The Leftist Perception Through "The Paradox of Tolerance"

Are leftists really "intolerant of intolerance"?

The paradox of tolerance is something leftists occasionally bring up when addressing fascism, whet her or not they’ve hit the mark on its definition. The interesting thing about leftists embracing the paradox of tolerance is that they actually become far more intolerant than they believe because they are not immune to our domestic political environment, though they seem to believe they think outside of it. They embrace the left-right paradigm and proudly dub themselves “far-left” or other adjacent vocabulary to incite a reaction in others or as some weird badge of identity, serving less of a purpose than any tangible and well-informed conviction they could possibly hold. A large majority of these self-proclamations amount to little more than patting themselves on the back. In such, they end up embracing an ideology gifted to them by liberalism, which drapes a façade of tolerance over a violent mentality.

What is the paradox of tolerance?

The Paradox of Tolerance is a concept by philosopher Karl Popper. Simply put, it means to be intolerant of intolerance as a form of “social maintenance”. In other words, to be against bigotry in all forms, and oppose ideologies based on intolerance. As far as leftists concerned, they believe they’re intolerant of (namely) fascism.

Infographic on “The Paradox of Tolerance”

While Leftists claim to stand against bigotry like racism, homophobia/transphobia, classism, xenophobia, etc., they really just feel superior to their peers, and use these virtues as a vehicle for their advocacy of western cosmopolitanism. They regard themselves highly and form unhealthy, dehumanizing, and politically-motivated perceptions of the people they interact with in their lives. They’re willing to cut ties with people over personal politics as if they’re above others, claiming their tolerance paradox is strictly aimed at the worst of the worst. In doing so, they become the embodiment of individual exceptionalism. It appears in their understanding, their is a scale of threat where they see conservatives as the most dangerous people in liberal society, mainly due to their social views. While leftists consider mainstream conservatives in America their enemies, conservatives can be guided in the proper direction by communists, and are no worse off in their understanding than your average liberal, or even your average leftist. Yet somehow, leftists will find a problem in saying:

“We’re all in this together, why not work together?”

In response to that, I’ve heard:

“I don’t work with fascists!”

“Conservatives want me dead!”

“If I work with them that makes me a fascist!”

Well then, what makes social conservatism the equivalent of fascism?

Many conservatives, especially libertarians, oppose bourgeois reign and military expansionism, which are key components of fascism. Are they fascists because they tout McCarthyist rhetoric about communism? There’s plenty of leftists that do that too, and you’d think they would know better, but McCarthyism was designed to demonize communism, and has been hammered into the framework of our government and culture; of course many American people are going to be anticommunist. The problem is what conservatives often describe that they hate about communism isn’t communism, that’s just the word they’ve used for it. Not to mention the leftists that seem to be enticed by the ideals involving end-goal communism - a moneyless, classless, stateless society - don’t understand or approve of the scientific approach it would take to reach that stage, often slandering and/or discarding past and existing socialist projects as “authoritarian regimes” or “state capitalism”. What makes them any less anticommunist if their liberal-influenced idealism is a distortion of reality, and why do they feel superior to conservatives? Is it because they have social views that are unpalatable to leftists, or even bigoted social views? The problem therein is pinning bigotry solely to one political identity.

More often, leftists seem unwilling to agree to disagree due to their belief that American conservativism is encroaching on fascism, as if average citizens are given the power to control legislation in the American political system. At this point it’s very clear the system is rigged against the majority of Americans. We live under an oligarchy that controls most if not all of our politicians and media. The CIA has more power than our representatives could hope to. There are multibillion-dollar American corporations their own private militaries acting as agents of eminent domain & imperialism. So why not extend your reach to educate and cooperate with the average workers and civil servants? For some it is apparently too difficult, and these discussions become insurmountable. Leftists don’t seem to like truckers or farmers very much. They also seem to hate veterans as much as they hate cops. They usually prefer to mock someone for their views than they do try to have honest dialogues with them.

