Far too often people forget that Right to Free Speech is not your first right, and it is superseded by other human rights above it.
Your right to Free Speech only applies as long as it doesn’t interfere with other people’s rights to safety and freedom from prejudice, hate, harm, etc…
It’s not that complicated and yet countless people always fuck something so straightforward up.
It begins with free speech, then you skip a few years and suddenly trans kids are scared for their lives. Speech affects people and has consequence, it is not something to take lightly.
That’s all fine and dandy until people change the definition of those words to suit their needs. Then all speech they disagree with is hate speech. Which has already happened.
That’s all fine and dandy until people change the definition of those words to suit their needs. Then all speech they disagree with is hate speech. Which has already happened
Let’s get some examples there chief.
Link what you think is “fine” and has been labeled hate speech
As a Floridian, the issue is pretty apparent. Conservatives are outlawing the current teachings about race in our schools all under the guise of STOPPING racism.
But that’s fascists calling reality fake…
We can’t take any of them seriously. I didn’t think I had to keep pointing that out in 2023.
I meant a rational person declaring something they don’t like as hate speech.
Do you understand how crazy it is to say:
We can’t call anything hate speech, because the people using hate speech all the time call everything they don’t like hate speech
Fascists have been trying to do that forever, dont start falling for it now all of a sudden.
But that’s fascists calling reality fake…
Yuuup. Just like they say about liberals calling for the protection of pronouns: “Genders is gender!”
So yeah, sorry, but we have to be VERY careful about any kind of “Free speech, except…” because anyone can fill in that blank.
Don’t act like this is some crazy tactic that no one would fall for. There are kids down the street from me RIGHT NOW learning about how slavery is misunderstood and it gave people lots of valuable skills.
ironically, slavery just being misunderstood is due to the “I will defend your right to say ANYTHING crowd”
Under freedom of speech I expect idiotic ideas like this to arise, what’s unacceptable is when that free speech is undermined so teachers can’t deliver the truth. Never undermine freedom of speech. This is where we end up.
No, they’re stopping woke political teachings of race. Not anything else. The differences in race and our history has always been taught, and will continue to be. Teaching black kids that they’re victims of white people, and white kids that’s they’re racists has NO place in their education. And that HAS been taught to them. Those teachings take innocent children and MAKE them racist against the other race. There’s no other outcome.
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Downvoted solely for use of “cucked”. For fuck’s sake, that word needs to die, not be “reclaimed” or whatever the fuck. It just makes me irrationally angry.
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Except black people’s lives have been made worse by white people. Where’s the lie? White kids are not being taught they’re racist. I got a “woke” education and white people were not taught that they’re inherently bigoted. In fact, we were taught that anyone can be a bigot, regardless of who they are, and that any category can be used to cause division and hate.
I wish you would take your face out of the slop of lies the right wing media feeds you. It makes me sad.
Where’s the lie?
as a white conservative, I think it’s an affront to justice that I can’t call black people N****s and have to “respect their rights”! true freedom is having the right to own people!
Cringe: denying you as a white conservatives are a bigot.
Based: proudly boasting that white conservatives are bigots.
Who is telling white kids they’re racist? Honestly.
Oh do you mean their ancestors? Because that’s kind of a big difference.
Exactly. Nobody is telling white kids they’re racist for existing. That dude just exemplifies the kind of brain rot you get when all your news comes from Breitbart, Fox News, and Facebook memes.
What school is teaching what you said? Are you familiar with actual CRT and where it is applied? Hint: not in grade schools. Nobody thinks white children should be ashamed of their race and vice versa. Giving students an accurate history and equipping them to understand racial issues is vital. Let’s not confuse ignorance with innocence.
The differences in race
Dog whistle.
Show me the curriculum that teaches black kids they’re victims and white kids that they’re all racist.
All righty – I didn’t realize I somehow found myself in a 3 week old thread. In case it happens to anyone else, I’m going to send my reply anyways, but I’m not going to reply directly to him because I see no point in engaging with shithead racists 3-weeks later!
