timewarp

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?

He was asking for exactly what he got.

Actually, he was entirely right about them. He accurately pointed out that they were too cowardly to do the actual, hard work required to fight for their beliefs through the democratic process.

Throwing fists from the safety of a mob is a lazy shortcut for weak people who can't win an argument. They aren't heroes defending society. They are just violent, lazy thugs who earned their jail cells.

He challenged his critics to a fight.

No he didn't. Saying people are scared to fight for what they believe in does not invite or mean they are afraid to attack him physically. Regardless, someone saying you're scared to fight them, and you actually committing assault to prove them wrong, makes you the idiot in that scenario.

I encourage you to read my other comments, where I address Karl Popper directly.

By cheering for a mob to use physical violence to preemptively shut down someone’s speech, you are acting as the exact intolerant, anti-democratic threat that Popper warned about

Listen, it is clear your responses are devolving into bad-faith, contradictory claims just to avoid admitting that a mob committing battery isn't a noble political act.

I've said everything I intend to say. Either sit on it and reflect on why you are so desperate to justify vigilante street violence, or keep doing logical backflips to defend a mob. Either way, I am leaving the conversation here. You can have the last word if you need it.

So, just to confirm, hate speech is cool with you? "I think that people with trait such and so are less than human."

I want to be clear: believing anyone is "less than human" is an awful idea. We agree on that. But our disagreement is about how we actually cure hate.

First, we have to be careful not to reduce complex issues to extreme hypotheticals. Much of the UK immigration debate is about an overburdened post-COVID welfare system. Wanting stricter borders isn't inherently declaring anyone "subhuman."

But even if a random citizen does say something genuinely vile, we have the agency to not let a stranger's words break us. An awful opinion is just an opinion.

Most importantly, we need to know why they hold that view. Extreme views often stems from profound, unaddressed trauma. Look at the tragic reality of the grooming gangs scandal, where horrific abuse was covered up for years by authorities terrified of being labeled "racist."

If a victim of that systemic betrayal develops extreme, xenophobic views out of trauma, what does a street mob accomplish?

Letting someone speak isn't about validating their conclusion. It’s about giving them the space to reveal the root of it so we can actually address it and shift their perception.

You are accusing me of "strawmanning" and arguing in bad faith, but you seem to have forgotten how a comment thread works. I was responding directly to the specific claims made by the previous commenter.

The person I was replying to explicitly claimed that the mob's violence was politically motivated—they called it a "crucial defense of democracy" designed to ensure people "stay afraid." I responded directly to their stated ideological motive. It is not a "strawman" to quote a person's exact words and reply to the argument they actually made.

Now you have jumped in with a completely contradictory defense. You are arguing the mob had no political ideology at all, and was just acting like unprincipled thugs "beating up a drunk at a bar."

I had no reason to address your alternative explanation at the time, because the person I was talking to was actively claiming this was a noble political crusade. Ironically, by stripping the mob of their political motive, you are actually arguing against the person I was responding to.

If you want to completely scrap their defense and present your own distinct viewpoint—that this wasn't about defending democracy, but was just a senseless, apolitical street assault—I'm more than happy to address your argument separately. Let me know if that is the premise you want to go with.

I mean, I want to agree with you.

I genuinely appreciate you saying that, and for what it's worth, I actually understand the fear driving your perspective.

The media and political machines run on algorithms designed to make us terrified of each other. When you are constantly told that the people you disagree with are an existential threat to society, the instinct to just shut them down completely—even physically—makes sense emotionally. But history and psychology prove it is the absolute worst way to actually fix the problem.

Some things shouldn’t be debated. Some “opposing views” shouldn’t be given a platform or granted the light of day.

If you want to actually change minds and protect society, declaring that bad ideas "shouldn't be heard" is the biggest mistake you can make.

Think about it from the perspective of psychology. If a child or a patient comes to a therapist with deeply troubled, harmful, or antisocial views, what happens if the therapist says, "Those ideas are unacceptable, and you are not allowed to speak them in here"?

The ideas don't go away. They just fester in the dark. The therapist loses any ability to understand where those ideas came from, diagnose the root cause, or help the person untangle them. Listening to someone’s ideas—even abhorrent ones—isn’t about validating them. It’s about exposing them to the light so they can actually be treated and dismantled.

When you push bad ideas off the public platform, you don't destroy them. You just force them into echo chambers where they are never challenged by better arguments, and where they metastasize into actual extremism.

Does that mean things may get messy and that mistakes may be made? Yeah. Probably... You can’t reason someone out of a position they haven’t reasoned themselves into.

You might not always be able to reason them out of it, but you absolutely cannot beat them out of it.

Using violence against bad ideas is a trap. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. understood this better than anyone when he wrote about the descending spiral of physical escalation: "Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate."

When you use a street mob to violently silence someone, you don't prove their ideas wrong. You just prove their paranoid worldview right. You convince them—and anyone watching—that they are a victim, and you guarantee that the next time they come back, they will bring their own weapons. Violence begets violence.

The only way to actually defeat bad ideas is to drag them out into the open, expose how weak they are, and defeat them with better ones. It is harder, it takes longer, but it is the only method that doesn't end with us destroying society to save it.

They should be allowed to express their opinion until it becomes tangible and problematic for said outgroup?

Yes. Exactly. That is the fundamental basis of a free society and the legal system. The line is drawn at tangible actions and imminent threats.

You do not get to physically assault people based on hypothetical future crimes you imagine their words might lead to. Using physical violence to punish someone preemptively before anything "tangible" has actually happened isn't justice. Redefining offensive speech as "violence" is just a rhetorical cheat code you are using to grant yourself permission to throw the first punch.

Also that twat called for it... As a crowd gathered behind him, he said: "All of you who throw water are cowards."

"Fight for what you believe in" is arguably the most common idiom in all of political activism. When labor unions say "fight for your rights," or progressive activists say "fight for climate justice," they aren't asking for a literal fistfight. You know exactly what that phrase means.

Deliberately misinterpreting a standard political metaphor as an invitation to a physical brawl is the definition of arguing in bad faith.

Furthermore, throwing liquid on someone is legally physical battery. The mob had already started the physical altercation. He was calling them cowards because they were hiding in a crowd throwing things at a single person instead of actually defending their beliefs with their words.

Your entire argument boils down to intentionally twisting a common figure of speech so you can fall back on the classic abuser's defense: "Look at what he was saying, he was asking for it."

That opposing political view: “you cannot live your life. I want to deport, imprison, or execute you.”

First, you are inventing an imaginary, extreme quote to justify actual, physical battery. If we are playing that game, should I take the most unhinged, violent statement made by anyone I believe shares your political alliance and permanently assign it to you?

Second, a random citizen on the street has zero institutional power to deport, imprison, or execute anyone. They are not an imminent threat. The state is the only entity with the power to imprison people, and as we've seen, the UK government is currently using that exact power to arrest 82-year-old pensioners simply for holding Palestine Action placards.

If someone is actively trying to physically harm you, you have every right to self-defense. But claiming that hearing a civilian's political opinion on the street is the equivalent of an impending execution is intellectually dishonest. You are redefining speech as "violence" so you can use actual, physical violence while pretending to be the victim.

By cheering for the violent suppression of political expression, your worldview aligns perfectly with the actual authoritarianism of the current UK government, which is busy crushing dissent to ignore actual victims in Gaza.