The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 21
In 1945, even as the Nazis fell from power, Karl Popper told us how to find the line where free, liberal societies are in imminent danger in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies, most simply summarizing a crucial part of the argument in a short footnote about “The Paradox of Tolerance.” There, Popper lays out a short summary of when a free society should and must not tolerate intolerant movements if it is to survive. It is not only when they espouse and preach intolerance but when they also cease to be amenable to reason and rational debate, forbid their followers from listening to reason and rational debate, cannot be held in check by public opinion, and encourage their followers to respond to arguments with “fists or pistols,” i.e., violence of some form or another. I contend that the Woke, uniquely, have crossed this line in this episode of the New Discourses Podcast. They are absolutely intolerant, will not debate or listen to alternative perspectives, and, unlike all other hate movements that fail those two criteria, have grown to be completely unchecked and uncheckable by public opinion. This places them outside of the range to which tolerance should be extended in free, open societies, and it identifies them uniquely as a threat to their continuance. Join me to hear my argument for how Karl Popper warned us in 1945 so that we might see this situation when it arose.
For more on the idea of tolerance, check out the entry on “tolerance” in my Critical Social Justice Encyclopedia and check out the four-part series on Herbert Marcuse’s “Repressive Tolerance” on the New Discourses podcast, Part 1 here.
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19 comments
The Nazis and the Communists were simply socialist cousins. Each viewing the other as heretical socialists. The Nazis did not offer an alternative to socialism, they simply offered a different, more evolved and localized, flavor of it.
“Never attempt to reason with people who know they are right!” ― Frank Herbert
“When I am Weaker Than You, I ask you for Freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am Stronger than you, I take away your Freedom Because that is according to my principles.” ― Frank Herbert
A vote for a Biden or a Harris would be inane under any circumstance. Trump turned out to be a pretty good president. And I say that as someone who doesn’t like him.
You are the perfect specimen of the paradox. Your tolerance of Trump allows intolerance to prevail.
Go do research on President Ordan of Hungary. The Republicans Tolerate his views even though it is intolerant of the United States Constitution
Is that before or after 1million died of covid, the economy crashed, he almost destroyed NATO and Ukraine, praised Putin and orchestrated a treasonous coup that endangered our Democratic govt. ? Where is “pretty good in all that?
The “old-school german” is Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg, who on January 30, 1933, inaugurated Adolf Hitler as Reichskanzler (Chancellor).
What woke/ anti racism ends up doing in the culture is what I saw in happen in my high school after Columbine. We had a few kids that dressed like the young men who attacked the school (trench coats, goth styles). Most kids, mostly out of fear, would basically walk on egg shells around them and nervously say hello. The thing is these students knew exactly why people were being “nice” to them and it wasn’t because their classmates suddenly realized their own biases towards people who wore these clothes or dressed like goths were wrong. It was because students feared the goths / trench coat wearers. The niceness or kindness was not genuine. Will these seminars/ anti racism teachings e lead towards people genuinely treating each other with respect and kindess? I highly doubt it.
I’m a little leery of the term, “social violence.” Sounds too much like the claim that “speech is violence.”
The 18-25 y/o age cohort has the highest incidence of mental health dysfunction at 29.4%. Women experience it at 2.2 times the rate of males. Generalized Anxiety is the most commonly occurring disorder.
(The rate of disorder may in fact be higher. Per DSM Dx criteria, at any one time 50% of the American population could be diagnosed with a mental health disorder. In 2013, APA revised DSM to expand Dxs.)
By now everybody who isn’t dead should know the above population stats. Some researchers attempt to explain them. I’m not the only clinician to note how changes in societal norms/standards are strongly correlated with increased mental health dysfunction, reduced/absent problem-solving skills, and what appears to be an eternal state of infantilism in the 18-25y/o cohort.
The 26-49y/os are next at a rate of 25%. 50y/o and up are at 14%. Finally, 12-17y/o place at 13.3%
It would be illogical to posit that the mental health issues of 18-25 y/os may be related to seeing the world through the lens of critical theory? Right?? sarc.
Anyone care to speculate what American society will be like when the 18-25y/os move into positions of management? America is screwed. BTW, as I age, I have increasingly strong expectations that the years 500-1500 CE will be repeated.
Starting shortly after the end of World War 2 the US and western world in general was smitten by an epidemic of extraordinary levels of violent crime. Then, starting right around 1992, it just stopped. Violent crime rates plummeted, falling over 80%, with no apparent explanation. As far as I know the most compelling theory offered so far is a staggeringly widespread case of lead poisoning brought about by leaded gasoline.
Fast forward to our current situation. Testosterone levels today are a fraction of what they were just 50 years ago, there are enormous numbers of people claiming gender dysphoria, and having a “Cluster B” personality disorder seems to practically be a membership requirement to be part of the woke mob.
What if the rise of plastics and all kinds of industrial contamination of the food and water chain (particularly pharmaceutical and factory farm related) are the driving factor this time around? Every time someone takes a serious look at plastics and the water supply they find catastrophic levels of yet another endocrine disruptor.
We had one generation that was violent and all but sociopathic due to lead poisoning, and now another that’s histrionic and deluded due to endocrine disruption.
A causal correlation has also been found between the onset of a decades-long decrease in the crime rate and the passage of Roe v. Wade 15 to 20 years earlier. A disproportionate number of all those babies who were aborted thanks to Roe would have grown up to be violent criminals.