The school he used as an example:
https://www.dcnewsnow.com/news/local-news/virginia/loudoun-county/loudoun-co-schools-report-nearly-900-racial-slur-and-hate-speech-incidents-this-past-school-year/Uh … 900 uses of racial slurs / racist behavior reported and more than half of them being the N-word … seems to me like maybe they deserved to taught that they’re being racist because … [shocker] they were being racist!
Also, ONE fucking example of a moderately sized (~435,000) suburb isn’t the smoking gun they think it is, even if it turned out to be accurate (which, this isn’t).
Details on the specific incident they’re likely whinging about though:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/partisan-war-over-teaching-history-racism-stokes-tensions-us-schools-2021-06-23/You’ll notice that there is zero proof of what he said, just that right wing whack jobs lost their fucking minds and got stirred into a fury because of the CRT boogeyman.
Loudon County, VA. Do your research, that LITERALLY happened. Made national news, I’m thinking you’re not in the US, not a person in the country isn’t familiar with the chaos of that place, Hardly contained there.
There have been some laws passed by several states to label criticisms of Israel’s apartheid state as hate speech and outlaw BDS boycotts based on that.
Do not assume the right wing won’t try to turn whatever tactic you find effective against them back at you. That doesn’t mean you should stop using it though; they certainly aren’t going to drop it now that they’ve found a way to wield it.
That’s the same as the other example someone gave…
Fascists calling something hate speech so we stop talking about their fascism.
Why does this work on so many people?
What logic are you using that this means we can’t use the term “hate speech” anymore?
I specifically said to continue using it. Right wingers using it for right wing goals doesn’t mean that it’s inherently bad or something. Labeling things hate speech is a useful tool, but don’t trick yourself into thinking your opponent can’t use it.
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Link what you think is “fine” and has been labeled hate speech
Sure, lets start with having a penis making you a man, and a vagina making you a woman. Referencing indisputable biology has been called both hate and a phobia more times than I can count.
Ah, there it is. At least you’re willing to say it and not tiptoe around it like a coward.
The reason the scientific community does not endorse the conservative gender ideology, is because it causes much more direct harm than good to human happiness. If we don’t let trans people transition, their lives are so much worse that they are seriously likely to kill themselves. Most of the negative consequences of transition come from bigotry, something that is unequivocally on the bigot, not the trans person. Most people who “detransition” after taking hormones do so because of hate rather than because they realize it wasn’t for them.
There is no direct harm caused to people who aren’t trans so long as they treat other adults as equals, and let children access the help they need. Trans people are not more likely to be the perpetrators of violence, they’re more likely to be the victims of it. Male predators don’t need to pretend to be a woman to get into women’s bathrooms or intrude on their spaces. The anti trans rhetoric is based on lies.
The biggest thing you need to recognize about your position is that it helps the insanely corrupt and selfish far right political groups like the American GOP. It is a wedge issue used to promote incompetent rulers who hate anyone that isn’t a rich male member of the largest cultural group. Even if you don’t believe you hate trans people, your support allows trans people to be legally persecuted for trying to live. I am not exaggerating, trans people are losing lifesaving treatment and being forced from public life, thanks to the refusal of people like you to stand up against the bigots.
Has anyone ever told you how unfathomably based you are?
You did prove them right, though. It was fine to say a woman is someone with a vagina and a man is someone with a penis in the past and now you consider this hate speech.
So, their point is correct. People change the definition of words and if you still use that words you are treated as a bigot and worse.
Are you all misunderstanding this discussion on puporse? Or do people struggle to understand how replying on Lemmy works? You all are now arguing against me how it’s bigoted to misgender someone.
I will put the discussion into this comment again, just because I hope you seriously just lost track of what was said.
Person says:
That’s all fine and dandy until people change the definition of those words to suit their needs. Then all speech they disagree with is hate speech. Which has already happened.
This gets 10 upvotes, 120 downvotes.
Another person answers:
Let’s get some examples there chief. Link what you think is “fine” and has been labeled hate speech
This gets 72 upvotes, 2 downvotes.
The person replies with:
Sure, lets start with having a penis making you a man, and a vagina making you a woman. Referencing indisputable biology has been called both hate and a phobia more times than I can count.
5 upvotes, 42 downvotes.