Is this to say that leftists are more argumentative than conservatives, or is it the approach to dialogue that escalates the conversation? Maybe conservatives are the ones that are far more confrontational right out the gate, or perhaps there are focal points that get either side more irate than the other. After all, our political sphere is full of very polarizing issues. In many ways, these topics have become so polarizing that even entertaining the idea of debating or discussing them enrages liberals, conservatives and leftists alike, and many of them claim it is beyond all rationale to even allow discourse on specific subjects. Some liberals and leftists just find it more gratifying to argue with each other and/or conservatives in order to gain social capital, wherein these discussions become circle jerks of meaninglessness that end up serving the system out of inaction.

Are conservatives truly deplorables like they’ve been treated in recent years? Unsalvageable people, based strictly on moral platitudes? Contrary to what some leftists may think, no; everyone under a superstructure that holds up bigoted values - in the courts, the prisons, the three main branches of federal governance - is susceptible to being just as bigoted as anyone else. That’s not integral to conservatives, nor are they worse than anyone else living under this system just because they’ve drawn different conclusions than you - no matter how morally wrong they may seem to the individual. They are not “closeted fascists”, they often denounce fascism whether or not they contradict themselves doing so - a contradiction that is also not specific to conservatives. This, among many other problems faced in the US, is emblematic of a greater problem with education and propaganda. The problem isn’t conservatism, and if it was, conservatism would be a threat to socialism and therefore communism, but it’s not.

The problem is liberalism.

As an ideology and a system of governance, it poses more of a threat to humanity than conservatism could ever hope to. After all the dominant governing system in the west is liberalism, of which social democracy is the closest ally. Both have allied with and protected fascism, and both share the same social values. Liberalism prides itself on the destruction of nations as “preserving democracy”; it undermines national sovereignty for its own goals; it acts as a virus on the political ideologies of those who live under it. Anyone can be tainted by liberalism, especially if they don’t have the media & educational literacy to see through its façade. In America roughly 21% of adults are illiterate, and more than half of US adults have a 6-grade-level competency; paired with multi-billion-dollar state-controlled propaganda outlets (among other factors), it’s no wonder people struggle with the control liberalism has over their ability to think for themselves.

Simply put, you are a product of your environment. You are not better than others because you’ve collected what you consider to be the right ideas. Labeling conservatism as a step away from fascism is ahistorical and undialectical. There are enough currently existing socialist countries that are governed by a conservative communist or socialist party to disprove a definite link between conservatism and fascism that leftists and liberals alike have assumed - the Communist Party of China and the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua are two that come to mind - neither of which are expansionist states, nor do they let capital rise above the authority of their government.

How is fascism actually defined? Do leftists have a consistent definition or thorough understanding of fascism?

This may seem obvious to some, but fascism is an economic mode of production, not the social belief system leftists make it out to be. It is the merger of corporate and state, where an elite class (bourgeoisie) has authority over all of society and uses state force through militant dictatorship. Fascism is expansionist, as was Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and in modern time the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Ukraine. Fascism is an explosive system of constantly increasing violence - a terroristic state or organization of states dictated by finance capital.

The leftist definition of fascism has been stretched thin enough to include just about anyone they disagree with on social policy, economic policy, and/or culture. You cannot reason with leftists in the way you could reason with conservatives - whom they seem to consider enemies - because leftists hold their virtues to be more important than humanity and are often more volatile in their approach to discussion - something they cannot get past because their ideology is personal. That individualistic approach to their political understanding is symptomatic of liberal thought.

In attempting to become the most tolerant and careful ideologically, leftists approach themselves closer and closer to embracing fascism.

They are easy to manipulate through psychological operations and manufacturing consent for imperialist efforts, and get tied up in liberal politics more than they seem to understand. The irony of them raging against someone like Richard Spencer is that they’re very similar to him ideologically. He’s just far more open about his race essentialism than they are.

