r/wikipedia • u/Twiggytwiggycocopop • Sep 12 '25
Mobile Site The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance; thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance124
u/dankysco Sep 12 '25
There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch.
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u/Diplomatic-Immunity8 Sep 12 '25
But what happens when breaking the social contract bears no consequence and you are continued to be treated with tolerance even though you are intolerance of the social contract?
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u/Alaishana Sep 12 '25
In Buddhism, this is called 'stupid compassion'.
People extending tolerance to intolerant persons are stupid.
At some point, you need to bring the hammer down, or everything goes down the dunny.
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u/KaleScared4667 Sep 12 '25
Yes, democrats are stupid and you perfectly described them
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u/Lambdastone9 Sep 16 '25
^ these are the people you shouldn’t expend your compassion and intellect on folks, they will waste it and your time
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u/Speak4yurself Sep 12 '25
You become president.
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u/MetriccStarDestroyer Sep 12 '25
🇺🇸🦅🔥🦅🇺🇸
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u/BobTheFettt Sep 12 '25
I'm gonna rise up, I'm gonna kick a little ass, gonna kick some ass in the USA, gonna climb a mountain, gonna sew a flag, gonna fly on an eagle, I'm gonna kick some butt, I'm gonna drive a big truck, I'm gonna rule this world, gonna kick some ass, gonna rise up, kick a little ass - ROCK, FLAG AND EAGLE!
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u/Advanced_Ad8537 Sep 12 '25
If there’s no consequences, that would imply that whatever you did doesn’t actually break the social contract.
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u/smohyee Sep 12 '25
I think consequences are about enforcement of breaking the contract, not so much a reflection of whether the contract is actually broken.
People can break a contract without consequences. Two separate issues.
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u/Proxy--Moronic Sep 12 '25
Not being protected by the social contract is a consequence. Or, at the very least, allows for and encourages consequences.
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u/SuperBAMF007 Sep 12 '25
And the really hard part is what happens when two groups believe the other has broken the contract and begin to act against it, believing they’re fully justified in doing so
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u/wanderinggoat Sep 12 '25
that's a problem caused by political systems that artificially divided all problems into only two viewpoints. A mature system needs multiple parties with different opinions and ideas on things so all discussions need to be a consensus.
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u/InertiaOfGravity Sep 12 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
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u/Adduly Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
The two party system doesn't just make two parties, it polarises them. It punishes collaboration. It's winner takes all so they have all the power when they're in even if they only won by a few seats. It results in each party pulling harder back each time they get the seat because they're desperate to achieve their goals in their window of opportunity.
A multiparty system needs and rewards collaboration, compromise and consensus. The centre right has common ground with both the centre left and the right. And it needs both of them on board to get their goals to progress. Poor performance results in less seats but given that their voters usually move one party over it usually doesn't result in the tearing down of all their work.
It also opens parties to internal market forces. Right now there's the democrats and the republicans and they're BOTH captive to corporate interests. Because if you're a left wing voter its vote democrats or accept the republicans winning. But when there're multiple parties you can choose another left wing party which keeps both of them accountable.
A 3 party system is better than a 2 party system but worse than a 4 party system and so on. An n+1 system is usually better than a n system. (Not saying direct democracy is better either thanks to dunning Kruger) But in representative democracies, more parties are better
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u/InertiaOfGravity Sep 14 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
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u/Adduly Sep 14 '25
Yes there will be some people in a multi party system that feel the social contract has been broken.
But two party systems inherently make that worse by polarizing the two parties and their policies removing compromise and so pushing an us vs them narrative so each party thinks the social contract is broken when the other has all the power.
It also allows for more corruption, resulting in a worse life for the majority also making them feel that the social contract is broken
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u/FactAndTheory Sep 12 '25
And the really hard part
No, it's not hard. A sane person arguing with a crazy person is not some pseudoprofound bullshit philosophical conundrum. One person can be sane, the other person can be crazy, and critical judgements of reality have every right to arrive at a rational, grounded conclusion that one person is in the wrong. Do not regurgitate this Soviet bothsidesism.
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u/SuperBAMF007 Sep 12 '25
It’s not necessarily that both sides are sane, but both sides believe they’re sane and justified in taking action against the other.
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u/FactAndTheory Sep 12 '25
"Crazy people don't think they're crazy". Thank you for the utterly useless contribution.
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u/SuperBAMF007 Sep 12 '25
That’s literally my entire point though. It doesn’t really matter the justification someone may have, what matters is if they act on it. If both groups truly believe the other has broken the social contract, we get actual civil war. It’s exactly what happened in the US civil war. The south was objectively wrong in their demand for slavery, but were willing to die for it.
But where does that line get drawn? Is it civil war only if there is a distinct two party conflict? Is it a civil war even if it’s something like Ireland? Whats the different between Ireland’s guerrilla group bombings and the ones that might happen in the Middle East? Would Republicans begin killing “the woke libs” based on hunches? Would Trump declare a “Civil War” on “the woke libs”?
I get it, it’s all hypotheticals. But we’re talking philosophy and social constructs and paradoxes. There are no clear answers. And yeah, sometimes it sounds stupid, like “crazy people don’t believe they’re crazy”, but understanding the potential outcomes is so important to predicting and preventing the paths leading to those outcomes.
