this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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I suffer from the paradox of tolerance whereby those who want a tolerant society must not tolerate intolerance. Those that are intolerant must be removed from society if you are to truly achieve tolerance.
I guess I'm fascist now too..
The paradox is the result of the liberalist idea of some universal right to tolerance; that there's some inherent moral or pragmatic obligation for us to just tolerate everyone and everything possible.
There's no moral nor pragmatic benefit to tolerating neo-nazis in a community. We don't need some mental gymanastical paradox to excuse that fact. Being a neo-nazi is a personal choice to be harmful antisocial scum, comparable to child abusers and billionaires, and the abstract liberalist idea that they automatically deserve freedom, liberty or tolerance in the first place is pointless and dangerous.
The biggest issue with this is that people that think like this tend to throw accusations like “neo-Nazi” out like lollies, at everyone that they disagree with about on certain things that are in no way “nazi-esque”.
Disliking the “welcome to country” does not make you a neo-Nazi. It is a divisive thing. It’s not some centuries old tradition, it was invented by Ernie Dingo in like the 90s. Many, many people think it’s completely pointless and irrelevant, and they’re entitled to that opinion just like you’re entitled to your opinion that it makes them racist. It doesn’t mean you’re automatically right and they’re wrong though.
In this specific situation - welcome to country at an ANZAC day ceremony - it is extremely debatable about its use. The ANZACs, 99% of who were white non-indigenous people, died defending this country. “Welcoming” their relatives to the very country is rightly seen as incredibly disrespectful by many. Without those ANZACs giving their life to defend this country that is being claimed is not theirs, the aboriginals might have been eradicated off the face of the earth.
Saying this is not racist. It’s not “neo-Nazi” views. You claim it is as an excuse to be intolerant towards those people. No matter how you try to sugar coat it, you are being intolerant.
The hecklers in this case were straight-up neo-Nazis.
From the ABC article (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-25/melbourne-anzac-day-welcome-to-country-hecklers/105215124)
This quote cited on his Wikipedia page (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Hersant):
A heckler was. Singular. He wasn’t the only one, and he definitely isn’t the only one who found it incredibly disrespectful and insulting. One person doing X being a Y does not make everyone doing X a Y.
At another Anzac ceremony the self proclaimed “tolerant” people were shouting “free Palestine”. What are your thoughts on that?
Also this “the ABC understands a group of far right were present” thing is just typical media garbage, unverified and put there purely to stoke the outrage flames from their target audience. Also they likely consider anyone who voted “no” to the voice “far right”, so it’s a meaningless biased comment made to get a reaction.