If I am free to speak intolerantly, you are tolerating me. You are tolerating intolerance. The paradox does not apply to your scenario.
It’s called the paradox of tolerance. Tolerating intolerance is the paradox. So it says you can’t tolerate intolerance.
So it says you can’t tolerate…
That makes you intolerant. Your model has called for your own oppression.
I don’t think you’re missing my point. I think you’re being deliberately obtuse.
The German People were following the paradox in 1935 when they denounced people who were interfering with their ideals. They were denouncing people who were trying to harm their ideal society. They were intolerant of those people who were pushing an “alternative” world view that wasn’t conducive to the advancement of the public’s goals. They felt these people had no redeeming qualities; that they were dangerous and disruptive to society. That they had nothing of any value to say, and that it was acceptable to suppress them. These dangerous, disruptive elements should be intolerated. They should be suppressed and destroyed, rather than allowed to interfere with the purity of German society.
If you present Popper’s paradox to the German public in 1935, they will agree with its truth. They will use his philosophy to support their eugenics and genocidal programs: it is vitally important for the German people to fight back against the intolerance of these disruptive influences. Indeed, Hitler presented the same concept in Mein Kampf, and called for intolerance against those he deemed intolerant.
There is no objective truth behind the paradox. Popper’s paradox works just as well for justifying your enemy’s actions as it does for your own. For that reason, it must be rejected.
