To everyone pearl clutching in response to this correct meme with one of the following phrases:
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“That’s how you create an echo chamber”
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“paradox of intolerance doesn’t say how to fight fascism”
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“This is about silencing opposing thought”
I would like to take this moment to remind you that the paradox of intolerance isn’t about exiling those who disagree on economic policy; it’s about recognizing and directly opposing those who are trying to harm or disadvantage others and doing so in a meaningful way that will actually change the outcome. You can’t debate Hitler out of doing a genocide, but you could have jailed him before he gained power.
Being too spineless to call out and fight intolerance enables fascism. The longer you live wrapped up in your civility politics, the overton window shifts further right, and it strengthens the fascist support. It happened in pre-WW2 Germany, and it’s being repeated in dozens of countries worldwide. If you feel the urge to block me, go ahead…
…but know that this is your fault
Edit: spelling
The paradox of intolerance is not a paradox. Tolerance is a social contract, folks who demand us tolerate intolerance are violating the social contract and should be ignored.
Sorry, tone doesn’t come across well. I can’t tell if you’re trying to correct me on a point, because I agree with you.
I read it as continuing your train of thought.
You do indeed agree.
Big aside:Maaaaaan, I catch myself doing this all the time. Posting what I think is :yes, and… But people don’t realize that and think I’m disagreeing… and then much confusion ensues.
Tldr, I gotta stop assuming shit and be better at setting context…
I’ve just realized that my tendency to start comments irl and online with “Yeah…” might in part be a defense mechanism to avoid being misunderstood as disagreeing.
Thank you!
I’d argue it’s not a paradox because it relies on two different definitions of tolerance.
- Tolerance 1: Intolerant opinions should be allowed to exist without criminal punishment.
- Tolerance 2: Everyone should treat intolerant opinions like other opinions for the purposes of platforming, how you feel about the speaker, etc.
Tolerance 1 is basically the kind of free speech principles adopted by most democratic societies and is probably necessary for such societies to remain free. Tolerance 2 is just silly. If you’re in a forum specifically for debating deplorable opinions, fine. But there’s no reason that a politics forum needs to cater to deplorable opinions.
THANK YOU. In a Post about banning Germany’s far-right Party AFD, some people wrote such delusional nonsense! It’s unbelievable how far some People go to defend POS like the AFD.
I was recently reminded about the caveats that Germany has on the “no Nazi parties” rule. It’s truly insane that it’s essentially (this is hyperbole, but less than you’d think) “you can ban a party from running if they’re Nazis… As long as they call themselves Nazis, and they’ve won an election, and the leader is called Hitler, and the leader went to art school. All other parties must be allowed to run”
Yeah it’s quite a challenge to pass that threshold. But it is even more insane that there is a Party which passes this with flying colours and it is STILL a huge debate .__.
You all should see the shit going on in a post about Gisèle Pelicot where they are literally saying that the tiny fraction of women who commit sexual assault is an excuse for decrying the (absolutely understandably angry) women holding signs that say “NOT ALL MEN BUT ALWAYS A MAN”.
I really fucking despise these false equivalencies.
I mean…it’s literally not always a man. I get the point but that’s a terrible slogan.
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You can’t debate someone that isn’t arguing in good faith, and these people never ever are. Yeet and move on, save your energy for the people that have just been mislead by the altright and may actually change their opinions.
All you can do is force them to face their convictions. What happens after that is up to them. Just do what Tim Walz did to JD Vance when he asked about the election results, and bluntly ask the root question.
“Do you think migrants are less important than citizens? What about men vs. women? Or gay people vs. straight people? Or trans people vs. cisgender people?”
“Do you think that the government should force people to follow your religion? If the government picked a different religion than yours, would you just agree to follow it?”
Hypothetically there could be bigots you could have a rational debate with, but they tend to not remain bigots for long.
I knew one. Nazi-tatted dude. White separatist (he was careful in specifying separatist, not supremacist). He believed racial conflict was inevitable (not a full on race war just ongoing low scale conflict) and he’d decided he’s white, he’s gonna be on the white side of the conflict. He was moderately respectful of other races as long as they didn’t come into what he considered white territory.
Aka the bigot to UwU pipeline.
