An existential paradox: If unlimited tolerance is extended even to the intolerant, then tolerant people and ideas will be destroyed

Philosopher Karl Popper’s paradoxical recognition that tolerance of hateful people, lies, and evil ideas is what led to the Second World War

(This is an updated version of an op-ed that appeared in The Progress on Nov. 15, 2019 - PJH)

As the Second World War ended and the nations of the Earth reeled from a horrific, multi-year enmity based on fascism and hatred, philosopher Karl Popper came to the paradoxical conclusion that unlimited tolerance might just be part of the problem.

As we see south of the border with Donald Trump and Elon Musk, in extremist corners here in Canada, including with Pierre Poilievre as Trump-lite, and more locally with MLA Heather Maahs siding with Trump and voting alongside conspiracy theorists, some people are forgetting the lessons of the Second World War.

In an open society such as Canada, we accept a very broad diversity of perspectives from the far left to the far right of the over-simplified political spectrum. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression is critical. But what if a perspective we are asked to accept is one that is intolerant, designed to oppress minority segments of society, be it women, racialized groups, immigrants, members of the LGBTQ community?

Homophobic lightning rods such as Barry Neufeld are few and far between and generally suffer no real consequences for fomenting hatred. At the BC Human Rights Tribunal this week, Neufeld was flippant and dismissive, calling the whole thing a kangaroo court. That's about as harsh as we are on intolerant people.

Popper’s realization, articulated after the Western world won a war against Hitler’s plans to destroy certain minorities, is that there is what he called, the “paradox of tolerance.” He wrote about this in his 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies.

Summarized: “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.”

Read that a couple more times if you need to.

We’ve seen several displays of intolerance locally, provincially, nationally and internationally in recent months and years. The 2018 school board election was a great example as a slate opposed to an LGBTQ anti-bullying policy came out in full force. A local Facebook page in support of these anti-LGBTQ candidates included the quote from American televangelist D. James Kennedy that said, in part, “Tolerance is the last virtue of a depraved society.”

In Kennedy's case, the depravation he means is tolerance of minorities and vulnerable groups rather than Popper's tolerance of intolerance.

Before the all but disappeared, utterances from candidates for the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) in federal elections express extremist ideas about women, in addition to xenophobic, nationalist rhetoric along with anti-science disinformation.

But no one should suggest (Popper wouldn’t either) that local school board trustees or Maxime Bernier and his PPC devotees, or Maahs or Trump or Musk, shouldn’t be allowed to say what they say. Some suggest some of these people's perspectives shouldn’t be given such a high profile. Maybe allowing the spread of bigotry under the guise of free speech is a tolerance stretched too far?

Again, to be clear, Popper did not suggest the intolerance such as what we’ve seen from the names mentioned above should be physically suppressed. It should be countered by rational argument and kept in check by public opinion.

What we do see is many on the far right, including PPC candidates and people such as Barry Neufeld and Elon Musk, are Orwellian claims that they aren’t allowed to make certain statements lest they be called racist. Ducks sometimes get called ducks when they walk and quack like one, but none of these people ever had members of any “thought police” knock on their doors.

The world saw what happened in the 1930s in Europe when bigotry and intolerance grew and were deemed acceptable under the guise of free speech. If violence comes to the streets – as is feared by some in the U.S. given a possible impeachment of an intolerant president – then the intolerant will indeed need to be suppressed to maintain tolerance.

(Editor's note: The preceding paragraph was written before the 2020 election and the insurgence in Washington, an attempted coup d'etat on Jan. 6, 2021.)

“We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant,” Popper wrote in 1945. “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.”

Given most of the intolerance we saw in Canada prior to 2020 was of the keyboard warrior variety, it seemed unlikely things would ever come to that.

Things changed.

In 1930 in Germany, seven years after a failed coup d'etat launched at a beer hall in Munich, history's most infamous political party rose to unprecedented power with a message that was fervently anti-immigration, anti-globalist, as well as highly nationalist and populist.

The rest of the world tolerated Germany's one intolerant internal policy after another, then one external act of aggression after another, until it was too late.

American journalist William L. Shirer was in Germany reporting on the rise of the Nazis from 1934 to 1940. His seminal book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany is a must read for anyone with any serious interest in what happened in that country at that time that led to the Second World War.

It was a culture completely tricked by a strong personality with dictatorial intentions all along.

In a documentary on the subject, Shirer's granddaughter recounts him saying: "What happened there can happen here."

Is it happening?

-30-

Paul J. Henderson
pauljhenderson@gmail.com
facebook.com/PaulJHendersonJournalist
instagram.com/wordsarehard_pjh
x.com/PeeJayAitch
wordsarehard-pjh.bsky.social