Perhaps. But the same would apply to the other golden rule. It's not "Do unto others as they would have you do unto them."

If you do what you feel is right, it doesn't matter if people disagree with you. You'd at least be ideologically consistent, not a hypocrite.

If being a good person requires pleasing people, there would be no good people in the world. "People" are impossible to please because it's an abstract category representing a generalized collective. You'll never please them all and that's okay.

Do what you believe is right, and sleep well at night knowing you tried your best.

If I remember correctly, Kant goes into detail about how others would be affected and how that influences the categorical imperative. I forget exactly what he says about it though

Understand tolerance as a social contract and not as a moral obligation. Tolerance is about piece within a society, not about right or wrong. If you do, there is no paradox, because the contract is broken and therefore does no longer apply. It also allows you to counter far right ideologies from whomever they come.

I don't like the idea of tolerating anyone. Tolerance, to me, feels like I have to make an effort of sorts to withstand someone else's existence. I definitely don't like everybody, so I don't make friends with everyone, but I do treat all people politely, and accept and respect that they exist.

By definition homophobia or transfobia is no nazism even if it is as bad as nazism.

What the fuck did I just read? Nazis rounded gay and trans folks up and put them in death camps too.

Get the fuck out of here, Nazi fucking scum.

Alright, so I read through your other comments and you've proven yourself to be a Nazi.

I am not saying you are a Nazi because I disagree with you. I am saying you are a Nazi because you are looking to shift the definition of what a Nazi is so that Neo-Nazis can exist more easily and more freely without being called a Nazi. Fuck Nazis, such as yourself.

yes, and the legal framework can (and should) differ from the social contract

everyone says that the people thry don't like are nazis

that is legally forcing intolerance though, not tolerance. Legally forced tolerance is like the first amendment to the constitution that legally protects all political beliefs including those that all women should be shot

Now i know you're arguing in bad faith.

For the second or third time in this thread: The other nine Nazis aren't Nazis bcs of their proximity to a Nazi, but because of their willingness to socialize with a Nazi.

You're deliberately misrepresenting anti-Nazi arguments to try to defend people who are happily supporting Nazism. If you're not a Nazi you'll do til someone actually starts goose stepping and throwing out Roman salutes.

Any movement that preaches intolerance and persecution must be outside of the law.

This is a common misconception about the Paradox of Tolerance, and I'm going to reference the person who invented it: Karl Popper in his 1945 work, The Open Society and Its Enemies:

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.

Popper argues that we should tolerate intolerance only up to the point of violence. That is, if one physically attacks us, we no longer have the burden of tolerance. Popper is commonly misquoted and intentionally misused to justify violence against disagreement, and that is clearly not his position.

The graphic above states that we should not tolerate "movements" which preach "intolerance." This is a subjective standard. I think Islam preaches intolerance. By this standard, I would be justified in banning all Muslims from immigrating to Denmark. This is why Popper used the much clearer standard of physical violence. Any modern society must tolerate disagreement - including "intolerant" disagreement. We resolve that intolerance at the ballot box. We cannot allow physical violence. No, someone saying mean words is not physical violence.

Elon Musk is indeed a Nazi, if that's what your reference was about.

My question is specifically about socialising voluntarily and friendly.

I will make the question more clear.

Person A = Donald Trump

Person B = Person who voted for Donald Trump, doesn't self define as a Nazi, personally this person doesn't consider Donald trump a Nazi

Person C = Person who didn't vote for Trump, thinks Trump is a nazi but is friends with person B. this person doesn't consider person B a nazi.

Person D = Person who didn't vote for Trump, thinks Trump is a nazi but is friends with person C, knowing that person C is friends with person B.

Person E = Person who didn't vote for Trump, thinks Trump is a nazi but is friends with person D, knowing that person D is friends with person C.

All this people are willing to socialise with their friends, they know them, and they know their political stances (only A and B vote republican) and they know who are their friends with. How many of those people would you consider Nazis?

Until now I understood that you would consider all of them nazis, also any subsequent friends of this little friendship chain. But feel free to correct me and tell me otherwise.