I 100% believe the lemmy developers’ firm belief in this policy is why the platform was able to take off eventually. In the early days we would frequently have people join and then stomp their feet about free speech and the slur filter and then fuck off to whatever variant of voat was en vogue (…that was wolfballs for a little while). It was a small community, discussions were heavily (but not exclusively) tech and communism, but I don’t think it would have been an appealing landing spot if that kind of toxicity had been allowed to grow.
Absolutely no question there’s more hostility in the conversations here after redditors came here, but more users will do that. The exodus has made it a lot easier for me to abandon some of the smaller subreddits I was still active on.
Why does everybody online insist on misusing “centrist” and “moderate” when they’re talking about spineless, bitch-ass accomplices? An actual centrist in America in 2024 would be very progressive relative to most of the country. It’s a good place to be.
The comic specifically calls out apologists. The kind that say “both sides equally bad” when both sides are most assuredly not equally bad. Or that try to suggest there can be anything meaningful gained from discussion with hateful intolerant people. They paint themselves as centrist. It’s not really misusing it.
i’ve actually been thinking this recently. what actually is a centrist? i feel most who claim themselves to be centrist are actually conservatives…
There’s an old joke. The parties change but the message stays the same.
A group of Nazis have cornered a group socialists when a centrist comes along. The centrist listens to both sides, how the Nazis want to kill all the socialists and how the socialists don’t want to die. Thinking long and hard on it, the centrist says that there’s a compromise to be had, just kill half.
I would say a true centrist is nothing. No beliefs on whether the means of production should be held by private companies or the people. Aka, they either cannot exist or have not formed an opinion on it making it so that their opinion wouldn’t matter.
The problem therein lies that we try to tie other things into it that aren’t about government, and instead about human rights, and it clearly diverts from being a line to a multi dimensional graph that all means next to nothing when it comes to claims like left right.
Both someone on the left and the right can want to subjugate parts of the populous without having to leave their belief on who owns the means of production.
They attack centrists to maintain the two party divide. If you don’t agree with one side, you are seen as an ally of the other.
I am mostly euro-centrist. In America, I would be far left.
Unfortunately, large sections of the Fediverse are slowly turning into bubbled echo chambers, each enforcing their own purist “correctness”.
They’re throwing anybody with remotely different opinions out the window whilst slowly shifting their overton window off into fantasy land.
Most of the “centrists” if come across tend to regurgitate hard right talking points.
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You should engage them in debate though. The people who need to do so are always such cowards that they’d rather ban and run.
It’s easy as fuck to outmaneuver one of those dipshits. And it’s funny as fuck when they stomp off mad because you made them look like an idiot.
I fully agree. Why have a forum if you’re not going to use it to show how stupid chuds really are?
You both don’t realize the sheer volume of chuds. It’s great, until you realize it’s endless.
We outnumber them.
That doesnt matter, it’s orders of magnitude faster to generate their BS than it is to write even one well-reasoned rebuttal.
All I know is that the lead-poisoned boomers are going to die soon and we won’t have nearly as much of that bullshit to deal with.
But I like seeing the rational debate!
So I can practice spotting fallacies and facepalm when people completely miss the point and counter with something that might be logically sound but is practically terrible.
There’s no reasoning with dishonest bad faith actors
Much better to spread the accepted hate than to be rational.
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The fastest way to an echo chamber is to ignore everyone who disagrees with you.
You should be intelligent enough and convicted in your understanding of any point you argue strongly, that you will be able to identify an irrational or false argument.
Otherwise when someone you disagree with has a good point that improves your view point, you will miss it.
Take the show always sunny in philadelphia. The characters are all examples of absolutely terrible people. We use their idiocy, bigotry, racism and general prejudice to further confirm our beliefs and views on any topic.
It is healthy to listen to bad takes.
Honestly if you start to suck like the bigots, it’s no surprise you would start to claim that anyone who points that out is a “centrist” bigot too to be yeeted away.
Sometimes I feel like people who want to fight bitotry have become cartoons doint a black and white evil vs good. Nope sorry. The world is not so clear cut. It’s a mess. And the word “centrist” can now also be used for censorship. Congratulations. You suck just as much as the bigots now. Hope it “helped” to adopt their tactics! 🤣
Nah mate, you can’t tolerate the intolerant. That’s how you end up with a nazi pub.
Lol.
