do evil games expect evil prizes, thank you Rainer Forst

edit: this is a pedagogical post, not a philosophical one. i actually fully agree with the paradox of tolerance and its conclusion! i just find that it doesn’t work as well as an educational tool for introducing people to the concept. sorry for any confusion :)

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No, we need to find a way to tolerate absolutely everyone, down to the worst monster.

Granted if someone makes a racist statement in public, it is still appropriate to treat them as if they just puked their last five drinks in the middle of the bar. If someone commits a hate crime, it’s still right and proper to arrest and detain them and try to figure out how they’ve gone mad.

But even fascists, neo-nazis and members of the white Christian nationalist movement deserve to have their rights respected (to the extent we can allow while preserving the safety of the community), which includes due process, and fair treatment while detained.

Firstly, we human beings are prone towards bigotry (what is likely – we aren’t absolutely certain – was how human tribes protected themselves from infectious disease, case in point, COVID-19 spreading worldwide inside a year), and secondly we have to assume that antisocial behavior is not a character flaw, but a physiological problem, even if we don’t immediately have treatment for it yet.

Generally, in functional societies, racial supremacy movements and religious-political movements don’t get much purchase except due to large amounts of precarity, and they can be mitigated further with information- and electoral-literacy. Or in Marxist speak moving more people from the lumpen-proletariat into the proletariat. And yes, it’s a problem because working people harder in the factories not only reduces political involvement but also parenting, resulting in intergenerational neglect and dysfunction.

Sadly, our ownership class prefer to be kings of a petty banana state than middle managers in an intergalactic civilization. And it’s so consistent among the ownership class that again, it looks like mental illness or a human bias, which is why they put only tiny fractions of their wealth into public works, and then ones that won’t ever threaten their position as a patrician.

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2 points

But even fascists, neo-nazis and members of the white Christian nationalist movement deserve to have their rights respected (to the extent we can allow while preserving the safety of the community), which includes due process, and fair treatment while detained.

That is a separate, different issue than tolerance. You’ve moved the goal posts.

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