The Paradox of Tolerance: Can Democracy Stop Fascism?

[The Tenth Jellian Republic]

A good way to protect democracy is to actually have it not just in name. If people feel like their votes don't matter, and that politics are controlled by the elites. Then switching to a system where politics are controlled by the elites on their side is going to be preferable. Adopting proportional representation or ranked choice voting, devolution, Increased prevalence of referendums, and allowing citizens to propose legislation via petition, are good ways to achieve this.

Ranked choice voting, proportional representation, devolution (aka federalism), referendums are all great ways to make the government more aligned with the people.

Really what we need though is to change the culture. A democracy doesn’t work when people don’t believe in it.

Democracy stops fascism on a constant basis, but not 100%. Hitler was elected after all. Really though, democracy is a tool and we expect too much of it. It is completely up to how the people use it. WE must stop fascism, before it can infect people in the first place.

[Puchialand]

If anything, Democracy FUELS Fascism.

What we need is Liberal Autocracy.

[The Tenth Jellian Republic]

If anything, Democracy FUELS Fascism.

What we need is Liberal Autocracy.

An oxymoron.

[Kurgao]

If anything, Democracy FUELS Fascism.

What we need is Liberal Autocracy.

An oxymoron.

Not anymore so than a socialist autocracy.

A good way to protect democracy is to actually have it not just in name. If people feel like their votes don't matter, and that politics are controlled by the elites. Then switching to a system where politics are controlled by the elites on their side is going to be preferable. Adopting proportional representation or ranked choice voting, devolution, Increased prevalence of referendums, and allowing citizens to propose legislation via petition, are good ways to achieve this.

Ranked choice voting, proportional representation, devolution (aka federalism), referendums are all great ways to make the government more aligned with the people.

Really what we need though is to change the culture. A democracy doesn’t work when people don’t believe in it.

Democracy stops fascism on a constant basis, but not 100%. Hitler was elected after all. Really though, democracy is a tool and we expect too much of it. It is completely up to how the people use it. WE must stop fascism, before it can infect people in the first place.

If you give more power directly to the people (in my ideal case, the people and technocrats) there will be less power available to be occupied by a political party or personalist demagogue. This is in addition to such a government being more able to follow the people's wishes and prevent the conditions for fascism to become prevalent.

[Nu Elysium]

If anything, Democracy FUELS Fascism.

What we need is Liberal Autocracy.

liberals are about to reinvent vanguardism from first principles

[Reploid Productions]

"Tolerance" is a stupid myth made up by bootlickers and lazy consumers. We need an ALL-LEFT government. Those who lean even slightly to the right will be DRAWN AND QUARTERED. No exceptions. Don't care about what's in your head. IF YOU PREFER DISNEY TO VIVZIEPOP, YOU ARE A FUCKING BIGOT.

The site rules. You need to familiarize yourself with them. Immediately. You can argue against right-ring ideologies WITHOUT gleefully hurling abuse and blasting your torture fantasies at those you disagree with.

[Uiiop]

You just gotta vote real hard.

Sounds like someone forgot voting hard by yourself isn't enough anymore.

We need a whole unpaid internship working solely for the campaign's behalf both on and offline.

[Cole Whyte-Gurney]

Democracy isn't about stopping any ideology, it's about delivering whatever government people choose. What stops fascism is how shit the reality of fascism is.

[PUTAT]

If anything, Democracy FUELS Fascism.

What we need is Liberal Autocracy.

Liberal autocracy is just Pinochet's regime. That didn't work out too well.

[Page]

So, I wonder, how do you think Liberal Democracies can, democratically, stop the far left and far right tide we are seeing?

How do we stop both the people who liberated Auschwitz and the people who built it?

How do we stop free housing for everyone and also enslavement in the prison system?

How do we stop the people who treat the transgender community respectfully and the people who want them all dead?

But that's the neat part, you don't. You don't stop both of these "equally bad" factions. You lose to the left and fade into irrelevance and impotence with the fash.

What we need is Liberal Autocracy.

You will work for $7 an hour making bombs for baby-killing ethnostates abroad and wear the Pride ribbon while you work, or you will be thrown out of a biodiesel fueled helicopter in 16 - 28 months, depending on how fast the paperwork is processed.

[PUTAT]

How do we stop both the people who liberated Auschwitz and the people who built it?

How do we stop free housing for everyone and also enslavement in the prison system?