And now people go on a tangent how it’s bigoted, dangerous and wrong to misgender people. How the defintion of words change etc.
Are you all dense or something? That’s literally what the person was saying! But by pointing that out you all somehow try to paint the person as bigoted. That’s completely besides the point? Is someone else seeing what’s going on here?!
It was fine to say a woman is someone with a vagina and a man is someone with a penis in the past and now you consider this hate speech.
Still is fine, you wont go to jail for accidently misgendering someone. At worst you may illicit an awkward cough in the room and maybe someone will take you aside later and be like “bruh they are (other gender) haha” and you would be like “Oh shit! My bad!” and that should typically be the end of it.
I’m a dude with just very long hair, cuz I like its style. I get misgendered all the time from the back, people call me a lady or ma’am all the time.
When they see me up close they often go “Oh geez Im sorry!” and I just laugh and tell them not to worry about it, it happens all the time. Thats about it. Thats the whole interaction.
Thats right, misgendering happens to cis people all the time too, and this type of social interaction is an ancient one that has been around for a millenia.
No one actually gives a shit.
Now if you PURPOSEFULLY misgender someone to try and hurt them…
That is actually a fucking problem and now you are being an asshole. But thats not just for trans folks! That applies to cis people just as much.
Let me ask you this: You walk into a bar with a biker gang, and a big burly dude is in there and you call him a woman, and he informs you sternly (cough) that he is a man, and you keep calling him a lady and are clearly trying to piss him off, you tell me how well that will probably turn out for you.
What the hell are you talking about?
In no way or form did I say it is okay to misgender someone.
Please try to understand what this discussion was about. It was about the very fact that words and things that were okay to say in the past, are sometimes not okay to say anymore today.
And other words change if they are acceptable or not. In our grandparent’s childhoods, it was usual to call a black person a n*****. Now it isn’t, and that’s a good thing, isn’t it?
But that’s not the point of the discussion? The person said that things that used to be fine can suddenly be not tolerated. People downvoted the person and claimed that’s not true.
N***** used to just be the word for black people, coming from the word Latin “niger”([ˈnɪɡɛr]) and meaning the color black, almost every Romance language still uses it, but I would strongly suggest not using it in the USA.
??? So you agree?!
Except the person argued about what IS fine, not what WAS considered fine in the past. The person is literally arguing that we ought to be able to misgender people. They claim it is morally righteous to misgender trans people. Their reasoning is that people are only labeling misgendering as hate speech because they disagree with it, not because it is actually hate speech.
I provided good reasons as to why misgendering and promoting the conservative gender ideology that causes it is harmful, debunking their argument that the perspective is being labeled only due to disagreement. Let’s look back at their original argument.
That’s all fine and dandy until people change the definition of those words to suit their needs. Then all speech they disagree with is hate speech. Which has already happened.
The argument that hate speech laws could be used frivolously to silence those who disagree is a valid hypothetical concern. Where this person fucks up is by claiming things are already being labeled as hate speech even when they aren’t. This is suspect because there aren’t many places that seriously outlaw hate speech, and most of those places have yet to overstep the law in any real way.
In places like the US where people are at best, socially shunned for hate speech, it’s uncommon for people to falsely claim bigotry on a large scale. Usually when a false claim is made, the falsehood is in the description of events, not the moral principle being applied to.
When another poster pushes back, the person claims the conservative gender ideology isn’t hateful and is deemed as such because people disagree with it, and argument I showed to be lacking. It is hateful because it inherently promotes hate and discrimination. You’re trying to run interference for the poster by misunderstanding the moral principle that they appealed to.
They did not appeal to the idea that words get changed to make you look wrong for using the old definition. This would be like if “to flame” was understood to mean criticize, but everyone forgot that usage and then you said “we should flame that guy.” You meant something reasonable but people didn’t understand you. That’s what you claim is the problem when you say:
People change the definition of words and if you still use that words you are treated as a bigot and worse.
The poster claimed that the old definition is actually good and should still be used. I pointed out how that the old definition is problematic, even by the logic of the past. It excludes and includes people it shouldn’t which results in real harm. I laid out the real harm done by those definitions, allowing the poster to make an informed decision on whether to still hold that definition. If they still choose to insist on that old definition that harms a group of people for characteristics they didn’t choose, then they are a bigot. Harming a group for innate characteristics is bigotry.