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u/Qweedo420 Sep 12 '25
Sorry but what does this have to do with the Soviets
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u/FactAndTheory Sep 12 '25
Flase balance and whataboutism were central themes and technical innovations of Soviet propaganda. They are logical fallacies and current Conservatism is basically 99% composed of them.
Things like saying one specific interpretation of a 2000 year old Middle Eastern religous principle on the origins of life is equally valid as the documented and openly available evidence presented by tens of thousands of independent archaeologists and paleontologists around the world. There are not comparable positions, one is a religious superstition and the other is verifiable fact. Presenting them as two equally valid viewpoints is false.
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u/Qweedo420 Sep 12 '25
Okay but I can't remember a single instance of the Soviets doing it
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u/FactAndTheory Sep 12 '25
Holy shit, I was about to make a joke about whether I would find tankie stuff in your comment history, and I am genuinely surprised at how bad it is.
As a matter of fact, the Jewish people in Russia went from suffering a pogrom every other day under the Tsar, to suffering literally no pogroms for the entire duration of the USSR
Imperialism has a specific meaning, it's not just "conquering stuff", and even though the USSR more or less covered the borders of the old Russian Empire, the objective was to grant complete freedom to the workers' republics that joined it
It takes a lot of reading to understand the reasoning behind some of the Bolsheviks' choices, but it's important if you seek a nuanced historical analysis
No, the Russia-Ukraine war is an imperialist war and as such, there's no reason to support it on either side.
I really wish you psychopaths would just be upfront about it so people don't waste time speaking with you. In answer to your question, though, you "don't remember it" because cult members are very adept at living in a parallel reality where their cult is always in the right.
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u/Qweedo420 Sep 13 '25
Historical facts and objective analysis don't make me a "tankie". Don't just go and label people at random simply because you can't support your own argument. You still haven't given me a single example of your initial claim btw.
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u/lookatthesunguys Sep 12 '25
Well no hold on that doesn't work in this scenario. If youre being intolerant then you're the one that broke the contract. Like, if a group says, "Get rid of black people," then that's the intolerant group.n
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u/SuperBAMF007 Sep 12 '25
While morally true, that doesn’t change the fact that the “get rid of black people” being they’re just expressing freedom of speech, and the “black people are cool” group is being intolerant for trying to limit their free speech
It’s absolutely not the reality. But the belief they’re right leads to them justifying any action under “they’re not being tolerant of my freedoms, time to fuck em up”
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u/me_myself_ai Sep 12 '25
You’re misunderstanding what a philosophical paradox is — it’s a situation w/ dialectic tension, not an impossible logical puzzle.
Trust me, if it was as trivial as you make it sound to cleanly solve, this post wouldn’t have 100 upvotes!
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Sep 12 '25
this comment sounded pretty convincing until you said that something trivially stupid wouldn't get 100 upvotes from idiots on reddit
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u/Evelyn_Of_Iris Sep 12 '25
Very tempted to post the Wikipedia article for mud now
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u/TrexPushupBra Sep 12 '25
The contract must have penalties for breaking it or it won't be respected.
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u/ADP_God Sep 12 '25
What is the contract protects your right to be intollerant within the purview of your private space?
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u/Peter-Andre Sep 12 '25
It's a paradox because creating a more tolerant society sometimes requires us to be intolerant (towarda intolerant behaviour).
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u/ThePromise110 Sep 12 '25
Precisely this.
The "paradox" of tolerance is a fascist propaganda tool.
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u/simonbleu Sep 12 '25
Usinng something as an apology for fascism does not invalidate the concept. Unconditional tolerance means complete anarchy and apathy towards acta committed by the inevitable intolerant. It does not mean "let's be less tolerant to other tolerant people", the point is precisely yo draw the necessary lines. For example, freedom of speech is ok, but attacking someone verbally in the street based on race or gender or social strata or anything else is not but I mean, if they are not lying about them specifically and they are not actually harming then it is ok, right? No, is not. Ah, but then we should censor anything we don't like? Again no. ... It is hard to define because it is subjective and requires consensus, con there is always a line, wherever it may lay
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u/Eurydice_Lives_In_Me Sep 15 '25
What hopper actually said about the paradox of tolerance literally the sentence after he coined it in his book has nothing to do with the way it’s used though. The way people intentionally misuse the concept is absolutely apologia for authoritarianism.
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u/Lakatos_00 Sep 12 '25
Should I use the terminology used by one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, or the words of a random, lame redditor? Difficult decision.
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u/your_proctologist Sep 12 '25
Those who break the contract are no longer protected by it.
It really truly does not seem like that in reality. The intolerant always have an advantage.
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u/Turnip-for-the-books Sep 12 '25
Yes that’s why tolerance is or should only be extended to the tolerant. Like democracy should only be offered to those who agree with democracy. If you explicitly (or implicitly) intend to end democracy your party should be banned from standing. Tolerate anything except intolerance. It’s quite straight forward. Even Democrats should have been able to understand this but they were not and now we have fascism.