If your definition is "do what you believe is right" it absolutely needs to be paired with a requirement to put effort into figuring out what actually is right.

Something something due process, proportionality principle, etc. This isn't exactly trivial, but that first rule does help in determining who is the one infringing. To start with, both starting shit as well as unjustified escalation are both punishable.

Intolerance to not tolerant - just use the double negation and the paradox disappears.

Well when you figure that part out let me know, I've been trying my whole life and so far everything I've come up with is bound to still piss someone off...

If your definition of right and wrong is based on what gains approval from others then you're in a very dangerous predicament and I hope to the gods I don't believe in that you're surrounded by decent people.

It never really seemed like a paradox to me to begin with. To suggest that it is is just a rhetorical game used by the intolerant in bad faith.

i'd say it's relative to your culture. if you're a liberal woman growing up in iran or saudi arabia you're gonna hate your life.

but this opens up genuine discussions about right/wrong and whatever else.

the fact of the matter is that we just make up everything about humans and their relations as we go along. there is no real right or wrong, there's just perspective in any given moment in time and context.

if there are 34738434739473 iranian women who support their lifestyle and 40000 who don't then who's right?

according to americans the minority is right, but we pretend that they aren't in america when it comes to domestic concerns.

whoa.

A lot of Republicans and Nazis (but I repeat myself) believed they do what's right as a result of propaganda. What's right is about impact, not approval.

They've been murdering each other over their religious disagreements for more than a thousand years, long before he ever came along. He just used them, like a tool, to reach his own ends.

He gave those who believe in such tripe the opportunity to exercise their beliefs "legally". They are waiting for another opportunity to do their holy work, always. Something something "chosen people", there can be only one.

I disagree with this assessment of the text - assuming it's correct, I'm not familiar with the source.

What this extract is saying imo is as long as it's possible to effectively keep in check and counter intolerance with argument and public opinion, suppression is unwise.

But, tolerance should reserve the right to suppress intolerance before it becomes violent, specifically when intolerance acts in bad faith and refuses to participate in logical argument or debate, and instead denounces argument entirely.

So the threshold is not violence itself, but one example of what "may" lead to violence.

Just my 2¢ on the text (not my opinion on the topic).

this line of thinking has narrowed way too much.

people used 're****' as a general slur for years and nobody was rounding up the mentally challenged for extermination. in fact, nobody ever used this word in front of the mentally challenged other than the socially awkward.

nazi's shouldn't be tolerated. but the modern world acts like people who make mistakes or are mildly offensive are the same thing as nazis.

It doesn't really help in determining who is doing the infringing either. There are places where saying "from the river to the sea" would be considered to be infringing on the social contract. And given that the social contract is a social construct, who's to say they're wrong?

There is no way to reconcile your interpretation with the actual text:

and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

A preemptive strike is neither stated nor implied by Popper. I find that a dangerous proposition for a democratic nation. It would justify any and all manner of violence based on nothing and anything but the subjective and active imaginations of the politically inclined.

Again, who is harmed?

And when one side is clearly hypocritical, we can establish that that their contract is unbalanced and unfair and strike the unfair terms.

... like for example determining that people like Netanyahu don't have the moral authority to punish others from doing what he himself does;

https://newrepublic.com/post/178243/benjamin-netanyahu-literally-says-from-the-river-to-the-sea

We already have whole fields studying precisely this line sociology and more, analysis of power balances and stereotypes, and more. Again, it's complicated, but it's not happening in a vacuum, we know how to approach this

Well, it kinda is, if you take the terms at face value: To defend tolerance by being intolerant.

The fact that it can be simply resolved by requiring tolerance to be mutual doesn't make the original less of a paradox.

I've posted about this exact fucking thing before and I completely agree. There is no paradox, it's just a bullshit argument easily dismantled

The person who put forward the idea, or gave it a name, was a pretty notable philosopher who was notably in favor of a discourse driven liberal democracy, and against fascism.

He didn't mean paradox in the sense of "self contradictory and unresolvable" like the liars paradox. He meant it in the sense of "seemingly contradictory".

