"Now we just need to add a clause to the contract to exclude communists and we'll be good to go"

Apologies if this is the wrong comm, I'm a little confused with the changes still.

Collectivizing some takes from comrades for some counterpropaganda:

  • The paradox of tolerance is a semantic fallacy — tolerance = socially progressive, not pain tolerance: "smuglord Oh, you're a tolerant person? Tolerate this then! punches you in the face". To put it another way, tolerating other people (the bare minimum!) is different from tolerance for concepts. Parenti addresses this in The Culture Struggle:

The reason for respecting other cultures is to avoid doing harm to the people who live in them. But what if certain practices within the culture itself harm segments of the population? What claim, then, does the culture have to being above judgment? In South Africa, for instance, police are frequently dispatched to investigate muti killings, murders committed in order to present a traditional priest with a severed hand or genitals or heart so [gender] can cure a disease or bring some business gain to a supplicant. 51 South African authorities seem to have zero tolerance for this sacred aspect of indigenous culture. Presumably so would the murder victims had they been given a say in the matter.

  • The tolerance paradox only exists if you see tolerance as some logic puzzle rule and not a practical outcome for the lives of the marginalized. As this post pointed out, tolerating "all political parties" when some are openly trying to cause harm to others (e.g. actual Nazis) isn't more inclusive. Unlike actually marginalized groups, political views are, while also a product of your environment, at least something you have control over. In case you think this is just a point of theory, this has harmed trans people previously, for instance.

Consequently, the so-called "paradox of tolerance" can often ironically be used to argue for intolerance.

We don't need a society where all viewpoints are tolerated. Even well-intended ones often shouldn't be, as Mao famously put it:

Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn't that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?

  • happybadger [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    porky-happy "retvrn to tradition"

    >Doing antisocial things means you're exiled from society and anyone can hunt you for sport if they want to

    porky-scared-flipped "no not like that"

    • Lemmygradwontallowme [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      Doing antisocial things

      If by doing antisocial things, you mean doing mass killings of 2 or more people, certainly

      and anyone can hunt you for sport if they want to

      Make it quick, and don't make a mess of it

      • happybadger [he/him]
        ·
        1 month ago

        The only difference between the mass shooter and the social murderer is that the mass shooter has a lower death toll than the wealthy person or corporation dodging taxes and destroying the biosphere. They're on the list certainly but they're so far down the list.

        • Lemmygradwontallowme [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          1 month ago

          the mass shooter has a lower death toll than the wealthy person or corporation dodging taxes and destroying the biosphere

          I actually forgot about that, but anyways

          knight-nod

          Any corpo and their shareholders who causes a 2nd Bhopal will get gulag'd at best, and executed and body disrespected and composted at worst

  • GarbageShoot [he/him]
    ·
    1 month ago

    Social contract theory, the last refuge of the liberal. Liberals to this day say it's the fundament of society because some assholes 250 years ago who did zero anthropology said that it's just what society is.

    As others said, the contract is arbitrary, so this doesn't work as an answer to anything. The Nazis sure had social contracts, and they sure did "not protect" the people who violated the terms of those contracts. This so-called gotcha has no way to distinguish between that and a decent society.

    Furthermore, this focuses heavily on a logic of a person's actions being uncoerced by the environment they live in. The thief who gets his hand cut off does not get asked if he had no other way to get bread if some guarantee of employment or welfare wasn't part of the contract (and it often isn't). Sorry, you're just a legal unperson now! Huh, thought it was the totalitarians who unperson people, not us virtuous liberals!

    SCT is nonsense and society should be oriented, by means of unilaterally democratic input, towards the best outcomes for people. Anything else is definitionally providing worse outcomes, or the same outcome in case complete happenstance.

    • ThermonuclearEgg [she/her, they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 month ago

      This so-called gotcha has no way to distinguish between that and a decent society.

      Luckily, all you need to do is vote i-am-adolf-hitler out of power, and then we'll have a decent society. At least until the-republican runs.

  • rhubarb [he/him]
    ·
    1 month ago

    It's not even rhetorically good, because testing it by applying it to the real world, which is surely the first thing you would do to argue against it, immediately reveals that you can use this to just arbitrarily decide who to tolerate.

    • ThermonuclearEgg [she/her, they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 month ago

      We're tolerant, don't worry. Could you line up against this wall for me real quick please? People standing in front of that wall is my special interest, so you're being ableist if you don't.

  • TreadOnMe [none/use name]
    ·
    1 month ago

    God help us if the people who 'teach rhetoric' can't see past this nonsense. I'd genuinely prefer sophism.

    • Thallo [she/her]
      ·
      1 month ago

      Unfortunately, teachers get stuck reinforcing thinking patterns because they have to teach the same thing year after year after year so it becomes rote

  • 7bicycles [he/him]
    ·
    1 month ago

    do I even want to know what kind of person both self describes as "teaching rhetoric" and is also easily swayed by tumblr memes

  • Cutecity [he/him]
    ·
    1 month ago

    Like you said, there is no mention of tolerance to what. But you only mention pain and then viewpoint (or ideology). I personally saw it as tolerance to expression (for example of identities, such as culture, religion, gender). Then of course if anyone wants to hijack the concept they can just conflate those expressions to whatever intolerance they want (for example, religious people are homophobes). I'm not disagreeing, just thought the precision might be useful.

  • Thallo [she/her]
    ·
    1 month ago

    Any not just use the non aggression principle? ancap-good