That's true. But it also requires that both sides have the same definition of tolerance and the same definitions of good an evil.

For instance, what if that religion being practiced believed that homosexuality is a sin, and you did not?

In their eyes they'd be justified in thinking you were intolerant of their god-given righteousness and you'd be justified in thinking that they were being intolerant of the liberty of others.

Maybe they actively roam the streets harassing gay people, maybe they have laws about a death penalty, or maybe they just talk about them as unclean. Where does your tolerance start? Is it only at words and not action? Does that mean hate speech is ok?

The paradox here isn't to do with tolerance and intolerance, but the assertion that either of those things exist as objective view points.

I’ll tolerate you as long as you tolerate me.

I'd only comment that it's not just about tolerating me. I am intolerant of people who are intolerant of others, unless they follow this contract.

But then not everything is about tolerance of other people. I don't tolerate people who litter, for example, even if they tolerate me.

That's the final panel & speech bubbles.

Exactly, it's only really a paradox of you try to define "tolerance" as a completely unqualified imperative. Tolerance of what?

Semantically speaking, "Are you in favor of tolerance?" Does not express a proposition, while "Do you tolerate everything?" without additional qualification is descriptively negative. No paradox at all.

And a pretty poor one at that. It doesn’t demonstrate the concept.

Sorry sir, we only do soapboxes here.

I view it as a contract. If you don't abide by it, you are not covered

When the general society is intolerant of nazis, they are not usually calling for nazis to be killed or harmed.

And why aren't we doing that? They're literally Nazis?

absolutely it gets abused. any time anyone wants you to tolerate what they want you to(defend their own tolerance), they might suggest that you're not being tolerant enough. (suggesting you intolerant)

this means that both intolerance of reasonable rules, as well as intolerance to unreasonable rules can always be twisted as "intolerant of the tolerant ruling".

essentially, whatever an authority establishes as being right/good must be tolerated, whereas what they consider wrong/bad will not be tolerated.

of course most reasonable people know that what people think is good/bad/right/wrong varies massively, and how tricky and meaningless this fact can make the whole idea of "tolerating the intolerant". it certainly doesn't help in convincing the intolerant to be tolerant, so i think it's not worth talking about.

I don't think that's "the problem." There's been a global resurgence of actual fascism over the last 20 years. Nationalistic, racist, xenophobic, dictatorially structured, scapegoatism, corporatist, all the boxes checked. It's been my experience people complaining about the term being "watered down" have dipped their own toe too much in that pool, i.e., they think some elements of it are excusable, sympathize with the actual fascist figures, and hence rush to their defense.

Fascism never caught on anywhere with the public in any country because the whole population was all suddenly cartoon villains. The public got sold a belief system that was appealing to them, that made sense to them, that's how they fell for it. They'd put in elements of truth into what they were saying, or appeal to basic grievances that the population had.

Thank fuck someone reasonable.

Yes the term is 1000000% watered down and means nothing anymore, it's lost all the terrible insult it used to carry.

This assumes that censorship is inherently bad. Censorship against speech regarding the government should be protected. However it's perfectly legitimate to censor harmful ideas, and many countries censor hate speech. We censor people's ability to physically and emotionally harm others. We censor threats. Censorship isn't inherently bad, and is already used functionally everywhere, just ask ChatGPT.

I do however think censorship can be dangerous. I think the censorship we see in public forums (including lemmy) already treads on the toes of legitimate intellectual conversation of objective views on hate speech and offensive language. Tone policing is incredibly intellectually disingenuous, but is widespread because feelings trump literacy. I think the censorship of individual words is supremely dangerous because it also bans or limits the conversation around those words, their usage, etymology, and understanding their use. Comprehension of offensive things is just as valuable as understanding anything else, if not more so should you wish to fight them, but censorship of offensive things without context destroys the capacity for understanding to permeate the social consciousness.

That's not what Popper is talking about. He's talking about maintaining the option to be intolerant of the act of intolerance, not of people.