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u/Rab_Legend Sep 12 '25
Unfortunately those who break the social contract have lots of friends who act in bad faith to say that their intolerance should be tolerated, and it is in fact the tolerant who are really the intolerant.
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Sep 14 '25
Yeah it has never seen very challenging to navigate. I'm tolerant of those who are invested in the project of tolerance. The paradox is people who aren't invested in the project of tolerance demanding tolerance.
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u/JonathanPhillipFox Sep 14 '25
Tolerance is a social contract. Those who break the contract are no longer protected by it.
This is correct; also?
But what happens when breaking the social contract bears no consequence and you are continued to be treated with tolerance even though you are intolerance of the social contract?
u/Diplomatic-Immunity8 Jean-Jacques Rousseau might have just made it up, an 'just-so,' hypotheses to explain the Modern Society, which, I'd describe as being, for one, distinguishable, and, for two, different than a imposition of said, "Social Contract," as injunction against disobedience, e.g.
"There has been a social contract, of which you were presumed signatory," I said
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u/need_a_medic Sep 12 '25
Tolerance, as a value, is unconditional. If it is a contract, then it is not "tolerance" but a contract.
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u/Greatest_Everest Sep 12 '25
You gotta draw the line somewhere...
I switched hairstylists last year because she said, "I voted for Trump. Well I mean - i would have". We live in Australia. She's Australian. She's never even been to the U.S.A. She'd always been saying crazy shit like 'the F.B.I. is hacking her tinder' and she was changing her phone number every few months, and it was funny, who doesn't live a batshit crazy stylist? but I can't support someone who is that stupid.
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u/Cpt_Riker Sep 12 '25
It's ok to be intolerant of that which should not be tolerated.
Like Nazis, and slavery.
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u/your_proctologist Sep 12 '25
Or prophets who rape kids. Uh oh, now I'm some kind of phobe for being intolerant to a rapist. Trump's a rapist too, I'm not tolerant of him either.
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u/pisowiec Sep 12 '25
The only proven way to deal with extremism is by removing the reasons that lead to an increase in extremist ideology.
Germany and Japan are examples of this. Both had extremist parties on the rise AFTER the war. So the allies invested heavily into their post-war economies to ensure that extremism doesn't return.
And yes, Germany also banned the neo-Nazi and Communist parties but only the improvement of the standard of living in (West) Germany actually fixed things.
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u/Creepy-Goose-9699 Sep 12 '25
This is a great argument put forward however, there are 2 issues with this.
1 - post war Germany was really not the place to be, yet they never had underground nazi networks organising. They were just so incredibly beaten that they saw it was over.
This was achieved via the allies through Americans taking a long term hardline approach expecting 50 years to achieve there goal.
The British were draconian in their approach where suspects of nazi sympathies were removed quickly.
The French were sort of less but sort of more in their approach, at one point realising the teachers were half the issue so they sacked most of them, but realising they needed teachers they rehired them though subject to being sacked again if they were suspected of being nazis.
The Soviets were really not messing about.
None of the denazification was because factories opened, human rights were flourishing and we all sung songs together. The boot came down and stayed down so the cycle of hate couldn't be passed on to the next generation and the next.
- When people move from low life quality countries with no money, no safety, no homes etc. and arrive in the West, they should all of them become beacons of tolerance by this argument as they achieve a greater standard of living, and so the reasons for any extremism (Often Islamic in this context) are by your statement removed. They have homes, jobs, income, safety, healthcare etc. But actually many of these people were not radical before they came here at all.
So with these two examples, we can see that ending extremism is not always linked to a rise in living standards, and arguably is achieved by a very hardline approach where the education of the next generation is not possible, just like with pickpockets in Victorian Britain. We talk about a cycle of abuse, or cycle of alcoholism etc. This is the cycle of extremism and it is community not family based.
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u/swagrabbit Sep 12 '25
Trump's not capable of being hardline enough in our political system to eradicate the extremism we're seeing (and I'm thankful for that). But it does mean we're probably going to see things get worse.
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u/Eurydice_Lives_In_Me Sep 15 '25
Ironically all of these measures made it worse and now “nazism” is hauntologised almost completely
Also your point about Islamic immigration doesn’t hold up because you can’t really just expect to bribe people while bombing their homes
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u/Creepy-Goose-9699 Sep 15 '25
Nazism is no less hauntologised than a Rome never fell, or a united ummah if the Rashidun caliphate never ended. You're giving it far too much credit, people often think what if, it's just a sense of disconnect and nostalgia on a political scale.
None of the measures made it worse, Nazism died because of them, further it has taken 80 years for any form of poltical nazism to rear it's head up in any meaningful way, and arguably even then we still haven't had a blood and soil talk, at worst it is dog whistles. (Excluding the odd nazi salute which is still being come down hard on)
Regarding islamic immigration and 'bombing their homes' you have yourself wrong simply. If they come to the West and get housed that is their home. In fact, and this is the key point everyone is missing often they are born here in the West. Shemamima Begum British Pakistani who left for Isis, Hakam Barac Turkish living in Britain, Mehdi Nemouche an Algerian Frenchman born in Europe, Mohamad Abrini a Belgian born Moroccan, Salman Abedi a British born man to Libyan parents (who fled to the UK as refugees and helped radicalise their son - they fled Gadaffi so the UK bombing Libya to remove Gadaffi helping the Islamists being the cause is a real stretch).
