8 ms·

Paradox of intolerance claims a society must be intolerant of intolerance. Should that apply for censorship as well?

• effie 6y ago
  But society is tolerant of intolerance and I believe it has to be tolerant, if we are to be a free society, as opposed to engineered society controlled by elites. For example, Western society tolerates to some extent (and it should) bigots, racists, jingoists, people who take religious texts as literal manuals to life, antivaxxers, antimilitary activists, anti police activists, anti globalist activists, environmental activists, etc. These groups are known to be intolerant of some things and some classes of people. And society should tolerate them and allow them the same guarantees of free speech as to other people. There may be exceptions like neonazi/supremacist propaganda in Europe etc. but each exception should be carefully introduced and accepted in the population.
• happytoexplain 6y ago
  Not tolerating intolerance theoretically reduces, isolates, or rejects the intolerant element, stopping it from committing intolerances and therefore (again, theoretically) reducing net intolerance. Censoring a censoring element only serves as petty retaliation, since it is necessarily a net increase in censorship (if the censoring element is the host of the information, as in this case).
• optimiz3 6y ago
  Depends if the censorship is against attempts at overthrowing the society. A society has to be fundamentally intolerant of this or it will cease to exist.