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Tolerance goes both ways motherfucker
Tolerance paradox
Unfortunately, the solution to the paradox boils down to “Might Makes Right”. The bounds of tolerance aren’t set by a consensus, but by whomever has the Power to Yeet.
And while this game seems satisfying early on (Yeet the Nazis! Yeet the Tankies! Yeet the Radical Centrists!) you do get into a cycle of purity where you’re yeeting anyone who questions whether the last guy who got yeeted deserved it.
That leaves us with the age-old Martin Niemöller verse:
“And then they came to Yeet me - and there was no one left to Yeet back on my behalf”.
What is the appropriate degree of tolerance? How do you prevent it from expanding to include people who would dissolve the institution? How do you prevent it from collapsing into a state of cult-like obedience to authority? It’s a balancing act and one that the individuals with the power to silence fringe communities rarely have an interest in performing.
I believe the answer lies in bureaucracy.
You’re allowed to be intolerant but you gotta fill out just a bunch of paperwork to do so. And if someone to pay a fee, fill in several forms, submit to an ID chrck and wait 6 weeks just to get a literal N word pass, then yeet.
Laws, courts, and a strong democracy my dude.
The Intolerance Paradox posits the risk that these institutions are infiltrated by intolerant agents.
Florida has laws, courts, and an electoral system. None of those seem to be holding the fascists back. Many are being employed by fascists to legitimize their violence.
If the USA had better laws, the news media would not be free from getting sued or fined for spreading lies. If the USA has a stronger democracy, where we didn’t have to deal with this elector nonsense, then we’d have federal laws that prevent fascists from getting into power.
We don’t/didn’t have that, so now we get to hope that the fascists don’t win.
The only way we get out of this is by charging some of these fascists with treason and putting them in jail.
I’m curious what your take is on using governmental violence against fascists? For example, throwing them in jail.
we’d have federal laws that prevent fascists from getting into power.
A country riddled with fascists isn’t going to pass laws against themselves. You (paradoxically) need to get rid of the fascists first, before you get rid of the fascist policy.
That’s why we couldn’t have pass the civil rights amendments until after secession. And why we didn’t pass the Equal Rights (for women) amendment at all.
now we get to hope that the fascists don’t win.
Unfortunately, we’ve embraced fascism in both parties as the donor elites have tacked rightward. Harris striking common cause with the Cheneys might as well be a stake through the heart of American liberalism.
Ok, so you’re accepting defeat?
Can’t plan for victory if you don’t admit defeat.
Society needs a yeeting tree.
The Yeeting Tree by Shel Silverstein. It would have had a better lesson.
Look, I am a big believer in attempting to educate other people and better the world around you by trying to change harmful or hateful outlooks, but I also realize that some people cannot be changed. Trying to engage these types of people in real life is just putting yourself in danger. Engaging them online is fine but there’s a limit to how long you should spend having dialogue with someone who could probably argue their irrational viewpoints for weeks on end without stopping.
Yep.
My entire family is conservative. They eat up every drop of shit from the shit fountain. I can disprove anything they give me in about five seconds, and no matter how absolutely cratered their opinions are and decimated their egos in an argument, a week later, they’ll start right back up again with some insane shit they heard online.
It’s like trying to patch a dam made of mud.
I try to keep an open mind and engage in conversation when I can too. Tbh the fallacy I find to be the most irritating (and probably most common) is when the person already presupposes your entire argument and crafts straw men arguments against you. To me, that tells me they’re just unwilling/unable to listen to me and listen to my actual arguments. No use in debating someone who doesn’t even know what they’re debating against.
Having to keep saying “but that’s not what I said” every time I try and explain myself gets exhausting after awhile lol
“Their irrational viewpoints” because our viewpoints are all rational. Unfortunately, that’s what everyone who’s hard-line on their views and won’t consider discussion with others seems to think.
The meme posted here comes off as super dumb to me, not only will we not listen to anyone else, we are so closed minded that we won’t even listen to people who agree with us but also see where the other side is coming from.