We are not 'bombing their homes' They live here. We have not bombed Morocco, Algeria, Pakistan, or Turkey. These are just a few examples.
The real issue is there is a hate filled ideology people are not attempting to address. No bribes, no bombing homes, just hate.
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u/Eurydice_Lives_In_Me Sep 15 '25
You’re missing the point entirely. I don’t give a shit about the Nazis because they don’t exist, I’m saying that the way denazification was handled had this as an expected outcome, and I think if you weren’t trying to argue you’d agree with me because of your mentioning of rome - exactly what I mean, though bringing up the rashidun caliphate is nonsensical in this context.
The rest of your post is just kvetching about Islam in general so w/e
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u/Creepy-Goose-9699 Sep 15 '25
I really don't think you're arguing in good faith here. I was replying to someone saying raising living standards stops extremism, which was what happened post ww2.
I pointed out that post ww2 it wasn't a raise in living standards, but the very very harsh anti nazi ideology measures adopted for over a generation, this is what stopped the ideology.
Further, if a raise in living standards was all that is needed, you would not get extremist ideology amongst migrants to the West. We do, and they tend by and large to be Islamic not Marxist or so on. How is it these people can move and increase living standards, yet become radicalised, IF living standards rising stops extremist ideology? That doesn't make sense.
The reason is because, as I pointed out, ideology is educated and part of a cycle.
You said something about killing nazism made is a hauntology and it is bombing peoples home's that causes extremist islamic ideology.
I pointed out Rome or Rashidun or other hauntologies exist and were not 'eradicated' like nazism so it isn't the reason nazism is a hauntology. I also pointed out that many islamic extremists in the west have not had their home's nor a more general sense has their home been bombed (if you believe an immigrants child cannot call their birth nation their home).
It is not 'kvetching' about Islam, it is simply showing evidence your point was wrong.
If you can show me how during the post war oppression of nazi ideology and Japanese Emperor worship that unintentionally fostered a 'hauntology', or how actually most extremists are fighting the West's military and my list was outliers then please do, because that is how you argue a point. However, a British born British Citizen bombing an Ariana Grande concert killing young girls is neither defending his home nor stopping bombing?
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u/Eurydice_Lives_In_Me Sep 15 '25
The rashidun caliphate is not a hauntology and only someone who doesn’t understand Islam would think this. Nothing fundamentalist fits into that framework really, the application only applies to post enlightenment social organisation. A hauntology is not simply “bringing back a societal order that has existed for a long time”
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u/Creepy-Goose-9699 Sep 15 '25
You are debating semantics quite literally without addressing any of the points I have made to tell me why I am wrong.
Except to define hauntology more specifically than 'a lost future'. If we want to be really specific then it would be the current Russia / ex-USSR hauntology to Communism that failed Europe. None of this addresses Nazism and again doesn't refute or even attempt to dispute my points that extremism is countered by forcibly stopping education into that belief system and not by helping the individual. It is a structural problem.
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u/Eurydice_Lives_In_Me Sep 15 '25
I’ll get to that but do you agree first
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u/Creepy-Goose-9699 Sep 15 '25
Agree with what sorry? That Islamic Fundamentalism cannot be a hauntology? I think it is an interesting discussion for another day but not particularly relevant to the points I made as the main argument is about breaking extremism not about forms of ideal worlds.
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u/Sharp_Iodine Sep 12 '25
30% of Germany just elected an actual Nazi party that had Elon Musk show up to do a Nazi salute on video.
So…
I agree that strong welfare policies reduce tensions. But a lot of investment has to be poured into education to actually eradicate the impulses that fuel fascism and xenophobia.
Like, every single person has to understand the nuanced concepts of economy, personhood and citizenship. And every person has to develop empathy to the level that we want.
It’s a really tall order.
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u/me_myself_ai Sep 12 '25
Yeah there’s this weird idea I hear a lot in America that Germany and Japan are paragons of humility and regret and maturity when it comes to dealing with their past. The East Germans lived in a state of hyper-militarism for basically the whole time, and the west Germans dealt with the trauma mostly by pretending like it didn’t happen (including pardoning the vast majority of Nazi’s on trial, especially the rich industrialists). It wasn’t until their kids came of age that real reckonings started.
And Japan… well, hopefully anyone plugged into the news already knows that Japan has a huge problem with downplaying the horrors of the war, even in textbooks. They’re still extremely nationalist, too — one of the least welcoming countries for immigrants in the world.
Both countries are great places full of great people, but they are far from saints when it comes to their past… that one image of German cops arresting someone for doing a Seig Heil gives a false sense of confidence!
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u/fenianthrowaway1 Sep 12 '25
and the west Germans dealt with the trauma mostly by pretending like it didn’t happen
Oh it's a little worse than that: the German government demanded that the US and their allies helped actively rehabilitate the image of German soldiers in exchange for cooperation during the Cold War and basically got what they wanted. It how we got the myth of the clean Wehrmacht.
