“White supremacists are really, really hoping that you don’t keep reading this article. They don’t want you to learn about the Paradox of Tolerance, because then they’d lose a powerful weapon in their fight to make society more racist. Ready to make a white supremacist mad?
Fortunately for us, the Paradox of Tolerance, a concept coined by philosopher Karl Popper, is easy to understand and remember. The “paradox” part makes it sounds complicated and hard, but it’s really just a rule with one exception. It goes like this:
- A tolerant society should be tolerant by default,
- With one exception: it should not tolerate intolerance itself.
To give a specific example, a tolerant society should tolerate protest marches in general, but it shouldn’t tolerate a white supremacist march advocating for the oppression and killing of people of color – like the march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 that ended with white supremacists beating and killing people who were opposed to their message of intolerance.”
How my heart sings 
Yeah! I have always loved this innovation of Popper…..especially, the paradox part -the real essence of what it means. 😉 Hugs!
It is a very good article.I’ve never seen Quartz magazine before.I did read some Popper when teaching but had forgotten this.Thanks for coming by.:)xx
He was a great thinker