You made a wild assertion defining the thing as something it’s absolutely not about while implying I misunderstood it in the same breath, and now I should be charitable in how I interpret you?
Point being: paradox of intolerance is absolutely agnostic to what’s legal and sometimes it can mean punching nazis
The paradox of tolerance says that if you tolerate everything, you will tolerate the intolerant when they take over, which will lead to intolerance.
The solution to the paradox of tolerance is simply to not tolerate the intolerant taking over and instituting an intolerant society. There are many examples of un-punched Nazis who have not managed to manifest their intolerance (because the law protects people), as well as punched Nazis who remain unrepentant and go on to commit intolerant crimes. Famously, the actual Nazi party was engaged in street battles with the Communists in inter-war Germany, and this didn’t prevent their rise to power. Their rise was enabled by a complicit populace voting for them, as well as a weak constitution which allowed dictatorial rule (and of course other factors).
You brought up the paradox of tolerance in response to someone denouncing violent rhetoric. But you have never explained - and can’t explain because it’s not true - how violent rhetoric is necessary to prevent the erosion of tolerance in society.
Ok then I think you’re saying the paradox of tolerance doesn’t necessitate extra-legal action, maybe instead of “misunderstood” you meant “interpreted in ways I disagree with” and that’s fine.
It’s a classic liberal position, one that liberals often hold as they sleepwalk towards fascism, but I can forgive you for being a liberal.
However, there are many that won’t let laws (which are again morally apathetic and can and often are unjust or fascist in nature themselves) stop us from resisting fascism in every possible way as the situation calls for it. I’m thankful for those people.
There’s a debate to be had about the extent to which society should pre-emptively resist fascism, be that extra-judicially or within the law. But there is simply no paradox.
Calling it a paradox implies that there’s some contradiction between being tolerant in the sense of freedom of religion and expression - allowing people to peacefully exist whatever their background or identity - and the necessity (in order to main those freedoms) of resisting fascism. There isn’t; there is no fundamental reason why you need to restrict individual freedoms in order to prevent fascism.
It would be much more productive if, instead of using the “paradox of tolerance” as a bit of a thought-terminating cliche, people declared what kind of actions they thought were justified and why. Is violent rhetoric which, for example, calls for the death of Trump justified? I have no idea if you think it is because you switched from the specific to the general so quickly. There’s such a vast breadth of actions which people allude to when talking about the so-called paradox that some are bound to find broad appeal while some are bound to be extremist fringe stuff.
Thanks for taking the time to discuss.