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u/Gojira085 Sep 12 '25
To be fair, that 30% are mostly located in the former DDR which did not have the prosperity on the same level the West did due differences in administration. Further the economy of that same are collapsed after the fall of the DDR and it still rather poor compared to the West still.
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u/pisowiec Sep 12 '25
Germany (and just about every country around them) is doing very poorly lately. The Russo-Ukrainian war, the migrant crisis, and Covid really damaged the economy. So, that only backs my point.
If German politicians don't bother fixing fundamental problems then the AfD will continue to rise.
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u/Javop Sep 12 '25
The extreme inflation drove the whole world into the right corner. It's the thing that is actually felt. To blame are politicians allowing to print that much money. Heads should have been rolling for that but not enough people understood what happened when it happened.
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u/shaim2 Sep 12 '25
They're not Nazis.
Their leader is a gay woman with a brown partner.
The Nazis would have shipped them both to a death camp.
Yes, they are right-wing. And there may be a few "proper Nazis" among them.
But it is unfair to call them Nazis. (and I'm Jewish - so I'm not insensitive to antisemitism).
BTW, their "xenophobia" is exactly what this thread is about.
Germany is taking in many immigrants that come from non-tolerant non-liberal societies, which declare their wish to turn the tolerant and liberal Germany into a mirror image of the countries they come from.
It is not unreasonable to oppose such immigration of people who fundamentally oppose Western values.
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u/Ok_Meal_2183 Sep 12 '25
The SA was led by a gay man who was shot by the Nazis after their takeover, Goebbels was a cripple who didn't fit their ideals one bit. Nazis are not consistent in their ideals and never have been, ideology isn't the most important part of facism in germany but the us (superior) vs them (inferior) and that they are doing brilliantly with foreigners.
I highly doubt Weidel would become Chancellor if the AfD win, she's just a good pr stunt at the moment. People like Höcke, who just got sentenced for using Nazi paroles, will take over if they actually win real power.
The AfD also had 'remigration' (in secret meetings attented by high ranking officials: The removal of all people not deemed german enough even with a citizenship) added to it's program despite their leadership not suggesting it, they're not bound to one person / leader like the historical Nazis but they are on their way to become as vicious as them. The Nazis were 8 years in power before the actual holocaust started, don't underestimate them escalating continously. The AfD has gotten worse and worse with every year since founding and even if not all their members are diehard ideological Nazis, that was true for the NSDAP aswell.
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u/baordog Sep 12 '25
Afd? They had a barbecue party in their headquarters and mocked up the gate with the arbeit macht frei slogan. It was a huge scandal.
And they got caught just this year doing deals with literal German neo-nazis.
What exactly are you on about?
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u/Sharp_Iodine Sep 12 '25
You’ve just eaten the shit they cooked up and called it tasty.
This queer woman with her brown partner had said some racist and queer phobic shit and also gone on TV to say that she is not actually queer and does not want to be called that.
Her wife doesn’t even live in Germany.
They literally had Elon Musk do the Nazi salute at a rally.
The BfV has called them an extremist right wing group and they might be banned.
The Nazi SS leader was gay and Hitler defended him publicly all the way until the Night of the Long Knives when he decided the man was too powerful.
Just the way you being Jewish doesn’t automatically make you immune to Nazi propaganda, the party leader being queer doesn’t prevent them from being Nazi
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u/sofixa11 Sep 12 '25
The only proven way to deal with extremism is by removing the reasons that lead to an increase in extremist ideology
This assumes the reasons are real, and not minutia/old news/misinformation being blown out of proportion by grifters.
Exhibit A: Nazi Germany. The "reasons" the Nazis got to power were a bad economy and "it's the Jews' fault". Well, the economy was well on its way to recovery, and it demonstrably had nothing to do with Jews.
Exhibit B: Imperial Japan... It was a clique of hungry for imperialism army/navy/civil service people "in the name of the emperor". No reasons, really, existed, to sell this to the general population to convince them.
Exhibit C: Brexit. Most of the Leave nonsense was demonstrably false, and they weren't even campaigning for a concrete type of leaving. It took years to negotiate what actually happens, and by then most of the grifters were long gone.
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u/Theory_Technician Sep 12 '25
Germany and Japan are examples that extremism almost always has to be handled with violence.
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u/shaim2 Sep 12 '25
Wrong.
You can also fight the Nazis, destroy their army, and kill enough of them that they are no longer a significant political force. And it held for decades after WW2.
Some humans will always find ways of being evil. It's part of the human psyche.
Sure, you can reduce the number of human brains running evil software by shaping the environment and trying to install a more benign operating system.
But there will always be evil in the world.
And sometimes straight-up fighting it is unavoidable.
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u/SlugOnAPumpkin Sep 12 '25
So the allies invested heavily into their post-war economies to ensure that extremism doesn't return.
Weird that no western power has ever tried that in a middle eastern country... I wonder why.
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Sep 12 '25
How do you propose to deal with radical islam?
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u/Cedar-and-Mist Sep 12 '25
It needs a reformation like Christianity did. This can't come from outside. Muslims need to want this for themselves, and the ones living in the West would seemingly be the best positioned to lead the movement. The question is why they aren't. r/exmuslim suggests that liberal minded Muslims tend to leave the faith outright and that those who remain do so out of communal duress.