How do we stop the people who treat the transgender community respectfully and the people who want them all dead?

But that's the neat part, you don't. You don't stop both of these "equally bad" factions. You lose to the left and fade into irrelevance and impotence with the fash.

The truth is more complicated. Bolshevist despotates aren't winning while democratic states are still many. It is a bit ironic since half of the far-left (leftcoms) had faded into relative obscurity.

[Camtropia]

If anything, Democracy FUELS Fascism.

What we need is Liberal Autocracy.

Getting some serious "you have become the very thing you swore to destroy" energy here.

[PUTAT]

You just gotta vote real hard.

I can't tell whether this is satire or a real opinion. Nothing in the internet can be 100% trusted.

[The Lazarene Republic]

Liberals have two separate concepts of democracy: one where the people ultimately decide, and another where the right decisions are made. This leads to false paradoxes that are entirely the result of their bad use of language rather than any facts about the world. Of course, there is a real dilemma about when one principle should override the other (as it would be dumb to always ignore consensus or correctness), but it's simply a question of which priorities it is best for us to have and not really any different from cases where two moral virtues might lead us to different conclusions.

Also, Karl Popper, the guy who came up with the paradox of tolerance, distinguished it from the paradox of democracy. The paradox of tolerance concerns whether people who are tolerant of other viewpoints should tolerate viewpoints that are intolerant of other viewpoints (tolerance basically meaning they are willing to engage in dialogue and refrain from censorship, not whether they are politically correct), whereas the paradox of democracy is about whether a majority decision can abolish majority rule. Popper also adds that incitement to violence and violent acts are grounds for censorship, whereas we ought not censor ideologies that are in theory intolerant but in fact behave tolerantly. If I was an extreme Platonist and want to ban all musicals, it would be silly to send me to Gitmo for posting my opinions on Substack; however, if I organize to kill people who put on or watch musicals, then presumably the government could drone strike me.

I'm not a fan of Popper, and I think the way people (erroneously) use the paradox of tolerance is still indicative of its inherent flaws, but I don't think Popper would approve of the wildly authoritarian conclusions that people (mostly leftists/liberals, blame where it is due) have justified with it. And in this case, all sides in question are quite censorious at the moment (whether the centrist establishment or populists on the left and the right), but none of them are seriously prepared to overthrow their governments, so we can expect about the same amount of censorship no matter who has political success.

[PUTAT]

I'm not a fan of Popper, and I think the way people (erroneously) use the paradox of tolerance is still indicative of its inherent flaws, but I don't think Popper would approve of the wildly authoritarian conclusions that people (mostly leftists/liberals, blame where it is due) have justified with it. And in this case, all sides in question are quite censorious at the moment (whether the centrist establishment or populists on the left and the right), but none of them are seriously prepared to overthrow their governments, so we can expect about the same amount of censorship no matter who has political success.

I disagree. Regions with autocratic regimes tend to have worse censorship than liberal states.

[The Lazarene Republic]

I'm not a fan of Popper, and I think the way people (erroneously) use the paradox of tolerance is still indicative of its inherent flaws, but I don't think Popper would approve of the wildly authoritarian conclusions that people (mostly leftists/liberals, blame where it is due) have justified with it. And in this case, all sides in question are quite censorious at the moment (whether the centrist establishment or populists on the left and the right), but none of them are seriously prepared to overthrow their governments, so we can expect about the same amount of censorship no matter who has political success.

I disagree. Regions with autocratic regimes tend to have worse censorship than liberal states.

Where did I say otherwise

[The Tenth Jellian Republic]

An oxymoron.

Not anymore so than a socialist autocracy.

Ranked choice voting, proportional representation, devolution (aka federalism), referendums are all great ways to make the government more aligned with the people.

Really what we need though is to change the culture. A democracy doesn’t work when people don’t believe in it.

Democracy stops fascism on a constant basis, but not 100%. Hitler was elected after all. Really though, democracy is a tool and we expect too much of it. It is completely up to how the people use it. WE must stop fascism, before it can infect people in the first place.

If you give more power directly to the people (in my ideal case, the people and technocrats) there will be less power available to be occupied by a political party or personalist demagogue. This is in addition to such a government being more able to follow the people's wishes and prevent the conditions for fascism to become prevalent.

The Soviet Union could be considered a socialist autocracy…

You need to balance giving too much power directly to the people, which can end up looking a lot like giving all the power to just a few. We can’t all be technocrats. Representative democracy comes the closest the answer so far.

