I've already told you we have a fascist infestation in the United States. People in the U.S. are likely unaware that this authoritarian resurgence is more advanced in the United Kingdom. As I listened to the UK channel spiked podcast today, called it's time to cancel cancel culture, I was reminded of Karl Popper's argument regarding the degree to which liberal (i.e., tolerant) societies should tolerate intolerance.
I will quote Popper, and then give you my answer to this urgent question. You're almost certainly not going to like the answer.
Here's the famous quote from Popper—
Popper was a non-religious Jew who witnessed the rise of Nazism in the 20s in his hometown of Vienna and fled to England, then in 1937, to Christchurch, New Zealand, where he was appointed lecturer at Canterbury College (now the University of Canterbury). There, he wrote The Open Society, where the famous passage appears in a footnote:
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 unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; 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 rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
I agree with Popper. Completely. 100% We can no longer afford to tolerate the intolerant. In normal times in a liberal society, where there is no existential threat to that society, we can tolerate the intolerant and pat ourselves on the back for doing so. But these are not normal times.
Let us review the only reservation we need consider. I will start with a quote from the (non-canonical) Gospel of Thomas using one translation here.
His disciples questioned him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? And how shall we pray? Shall we give alms? And what kind of diet shall we follow?" Jesus said, "Do not lie, and do not do what you hate.
This last sentence should be understood in this sense.
What you hate (done to you) do not do (to others).
If those of us in a liberal society do not tolerate the intolerant, we become intolerant ourselves. Thus we do to others what we hate done to us.
This may seem to be a strong objection, but what kind of morality are we considering here? Intolerant people pose an existential threat to those of us who want to preserve a liberal society. These anti-democratic, illiberal fascists are capable of any atrocity because for them, the ends always justify the means. They will lie and distort reality beyond recognition to deceive you, they will blackmail or betray you, they will take every step to "cancel" you if they don't like what you say and believe.
The fascists have been doing all these things. The more power they acquire, the more vicious this canceling will get, up to and including show trials, firing squads, re-education and gulags.
If we have a Christian morality, and refuse to respond in kind to this existential threat, instead preferring to follow the precept of Jesus above, we will die as martyrs or live in fear on our knees as we wait for salvation. I am not a Christian. I don't think redemption lies through my dedication to God. I don't believe there's a Happy Outcome in Heaven which is my just reward for accepting Jesus as my savior and redeemer.
Therefore I don't see any reason to put up with this existential threat, this fascist bullshit. Free speech is one thing, but trying to arbitrarily destroy other people's lives is quite another. If I am not causing pain and suffering for others, no one, and especially not delusional ideologues, has the right to tell me how to think or behave.
If I want to live, and I want my children to live, I will respond to the fascist threat in kind because I have no other viable, effective choice. In World War II, those in liberal societies fought the Nazis. In order to do that, they had to kill Nazis. Because what else are you going to do with dangerous out-of-control predators? Liberals had no choice. And so those people did indeed do what they hated in the sense above. That's the kind of morality I am adhering to here. It is indeed the law of the jungle. It is an evolutionary imperative, the survival instinct writ large. That's the only real alternative to martyrdom we're being offered here.
Maybe this old clip from Woody Allen's Manhattan will make this clear. We don't need some devastating satire of Nazis in the New York Times. In fact, in 2020 the New York Times has been taken over by Nazis (the movie was made in the 1970s).
You can listen to the spiked podcast below in this context. I don't want to get into the details. The people at spiked are good, tolerant liberal people. They are really nice, reasonable people. They believe in progress. They want people to live and let live. They think they can reason or persuade or satirize their way out of this predicament. Forget about it. To counter this threat, you've got to put the fascists down. I'll leave "put them down" undefined because we don't know what will be necessary going forward, but what I mean generally is rendered impotent or ineffective with no capacity to ever threaten others again because of wrong-think, having the wrong skin color and similar "crimes".
The second segment in the podcast is about the BBC. Well, you might ask, what's the problem with the BBC? Well, there are fascists running it and they are totally out of control (listen to the podcast). These "journalists" (really, activists) are running an unconstrained totalitarian disinformation/propaganda campaign on the public airways. If it were up to me, I would have suspended operations at the BBC some time ago and warned those running it that if they don't cut the ideological bullshit, they will be tossed out on their ass. The ironic part of the UK's ongoing tolerance of the BBC is that the British public must pay for the constant disinformation those activists serve up.
If my views offend you, know that I am unapologetic. In particular, I am not going to apologize for the reality of the human condition. History tells us that this kind of problem crops up from time to time. History and reality also dictate that there is only one way out of this mess if you want a life truly worth living. Merely sucking up the punishment is no way to live.
The governor of Utah just declared a state of emergency because the fascist infestation in his state has overwhelmed the state's resources. Hundreds of corporations are boycotting Facebook to try to force the space alien Zuckerberg to clamp down on "hate speech." And what is hate speech? It will be anything the President, his political allies or his voters say on Facebook.
There is only one chance to get this right and the time is now.
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