Lemmy is a strong echochamber for leftists sadly, it was my hope that Lemmy would have a thoughtful userbase who recognises both sides are equally problematic for their extreme views and hard headedness.
Majority of it is bullshit anyway, biggest joke on earth is the political system, the world functions because of all the people who don’t give a damn and get on with living their lives and being useful.
You are in a queer friendly community talking about “… recognize both sides are equally problematic for their extreme views …” That is incorrect. The most leftists are not pushing or perpetrating the genocide (or removal, or subjugation) of my people (the queer, disabled, and other social minorities). I know from experience the same is not true of the right. Just like the OP and like many of the comments, I do not tolerate “both-sidesism” because it is not an equal scale. The right creates a platform built regressionist practices. I think some leftists are annoying, but at least they aren’t trying to kill me.
“equally problematic for their extreme views” means you look at all the extreme views of each side and compare how problematic they are. Genocide on social minorities is an extreme view. Accepting social minorities for what they are is not an extreme view, so these two things cannot be compared in this equation.
The genocide of social minortities thing from “the right” could maybe be compared to the excusing and denying of Chinese genocide from “the left”.
In this case, both are problematic, but the right side thing has a personal impact for you, so it weighs heavier for you. Someone with a Taiwanese background may find the other side’s problem to weigh heavier.
It s not a very good measure to base your political beliefs upon, but it’s rather a measure to support the centrist view and illustrate that extremism happens on both sides.
Finally, political views are a spectrum. There is no true left or right or liberal or conservative, or rather there is, but there shouldn’t be. The left/right debate only polarizes society. I think most centrists are against that polarisation and think that the centrist view could be a way to bridge the gap and find a way to reunite society.
I see the common mistake of associating the left with authoritarianism.
China and such are not left. They’re even further right to the point of fascism labeled communism.
Remebere communism/socialism is about the workers relation to the means of production. Chinese people do not own the factories they work on, so I’m not sure you can call them left.
ThE mArKeTpLaCe Of IdEaS
I’m voting with my dollar and not listening to theirs.
They’re not really centerists, they’re just trying to stir the pot. Jon Stewart had a really good podcast on all this on the Weekly Show. I could only find a youtube video on my laptop, I think it’s the full thing by the time.
The uncommitted/third party vote is what caused biden to drop out of the race. It could also very well cost the democrats the election.
When a minority group has outsized power due to circumstance, they should use it to affect the change they want.
The point isnt to make democrats lose its to put pressure on them to drop their worst positions, which happen to include genocide.
You can argue that you think it won’t work, but its a prediction. Noone knows, which is why even among Muslims this debate has people on both sides.
None of what you said is how anything works in US government. Biden has some crazy takes on the war in Gaza, but it’s rooted in them being our allies and something else that I have no idea about.
3rd party in a 2 party system just takes away votes from another person. You have to calculate who that’s gong to be and assess the risk to the people and government.
When a single party is in charge of the both the house and senate and there are no assholes that can be bought off, that’s the only time things can be changed.
something else that I have no idea about.
That something else is Zionism.
Do you really believe that? Biden is a church going Catholic. We don’t know what’s going on here, but I suspect it’s more money related.
A lot of US Zionists are some flavor of Christianity. It’s very common.
What do you think Zionist means?
A political movement that advocates for the establishment and support of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Woe, Tolerance Paradox be upon ye.
Agreed: those people, who aren’t like us, are bad people and must not be tolerated
look, all I’m saying is that maybe the Nazis had some pretty great points and- stop throwing things at me! HELP HELP IM BEING OPPRESSED!!!
The apple fell somewhere completely devoid of apple trees and scientists could not trace it back to the tree of origin.
When you debate the bigots in the “Free Market of Ideas”, you basically say that these bigoted ideas are “Just as valid as any other”
This is why you don’t see Temu shit on Target shelves, but in shady grey market apps.