[Kurgao]

Not anymore so than a socialist autocracy.
If you give more power directly to the people (in my ideal case, the people and technocrats) there will be less power available to be occupied by a political party or personalist demagogue. This is in addition to such a government being more able to follow the people's wishes and prevent the conditions for fascism to become prevalent.

The Soviet Union could be considered a socialist autocracy…

You need to balance giving too much power directly to the people, which can end up looking a lot like giving all the power to just a few. We can’t all be technocrats. Representative democracy comes the closest the answer so far.

In my opinion, representative democracy is worse than just straight up direct democracy or technocracy. The United States is a perfect example of this, where the people in power are both incompetent and most people are unhappy with policy and feel they have little control over it. It is the worst of both worlds.

[Canis Sapiens]

"Tolerance" is a stupid myth made up by bootlickers and lazy consumers. We need an ALL-LEFT government. Those who lean even slightly to the right will be DRAWN AND QUARTERED. No exceptions. Don't care about what's in your head. IF YOU PREFER DISNEY TO VIVZIEPOP, YOU ARE A FUCKING BIGOT.

The site rules. You need to familiarize yourself with them. Immediately. You can argue against right-ring ideologies WITHOUT gleefully hurling abuse and blasting your torture fantasies at those you disagree with.

I didn't abuse you. You're an adult, and probably a man. You can't be abused. You can only be called out on your complicity.

[Kurgao]

I didn't abuse you. You're an adult, and probably a man. You can't be abused. You can only be called out on your complicity.

Given your nation's title, I'm going to guess those 2 are the main connection. And with how long it took you to respond and how brazenly you are defying the mods, I'm going to guess this is your first account. As a fellow leftist, I would recommend you tone things down significantly if you want It to last more than a month.

[The Tenth Jellian Republic]

The Soviet Union could be considered a socialist autocracy…

You need to balance giving too much power directly to the people, which can end up looking a lot like giving all the power to just a few. We can’t all be technocrats. Representative democracy comes the closest the answer so far.

In my opinion, representative democracy is worse than just straight up direct democracy or technocracy. The United States is a perfect example of this, where the people in power are both incompetent and most people are unhappy with policy and feel they have little control over it. It is the worst of both worlds.

I think that is because of problems with our flavor of representative democracy, and the fact that many people are disengaged from voting. At best the national elections can reach high 60s and that’s a breakthrough. In the local votes it’s much worse.

I also think that while some are incompetent, many simply have their hands tied, and it makes the whole institution dysfunctional and look incompetent. I’m sure lots of them have more imaginative ideas then the bland watered down stuff that goes through three different opinion panels before it sees the light of day.

The problem with direct democracy is it places too much of a burden on individuals. We struggle to get out the vote with the few elections representative democracy requires, imagine the damage apathy can do with direct democracy. A true direct democracy, that lives up to its name and doesn’t devolve into the opposite, will require robust infrastructure and high decentralization, in which case we get federalism and representative democracy that way…

Really a technocracy and a representative democracy overlap in many ways…

As far as the paradox of tolerance goes, direct democracy is more susceptible to populism than representative democracy.

[Hittisha]

Many of those who believe in democracy are like little mice, convinced that they merely desire a share of the cheese of consensus, only to keep growing ever more hungry until the point where they morph into aggressive rats the more they are conditioned into identifying an opposing party to blame for perceived injustices.

Democracy (in the sense of mass democracy) will eventually pave the way to either socialism or fascism, because it is essentially sublimating any open competition between conflicting interest groups into a manufactured consensus mechanism to legitimize authority purely by numbers within a given territory, which only lasts so long as the electorate can agree to disagree, and be bound by the rules of the game. As expenses rise and social cohesion deteriorates, things get to a point where the only thing that prevents civil war is the ability of the state to exercise its monopoly on the use of force to maintain its legitimacy on behalf of the people, all the while being compelled to present options with increasingly coercive demands that one segment of the population may impose on the other.

In my view, any democracy should be kept as small as possible, or only large enough to reflect the choices of those who live in deliberate association with one another, and exercised to the full exclusion of outsiders who have no stake in their affairs, and cannot be expected to contribute proportionally in any institution that encompasses all whom it may concern. Ideally, it should be supplemented by a system of weighted voting that measures the value of each vote based on the merits and contributions of the individuals partaking in the elections, rather than simply having it be equal for everyone.

