Wiki - The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.

  • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
    0·
    1 year ago

    The problem is that people label everything and everyone “Nazi” or “fascist” these days and with that they justify not tolerating any type of experience or opinion they find uncomfortable.

    This leads to basically ignoring a whole bunch of people. But their problems won’t stop simply because you ignore them. Instead you now have people who were on the verge to vote right wing, now definitely voting right wing because they feel the left ignores their problems (which is true).

    • dx1@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
        0·
        1 year ago

        Or perhaps some people aren’t fascist when they are angry about the communication problems with refugees, for example . Perhaps they are just simple minded, a bit stupid, politically uninterested, whatever.

        These people will always exist. They don’t go away when we hate them a lot. Or when we label them as fascist in some kind of Gotcha moment.

        A practical solution would be to deal with their problems. Which can easily be done if you are willing to pay a bit of money for community centers etc., which could help with communication and integration tremendously.

        It’s a mislead interpretation of what tolerance means that makes people wilfully blind to these issues. They will even risk having a party like the AFD growing in seats for this.