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I remember killed yesterday when leftists made fun of "freeze preach"
Not so fun when the shoe is on the other foot, is it?
The right wing assholes whining about free speech don't actually want free speech. You can see that in the campaigns to remove books from school libraries all across the country. All across the world the right are demonstrating time and again how little they actually support free speech.
What they want is the freedom to spew hate speech, which is the only kind of speech that a tolerant and free society should not tolerate. All other forms of speech they will gladly and eagerly suppress unless it agrees with them.
Right wing assholes don't want free speech, but I do.
That includes extremist views, since the government should not in any way be in business of determining what those are
It's not a question of "extremist". What is or isn't "extreme" is largely a matter of how far an idea strays from the norm. Some extreme ideas are very good, some extreme ideas are terrible.
The question, rather, is of purpose, not character. Intolerant speech - that is, speech whose purpose is to limit the rights of specific groups of people to exist - is the only kind of speech that we must be prepared to limit, because without limits on intolerant speech, the intolerant will ultimately abuse their freedoms to strip away freedoms from others.
This draws a hard line. It clearly defines and delineates what is and is not acceptable. It is a simple and clear rule that any tolerant society must abide by if it is to continue to be a tolerant society.
For the proof of this, you only need to look at what is happening in the US right now.
To you, speaking out against Israel is fine, but to some people it might be antisemitic. Whether or not it is against the rights of someone is actually personal opinion, not for the government to decide
But we're not required to evaluate the facts of the case based on what "some people" think. We can objectively examine the content of people's speech and ask whether it's intent is to advocate against the basic rights of a group of people or not. Criticising Isreal does not meet that test, despite what the ADL might claim.
Yes, there are grey areas. Yes, there are hard calls that have to be made. But saying "This is hard" and then throwing up your hands and resorting to free speech absolutism because you can't handle the difficult work of building a society is just childish.
How do you objectively decide that? Because Palestinian protestors would violate this:
The same way you objectively decide anything else in law. You apply the principles to the facts.
Your first example there is a gimme; clear and obvious example of antisemitic hate speech. The fact that they're protesting against Israeli genocide isn't some magic shield that protects people from criticism. You can protest against the actions of Isreal without declaring that Hitler was right.
The second one is a grey area. That's the thing; when you take a serious approach to the problems of the world, instead of fleeing to the simplicity of ideas like free speech absolutism, which require no degree of complex thought, you will inevitably run into grey areas. So I'm not going to give a hard answer on this one because I think it would take a lot of serious thought and debate to come up with a hard answer on it. But I will say that even if it was ruled as intolerant speech, nothing would be lost. You can protest against Isreal and stand up for Palestine without needing to celebrate the actions of Hamas. Those things are not intrinsically linked. So your examples do not demonstrate any kind of underlying flaw with Popper's principle. Nothing of value is lost if we as a society choose to say that these kinds of speech are unacceptable.
A society can choose to say that certain types of speech are intolerable, but do we get better results by jailing those people? Or do we make it more acceptable over time to jail people who are simply protesting against the government? Do we then apply violence to the protesters who don't agree to be peacefully arrested?
This isn't a theoretical consideration. See Tiananmen square, arrests of protesters in Russia, Iran, etc. The propaganda mouthpieces of these countries love to point out when similar things happen in the West
It's not a hypothetical, but it's also not responding to the specific premise of Popper's paradox.
You're basically doing the equivalent of saying "Some people get falsely accused of murder, therefore we should make murder legal."
People protesting against the government are not enaging in intolerant speech. It's that's simple. There's a clear cut rule that Popper lays out. You can say "Oh, but what if we decide to not follow that rule?" but then you've completely rejected the premise. That's no more useful than it is to suggest that democracy is bad because democracies sometimes become dictatorships. If your argument "X is bad if you do it badly" then you're always going to be right, but not in a way that's useful.
There's a huge difference. When there's a body it's obvious someone died. When someone gets offended, no crime was committed. But almost the same thing that is only offensive to people could cross the line into harassment.
Except you'll notice that I never said a word about "harassment" or things being "offensive". Throughout this discussion I have only ever advocated for the ability to restrict speech that is "intolerant." Not offensive. Not harassing.