[Hirota]

A state that is intolerant against the intolerant, will have itself to define who is and who isn't intolerant.

That's a fair question, but Popper didn't forget it. The footnote where he coins the paradox addresses exactly this. His position was that suppressing intolerant ideas is unwise as long as they can be countered with argument and kept in check by public opinion. That line is crossed when a movement refuses argument and moves to force. So the true test isn't really "who holds bad opinions", it's "who is trying to stop the rest of us voting them out."

I'd also challenge the framing. Liberal democracy isn't designed to stop voters picking radicals. If a majority wants a hard-right or hard-left government, that's their call. What it is designed to do is stop a winner using power to make sure they can never lose again. Modern backsliding rarely looks like a coup; Nancy Bermeo showed that coups and open election-day fraud have declined while slow, legal erosion by elected executives has grown. It looks like Fidesz using a two-thirds majority to rewrite Hungary's constitution in 2011, or Maduro's CNE declaring a result in 2024 without publishing the tally sheets. Both won elections first. Kim Lane Scheppele calls this "autocratic legalism". That's the threat model, and it's symmetrical across left and right.

On that note, I don't agree that Trump had "the decency to respect democracy and due process". He refused to concede in 2020, and his campaign organised alternate slates of electors in states he lost. You can support his policies and still accept that's the exact behaviour the guardrails exist to catch.

How do democracies defend themselves democratically? A few mechanisms that already exist and work:

• Judicial party bans with a high bar. Germany's Basic Law Article 21(2) lets only the Federal Constitutional Court ban a party. It did so twice in the 1950s (SRP and KPD) and then refused to ban the NPD in 2017 because it was too insignificant to actually threaten the order. The government doesn't get to decide.
• Graduated responses short of a ban. After the NPD ruling, Germany added Article 21(3), allowing anti-constitutional parties to be cut off from state funding. The NPD's successor lost its funding in 2024. The party can still stand and campaign; taxpayers just don't fund it.
• External review. The ECtHR upheld the dissolution of Refah Partisi (2003) and Batasuna (2009), but only after finding concrete evidence of intent to abolish democratic order or links to violence. A national court that bans a party on thin grounds can be overturned.
• Entrenchment. Supermajorities for constitutional change, independent election administration, fixed terms and security of tenure for judges. These are dull, but they're what makes dismantling democracy slow enough for voters to notice and reverse it, as Poland partially did in 2023.
• Norms. Levitsky and Ziblatt's point in How Democracies Die is that written rules only hold when politicians practise mutual toleration and forbearance. That's enforced by voters punishing those who don't, which is the most democratic defence there is.

I agree the rise you're pointing at is real, and Hungary and Venezuela show where it can lead. But you're also right that these tools can be abused. Turkey has shut down a string of pro-Kurdish parties, and Thailand's courts dissolved Future Forward in 2020 and Move Forward in 2024, both popular opposition parties. Romania annulling its 2024 presidential election is still being argued over. The lesson from those cases isn't "never defend democracy". It's that the power to exclude must sit with independent courts, require evidence of anti-democratic action, and be reviewable. Where those conditions fail, the problem is the capture of the courts, which is the thing we were trying to prevent in the first place.

The catch with not trusting anyone to decide who's intolerant is that refusing to decide doesn't make the question go away. If a democracy has no mechanism to stop a party dismantling it, that party wins once and then decides for itself who gets to take part. That's how Weimar ended, and it's why Germany wrote Article 21 afterwards. Karl Loewenstein, who coined "militant democracy" in 1937 while watching it happen, made exactly this argument. The choice isn't between someone deciding and nobody deciding. It's between an independent court with an evidence threshold and an appeal route, or whoever gets into power first and wants to stay there.

[Behun]

You cannot have a non-authoritarian Socialist model. At most, you can have a Social Democratic model which is in itself a Capitalist one.

"You can't have democratic socialism!"

>Brings up Democratic Socialism

You know you can have capitalism to bankroll social policies and have free and elections right? Unless you think Scandinavia and most of Europe is authoritarian.

> socialism is when capitalism (I'm European btw)

It's welfare capitalism

[PUTAT]

You cannot have a non-authoritarian Socialist model. At most, you can have a Social Democratic model which is in itself a Capitalist one.

False. Social anarchism exists. The neozapatismo folks are quite libertarian.

Where did I say otherwise.

You said something about the same amount of censorship. The implication can vary.