The paradox of tolerance, first outlined by Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper, explains that the attractive glitter of universal tolerance may not actually be gold. The paradox suggests that if a society is truly tolerant of everything then it must also be tolerant of intolerance, introducing a slippery slope that could eventually see intolerance completely supplanting tolerance. Summarized less dizzyingly, the paradox illustrates the risk of giving all attitudes a pass, lest we find ourselves giving hate one. The paradox has attracted considerable attention from thinkers since it was first published by Popper in 1945, and is often involved in discussions concerning whether there should be limits on personal freedoms.
In our digital, hypersocial age, the relationship between the paradox of tolerance and the freedoms of speech and expression is, to me, in dire need of examination. There has already been much discussion of what to do about the proliferation of online and real-life hate speech. In America, social media websites experienced something of a hate speech and disinformation revolution leading up to President Donald Trump’s first presidential term in 2016. (Unlike misinformation, disinformation is deliberately meant to deceive.) He and others purveyed so much deception and spite through social media channels that their posts were first fact-checked by built-in functions previously thought unnecessary, then banned from the platforms altogether. This led to the creation of “alt-tech” such as Trump’s own social media platform Truth Social—spaces where there’s no daylight between the freedom of speech and the freedom to hate.
Unfortunately, even with the birth and ongoing growth of alt-tech, the freedom to hate is still regularly displayed on surface-level social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and X. Much of this is owing to all of these platforms’ recent rightward swings: Meta, who operates Facebook and Instagram, is owned by Mark Zuckerberg, a born-again Trumper who recently parroted both the President’s disdain for diversity and performative machismo; X is owned by Elon Musk, whose Trumpist sycophancy was potent enough to earn him a role in government. With the far-right ministry of intolerance dominating the social media landscape, it’s no wonder that I’m constantly subjected to online content as ridiculous, lifeless, and harmful as two men dancing beneath an image of a computer’s “N,” “I,” “G,” “E,” and “R” keys imploring me to “make a word👀.” I also recently had the misfortune of stumbling upon the expanding social media empire of LC Sign, an LED sign manufacturer gaining traction on Instagram Reels and TikTok for their shortform content that often opens with homophobic or transphobic “humor.”
To create a space for hate in the name of “freedom” is to, ironically, scale back the freedoms of those being hated. This is the core problem presented by the paradox of intolerance: universal, unchecked tolerance and personal freedom will eventually undermine itself. In times like these, it behooves us to remember the words of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”
Featured image courtesy of rudall30, Getty Images/iStockphoto.