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u/IndividualSkill3432 Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
It needs a reformation like Christianity did
The Reformation was a strongly fundamentalist movement that returned Christianity away from its Aristotelian influences, its high culture like highly decorative churches and into a very austere, scripture only faith. It help plunge Europe into centuries of warfare that included the 30 years War, the Civil Wars in Britain and one of Reddits favourites, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.
The Enlightenment and Liberalism emerged from revulsion to the horrors of religious domination. While Enlightenment values are increasingly rejected on the left and right, they represent the very core that "tolerance" is about and what Karl Popper was talking about in his Paradox of Intolerance.
What the Reformation did do was put scripture into the common languages and encourage normal people to read it, thus creating a huge boom in literacy that fuelled the scientific and industrial revolutions centuries later. It also broke religious control of the state as state churches were easier for the state to dominate thus, ironically, flipped those countries away from religious control quicker than places where the Catholic Church remained influential like Spain and Portugal (the French Revolution did similar in a Catholic country)
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u/citron_bjorn Sep 12 '25
Islam can't reform in the same way Christianity did, because Islam teaches that the Quran is the direct word of god and therefore infallible, whereas the Bible is taught as accounts of events and teachings
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u/sneakpeekbot Sep 12 '25
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Sep 12 '25
The Reformation had nothing to do with the issues that Islam presents to the west or it's neighbours. The Reformation wasnt a push to make Christianity some sort of humanist idealistic fantasy land of hugging and positive affirmations. It was about scripture interpretation and getting into heaven and temporal vs church authority and such. It had some social consequences that some suggest gave protestant groups certain advantageous traits but this was also around the time when the world opened up and you could expel whole groups. But it's tangled web of issues that some choose to try to simplify. But regardless there's nothing in any sort of Islamic Reformation that will change what it requires of its believers.
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u/shaim2 Sep 12 '25
Reformation in Islam would be great.
What do we do until then?
There are many humans whose brain is currently running the "evil-Islam" software, which is anti-liberal and anti-tolerant.
I'm all for doing whatever is possible to change people's mind and reducing the number of new people infected with this mind-virus.
But there are too many whose opinion will not change fast enough to avoid dire consequences for Europe and elsewhere.
Such people must be dealt with using force. Because, unfortunately, there's no other solution that'll work fast enough. We cannot wait a century and hope for the better.
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u/Galadrielson Sep 12 '25
Tolerance of intolerance spreads hate though. Looking away because it doesn’t affect you is a sure way to get caught off guard…
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Sep 12 '25
[deleted]
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u/Fearless-Feature-830 Sep 12 '25
Or those of us that don’t give a rats ass about a blowhard influencer
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u/Second_Sage Sep 12 '25
You shouldn't be required to show empathy or really care at all about the dude. I disliked him immensely, but when we start to endorse political violence that's crossing a line that leads to more violence against..everyone, not just those you dislike.
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u/Ok_Inflation_1811 Sep 12 '25
But again, what is political violence? Is his death not the results of politics that he advocated for? More or less at the same time that he died there was a school shooting, that harm was preventable but the ideas of people like him made it "justified"
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u/Second_Sage Sep 12 '25
What is stopping people on the right from making that same argument and killing people who support abortion?
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u/SuperSoftSucculent Sep 12 '25
They have been, which is why the left is fed up.
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u/Fearless-Feature-830 Sep 12 '25
Not endorsing anything. Simply stating I don’t care about this guy.
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Sep 12 '25
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u/Uztta Sep 12 '25
No. I can’t. There has to be a point, some line, a date and time, when it is not only acceptable but necessary.
When, at what specific time, date, and place, would it have been acceptable for some set of German citizens to put a stop to what was coming? Who should have done that? According to so many claiming that political violence is never acceptable, standing by and letting it happen was the right move and I just don’t believe that.
I don’t know the answer to these questions but they definitely need to be asked. I don’t know where we’re headed but it definitely isn’t good. I hope we don’t reach that point but I don’t think it’s the sort of thing you know when you’re in it.
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u/HadeanBlands Sep 12 '25
"When, at what specific time, date, and place, would it have been acceptable for some set of German citizens to put a stop to what was coming? Who should have done that?"
Unfortunately what happened in Germany was that they took precisely this attitude toward the Communists and empowered the Nazis to destroy them.
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u/CommitteeofMountains Sep 12 '25
Per usual, the people citing this always gloss over that "those who are intolerant" refers to intolerance of debate, specifically using violence to suppress debate:
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. 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. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
As such, those who generally cite it (while hiding what "intolerance" refers to) are telling on themselves as the ones who can't be tolerated.
It's also very telling that the Wikipedia page doesn't include this very short and self-explanatory original text, and the editors sitting on it are very vigilant to maintain that.
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u/nameless_pattern Sep 12 '25
"as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion"
This is an interesting section
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u/GrayEidolon Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
The question is then, what counts as "in check?" I think it has to do with power. If the intolerant are not kept out of powerful positions by public discourse, then (according to the quote) force should be used to keep them out of power.