In order to have the most tolerant, rational discourse driven society possible there are some things you cannot tolerate, nor engage in discussion with , because if you cannot be persuaded there cannot be rational discussion.

So the paradox was named by a person explaining why you don't have to listen to Nazis just because you want to be open to new ideas and perspectives.

Coming to the conclusion that it's not contradictory is agreeing with the argument that it's okay to just tell Nazis to fuck off.

I see what you're saying, but to me it's not a paradox that needs addressing because to most people it's obvious that these are qualitatively different kinds of tolerance. To me it feels like a technical gotcha divorced from the obvious intent. I might be assuming too much there.

Maybe that was the case during woke 1 but we have a lot more visible, vehement Nazis and general fascism now to bring that term back to its roots

I see, well said. I'm not well informed on the absolute origin of the phrase. It wasn't clear to me if the philosopher was responding to people saying that being intolerant of Nazis/other types of bigots in the pursuit of tolerance of diverse types of people was contradictory and therefore not morally or ethically sound, or just spontaneous hand-wringing.

"Tolerance has a limit. Beyond that limit, intolerance becomes duty."

• Rig Védā

But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force

He then goes on, in the paragraph you quoted, to make it clear that it's refusing rational argument that's a problem because it can lead to violence, not violence itself.
Further, if you finish the paragraph it becomes clear that the opening statement is anything but a misunderstanding:

We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

You don't have to agree with him, you can be partial to rawles, but popper was not vague.

all things in moderation

That's what I mean, they get their sense of "right" and "wrong" from what others around them tell them and what they've internalized their whole lives.

They don't put any rational thought into it, or empathy. They don't think for themselves about it. If they were to stop and think about things for themselves they might have a moment where they realize "this is wrong," but they don't because they base their judgments on their deeply internalized patterns that were socially conditioned from a very young age.

If you think about the impact your choices will have and make your decisions based on what you think will have the best impact, then that means you're thinking for yourself and not basing it on the perceptions of others.

In other words, it doesn't contradict the categorical imperative.

I assume your referring to the Liberal Right and not the Conservative Right

I've re-read it and still kindly and respectfully disagree about the meaning of that excerpt in isolation. Whatever the implications of this interpretation are, I have no idea because I'm not familiar with the work (however naïvely).

Here's a detailed breakdown of my take:

I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies;

The key word here is always, so, intolerant philosophies shouldn't always be suppressed.

as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.

The condition for not suppressing intolerant philosophies is if they can be kept in check and countered by public opinion and rational argument.

But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force;

Reserve the right to suppression if necessary..

for it may easily turn out that

Because the following things might easily happen:

they [the intolerant] 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.

An example of what may occur when the first approach fails due to essentially bad faith, and the reasoning for why to reserve the right to suppression. But it doesn't frame violence as the threshold for when to apply that suppression.

Anyway, that's my take. I'm still assuming this quote is accurate - I haven't checked it.

And once again I'm absolutely not agreeing with these positions or assertions about the suppression of intolerance, this is just how I understand the text.

Hilter was initially intolerant to those who were intolerant of the rich. National Socialism was universally unpopular for an entire generation. But it flipped and gained massive universal appeal in the shadow of a bloody communist initiated civil war.

You can't preach tolerance while being intolerant of people who happen to have more money than you, just like you can't claim to be tolerant while being intolerant of those with more melanin than you. It's all relative. No one has zero money and very few have zero melanin. But anyone who has more than me is a bad guy is not a very tolerant position.

Anyone reading this is in the 10 percentile globally. It's like light blacks being racist to dark blacks (which is a real thing).

Never argue with someone that John Brown would have shot.

This. I'm not sure why others are arguing your point. I guess they don't actually understand what you're saying?

What's that? It's strange how this post seems to attract all kind of rubbish and brainfarts.

Not a direct response, but a response as part of a larger philosophical narrative.

He was a true believer in a society driven by rational discussion and the free exchange of ideas, which was the main point of his work.
As part of describing how he thought society should be run (tldr: we should discuss things, change institutions peacefully, and make small changes that we can actually tell if they worked instead of upending society in the name of an untested ideology) he spent some time describing the edge cases and weaknesses, which is where the quote comes from.