TLDR: You ironically moved the goalposts and misunderstood what the poster was arguing. I did not prove them right in any way.
This is ridiculous, really. It does feel as if you were bots going aggressively off on a tangent with no connection to the content or context.
Or you are simply unwilling/unable to make a distinction between different levels of communication.
Do you agree that sometimes things were fine to say in the past and now they are considered hate speech? That was the topic of the discussion.
To prevent you and others from getting caught up in and endless loop of being triggered, I will provide another example instead: In the past it was okay to address a woman as “Fräulein X” when she was unmarried. And as “Frau X” when she was married (in German). No one cared about that, now, many people will considered it rude an bigoted and call you a sexist when doing it anyway.
Now that I think about it I feel it’s actually quite easy to find a few examples, and the question to the original poster to provide an example was seemingly just bait so you all can get enraged for a bit. And everyone who didn’t participate in the overall outrage, you generously consider and treat as a bigot you have to correct as well.
Language will always be a moving target. If you said “woman used to mean x and now it means y” you’d be fine. The problem isn’t that language changes with us, it’s equivocation. Using women two different ways in a conversation is a dick move.
But I did not say it was a problem that it changes. I pointed out that it did indeed change and for some reason people get triggered by that.
You need to learn that such things are a part of life and you have to deal with it in order to be a member of society. The existence of progress doesn’t negate the need for hate speech protection. All societies have to change with time and that’s okay.
I think you all forgot the purpose behind policies like freedom of speech and natural rights and that’s why you’re getting all mixed up.
What the hell are you talking about?
In no way or form did I say it is okay to misgender someone.
Please try to understand what this discussion was about. It was about the very fact that words and things that were okay to say in the past, are sometimes not okay to say anymore today.
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What the hell planet have you been living on? Its done constantly.
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What the hell planet have you been living on? Its done constantly.
maybe you should stop watching conservative media, for example ditch Joe Rogan as a start.
LOL! Joe Rogan isn’t a Conservative. Libertarian at best.
Ah, so when someone transitions from woman to man and have a penis grafted on them, it makes them a man? Good on you to be so progressive.
This is a definition dispute, not biological. Mostly anyway. I could have this conversation with a lot of people and it wouldn’t be any sort of hate speech, but it’s pretty obvious what you’re about here.
I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you’ve been had. No one is coming to take your precious heteronormativity and matching pronouns away from you.
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Dude, you’re gonna have to accept you can’t say hate speech or express hate toward other people based on superficial characteristics at some point. You’re only making it harder on yourself quibbling over semantics.
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If your ability to label someone as a bigot relies on your own poor understanding of language, then you aren’t fighting hate speech, you’re just a manipulative asshole.
That’s what you ought to be telling the bigots, but here you are defending them.
Never claimed otherwise, and not what I said, learn how to read.
So what you’re saying is that it’s important to instill strong morals and encourage critical thinking in the general populous so that we can recognize the difference between actual hate speech and what is being spun as hate speech in order to further the agendas of those who would oppress us and therefore any action made to suppress public education must be the precursor to a larger scheme to gain control by manipulating the ignorant?
Hate speech is hate speech. Doesn’t matter if it was being used ironically or to trick people.
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Which has already happened.
Citation needed
Not OP but in my country there have been pushes to label criticism of Islam as hate speech against muslims. Partucularly troublesome given how Islamic views of women and LGBT individuals have become more prevalent.
Thats not how Hate Speech works, its explicitly about intent and not the actual words used, at least in Canada.
Canada doesn’t specify any specific words that are “banned” or whatever, and the law is explicitly setup to handle that no matter what you do or dont say, all it cares is about the intent behind your words and whether they intended to incite violence/hate.
the tolerance paradox
If everyone is tolerant of every idea, then intolerant ideas will emerge. Tolerant people will tolerate this intolerance, and the intolerant people will not tolerate the tolerant people.
