If anything, the model of a paradox is too mind-boggling for people to grasp it intuitively. A simpler model for it is that of a peace treaty, or of a social contract. Picture this: a contract whereby we agree to uphold rights and protections for everyone, in exchange for receiving the rights and protections thereby upheld.

Tolerance by itself is too easily conflated with having no standards whatsoever, (eh? Nazis? I guess we have to tolerate them if tolerance is the rule of the day, right?) but when it’s a question of enforcing the terms of the contract, it becomes quickly clear that when they start working to break the contract they’re no longer covered by it.

It’s not a paradox when you’re enforcing a contract or a treaty. The protections of a treaty extend only to those abiding by its terms. When the outlaws rode into town to do their outlaw thing, were they entitled to the protections of the laws? No, that’s what the word outlaw means.

Of course, this framing-in-neutral-sounding-language suffers from the problem whereby in cases of oppression, neutrality aligns with the oppressor. Who gets to say what the contract is, and who enforces it? Should the organs of law and justice fall into the hands of people bent on oppressing others, that’s when this neutral-sounding-framing can be used as a tool of oppression. That’s how Jim Crow worked, it’s how white supremacy works, it’s how every colonial/settler nation functions.

There is one group of people intent on using the language of tolerance as a tool of oppression, and it’s high time there was a clause in the paradox/contract/treaty that explicitly calls out that fascists aren’t covered because their whole program is to subvert the contract such that they have rights and power but others do not.