anti-Nazi than they did (they were more neutral as well). Hard to criticize them IMO when the US tried to be neutral for so long though!
Eventually, there's a line that is crossed and we must become "intolerant" of other people's actions. Nazi Germany is perhaps the last example where the country truly unified itself against that threat, but... even as late as 1941 (well after the fall of France), USA was nominally neutral in the conflict. Was that the correct move? Should we have "Become intolerant" of the Nazis sooner?
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Don't believe me? Look up Charles Lindberg (yes, "Spirit of St. Louis" pilot for the first Trans-Atlantic flight). Look up the speeches he gave for the "American First Committee", a popular antiwar group in 1940 and 1941. USA was 100% willing to give up on France and Britain back then, and it was incredibly popular despite the atrocities that continued in Europe.
It all of course changed when Japan made a strategic blunder on December 7th, 1941. But remember: USA was largely reacting to Hitler's rise with a big "should we even care" ?? If it weren't for Japan, I don't think we would have joined the war in earnest.
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"Tolerance", keeping neutral, etc. etc. is the wrong answer sometimes. I think we can all look back with shame upon the US's reluctance to kick Hitler's ass. Like, we Americans make fun of Chamberlain's appeasement, but its not like our country did much about the situation until a few years later.
12/07/41: Pearl Harbor
12/08/41: US declares war on Japan
12/11/41: Germany declares war on USOf course, politics overrides contracts. Hitler wanted close relations with Japan, and gave them his word that Germany had Japan's back on Dec. 4th. So Japan used that to attack the USA (knowing Germany would help). Germany, much like Japan, underestimated the strength of the USA and didn't expect them to be a big deal.
But WW2 could have just had US vs Japan, but kept "neutrality" vs Germany ... if circumstances lined up just right. Apparently there were many German advisors who were trying to push for this scenario, and didn't think Germany had anything to gain for keeping its verbal agreement with Japan. We can imagine an interesting parallel-world where maybe some Advisor managed to convince Hitler of this plan and Germany going down this path instead.
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USA wouldn't get first-hand witness accounts / pictures of the Holocaust for years. The Holocaust was happening, but US citizens wouldn't know about it. (The first whispers of the Holocaust were given to the US State department in 1942, but were written off/ignored)
New York Times had the Holocaust discussed on its 10th page in December 1942. (Not even front-page material). So once again, news of this genocide was largely met with a shrug. War-plans to bomb concentration camps were discussed, but pushed out as a low-priority. Some rescues happened, but it was clearly not a focus of the war effort.
I think people greatly underestimate the USA's capability to be isolationist. Yeah, we play the world's policemen at times, but we also don't like doing it.
In any case, by the time our soldiers found the concentration camps and gave first-hand accounts of them... the Holocaust was largely accepted as fact. But we weren't exactly proactive at stopping it.
Except that in this case we're seeing people who feel entitled to everyone else's support demanding it under the guise of tolerance.
Think about it. We're talking about a federated self-hosting social networking service, and how a group renowned for a political leaning that lies somewhere between authoritarian and full-blown fascist, not to mention the significant amount of racism, is not benefiting from being able to freely connect to each and any node made available by anyone in the world. It's not tolerance that's being expected, but benefiting from having free access to everyone else's services.
One side says not using someone's preferred pronouns is intolerant to their gender identity. The other side says being forced to use them is intolerant to their religious beliefs. Now what? Tie goes to the one with the most guns?
If you don't allow censorship, nobody gets censored. If you do allow censorship, there will always be somebody who wants to censor you.
Proselytizing religions have no moral leg to stand on from an imposition point of view.
Plus, let's be honest here, your example is just people being jerks with each other. The real debates are about physical harm, economic harm, etc., in which case it's far less fuzzy figuring out who's wrong.
In which case the party trying to impose censorship always loses.
> The real debates are about physical harm, economic harm, etc., in which case it's far less fuzzy figuring out who's wrong.
Nobody is talking about laws against violence or monopolization. Charging someone with a crime for beating you with a billy club is not censorship.
For the preferred pronoun question, which one is more imposing? Getting other people to call you by your preferred pronoun, or refusing to call people by their preferred pronoun? You can make plausible arguments for either side.
Except the paradox of tolerance clearly states that simple disagreement isn't intolerance, nor does it prefer censorship in all cases of disagreement, so your scenario isn't a refutation of it:
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 most 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.
I never made or implied any such claim, you're not arguing in good faith here.
You claimed the paradox of tolerance allowed no principled way to draw the line between what should and shouldn't be censored, I quoted the principle as stated verbatim. And rather than make an argument against the paradox of tolerance as written, you decided to switch to ad hominem.
If you want to actually convince anyone of anything, you're going to need to argue against what people actually say and believe, rather than strawmen.
In this case the line is pretty clear, and very crisp.
You're talking about a political group that advocates overthrowing the results of free and fair elections aimed at subverting a democratic regime by installing a dictatorship whose supporters are very adamant in their embracing of racist world views.
As for your claims about dictatorships, racist world views, and so on - all of these are vague attacks that generalize an entire half of the country. There’s little evidence to support such claims.
It's one thing to clench your teeth and complain a bit and an entirely different thing to try to overthrow the democratic system in place.
And keep in mind that except for 2004, the popular vote went the other way so for sure there were enough people to send marching on the Capitol.
Oh, and if you will claim that speech insites actions, i ask you one thing: who determines what hate is? In Russia, talking about corruption and opposing Putin is extremism and hate speech.
If you want to argue that some spoken words can be prosecuted in some jurisdictions, chose another opponent. I state my personal opinion that anything spoken should be protected under free speech rights, and even the death threats. Yes, because words do not kill. Killing requires action, and actions must be stopped, not screaming.
Thus, sane people MUST fight against criminalising any kind of speech, because speech is not a crime. Just like sane people fought against slavery, segregation and Holocaust, all of which were legal.
A reasonable position. And one I, for the most part, support.
However, the other side of that coin is that private actors (i.e., not the government, at least in the US) have free speech rights too. And that includes the right not to allow or support speech on their private property.
As such, if you attempt to force private actors to host/support speech they do no wish to host/support, then you are violating the principles you espouse.
I can perfectly tolerate those people - as long as they do not come to my village to tell me what to do, but stay among themself.
It is called live and let live.
If your intolerance is in your own tightly sealed sandbox that doesn't impact me, sure, knock yourself out.
Even though there exist no tightly sealed boxes and everything is connected to everything in the long run - I do not want to impose my ideology on others, I can tolerate people I despise, as long as they leave me in peace. And my experience is, that they often think like that, too. Except for the fanatics with world conquering motives, sure. But planning for a coup d'etat is no longer free speech btw., but preparation of a crime.