The solution is that it’s a social contract. I agree to tolerate your weirdness and quirks. You agree to do the same to myself and others.
By being intolerant (without a good reason), they break the social contract. Therefore they are no longer protected by it either.
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Mmmm, milk toast.
This doesn’t seem so much of a liberal thing but a social centrist thing. There’s plenty of people on the left that are socialist/communist but don’t care as much about social issues. I recall someone arguing that the people who wanted to kidnap Gov Whitmer were experiencing “economic anxiety”. You see it too with leftists who float the idea of working with MAGA hats for economic populism.
It’s like when people say there’s basically only one party or there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans. From a purely economic perspective, sure, the differences are rather small. Pretty much just comes down to taxes. But the two parties are polar opposites when it comes to social issues. To say there’s no difference is basically ignoring the social aspect.
Enlightened centrist or liberal or apologist, it’s just cringe.
anyone telling you to defend nazi’s isnt a lib.
You’d think that’d be obvious and you wouldnt have to be told that, yet here we are, having to tell you the blatant fuckin obvious.
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Oh you sweet summer child.
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You really need someone to explain to you that the guy in the comic is a drawing and is just a fable for making a point, and not a real liberal actually defending real nazis?
The problem is it’s not a simplistic line. I strongly disagree with the nazi viewpoint. They also break the social contract so often they’ve voided all rights to be covered by it. At the same time, some people want to take it too far. There are still later lines we shouldn’t cross. (E.g. A mob beating Nazis with baseball bats is never acceptable).
Unfortunately, Nazis like playing games, and trying to mess with the scale of problems. Some people try and step in and “help” without realising that they are dealing with untrustworthy information. This can tie people’s minds into an impressive knot, just as they intended.
(E.g. A mob beating Nazis with baseball bats is never acceptable).
real heavy “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” vibes from this.
Endgame for fascists, nazis, authoritarians, etc is violence. Violence against you, me, and anyone else they declare “undesirable”
The only way to defeat them is violence. To protect a civil society and a way of life that allows humanity to blossom in all its various shades and shapes.
You hide behind betters, pretending to have a moral highground because you didnt get the blood on your hands, while benefiting from the blood on everyone elses.
I don’t think it’s so much violence itself but the threat of violence. Nazis and fascists need to know that if they get violent, we’ll return it a hundredfold in kind.
It’s kind of like the phrase that a sheathed sword is sometimes enough to keep the peace. The threat of it being used is what keeps people in line. What we need are more visible sheathed swords – unless of course we need to draw the weapon.
I never said I’m not willing to get blood on my hands. Violence can be required. It’s an unfortunate sign though that we have already failed badly. However, if violence is required, it should be controlled, and focused. A mob beating with fists is spontaneous, a mob using baseball bats is a lynching.
The difference between a mob and a militia is in the organisation and responsibilities. A militia has a chain of command, and so someone who can stop things going too far. They can also make sure the actual job is done, rather than straying into mindless violence.
If violence is required, we are morally required to apply it. However, we are also morally required to apply it precisely in controlled amounts, towards the required goal. Otherwise we can easily degenerate into the exact thing we claim to fight.
The other thing to remember is that we can be baited. Mindless violence might feel good, but if it doesn’t advance the cause, it’s worthless. Even worse, it can justify the actions of the other side, even if the balance is still disproportionate.
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The amount of people trying to middleground this shit to advance nazi causes shows you just how fucking good they are at infiltrating discussions to try and shift their bullshit to a more normalized position with this soft hands shit.
Its blatantly black and white. If you arent against it, you are enabling it. Not a lot of things in life are black and white, but this particular instance is. There is no middle ground, no concessions, nothing. Only absolute rejection. Anything less is just is just letting them win and advance.
Someone else being a twat won’t make me violate my principles. I’m not good to others because they’re good to me. I’m good to others because they’re an end themselves, not a means to my ends.
If you are good to nazi’s because they are good to you, regardless of what they do to others, Then your principles, and you as a person, are shit, and you should be treated as nothing but an infiltrator for their cause, because that is what you are.
I’m good to everyone because they’re humans. Even pieces of shit.
So you’d be kind and nice to Hitler?