The rational debate is so the on the fence people see the problems with the bigots rather than just the bigoted opinions/“proof”
It’s about stopping the lies from spreading not changing an individual opinion. You could hardly call yourself a leftist if you don’t understand that
Fuck sealions!
I tried, but it didn’t go well for either of us.
Thanks to you that apple is a Nazi now
/s just in case
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Apple: I was a very far left leftist with strong values a d principles but then someone was rude to me on the internet and forced me to become a Nazi.
Is this centrism or is it just a bad faith argument from a bigot?
The person making the argument could just be naive too.
I could see myself 25 years ago making such a statement in completely good faith, trying to see both sides and all that. But I was naive to think that both sides were also arguing in good faith.
But to be fair, that naive messenger would still be repeating an argument that originated in bad faith.
Heck I still find myself thinking this on a subconscious level. I can’t let go of the sense that we should be able to discuss things in good faith and make change through civil discourse.
I have to remind myself that history does not support my blind faith in the goodness of humanity like this.
Even people who have less than two seconds ago proven they are arguing in bad faith, my gut reaction is to give them another chance to come to the discussion properly.
It’s like pathological naivety, and yes, it’s just as harmful as the original bad faith argument when all it’s doing is echoing the bad faith argument.
I have been booted from many communities for asking what I thought was a genuine question. And at first been left wondering why a community would ban someone for asking questions and trying to learn. I’ve experienced this my entire life and only recently began to understand that it’s not some personal slight against my curiosity and ignorance. It’s a necessary safety measure for that community.
I’m just an idiot, questioning an asshole, but from everyone else’s perspective there’s two dumb assholes over here.
That s my issue with Lemmy. Why do we stick so hard to “the left” when we see daily reminders that “the left” has plenty of bad faith actors as well? Just look around on lemmy.ml or better yet hexbear.net
Well… Short answer talking about “the left” and “the right” is effectively doing something called “constructing a public”. These are are not just political constructs, they are political constructs that do certain things. Neither of these constructs have hard boundaries and throughout time they shift.
But there is a distinct difference. When you look at the right, while the presentation changes they have a fairly straightforward citable group of guiding philosophy traceable through a small handful of writing. If you read Thomas Malthus and Edmond Burke they will sound like slightly more archaic versions of modern pundits on the right. When you listen to the modern pundits you will notice that they are very repetitive and what differentiates one from another is more or less just presentation style. That repetition of talking points changes it’s arguements but never it’s foundation. Since it’s mostly in service of protecting a status quo where hereditary privilege is upheld it doesn’t have to get complicated. It just has to justify the world as it has been and that humans are sneaky, fundamentally flawed and morally defunct but that by structuring society as a winnowing process where playing the game the rightful and just few will rise to the top.
But when you look at “the left” it’s not an easy gradient, it’s a loose scattering of little clusters of very different ideologies and guiding philosophies. Since it largely works of a guiding concept of dissolution of established aggregated personal fortunes and radical anti-supremacist framework of various forms it’s not uniform. There’s anti-colonialism, anti-racism, anti-monopolist, anti-capitalist, anti-discriminatory, pro-neurodiversity, expanded personal rights, pro public service, pro democratic and anti democratic groups, pro freedom of movement, anarchists, and acedemic political theorists each with individual theories about how to bring about a state of all these things when none of this has in living memory existed. It’s not generally trying to defend a status quo but trying to feild test different ways of doing things… So basically everybody and their dog has a slightly different opinion of what is a good idea.
It’s kind of hard to see " bad faith actors" as it were because any two leftists might have almost no ideological overlap as far as praxis. They might not see each other as being part of the same tribe even if outsiders looking in would classify them as “left” and they might all claim to be “left” themselves… It’s not that it’s contradictory, it’s that the branching paths of divergent evolving philosophies have rambled off in a whole bunch of different directions and effectively become whole other creatures entirely.
