No Paradox

"Cut their heads off and fill the holes with garlic, that's what you do with vampires."

– Terry Pratchett

I started another recent blog entry with a Pratchett quote as well. It's almost as if he saw what was coming. Of course, I'm not talking about actual vampires, but the underlying message – that you don't debate evil predatory creatures who think of you or others as less than people, you fight them – is a perennial one which we all need reminding of sometimes.

Naturally, in the modern world a lot of effort is put into trying to disabuse us of this notion.

For some reason, the powers that be have decided that being evil and selfish (and thinking of the bulk of other people as "things" that can be abused, killed, or oppressed with impunity) is clearly the future.

I am not going to get into a debate here whether this is some kind of extreme psychosis or they're just basically evil, the result is the same. We've ended up with a ruling class who will kill us for profit if they can get away with it; morality plays no part in their decisions or personalities.

For this to work of course they have to come up with a way of stopping us from rising up against them. They start with the whole divide and rule thing (which is a different discussion), but when challenged about it one of the central moves in their playbook is acting the victim. Somehow spinning the lie that being called out about their bigotry is far worse a crime than the bigotry itself.

The far-right politicians and pundits start to claim they've been silenced or cancelled, something they shout about from every media outlet available 24/7 (which is a very dubious definition of silenced).

Unfortunately, rather than questioning this blatantly obvious disinformation, many people who consider themselves moderates or centrists get taken in by this argument and start to say we should listen to or debate the far right, despite evidence from history that this never works.

These moderates talk about tolerance and how if we don't tolerate the far right we're somehow just as bad as them; an idea that I'm suspicious originates from the far-right as it has that stink of plausible nonsense that doesn't stand up to scrutiny but will work because who has time to look at anything in depth anything these days.

It's bollocks.

There is no "Paradox of Tolerance". Its just semantic trickery, word play, sleight of mind, hoping that you're fooled long enough not to notice the conjurer palming something.

The best way to illustrate this is by analogy; using another quality or state and seeing how the argument holds up. Let's use "immunity".

Person A claims they're immune to everything but Person B says "Ah, but that means you aren't immune to immunity! Gotcha!"

In this instance, we can see that this is utter nonsense because we haven't been primed to have our critical faculties clouded by a delusional narrative that is deliberately being spread as the norm. Without any media spin obfuscating the issue we can see that of course immunity doesn't mean you're immune to immunity to itself. That would be ridiculous.

Similarly, while tolerance means that yes, you are accepting of differences, including different beliefs – as long as the latter don't harm others – it also means that intolerance is off the table. It's beyond the pale. Not tolerating intolerance is a given, not a contradiction. It's part and parcel of tolerance itself.

The far-right calling people out for "discriminating" against bigotry is like a paedophile accusing the judge at their trial of kink shaming. Some things are off limits as part of the unspoken contract we have with each other as people living together in a society.

Don't get taken in by nit-picking when you need to be looking at the big picture. Whether it’s done deliberately or done simply due to naivety, debating fascists always enables them. This is why they make such a fuss about it. All that making concessions to them does is ensure they'll keep asking for even more. They are never satisfied and are not part of the agreement we all make with each other as social beings because they always intend to cheat if they can get away with it.

Now where did I put that garlic?