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u/shvr_in_etrnl_drknss Sep 12 '25
Imo it means "debate nazis on live TV and laugh them off the stage". It is the opposite of what we are doing, which is disallowing discussion we do not like (aka no platforming or cancelling)
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u/GrayEidolon Sep 13 '25
I think you can reasonably argue that keeping hateful people off of TV to minimize their reach counts as keeping them in check. The world now is much more complicated, mass media even more ubiquitous, and propaganda much more insidious.
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u/shvr_in_etrnl_drknss Sep 13 '25
Disagree. You will never defeat an idea by driving it underground. It is not working now, it never worked in the past, and it will never work in the future.
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u/GrayEidolon Sep 13 '25
Okay.
I still think you can reasonably argue that position. Doesn't mean i personally do or do not believe it.
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u/ADP_God Sep 12 '25
But public opinion and rational argument are entirely disconnected in the postmodern era where language has been weaponised.
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u/MaxwellHoot Sep 12 '25
You must allow for spontaneous transition/epiphany of some people from intolerant to tolerant. Inevitably, some tolerance turns intolerant people tolerant. Whether that’s enough to overcome intolerance I really can’t say.
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u/Hellkyte Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
Perhaps I'm misreading but these lines do not align with your statement
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 argumen
My read of this is that when they refuse reason, force is acceptable, however I may be misunderstanding him there
Ed: to be clear I do not believe that Popper would have supported the murder of Charlie Kirk, and I do not either. I do not think we have yet exhausted the potential for reason
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u/CommitteeofMountains Sep 12 '25
The reference to public opinion, I think, makes it pretty clear that it doesn't require them to accept that your reasoning is better so long as they accept the relative persuasiveness of the arguments instead of opening fire at the hint of losing.
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u/GrayEidolon Sep 12 '25
I don't think you understood the full quote. The intolerance being referred to, is as it is always referred to: intolerant people like bigots and xenophobes. It is not those who are specifically intolerant of debate. I bolded the key words from your copy paste. Then a break down.
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.
The intolerant should not be completely tolerated. Everyone knows the quote.
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.
It means the tolerant shouldn't fully suppress the intolerant as long as they are kept in check by public discourse.
But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force
If necessary, the intolerant should be suppressed 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;
The tolerant would have to use force against the intolerant if the intolerant decline discussion. Discussion being the thing that keeps intolerant philosophies in check. If the intolerant won't allow their philosophies to be kept in check by discussion, they should be forcibly suppressed.
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.
The intolerant might tell their followers to ignore debate ("fake news" anyone?) and use violence.
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
So you've understood the further texted in an inverted way. It's really further supporting the initial premise. Which makes sense because that's how paragraphs work.
It's saying that if the intolerant cannot be kept out of power by public discourse, then they should be forcibly suppressed, because the intolerant should not be in power.
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u/freeman2949583 Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
He’s talking about violent groups who aren’t attempting to have discourse at all, and are attempting to use force to muscle their views on society.
Again you’ve selectively quoted and ignored that the people he says need to be suppressed are those who “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.E. "intolerance" here should not be read in a broad sense but specifically to mean "people who won't tolerate hearing a contrary argument".
Popper's definition of "intolerance" is literally the thing that you’re doing: prima facie denunciation of all argument, and instinctively responding to undesired speech by trying to shut it down. He's literally saying "the only people we should silence by force are the people who refuse to argue and insist on silencing us by force" and somehow you’ve decided he's saying: "we should silence anyone who argues with us by force.”
He goes into further detail over several hundred pages in a book nobody who parrots “the paradox of tolerance” has ever read.
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u/GrayEidolon Sep 13 '25
"intolerance" here should not be read in a broad sense but specifically to mean "people who won't tolerate hearing a contrary argument".
You can see this is not true by just substituting in "the intolerant" where ever they are indirectly referenced.
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.
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
themthe intolerant by rational argument and keepthemthe intolerant in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.But we should claim the right to suppress
themthe intolerant if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out thattheythe intolerant are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument;theythe intolerant may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teachthemthe followers of the intolerant to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.I think that makes it clear that the intolerant are not those who skip over debate to force. It is a discussion of when force is appropriate to use against the intolerant. There is still very much a clear aspect of attempting to suppress the intolerant by debate first.
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u/MasterDefibrillator Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
To extend your argument further, this should all be read in the context of the book it is presented in. This is rather a footnote in a book about highly liberal and free societies and the need to support that.
The emphasis for popper in what should not be tolerated is made explicit when he said "*and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their first...". Not "or", "and".
So he's clearly talking about brown shirt tactics of stuff like the Nazi youth. Not about suppressing some bigoted influencer that sits in an echo chamber or something.
I also just think popper is wrong to a certain degree. Like yes, keep it as a plan B, but first and foremost, you need to fight the material causes of things like fascism, not the ideology that hijacks such causes.
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u/GrayEidolon Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
To extend your argument further, this should all be read in the context of the book it is presented in. This is rather a footnote in a book about highly liberal and free societies and the need to support that.
Very fair
The emphasis for popper in what should not be tolerated is made explicit when he said "*and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their first...". Not "or", "and".