Intolerance is not about what offends others. You can be as offended as you like by the phrase "Isreal should not commit genocide," but it is not intolerant, because intolerant speech is only that which seeks to attack, constrain or eliminate tolerance itself.
A tolerant society is one in which all tolerant people can exist freely and without oppression. The intolerant are those that would seek to exclude tolerant people from the protections of that society. It is paradoxical to extend tolerance to those who seek to destroy tolerance.
Doesn't change anything. From one perspective no crime was committed because nobody was being intolerant, but from another perspective someone was.
You can apply it to many statements, like "There should be no state in the Middle East for Jews"
That could be intolerant or maybe not.
Intolerance, in itself, is not a matter of perspective. It's a clear criteria.
That doesn't mean we can always clearly determine what speech is or is not intolerant. It often relies on gauging intent, which is difficult to do. The example you cited would be a judgement call for the courts; it very likely does not cross the line into intolerant speech, but if you could clearly demonstrate antisemitic intent on the part of the author, which would require other overtly antisemitic statements or actions, then you might be able to prove a case.
And this is nothing new. The law juggles questions of intent all the time. In cases of doubt, we err on the side of innocence. This is all very well trod territory. Why is it acceptable to assess the question of intent when judging between murder and manslaughter, but suddenly that becomes an unacceptable complication when we're talking about what is or isn't hate speech?
How is it a clear criteria? You haven't defined what you mean by intolerance
From one of my previous comments in this exact conversation:
A tolerant society is one in which all tolerant people can exist freely and without oppression. The intolerant are those that would seek to exclude tolerant people from the protections of that society.
In other words, we don't defend the right of Nazis to be Nazis because ultimately their goal is to strip rights and freedoms away from other people. Even if they're not out in the streets lynching black people and Jews, they are actively working towards destroying the place our tolerant society holds for people who are different from them. Extending tolerance to their speech leads to less tolerance in society as a whole.
Conversely, we do not treat Pride parades as intolerant speech, no matter how offensive they are to Nazis, because their goal is not to reduce the tolerance of tolerant people. Nazis don't get to be protected from other people's intolerance of them - they don't get to cry foul when someone says "Punch Nazis" - because their feelings of offence stem from their intolerance, and the intolerance others have towards them is a reaction to their intolerance.
In other words, if Nazis didn't believe in a hateful ideology, no one would hate them. Whereas Nazis will hate black people no matter what black people do or don't do.
You can't define intolerance by defining tolerance as being intolerant of intolerance. You just made a loop
Tolerance is by its nature defined as the inverse of intolerance, and vice versa. That's what the "in" at the start of "intolerance" means. They are each defined as the negation of the other.
A tolerant society is one that believes all people have a fundamental right to exist and live freely. It's really that simple. Intolerance is therefore that belief that some people do not have a fundamental right to exist and live freely.
Yes, I understand that part, I'm saying you first need to first define tolerance to negate it.
By your definition, in a tolerant society I have the right to exercise free speech. I'm not shielded from consequences of my actions, for example if it's libel. I can say anything I want about your business, but it is not true and it causes damages I'm liable for the damages.
By saying I don't have the right to express my political opinions you're being intolerant by your definition since you don't believe I should be able to live free, correct?
Yes, that is correct. Hence the "Paradox" in the "Paradox of tolerance."
Paradoxically it is necessary that a tolerant society be intolerant of one thing and one thing only; intolerance.
What are you even talking about?
A bunch on nonsense. There maroons think that getting banned from Facebook for making death threats is the same as the government imprisoning you for speaking out against genocide.
There are still people who think the government should be in the business of fining and jailing people for things they say
Oh, you mean like slander, libel, inciting riots, or specific and actionable threats?
Those things are slightly different. You have the right to say "FIRE" in a crowded movie theater. You have to pay for the consequences if it's not true.
If we're talking about posting opinions that offended people, that's a whole another thing. People can get offended because you have a difference of opinion.
I think you need to prove either damages were caused or you were endangered by someone (damages were not caused, but could easily have been)
I don't consider "a person said something I didn't like" as harassment