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.
I disagree with some of that. Individual freedoms do sometimes need to be limited, for example “freedom” to oppress or “freedom” to deny hiring certain races.
It’s considered a paradox because by tolerating intolerance you allow intolerance to occur. And by being intolerant of intolerance you are allowing intolerance to occur.
The point of it is to highlight that intolerance is enabled by being too tolerant. We must not tolerate intolerance, paradoxically, in order to have a tolerant society.
The nuance being in what things are not being tolerated. Anarchist ideology is about abolishing hierarchy and building a completely egalitarian society, part of the work to do that means taking unjustly hoarded wealth away from the wealthy.
That’s another example of how egalitarian and tolerant goals require some intolerant actions.
It’s considered a paradox because by tolerating intolerance you allow intolerance to occur. And by being intolerant of intolerance you are allowing intolerance to occur.
If your principles of tolerance are, “everyone should be allowed to express their identity, religion and opinions peacefully and calmly, as long as their views do not call for violence” then that allows people to express their view that a certain race is inferior. But it does not result in the end of tolerance (as this popular but wrong summary express).
It’s only a paradox if you can only think of tolerance as being absolute, where any level of restriction on what people are allowed to do or express is “intolerant”.
Individual freedoms do sometimes need to be limited, for example “freedom” to oppress or “freedom” to deny hiring certain races.
But these “freedoms” are not freedoms any liberal or advocate of tolerance means by “freedoms.”
I’d go further than saying this is “the nuance”; this is the whole thing. Mentioning the paradox doesn’t give any guidance in what to do; just directly saying “we shouldn’t allow people to display swastikas” or " we should allow people to call for the assassination of presidential candidates" will result in a useful discussion.
This is exactly why it’s sleepwalking towards fascism. Letting people openly express intolerant views, educate their children with intolerant views, meet up and shout intolerant views, sign up as political parties with intolerant views… It leads to fascist takeover of democracy.
Sure they’re playing by the rules of the liberals but they’re exploiting every single advantage in terms of capital ownership and racial majority in order to “vote” their way to fascism.
There are laws that try to prevent this, but those laws are weak and the legislature is captured.
You fight them before they win the election, and if they do, and after they do.
Otherwise whoever has the most money and influence implements their vision for society, using the “dictatorship of the majority” to hurt marginalized people.
This is how liberalism enables fascism by not opposing capitalism and by not acknowledging that some freedoms need to be reined in