If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

-George Orwell, (Unpublished) original preface to Animal Farm

In this post I address only online speech. Burning a flag might be "freedom of speech" in meatspace, but I am talking about electronic networks, including the Internet, private clearnets, and various dark webs.

In much of the civilized world, most middle class workers cannot keep their jobs if their reputations are damaged. Refusing a vaccine, criticizing trans-sexual people, criticizing Israel -- any number of taboo topics might result in an unofficial witch hunt. Such witch hunts might involve lawsuits, semi-legal harassment by private detectives, and blatantly illegal tactics such as fraudulently sending SWAT teams to arrest the target for crimes that have not been committed.

The introduction to beehaw reads in part:

Of note, we simply do not tolerate intolerant behavior. Being explicitly racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or bigoted in any other fashion is not tolerated here.

But how might one determine when it's okay to be intolerant towards people you believe are being intolerant or who are being intolerant but doing so because they are uneducated or have not spent time deconstructing their own privilege? Many philosophers have written extensively about this subject, and I simply don't have time to write an entire manifesto. In simple terms, I am not advocating for tone policing. I believe that being outraged and angry at people who are destroying our society is a good thing to do. When the supreme court removes protections for abortion, it's okay to be outraged and to take action into your own hands - they have done something intolerant. When someone advocates online that you don't have the right to your own body, it's okay to tell them to fuck off. In fact, I greatly encourage it. This is being intolerant to the intolerant.

However, when someone online shares an opinion and it feels like they might be intolerant and you jump to the conclusion that they are intolerant and you launch into a tirade at them, this is not nice behavior. You didn't check if they have the opinion you think they have, and that's simply not nice to someone which you don't know.

It gets even more complicated when you consider someone who is sharing an opinion they have which is actively harmful to many individuals in the world, but it's due to their ignorance. I personally believe that so long as this person is not actively spreading this intolerant viewpoint and are working on themselves to become a better person, that it would not be particularly productive to launch into a tirade against them. I understand, however, how someone could be quite rude in response to such intolerance and I agree that this person may desperately need to be educated appropriately, but there is no way for that discussion to happen on this platform in a productive manner while lobbing insults at each other. I can understand why, at first brush, some might consider this tone policing. However, I disapprove of the intolerant viewpoint, and I approve of it being corrected, but I also approve of the intolerant person attempting to become a better person.

The only way for a platform which is hoping to exist as an explicitly nice place online to avoid taking sides in a situation like this is to withdraw from the quandary entirely. This kind of nuanced political and philosophical discussion is just simply not meant for Beehaw. I'd like to think that I'm aware and learned enough to avoid 'debating' things like phrenology, which are obviously racist, but I'm also smart enough to realize that there's likely some ideas which I've internalized or been taught by a colonialist western society which are harmful to other minorities. I want to be able to learn about how everything I was taught was wrong, and to be corrected, and that space can only exist when we don't let users berate each other over ideas they project on others (whether that projection happens to be correct or not).

I saw the above-quoted screed and I decided not to apply for a beehaw account. I believe it is perfectly possible to discuss phrenology without being a racist. I know that I could go to beehaw, get an account, and try to walk on eggshells around the topic of phrenology. But I don't trust the moderators or the users of beehaw to be "nice" and "educate" me about how I'm all wrong regarding phrenology. The wording of the above screed is reminiscent of Popper's so-called "Paradox of Tolerance."

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.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. 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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

In fact, the "Paradox of Tolerance" is not a logical contradiction: it is a weasel-worded double standard. When Popper wrote that he wanted something that seemed paradoxical -- freedom to be intolerant to intolerant people -- what he meant was that he wanted to set up a double standard. Popper wanted to be the arbiter of what can be tolerated in any society. Popper wanted to be the arbiter of which societies were "open." And then Popper wanted to sit enthroned on his self-righteousness and be praised as the protector of open societies.

Popper did not want unauthorized tolerance. Popper wanted society to tolerate only those things that Popper allowed to be tolerated. Popper wanted a total absence of what Orwell would have called 'liberty' -- and then Popper expected people to praise him as a truly tolerant thinker!

Unfortunately, for numerous reasons, Western university professors praise Popper, and graduates of Western indoctrination camps colleges have been trained to enforce a vaguely Popperian notion of political correctness. And finally we see a site like beehaw, which wants people to be energetic and lively and talkative -- but only so long as they either say exactly the right things, or else immediately surrender any WrongThink when notified in a politically correct struggle session.