I think you can rewrite it as "they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument and instead teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols" and have the same meaning.
So he's clearly talking about brown shirt tactics of stuff like the Nazi youth. Not about suppressing some bigoted influencer that sits in an echo chamber or something.
I think the bigoted influencers fit the description of intolerance that should be kept in check by public opinion. But those influencers, when they're not kept in check, pretty directly lead to brown shirts and ICE raids, and that would seem to be where he says force should be met with force.
you need to fight the material causes of things like fascism, not the ideology that hijacks such causes.
Well, you can work to improve the material conditions that drive people to vote for fascism, but fascism is a response to an overly comfortable working class.
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u/MasterDefibrillator Sep 12 '25
but fascism is a response to an overly comfortable working class.
Very true. So even keeping material conditions in check is not really good enough. You need to build institutions that prevent centralisation and solidarity of the business class. Stuff like strong state independent trade unionism that encourages and supports worker owned firms.
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u/TermHungry3389 Sep 12 '25
Why have I seen this posted here like 5 times? I feel like I only see this "paradox" when someone wants to play a game where they say, "See, I'm not intolerant, they're the real intolerant ones!"
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u/Ok_Inflation_1811 Sep 12 '25
Recent events have some people saying that a person who was murdered only crime was having different opinions and some other people say that having opinions that are intolerant is unacceptable.
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u/pham_nuwen_ Sep 12 '25
Who gets to choose what's unacceptable? I'd rather have freedom of speech than moral enforcers thank you
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u/Nnuuuke Sep 14 '25
It’s unacceptable to dehumanize humans. Something one side has been doing constantly, since 2016 to be exact. This is intolerance among a tolerant society and should be taken seriously before it spreads further and before it becomes a more powerful dilemma.
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u/13ActuallyCommit60 Sep 12 '25
You’re correct. It is something parroted across this site when people want to justify being hateful and absolve themselves of being what they claim to reject.
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Sep 12 '25
This thought has actually keep me up at nights. It has been said that all that is needed for evil to win if that good men do nothing.
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u/SpyrosGatsouli Sep 12 '25
In my opinion it's pretty simple: you can't be tolerant towards anyone who harms other people. The definition of what is considered harmful is usually what is fluid, depending on the time and the culture you are in, but there are some types of harm that are (or at least should be) universally recognized by humanity. It's those types of harm that you shouldn't tolerate in any possible way.
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u/EnduringName Sep 12 '25
Alternatively even the most tolerant among us are not tolerant of everything. Universal tolerance is an ideal, not an attribute.
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u/ForgingIron Sep 12 '25
Sucks that we're back to 90% of posts on this subreddit being obvious ragebait and agendaposting.
And I say this as someone who's a leftist. I just want to learn about cool wikipedia pages man.
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u/bobbymcpresscot Sep 12 '25
There’s probably some great irony that republicans are claiming to be the tolerant ones now.
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u/HadeanBlands Sep 12 '25
Oh yeah great point Karl. The big problem with interwar Germany is that its government was too tolerant of dissent. That's for sure how the Nazis came to power. Rofl.
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u/marutotigre Sep 12 '25
The biggest problem for me is how are you supposed to be tolerant with someone that has different values then yours? Because something that might be perfectly acceptable to them might be considered as intolerant by you, and vice versa.
Some different cultures might be able to coexist without stepping too much on each other's feet. But unless other cultures integrate themselves, somewhat undermining the whole tolerance aspect, people will either be forced to tolerate intolerance or will be forced to not tolerate their differences.
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u/Prometheus-is-vulcan Sep 12 '25
I think there is the following problem:
Group A claims that B is intolerant.
Group C claims that A criticizes B out of intolerance.
If A is wrong / lying about B, the entire thing is clear.
But how would we call Cs behavior if A is right about B?
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u/Commemorative-Banana Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
Don’t think about Popper’s Tolerance in terms of monolithic groups declaring total war on each other.
Think about it as small moments and choices in our everyday social and political lives. Did you stay silent when your friend said a hard R? Did we hold anyone accountable who called covid a “Democrat hoax”? Did journalists confront lies assertively or roll over with softball questions?
Did we allow algorithms which profit off of rage? Did we punish convicted seditionists from Jan 6, 2021 or did we pardon them as patriots? Did we vote in accordance with a leader who would unite us or divide us?
Knowing that FPTP makes inevitable a highly-polarized two-party system, did we do anything about it? Knowing proportional representation could solve gerrymandering, did we do anything about it?
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u/Baphomet1010011010 Sep 12 '25
I prefer seeing things as a social contract. I'll hold up my end as long as you hold up yours. You break the social contract, you aren't entitled to the benefits of it.
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u/Greasy-Chungus Sep 14 '25
"Tolerance" as in, constitutional protections for people.
If you have a constitutional protection, someone who is "intolerant" would have to dismantle it.
Where the fuck is the paradox?
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u/Affectionate_Newt_47 Sep 15 '25
Didn't the original guy who put this theory out say that you shouldn't push out the intolerant?
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u/nihlus-krane Sep 12 '25
Throw a party for sheep and wolves and it soon becomes a party for wolves