I’ve actually answered this before. While you guys are arguing over who gets to peel his dick like a banana I’d slit his throat.
That doesn’t sound like being good to him.
Whatever you say, Nazi. Enjoy your contemporaries.
And enjoy your day.
And that’s completely your right to do. However, that is not what the tolerance contract covers. It goes beyond what most people would tolerate normally. Also, people cannot both break the social contract, and then insist you hold up the other end.
By example, I’ve previously had long debates over nazi Germany and Hitler’s economic recovery. I would even tolerate Nazis, if they followed the social contract from their side. Unfortunately, the various Nazis groups regularly break that contract. They then try and hide behind it, when others take offence.
Conversely, I also disagree with the “tankies”. They tend not to break the social contract however. This gives them the right to reasonable tolerance of them, and their views. They respect others, despite disagreeing with them. They, in turn, gain a level of respect in discussions.
Don’t get me wrong, I am tolerant of a lot, from purely moralistic reasoning. The social contract is a larger entity however. It formalises what many of us feel. It also shows us where the lines are, beyond which people are abusing our tolerance. It’s the larger social version of our internal morals.
I don’t find social contract arguments all that convincing, but we can just pretend my social contract is “no violence or you get fucked” and ignore that. Tankies are way easier to talk to than Nazis, though I don’t really find myself talking to nazis often - just run of the mill bigots. Anyone with consistent standards or ethics is fairly easy to talk to, even if we disagree.
In my personal life I tend to take on more than half of the social costs in some friendships and I probably do the same when arguing with certain types of people. I’m more tolerant than I strictly need to be, but I feel like treating people like that is necessary for me.
The social contract concept is over-used by people who try to make it cover too much. It becomes a one-sided contract of adhesion which you’re assumed to have agreed to simply by existing. This, however, is simple reciprocation—it’s more like a truce than a contract. It would be unreasonable to expect tolerance from others while refusing to grant the same tolerance to them.
Of course there is no obligation to be intolerant just because the other person is; you are free to make a better choice.
Honestly these days if you say you tolerate someones ideas, but you don’t agree with them, then you are just called a ist word
There are levels of tolerance in there. E.g. I’m not gay. I have no interest in men. The idea of being sexual with a man is mildly repulsive to me.
With this, the bare minimum of tolerance is not actively working against the existence and legality of being gay.
Next is the “none of my business” level of tolerance. What happens between 2 consenting adults is down to them.
Above that is acceptance. Gay people have developed their own culture and community. While it’s not for me, I recognise that its existence and celebration makes our overall culture more dynamic and interesting. It also provides a lot of happiness to others. Accepting and rolling with that provides a lot of positivity to others, without significant cost to me.
However, if I was approached by a gay guy and propositioned, there is no issue with me turning them down. I try and be polite about it, but being firm isn’t being intolerant. (Luckily, most gay guys take being rejected a LOT better than some straight guys do).
Going back to your example. Going up to a black guy and expressing that, while you tolerate them not being a slave, you don’t agree with it. This is intolerant, it is an incredibly strong dog whistle of your tolerance is forced.
Conversely, if, during a debate on religion and it’s effects, you express your view that you accept people are religious, but don’t agree with it, that is better. The context is a debate, and you can explain your reasoning better. It also lacks the dog whistle element that makes it bigoted.
Basically, context matters, A LOT.
Thanks, really good thinking :)
I’ve found crystallising my morals into words and logic is useful. It both makes it easier to explain, as well as finding holes in my views. My moral framework has advanced significantly over my life. At no point did I think I was immoral, however, I have found significant flaws in my viewpoints. I’ve also found a lot of biases, which I’m mildly horrified that I ever held.
I’m still far from perfect, but aiming that way, as best I can.
semantic satiation incoming
Thanks. I need to put my mental dissonance to words.
This comic is a good example of the Paradox of Tolerance. You can’t tolerate intolerance… it does not end well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_toleranceTolerance of everything except intolerance, except that of intolerance. “Paradox” resolved.
It’s not a paradox at all if you view society and government as a social contract entered by all parties. The conditions for being protected by the tolerance provided for in the Constitution is that you extend that tolerance to everyone else. The intolerant have breached that contract and are therefore no longer protected by it.
