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This strikes me as wishful thinking possibly born of not having had enough conversations with concerted racists. The ones who are not afraid to tell you what th

by ixtli 7y ago

This strikes me as wishful thinking possibly born of not having had enough conversations with concerted racists. The ones who are not afraid to tell you what they really believe will do so without the sort of equivocation you get from crypto-reactionaries who talk about "free speech" and "tolerance."

knzhou 7y ago
I promise I've met worse racists than you have, and if you ask why they believe what they do, they talk in terms of self-defence. That they were minding their own business until group X took their jobs or killed their kin or stole their culture or broke their laws or left them destitute or insulted their people or took over their government. There is always a self-defence reason, and even more inconveniently, the ones with good memories can always cite lots of examples (which is inevitable, because it's a big world, so you can find genuine examples of anything). Would they use the words "free speech" and "tolerance"? Probably not. But "standing up for yourself after being attacked unprovoked" and "justifiable intolerance of intolerance" are the same argument, with only superficially different wrapping.
- ixtli 7y ago
  I certainly hope you haven't. But yes I know what you're talking about: that is certainly a behavior of a certain type of racist I've encountered. I find quite often that people with reactionary beliefs feel that they are personally under attack, or at least its important that they nurture a certain type of victimhood. I must insist, though, that there is another type that comes from a belief that your perceived "genetic" (here in quotes because these people tend to play very fast and loose with that word) inheritance make you in some way implicitly superior to people who lack your "genes". It's for this reason that I bring all of this up: no matter what they say, there is a difference between wanting to relegate people of color or gays to a second class in society and the intolerance of those beliefs. It's this relation that Popper was talking about. I also want to be clear that I'm not trying to say what you've experienced isn't real. There are definitely people like this. My reply was only in the context of the top-level "tolerance of intolerance" quote.
  - Udik 7y ago
    > there is another type that comes from a belief that your perceived "genetic" [...] inheritance make you in some way implicitly superior... On the other hand, I am pretty convinced that my genetic inheritance makes me "superior" (in some vague, but obvious way) to a cat- and yet I've never harmed or desired harm for cats- I actually like them. Or, to make a different example, while we consider it unacceptable to think of race X to be "superior" to race Y, we have no particular issues in admitting that the individual Albert Einstein was "superior" (again, in some vague way) to many other individuals (us included)- and yet from that doesn't follow we mean those individuals any harm or disrespect.
    - dTal 7y ago
      You don't compete with cats for resources, and you interact with them entirely on your terms. Once an animal enters your life without asking, and reduces the resources available to you, they become 'vermin', and people will do extraordinarily cruel things to them without feeling the slightest pang of guilt on the basis of that same 'superiority' which you feel towards cats.
      - Udik 7y ago
        Exactly- which means that the issue it's not the sense of (even genetic) superiority per se, but that of being threatened. Btw, we have an entire genre of fiction (a subset of science fiction) in which humanity is threatened by technologically and cognitively superior races coming from other planets- this doesn't prevent us from trying to exterminate them to ensure our survival.

by ixtli 7y ago

knzhou 7y ago

I promise I've met worse racists than you have, and if you ask why they believe what they do, they talk in terms of self-defence. That they were minding their own business until group X took their jobs or killed their kin or stole their culture or broke their laws or left them destitute or insulted their people or took over their government. There is always a self-defence reason, and even more inconveniently, the ones with good memories can always cite lots of examples (which is inevitable, because it's a big world, so you can find genuine examples of anything). Would they use the words "free speech" and "tolerance"? Probably not. But "standing up for yourself after being attacked unprovoked" and "justifiable intolerance of intolerance" are the same argument, with only superficially different wrapping.

ixtli 7y ago
I certainly hope you haven't. But yes I know what you're talking about: that is certainly a behavior of a certain type of racist I've encountered. I find quite often that people with reactionary beliefs feel that they are personally under attack, or at least its important that they nurture a certain type of victimhood. I must insist, though, that there is another type that comes from a belief that your perceived "genetic" (here in quotes because these people tend to play very fast and loose with that word) inheritance make you in some way implicitly superior to people who lack your "genes". It's for this reason that I bring all of this up: no matter what they say, there is a difference between wanting to relegate people of color or gays to a second class in society and the intolerance of those beliefs. It's this relation that Popper was talking about. I also want to be clear that I'm not trying to say what you've experienced isn't real. There are definitely people like this. My reply was only in the context of the top-level "tolerance of intolerance" quote.
- Udik 7y ago
  > there is another type that comes from a belief that your perceived "genetic" [...] inheritance make you in some way implicitly superior... On the other hand, I am pretty convinced that my genetic inheritance makes me "superior" (in some vague, but obvious way) to a cat- and yet I've never harmed or desired harm for cats- I actually like them. Or, to make a different example, while we consider it unacceptable to think of race X to be "superior" to race Y, we have no particular issues in admitting that the individual Albert Einstein was "superior" (again, in some vague way) to many other individuals (us included)- and yet from that doesn't follow we mean those individuals any harm or disrespect.
  - dTal 7y ago
    You don't compete with cats for resources, and you interact with them entirely on your terms. Once an animal enters your life without asking, and reduces the resources available to you, they become 'vermin', and people will do extraordinarily cruel things to them without feeling the slightest pang of guilt on the basis of that same 'superiority' which you feel towards cats.
    - Udik 7y ago
      Exactly- which means that the issue it's not the sense of (even genetic) superiority per se, but that of being threatened. Btw, we have an entire genre of fiction (a subset of science fiction) in which humanity is threatened by technologically and cognitively superior races coming from other planets- this doesn't prevent us from trying to exterminate them to ensure our survival.