In reality, leftists (and liberals) have what could be called conservative derangement. Their fixation on conservatives above anyone else as the stepping stones to fascism ignores the likes of Stepan Bandera, the Social Democratic Party of the Weimar Republic, the modern Nazism of Ukraine, or even the British colony of Israel. Social democrats pride themselves on progressivism, but have shown to be the arm of imperialism and fascism alike, from Mikhail Gorbachev of the former Soviet Union to Gabriel Boric of Chile, to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of the United States. All have supported imperialist efforts to destabilize other countries, or undermine their own people’s interest. Are conservatives capable of the same? Sure, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton exist (both neoconservatives but the point remains), but conservative derangement entails that conservatives are somehow uniquely worse than the rest of the political spectrum. It’s a silly assertion that only serves to help liberalism and its many forms, which includes leftism and fascism.

Why then, is there so much reaction to social conservatism in the US?

There are a plethora of reasons, but most of them stem from a cultural split that was created to pit the working masses against each other. Moral divides created around income inequality, the second amendment, cosmopolitanism, abortion, and anything else that can get Americans into a heated standstill. These divisive issues have different approaches. Some are willing to agree to disagree, others want to write people off for their ‘backward’ worldviews, going as far as to cut off their family, send people death threats, or even commit acts of terrorism for their ideology.

Strange, considering these policies and movements have regularly been used as a grift for public support. The pro-life position was only adopted by the republican party to manipulate the conservative vote in 1976. Prior to that, party stances were not rigidly one way or the other. The democratic party regularly grifts from tragedies like school shootings and police murders to garner support from liberals and leftists alike. Therein lies a bigger distinction, which is the difference between party politics and the working people. People’s political positions are far more diverse and imaginative than those that represent us, but still there are those who assume each others’ stances based on party platforms. Not to mention that both ruling parties quell the true creativity in people’s approach to solving the problems in America by narrowing the collective consciousness to the politics of the two-party system. Leftists fall into this as well, given they often identify more with the social democrats and other candidates that cater to ‘progressivism’. In doing so, they hold social views in higher regard than economic views in respect to their individual ideology.

The paradox of tolerance that leftists often subscribe to has them believing it is morally just to shut out people with bigoted or socially conservative views. The problem is, bigotry does not start and stop with conservatism; any ideology is just as capable of holding the same bigotry that conservatism is often associated with. There are many conservatives in this country that aren’t going anywhere, and aren’t going to change their beliefs if we refuse to reach them. How do you work to help the masses when you believe a large swath of them are as dangerous as proud fascists? After all roughly one third of Americans are conservatives, and if we can win over the hearts of them, regardless of how many, we absolutely should. Limiting ourselves in our outreach while contributing to the culture war that demonizes them and calls to criminalize them does not help anyone except selfish individuals.

Fascism is not social conservatism and vice versa. Whether or not fascists and conservatives have collaborated in the past is not a correlation specific to conservatism and does not show a deep connection between the two. Social democrats, liberals and anarchists have and do collaborate frequently with fascists in modern history, and historically have done so to spite communism several times in the last 100 years. If anyone should be pointing the finger, it shouldn’t liberals or leftists.

The assertion that conservatives are more likely to be fascists than liberals is a contrived notion not rooted in reality, rather concocted out of a moralistic perspective on (primarily) western liberal politics. Liberals and leftists are in fact more likely to support fascism beyond their own comprehension in their defense of western unilateralism, their anticommunist position being idealist and/or heavily misinformed distortions of history and of Marxism, as well as their complacency & ineffective action within their own countries.

Leftist and liberal activism amounts to little more than a performance, often of self-aggrandizing acts that tail the establishment. Leftists are in an especially specific position where they support acts of imperialism; they treat riots like they’re revolutions with no concrete demands or attempts to coordinate anything into a material force of the working class, but all desire to cause chaos; they do charity work and think it will lead to mass mobilization; they treat unions and worker co-ops like the path to communism while demonizing protesting farmers and truckers. Both liberals and leftists are easy targets of state propaganda, supporting whatever current goals the state department or the CIA have blindly. They are misinformed in many ways but believe otherwise, and will go to great lengths to arrogantly assert how right they are. In such, leftists - and liberals, obviously - are the perfect people to be indoctrinated by liberalism because they don’t even believe it’s happening. Liberalism protected fascism in the 20th century, giving refuge to its leaders and punishing its rivals (who were often its victims). One could say fascism broods within liberalism, but that period of dormancy is short-lived.