this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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Thank goodness.
I'm reminded of a story I read a while back - not sure where - about how if you let a Nazi into your bar, you eventually end up running a Nazi bar. I think the same applies to online forums. You let Nazis overrun a forum, everyone else leaves, and eventually you might as well just be running Stormfront.
Karl Popper's "paradox of tolerance"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
In my other (non-Lemmy) life, I've written extensively about the paradox of tolerance, and how recognizing it de-fangs the arguments of wanna-be totalitarians.
For people not in the know, Popper proposed that infinite, unrestricted "tolerance" is paradoxically self-destroying, because it necessarily means tolerating attempts to destroy tolerance.
The solution is simple and obvious in retrospect, but so many people have trouble finding it and worry about whether they're hypocrites or not for refusing to tolerate Nazis and the like. The solution is this:
Recognize the fact that you never promised to tolerate Nazis.
No one ever promised to tolerate everything without caveats or restrictions. Instead, we promised to tolerate each other, to respect one another's right to exist. In other words, tolerance is a peace treaty.
As soon as you realize that, it becomes obvious that you needn't tolerate Nazis, because they have broken the treaty. You are not bound by it when it comes to them. In fact, given the nature of people like that, they were never really signatories to the treaty in the first place, because they start from a basis of intending to destroy it.
Oh, how they hate it when people realize this and refuse to put up with Nazi bullshit or apologize for that refusal. Well, sorry, Nazi turd burglars, we never promised to put up with your shit in the first place, so y'all can fuck right off.
Tolerance and peace are both treaties. We agree to leave each other be and not take up arms in exchange for the other to do the same.
You have no obligation to be tolerant of someone who is intolerant or preaches intolerant ideology.
You have no obligation to be peaceful to belligerence and violence.