What is the “paradox of tolerance” and is it legit?
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For those who need a visual analogy, imagine a fire pit with a roaring fire inside it. This is the “Flame of Tolerance”, it represents a tolerant society.
Now you can throw many things into the Flame, and it’ll keep burning.
Next image a Bucket of Water. The Water is a non-specific “intolerant” group. You can imagine it as Nazi’s or religious fundamentalists or any group who by their very nature refuses to tolerate or accept the existence of another group of people.
Now no sensible society would let such a group in wholesale. The Flames of Tolerance don’t wish to be put out, so they don’t allow for the entire Bucket of Water to be dumped on it at once. Thus is the tolerant society is intolerant to the intolerant group.
The Flames of Tolerance **cannot** tolerate the Water, because to do so extinguishes the Flames. Those who are ACTIVELY intolerant of others in the society based on beliefs with no evidence to back up why those other shouldn’t be tolerated, are incompatible with a tolerant society, which is ofc paradoxical to the meaning of the world tolerance.
Now the paradox also teaches you must be vigilant against allowing the intolerant groups any foothold. Say someone managing the Flames of Tolerance goes “I mean the Bucket of Water isn’t all bad, surely we can allow some of it into the Fire, it can take it” and no one steps up and opposes the notion, they begin pouring small cups of Water into the Fire.
And at first they’re right, the Fire burns too brightly and hot, so the cups of Water do not extinguish it outright. But over time, as more cups of Water and added to the Fire, the wood begins to dampen, the ashes at the bottom of the fire-pit begin to turn into a sludgy waste and the Fire of Tolerance begins to weaken as its fuel is made ineffective by the gradual additions from the Water Bucket of Intolerance. Eventually either the Flame sputters out, or its so weak someone decides to finish it off by dumping the rest of the Bucket on top because it *seems* like the best option over the weakened Flame.
In either scenario, be it the Bucket douses the Flames wholesale, or the Flames are weakened slowly over time by the gradual addition of the Water, in the end you are left with a disgusting, useless sludge made from the ashes of the once bright Flames of Tolerance, and it will take a monumental effort to reignite the Flame from that mire of filth and scum.
Turning off the analogy, you cannot let intolerant groups who have shown no desire to change their ways exist within a tolerant society, and you must always be trying to root them out. Because if you let them fester under the surface, they actively undermine and weaken the tolerant society, and then at a key moment reveal themselves to the people of the weakened society and go “Look at how weak it is (without revealing that made it weak), let us take the lead and we will bring back the glory days” and the people of the weakened tolerant society, desperate and unable to see the perpetrators of their suffering before them accept their offer. Then the intolerant group makes the society better for some, but a nightmare for others. But to those that see improvement all they see is “it went from bad to good again” so they willfully ignore the plight of their former friends and colleagues out of fear that if they don’t keep the intolerant group happy, they could go back to the bad times (that the intolerant group often caused themselves)
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