> Because it's hard to unanimously and unequivocally identify those who are intolerant as such.
> This seems to be the MO of this so-called "alt-right" stuff; legal or constitutional barriers are almost impossible to define or enforce.
These are fairly creepy statements. Very difficult to apply a charitable explanation to what you're saying.
> Owing to the beguiling nature of language and rhetoric, the intolerant can thrive and propagate
Sounds familiar.
What I am trying to say is that there is no need to identify intolerant people. All that is needed is to make sure that intolerant and tolerant people do not limit free speech. Protecting free speech can be done without worrying that people will misinterpret laws. For example, a law saying that anyone wishing to publish something to their site can do so regardless if they are anarchists, Nazis, conspiracy theorist, or anyone else. No mater how much hate the intolerant write they will not be able to stop other people from writing about how much they hate the intolerant people.
So we have the intolerant people in the government trying to suppress dissent from the tolerant. This is described in the first paragraph from the wiki link.
If there was a law to be created today making a list of speeches that should be suppressed, what topics do you think would be on there? With the current government, probably things like making it illegal to claim that climate change is happening.
If the left really wants to protect themselves during the upcoming 3 years, I would expect them to try to make free speech as protected as possible before it is too late.
Now if as a society you tolerate them without the use of force, they will try to destroy everyone else who is not part of the their group. Effectively, all tolerance will be eliminated.
The only way you could prevent this from happening is if you are prepared to contain such a group one way or the other. Or allow other people to not tolerate them by using force too. Either way you void your tolerance tenet.
Have to admit - it is indeed a paradox.
The wikipedia page on this notes people dispute this idea, sourcing John Rawls as a notable example.
What you have quoted here is saying physical safety is sincerely in danger. To me this is like him saying it's ok to eliminate terrorist groups, if that is what they truly are.
Suppose even we have this group that's intolerant of everyone else. But their intolerance is expressed in speech, not actions. In other words, they're saying, "you're all our enemies, and should be destroyed", but they aren't doing anything about it. Or maybe they are, but it consists of running a political party on that platform, encouraging people to vote them in.
As a society, you can absolutely tolerate them without the use of force, at least until the point where they actually get the majority of votes (but at that point, they are the society, and you're an outgroup in that society).
For some people this kind of online attacking and lack of freedom to communicate (through effective trolling) may be worse than physical abuse. In the end its the brain interpreting signals and outputting pain.
In the Middle East, this kind of outsize influence might be even worse. I am no expert on Middle East politics, but I think it's fair to say that the most intolerant factions have striven to gain the most political power, in spite of the political leanings of the mass populations over which they rule.
One issue with intolerant groups is that they tend toward violence and oppression of opposing speech. The tolerant and pacifist among us can allow them to gain enough minority power to effect a political coup, which can result in a societal coup, since having political control can grant you some degree of societal control.
In such a society, espousing tolerance might carry with it the risk of violent retribution (since tolerance is viewed by the "in" group as heresy/dissent). This will cause the intolerance to spread, even if seemingly against the will of more tolerant citizens. In this way, certain ideologies can have a "toxic" societal effect. You don't need to look far in modern history to find examples. And, that's the paradox.
> As a society, you can absolutely tolerate them without the use of force, at least until the point where they actually get the majority of votes (but at that point, they are the society, and you're an outgroup in that society).
You just answered your own question
My opinion is that if there's a real threat of extreme political forces coming to power through democratic means in your society, then that society is already broken, and restricting hate speech is basically just sweeping the shards under the rug and pretending that nothing's wrong.
One always has to worry even in a democracy, for instance here one party manipulated the voting system so even though they only got 49 percent of the votes in the election, they got 60% of the representation in the state legislature. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/us/politics/prominent-rep...
You can take the absolutist free speech argument that some in the US make from the first amendment (you write later down that English is not your native language) but Germany seems to be going OK banning Nazi speech/symbols.
I'd really like someone (sociologists) to update Paradox of Tolerance with what we've learned about the Overton Window, the normalization of hate speech (violent rhetoric).
David Neiwert (Orcinus) has deeply influenced (completely changed) my positions on tolerance, free speech. As I've stated else where, I used to be a Chomsky style ultimatist for free speech. Alas, people aren't nice.
Now I know that how we talk changes how we think, that propaganda works, that most people aren't even aware of when they've changed their mind.
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&tex...