Intolerance

When we speak of freedom of speech, we must take into account the intolerant and ask: should we tolerate the intolerant? There are no absolute freedoms, there never have been, as all freedoms are limited by what's tolerated by society; even in completely egalitarian tribes there are mechanisms of shunning, ostracizing and banishment.

There's a tendency in our atomized society to reduce many things to their binary extremes; something's either good or bad, you're either for or against, you're either free or not, it's black or white with no gray in between. We live in a society where ideological differences are exacerbated to the point where much of public discourse is shaped by fundamentalists and absolutists. This is unfortunate in itself as the intricacies of human interaction do not lend themselves to easy explanations or simple answers. Freedom of speech in particular has been a hotly debated subject for centuries and goes as far back as Socrates' death sentence in 399 BC for impiety.

The modern day debate around free speech is heavily colored by the supremacy of individualism. That is to say that individual rights can not be restricted by considerations for other social values or specific minorities within society. There is however a dialectical reasoning behind this viewpoint that links this individual approach to the greater society, which is that diverging opinions lead to debate and conflict, which in turn leads to progress and change. Racism can't be eradicated by silencing the racists, but only by defeating their arguments with better arguments. For that to happen, racists must be allowed their place on the public square.

Although I follow and agree with that reasoning, there's just one problem with it. For all opinions to be equally represented on the public square, everyone should feel equally safe on that square. It's not that difficult to understand why homosexual people only have been "coming out of the closet" in recent decades when they're existed forever; the public square has been made safe for them to do so. Homosexuality has been normalized under pressure from activists who stood up against the status quo laid down by previous generations. It's equally easy to understand why racists and fascists have have crawled onto the public square recently as economic despair historically has shown to be the main cause of reactionary and extremist ideas. With the election of far-right politicians in many western countries in the wake of the global financial meltdown, scapegoating, nationalism and xenophobia have also been normalized to an alarming degree.

The main difference between right-wing and left-wing ideology is the difference between hierarchy and equality. Right-wing conservatives adhere to a strict "natural" hierarchy, where left-wing progressives strive for more equality. That's why the political right endorses capitalism, as it stratifies society into an economical hierarchy from extremely rich to extremely poor. Conversely, the political left wishes to minimize this stratification through social programs and safety-nets or, in the most extreme, introducing an entirely different economic model. But the hierarchies from the right-wing aren't limited to the economy, but expand into the realms of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation and so on. Right-wing politics and ideologies driven to the extreme are therefore the most intolerant towards that which is deemed to fall outside of, or is in conflict with their presumed "natural" hierarchies.

This intolerance creates a paradox for freedom of speech. Should we grant the same amount of freedom to the intolerant, who have a clear and ideological resistance to the freedoms of certain groups of the population, as to those who harbor no such animosities? I don't know. However, I believe there's little chance of convincing them with arguments, as they're already at the extreme end of the political spectrum. On the other hand, there are surely many who haven't reached that extreme end yet and could be reached yet with sound argumentation. Like I said in the beginning: there are no easy answers or simple solutions here, but we must account for this paradox of tolerance in our considerations.

Less well known [than other paradoxes Popper discusses] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
_{source: Wikipedia}

The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. We've seen this happen in history with the rise of fascist governments in Spain, Italy and Germany in the early to mid-twentieth century; we can trace the birth of Antifa back to those times as well, as explained in the below linked video. In recent times I get the feeling that "freedom of speech" is increasingly mistaken for "right to a platform" and "freedom from consequence." The former, "right to a platform," immediately becomes a problem in a world where all major platforms are privately owned; freedom of expression on those platforms are restricted by the terms and conditions of the owners. The latter, "freedom from consequence," is nonsensical and stems from the black and white perspective resulting from extreme individualism.

There are no easy answers, but we must guard against the total loss of freedom of speech which will occur when the ideologically intolerant become too powerful. Michel Rosenfeld, in the Harvard Law Review in 1987, stated: "it seems contradictory to extend freedom of speech to extremists who ... if successful, ruthlessly suppress the speech of those with whom they disagree." Since everyone, the intolerant included, has freedom of speech, it's up to us to combat them on the public square. It doesn't matter if they then start complaining about a "woke mob" or "cancel culture." The "woke mob" simply exercises its equal right to free speech when counter-protesting the intolerant. And if private owners of digital platforms choose to listen to that mob, complaints should be directed at those private owners.

I'll leave it here, as there's so much more to say about this sensitive and complex subject. One last funny side-note: when searching Google on "free speech absolutist" the top results are almost all about Elon Musk's recent acquisition of Twitter. He declared himself a free speech absolutist in the run-up to this takeover. I hope that the above explains, at least in part, why support for this takeover overwhelmingly comes from the political right. The below linked video is not expressly about freedom of speech, but discusses the threat to freedom in general and the necessity of left wing activism in the face of extreme right-wing activism by example of Antifa or anti-fascism. It's almost two hours long, but covers a lot of the points mentioned in this post and is, in my opinion, well worth your time.

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