He wrote the work during WW2 after fleeing Germany, so there's more than a little implied context that people would have at the time of publication. Basically a general vibe of "what the fuck! Let's not do that again!"

Happens all the time to be honest

Damn, you're kinda dumb

And not afraid of announce it

That's... brave..?

"Any movement (of intolerance)... ... must be outside the law." Is what I'm getting at.

When you create legal structure around that idea, you create a cudgel for the state to use on its citizens.

Protesting genocide in palestine isn't antiemetic, yet people are getting locked away as terrorists on the basis of "anti-discrimination" law.

The first amendment is in direct opposition to the argument of this comic, if for no other reason than that single line of text.

and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

This is the operative statement to which I'm referring. If the party to which Popper is referring is not "answering arguments" with "fists and pistols," Popper is not making an affirmative case for suppression.

To be clear, he's not making an absolute statement either. He's not saying, "we may only ever suppress speech which is violent." However - and this is critical - he's also not making an affirmative statement that speech without violence should be suppressed. This is the original work and quote used to derive the Paradox of Tolerance, so I think it behooves us to heed that in this statement, he's referring to physical violence. Further, there are no statements of his in which he argues for suppression of non-violent speech.

He then goes on, in the paragraph you quoted, to make it clear that it’s refusing rational argument that’s a problem because it can lead to violence, not violence itself.

Not just that. He also very clearly requires there to be the incitement to physical violence:

and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

I agree with the end of the paragraph. His definition of intolerance includes the incitement to violence, and what he argues follows logically.

Thanks for clarifying the quote's source etc.

I still kindly disagree with this understanding of the language though.

To me that whole section is justification for why to reserve the right to suppression: because the intolerant may not engage with argument in good faith, and they may instead tell their followers to denounce logical argument altogether and be violent.

The key word here is may, which to me means "this might happen". I basically read this as a warning of a potential outcome of intolerant philosophies - and why suppression might be needed and why to reserve the right to it - but not a threshold for when to suppress them.

But, at this point it seems like we might just have to agree to disagree on the meaning of the quote!

And once again, none of this is my opinion on the topic itself and I'm not endorsing a position, I'm only offering my understanding of the quote.

I will try to address your statements in turn as I don't think I am doing a good job of articulating my thoughts. That said, I think we are closer than I originally believed.

To me that whole section is justification for why to reserve the right to suppression: because the intolerant may not engage with argument in good faith, and they may instead tell their followers to denounce logical argument altogether and be violent.

The section justifies when it may be reasonable to suppress incitement to violence. The "and" operator requires the incitement to violence in the premise: "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."

Popper did not write "or." Both incitement to violence and rejection of rational argument is the [non-exhaustive] example Popper uses to justify the right of suppression.

The key word here is may, which to me means “this might happen”. I basically read this as a warning of a potential outcome of intolerant philosophies - and why suppression might be needed and why to reserve the right to it - but not a threshold for when to suppress them.

I agree. As above, the example he used it not explicitly exhaustive. There may be other reasons to claim the right of suppression. However, Popper never used any other examples as valid cause to suppress speech, and in the immediately prior statement, cautioned that suppressing democratic speech is "most unwise."

Given this, the implied claim that Popper and/or the Paradox of Tolerance supports the categorical suppression of "intolerant" speech (as the comic does) are inaccurate.

I guess my view on that section is still that it's just an example of what can happen and why to reserve the right to suppression, but not a threshold or reasonable scenario for when to apply suppression.

for it may easily turn out that..

To me, this really isn't saying: "this is one case where it's reasonable to apply suppression", but rather more simply: "because the following may easily occur with intolerant philosophies".

Anyway, I appreciate you taking the time to reply and expand more on your take. I think let's just say we understand it differently and leave it at that?

Read it again. He's using incitement to violence as a consequence to to be avoided, not as a driving factor.

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.

He goes on:

we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

He was writing at the end of WW2. He was saying it would have been fine to stop the Nazis at the start, before they were inciting violence because they couldn't be reasoned with.
It's clear you don't agree with his position , and that's okay. You can just disagree with him.