I wish that people made a better version of that picture, since it heavily distortswhat Popper said (PDF page 232), that is far more nuanced and situational. I’ll quote it inside spoilers as it’s long-ish:
the paradox
Less well known is the 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 even to suppress them, 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 anything as deceptive as rational argument, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists. 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, exactly as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping; or as we should consider incitement to the revival of the slave trade.
A TL;DR of that would be “an open society needs to claim the right to suppress intolerant discourses and, under certain conditions, suppress them”. In no moment the picture makes reference to those conditions.
That’s important here because mechanisms used to curb down intolerant discourses can be also misused to curb down legitimate but otherwise inconvenient ones, so they need to be used with extreme caution, only as much as necessary; Popper was likely aware of that.
The Paradox of Tolerance
They misspelled ‘intolerance’ in the first panel 👀
Huh. Good catch! I’ve had this pic for years, but never noticed that, and you’re the first person to point it out!
I wish that people made a better version of that picture, since it heavily distorts what Popper said (PDF page 232), that is far more nuanced and situational. I’ll quote it inside spoilers as it’s long-ish:
the paradox
Less well known is the 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 even to suppress them, 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 anything as deceptive as rational argument, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists. 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, exactly as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping; or as we should consider incitement to the revival of the slave trade.
A TL;DR of that would be “an open society needs to claim the right to suppress intolerant discourses and, under certain conditions, suppress them”. In no moment the picture makes reference to those conditions.
That’s important here because mechanisms used to curb down intolerant discourses can be also misused to curb down legitimate but otherwise inconvenient ones, so they need to be used with extreme caution, only as much as necessary; Popper was likely aware of that.
I agree with your criticism of the pic. Thank you for the quote!