The prefrontal cortex is not fully formed until one is about 25 years old. It is only natural that between puberty and de facto adulthood (age 25 or so) one will be torn between childhood and adulthood. (Surely, I am not the only one here show leaves certain events from my life in that age range off my CV.)
During this developmental phase, one learns to make sense of the world even as one begins the process of becoming a parent. The fact that clinical depression and suicide rates in this age group have exploded over the past couple decades is prima facie evidence that bad philosophy is poison.
“[A]s I age, I have increasingly strong expectations that the years 500-1500 CE will be repeated.”
Some few of our grandchildren can aspire to become the CEO of Brawndo*, but that is a very cold comfort.
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* For those who miss the reference, watch Idiocracy, which is probably the best documentary ever made. Last I checked, it was available for free from Archive .org, and it might be available at Hulu, Amazon Prime, Netflix, or some other video hosting site.
I wonder if it wouldn’t be fruitful to view what CRT is from the intellectual history perspective as well. Intellectual history focuses on the ideas over time and how they change everything–
the way the ideas change what we (nonphilosphers) in society understand to be the acceptable questions to even ask, who we are, what’s considered possible, what’s considered knowable, as well as what’s doable. It is not just CRT/CST rejects the epistemology of the scientific revolution or the enlightenment; they have replaced it successfully with an epistemology of empirical feeling. They’re busy saying the rational is easily overthrown, according to them, because it created certain winners and losers-and that’s already unacceptable. It is no longer a given fact of reality that hierarchy means some above others or “the poor you will always have with you”. In our current intellectual history, empirical feeling determines reality. That they are using this logic as a gift to gain power is not the most terrible consequence; what is most terrible is they can’t control what happens when feelings determine reality. They’ve overturned modernity’s epistemology, and society no longer agrees on outcomes, values, or empirical data as telling us a singular truth.
Ideas have powers of their own-even they don’t control the ideas that come from these ideas. We can’t go back to the enlightenment because as a society we don’t think as the moderns did anymore. We must go forward to a new solution, a new way of articulating the value of rational thought, of empiricism, of a way to bridge those contexts of knowing, Someone needs to propose an alternative that solves the problems of the post modern that starts from this place of “my truth” “your truth” “xir truth” and brings from that an agreement on what is knowable.
The great historian Alan Kors, now prof emeritus at Penn, is someone you should talk to. You probably know he founded FIRE, and has written eloquently in the evils of socialism. But even more he is a fabulous intellectual historian of the birth of the modern age and the Enlightenment. He will help you chart why we must go forward not back. As Descartes solved the problem of the overturning of the Thomists and the Pythagoreans, maybe it’s Lindsay who can overturn the postmodernists.
It is not enough for us to throw sand in the gears of CRT, because the epistemology proposed by CRT has undone singular truth. Even if we end up in detente, we will just end up not ever agreeing on what we know. We are stuck now arguing from this place of multiple truths and must fight through to a new intellectual approach that again allows us to agree on how we know truth. You have it in you, I bet. The mathematician in you can succeed.
It occurs to me that the whole Democratic Party, with the complicit media, has a goal to create automatic contempt for anyone who is identified as a conservative. This is, in effect, an attempt to create a whole new class of “niggers”.
upvote for courage
Help the helpful, be kind to the kind, kill the killers, police the police, and do not tolerate the intolerant.
In a free, classically liberal society based on the recognition of individual rights, speech is protected so even intolerant movements are free to do so, and that’s true even if they’re irrational and not interested in discussion. What can’t be tolerated is violence. The moment a movement that espouses intolerant ideas also turns to violence, threats of violence, or otherwise uses disruptive techniques to intimidate and silence others, it becomes subject to legal sanction. That can consist of legal action against those performing and planning the violence, or against the movement as a whole. I don’t see there being any inherent paradox in this situation: you are always free to speak; you’re not free to use violence.
ADM64 – I would suggest the line should be drawn before ‘violence’ and more in the realm of ‘impose’. You can impose your ideas upon me and literally silence me without laying a finger on me. This is what cancel culture is all about. People’s careers and lives are being destroyed simply for expressing an opposing view point. You allude to it here:
“The moment a movement that espouses intolerant ideas also turns to violence, threats of violence, or **otherwise uses disruptive techniques to intimidate and silence others**, it becomes subject to legal sanction.”
Those with public voices are the targets and they get canceled regularly. The latest is actress Gina Carano, who was immediately fired from her role on “The Mandalorian”. Her crimes were two-fold:
1. Most importantly, she showed passive support for trump
2. She had the audacity to claim that we shouldn’t hate someone for their political views. She likened the effectiveness of Nazi propaganda in convincing ordinary citizens to persecute their Jewish neighbors to what is going on today with cancel coulter.
Sadly ironic that she was canceled for saying we shouldn’t be canceling people for having different views. It took the twitter mob less than 24 hours to make it happen.
This may not be violence, but it is thoroughly intolerant and shouldn’t be tolerated.
https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/mandalorian-gina-carano-1234905589/
“it is thoroughly intolerant and shouldn’t be tolerated.”
I urge that much hinges on, what is meant by “tolerated”.
We can prosecute for violence, while only shun/ denounce the “merely” non-violent intolerant.
You’re right. “Tolerate” as an action verb needs further definition.