It’s almost like it’s a multi dimension spectrum with axis like left<>right, conservatist<>progressive, liberalism<>socialism and more… but simply “the left” and “the right” are popular (but problematic) terms that everyone recognises but everyone has their own interpretation of. However, if you want to be more accurate in you political discussions, you’ll have to write full page monologues and that is often not the way of the Internet. It will more often fall on deaf ears than not. And therefor the louder voices with the simpler terms get a bigger audience and reach eventhough the things they are saying might not be as good.
That is actually one of the major issues at play. One of the kind of predatory things about right wing politics is it plays into a fallacy that the truth is simple, easily recognizable and can be rendered down into axioms a child can understand. Anything that doesn’t fall under these parameters cannot be the truth.
But science moved away from big axiomatic stuff like 50 years ago. It became the study of variation and nuance.
The left attempts to have a aspects of this simple explanation stuff in sections by adopting almost slogan-like things - take “Trans women are women” as an example. That easily digestible slogan sits on top of a whole bunch of consequentialist based philosophy, psychological research with a focus on harm reduction, a history of uphill public advocacy to just put trans issues on the radar and being trans itself isn’t easy to explain. It is simple and quippy - but not axiomatic. So a lot of people on the right tear into it as a target because the optics of defending a short quippy but nuance laden argument in slogan form while keeping it short and easily digestible is basically impossible.
This issue is throughout progressive political thought. Any short form word we use to describe practically anything has a whole swack of addendums, hidden complications, edge cases and multiple historical definitions. If you use very technical language you can be more specific but then you can easily talk over the heads of your audience.
Because “the left” is a set of principles not a group of people?
Same can be said for “the right”, so I’m missing the point.
Here in the states, even the most progressive Democrats are right of center compared to the industrialized world, and so those who are centrist are leftist by comparison, and those who are left wing are seen as radical, even when we talk about how the justice system, between its false conviction rate, law enforcement brutality or propensity for cruel (if usual) punishments, needs to be either massively overhauld, or disassembled and redesigned from the beginning.
But any state or society that decides it needs to cull the population for any reason has failed as a community, and therefore has failed as a state or a society.
Also centrists, like their conservative brethren, fail to recognize that the misery experienced by the bottom rung strata is extreme and heinous, and the neglect by institutions to act on it as if it were a crisis is heinous itself (and might compare to crimes against humanity). And this is what fuels radical direct action (even terrorism) from the left.
(Curiously, Osama Bin Laden said as much was what drove his own terror campaign, including the 9/11 attacks, though he was also pissed at George H. W. Bush’s gulf war, what he thought he could resolve with his mujahideen army. But the Gulf War from the US position was less about Kuwait and more about securing oil for import to the US.)
(And yes, left-wing violence gets into tankie territory, what is a paradox of wanting to create a functional, peaceful public-serving society that isn’t exploited from the top, and being unable to compute how to get there without breaking one’s own principles. We radical leftists are not good at this yet.)
I appreciate this, I really do, but you do have to be careful not to end up like certain leftist Reddit subs where I got banned for the heinous crime of suggesting that voting for Harris might produce better outcomes than voting for Trump. Some level of discussion that goes beyond what the majority (or, lbr, the mods) think has to be allowed or you just have an echo chamber.
Granted, that isn’t what is happening in the comic. The apologist here is genuinely advocating tolerance of Nazis. This situation is appropriate.
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In my experience, most self-identified centrists, at least in the US, are to the right of what anyone reasonable would actually consider center. And I don’t mean that in an “um ackshually the Dems are center right” way either, I mean they’re often just Conservatives who don’t hate gays (but do hate trans people) or something.
Or conservatives who are queer and white
I think I got banned for replying “?” to someone saying NATO was bad because I’d literally never heard anyone say that. The context was about the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. I’m glad I’m off Reddit and modlogs are public here.
I truly hate seeing people get banned for questioning a viewpoint. How weak are your opinions if you literally won’t answer questions about them? Of course there are bad-faith rhetorical techniques that involve asking questions, but people wanting to learn should never be turned away.
Is this loss?
:.|:;…of at least one apple, sure.
No this is Bad Apple!!