Yes, tolerance itself is valued, and if you’re not tolerant, you need not be tolerated by others.
Tolerance is a social contract.
Those who dont abide by it, try to use it as a weapon against those who do, to enable their intolerance to grow and spread.
Those who don’t abide by the social contract are a threat to society as a whole, and should not receive its protection.
Because you end up empowering them, and weakening society against them.
Intolerance must be put down, with force. It is not hypocritical. It is not paradoxical. For the garden of tolerance to thrive, the intolerant weeds must be ripped out of the soil and disposed of in such a way that they can not spread their seeds further, because if you don’t… nothing will thrive but the weeds.
When I was growing up it was never about tolerating intolerance. It was about dragging it out into the sunlight so you could kill it. They have a right to say anything they want so we can make an example of them and they don’t go into hiding and do dumb shit.
Of course that depended on the mainstream leadership believing in democracy and not leaning into extremism. Because the GOP has switched sides on democracy it’s a liability now instead of a strength. A swing too far from the laws of England our founders meant to forestall.
Lotta talk in here about free speech that seems to be missing the point.
The right for someone to spew hateful rhetoric freely does not supercede my right not to tolerate it. The first amendment does not give the hate monger, nor the englightened centrist immunity from the social consequences of their public opinions.
No one ever gets the point until people start getting beaten, threatened, wounded, maimed or killed. They’ll keep arguing the details until there is an authoritarian government telling you what you can or can’t do or say.
Then everyone stands around wondering how it all happened.
Most regular people I know just want to live life and not really bother with anyone else in a negative way … in fact most people I’ve ever known would do something good for the other person if it meant it would help. Most people are just good and have a very good nature.
It’s the psychotic few billionaires and millionaires out there that want a world with authoritarian fascist government in power because it means those wealthy few get to keep all their money and if they do get their way, they can exponentially grow the wealth they already have. It’s all about money and power.
It’s all about a handful of morons who aren’t aware of their finite life that believe they can become temporary rulers of the world.
Some number of people are getting maimed, wounded, or killed. Do people have a threshold number at which point they decide it’s too much?
I like to explain it as such:
The Mediterranean is full of dead bodies from asylum seekers, but people still bath there. People will not bathe in a pool, if that pool has a single cadaver in it. Some might say that it doesn’t count because you can’t see the bodies in the Mediterranean, but you can in the pool. but even if the pool has an angle and the corpse obscured behind said angle, people won’t swim in it if they are told this in advance. so clearly there must be some ratio of dead people to water that society sees as acceptable.
so to answer your question, yes, and we haven’t reached that point yet, and the right is doing it’s best to keep that bar as high as possible.
I like this explanation too, actually
Never expected to see this joke used in such a way
Usually hunger … if you look through history, change doesn’t happen in societies because people are poor, abused, imprisoned, impoverished or have a lack of luxuries … change often happens when people go hungry because at that point they all realize that if they have no food, they will die … and when they can see death, especially their own death, they no longer have anything to lose and will fight for some kind of change …
And even that want for change is dangerous because it can come in many forms … good change, bad change, fascist change, socialist change, democratic change, authoritarian change.
in your post the thing I liked the most, the most significant in my opinion, it’s
They’ll keep arguing the details
this is the sum of all the thread. there’s so much on this few words. in my understanding,vsums up perfectly what I’d describe as the paranoia feeding the knitpicking and the extenuating effort to manage the malice. thank you
Nice, dark touch: The last panel has two people being deported. They seem to form an SS rune.
It also loosely reminds of Niemöller:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Hate speech is not the same as free speech. Free speech was for reporters to keep them from being jailed so it’s not even applicable for what this guy thinks he’s defending with that phrase.
Image Transcription:
A comic by Jennie Breeden and Obby from site TheDevilsPanties.com.
The first panel shows a mustached person with short hair wearing a t-shirt and sitting at a laptop. A speech bubble rising from the laptop reads “I just don’t think you people belong in our society!”
