John Richard

  • 49 Posts
  • 3.18K Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • Already addressed this elsewhere in the thread, but dropping a Wikipedia link to the Paradox of Tolerance is the most predictable, lazy response I receive anytime free speech is discussed.

    I would strongly encourage you to actually go read Karl Popper’s original text—or even just the link you just dropped—rather than just throwing out the title of the theory.

    If you had done the reading, you would know Popper explicitly wrote: “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.” He stated that suppression is only justified when a group abandons debate and starts using fists and weapons.

    By cheering for a mob to use physical violence to preemptively shut down someone speaking, you are acting as the exact intolerant, anti-democratic threat that Popper warned about. You are using a philosopher’s warning against political violence to justify political violence.

    Go read the literature, along with the subsequent challenges by modern sociologists, before dropping the link.


  • How has doing nothing against the rise of fascism worked so far?

    Dismantling bad ideas through debate, exposing their flaws, and addressing the root psychological and economic causes of extremism isn’t “doing nothing.” It is doing the actual, difficult work required to maintain a democracy.

    If you want to know why authoritarianism is actually on the rise, it isn’t because society has “too much free speech.” It is rising because of corporate capture, oligarchy, and the systematic destruction of the working class. When a society’s institutions fail its citizens, and those institutions then attempt to censor and suppress the resulting public anger, desperate people turn to extremists who promise to tear the system down.

    By cheering for censorship and street violence, you aren’t fighting the rise of authoritarianism. You are helping to create the exact polarized and violent environment it needs to thrive.


  • Your worldview defends fascists and bigots. What’s there to read?

    If you had actually read it, you would realize my worldview is focused on permanently eliminating fascism and bigotry through psychologically proven tactics, rather than feeding those ideologies through performative mob violence.

    Your worldview relies on beating people in the street—a tactic that history and psychology prove only reinforces extremist victimhood, validates their paranoia, and ensures they retreat into echo chambers where they become more radicalized.

    My worldview relies on dragging those ideas into the light, diagnosing the root cause of the anger, and dismantling it so it actually dies out. One method cures the disease and the other just punches the symptom to feel self-righteous.

    If your actual goal is to rid society of bigotry, you might want to look around and ask yourself: how is your current strategy working out for you so far?