The second panel shows a different short-haired person wearing a t-shirt, long pants, and sneakers, sitting on a park bench and looking at a mobile phone. A speech bubble from the mobile phone reads “Well, I don’t agree with what you’re saying, but I’ll fight for your right to say it.”
The third panel shows both people standing on the side of a street. The first person is holding a Bible and pointing across the road at a group of shadowed people carrying signs with hearts and pride flags. He is speaking to a crowd of people and saying “Your kind is a betrayal to God! You’re a drag on the whole country!” To which the second person is shrugging and responding “That’s appalling, but we can’t have free speech without the free marketplace of ideas!”
The fourth panel shows the first person standing at a lectern and wearing a suit with an American flag behind them and a shadowed crowd in front of them. They are saying “We will stop the woke ideology that’s destroying America!”. The second person is standing close to the foreground and shrugging, saying “Democracy needs this discourse, so let’s agree to disagree.”
The fifth panel shows the second person being dragged away by people in uniform while saying “Wait! Where are you taking me? You can’t just get rid of me!”. The first person is standing between the first person and an open paddy wagon, wearing a black uniform and looking smug as they reply “Let’s just agree to disagree.”
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]
Removed by mod
Consider… what went wrong is that no one pushed back on Panel Two using the very same free marketplace of ideas.
Panel One: Fighting for everyone’s right to express themselves is fine. Good as it is.
Panel Two: Destroy the bigot’s arguments and describe to the public what society will be like if the bigot gets their way. Is that tolerating intolerance?
Exactly. That’s how we were able to nip the whole global warming thing in the bud. Thank god rational arguments always prevail.
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Panel Two: Destroy the bigot’s arguments and describe to the public what society will be like if the bigot gets their way. Is that tolerating intolerance?
I can’t believe no one thought of this. And here planned parenthood and the grieving families at funerals of vets have just been sitting by listening to the noise.
Calling people out on their BS is the right line to draw for me personally, but I still want that person to have the right to express their opinion. We just need to teach people that it’s ok to be wrong as long as you can admit it and learn from it. No idea gets processed until pushed from an opposing party.
Sitting back and doing nothing teaches nothing. Calling it appalling and informing the person why they’re wrong is the right step toward change. But if you can’t say it in a way that makes them hear you, then you’re doomed to have the argument all over again.
The past twenty years have demonstrated handily that logical debate simply does not work. What’s needed is the emotive/motivational form of argumentation that puts the speaker’s thoughts, beliefs, and intent at center stage and actually does work. Bonus points is that it works regardless of how well educated whoever you’re speaking to is so there’s no longer the educational barrier in place allowing meaningful conversation.
I’d say that’s tolerating intolerance and is the right thing to do. Once they switch to violence though, remember you have a robust right to defend yourself, your community and your loved ones.
But then you are called anti islamist or isla mophobic. Yes, i went there.
Yes it is tolerating intolerance.
In the Republic, book VIII, Socrates identifies as democracy’s leading cause of corruption precisely that thing makes it seemingly so beautiful. In a democracy, citizens become inebriated with freedom (Euleteria). By making it the highest goal, people in a democracy end up leading democracy to its downfall.
True ca. 2400 years ago; still true today.
They misspelled ‘intolerance’ in the first panel 👀
Huh. Good catch! I’ve had this pic for years, but never noticed that, and you’re the first person to point it out!
I wish that people made a better version of that picture, since it heavily distorts what Popper said (PDF page 232), that is far more nuanced and situational. I’ll quote it inside spoilers as it’s long-ish:
the paradox
Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: 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 even to suppress them, 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 anything as deceptive as rational argument, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists. 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, exactly as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping; or as we should consider incitement to the revival of the slave trade.
A TL;DR of that would be “an open society needs to claim the right to suppress intolerant discourses and, under certain conditions, suppress them”. In no moment the picture makes reference to those conditions.
That’s important here because mechanisms used to curb down intolerant discourses can be also misused to curb down legitimate but otherwise inconvenient ones, so they need to be used with extreme caution, only as much as necessary; Popper was likely aware of that.
I agree with your criticism of the pic. Thank you for the quote!
What the fuck is wrong with Al Sharpton? He’s a real jerk in this comic.
He got tired of trying to do things the right way.
