The Paradox of Tolerance

[DMC]

13 hours ago, Yukle said:

Plato always makes me uncomfortable.

Me too.  And he clearly made Popper very uncomfortable.

13 hours ago, Yukle said:

But yeah, I agree that he is not arguing for the suppression of intolerant beliefs. That said, he's not advocating for them either; I've just reread the section and I'm not really sure he comes up with a clear response as such. I suppose he puts faith that the more ethical action eventually wins out in discourse, but it doesn't come across as the definitive solution, more the aspired ideal.

I think his key point is that horrid atrocities committed by what Plato and Hegel would label democracy's propensity for tyranny against minorities as an inherent flaw are an end result, not an immediate step.

Right.  Popper's purpose for raising the paradox of tolerance along with the paradoxes of freedom and democracy is to engage in Plato's critique that democracy (and subsequently open societies) are particularly susceptible to tyranny.  Popper's response is to allow for the validity of these paradoxes, but essentially echoes the famous Churchill quote that has already been alluded to here - "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."  In other words, while there are obviously structural flaws to democracy, and freedom, and tolerance, there are ways to institute protections from the worst case scenarios without violating the central tenets of such concepts.  As Popper states at the end of that footnote (and it's a long footnote):

Quote

All these paradoxes can be easily avoided if we frame our political demands in some such manner as this. We demand a government that rules according to the principles of equalitarianism and protectionism ; that tolerates all who are prepared to reciprocate, i.e. who are tolerant ; that is controlled by, and accountable to, the public. And we may add that some form of majority vote, together with institutions for keeping the public well informed, is the best, though not infallible, means of controlling such a government. (No infallible means exist.) [226]

That being said, the quote in the OP can of course stand on its own and is certainly worth discussing.  I just wanted to emphasize that Popper in general is arguing for openness in society and would find some of what's being asserted in this thread antithetical to his main arguments.

13 hours ago, Yukle said:

There's a gradient of intolerant actions, which are empowered by discourse, but society has a paradox on its hands trying to preserve the ideals of free thought while also preventing the worst that it can provide.

Well put.

10 hours ago, Ran said:

There's little empirical study on the actual impact of hate speech laws. I've found just one paper for Australia, for example, which seems to find that their anti-vilification laws  have limited negative effects... and limited positive effects. 

Can you please link this paper (or abstract if it's paywalled)?

[Kalbear]

15 hours ago, dmc515 said:

What you claimed was that benevolent censorship is better than the "free marketplace of ideas" and that there's "a lot" of evidence that shows it is "certain" that less censorship leads "directly" to bad consequences.  Other than "the US" as a case study, you clearly have no evidence, which not only negates such certainty, but also puts the "directly bad consequences" into question.  Pretty sure the worse consequences of the unchecked far-right (or any extreme ideology) have still thus far transpired in other countries.    

So other than the evidence we have I don't have any evidence? Good talk.

Counterpoint: there is absolutely zero evidence to indicate that Democratic countries with more censorship are more right-wing, zero evidence that countries with less censorship are less right wing. We have one data point, and while it's not conclusive it automatically rules out the other bits.

[Ran]

@dmc515

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lasr.12152/abstract

 

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

This is purely a failure of law enforcement and not a result of the First Amendment protections, as Michael German notes in the article. These people are posting videos of crimes, and the police are doing nothing not because they're saying they have a right to free speech, the police are doing nothing because ... well, multiple reasons are given, largely circling around the idea that they are overwhelmed.

 

It's not, however. 

Law enforcement makes this less of a priority because of a bunch of things - that the police have themselves been infiltrated by a lot of white supremacists, that the police have higher priorities to deal with per their government, that the community doesn't care as much. All of these things stem directly from the idea that these hate crimes are tolerable. 

We as a nation can decide to make these things intolerable, and one way we can signal that is making them significantly less tolerated in public discourse. We aren't doing that. One way - not the only way, mind you, but one way - is to make laws against them. This isn't perfect, but it is a signal that at least it is against the law, and those who want to listen to authority will say 'ooh, that's bad'. 

In the US, these people march openly. They talk online openly. They post videos of their admitting to violence and have chatlogs of conspiracy to commit violence. This isn't just a failure of law enforcement.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Ran said:

@dmc515

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lasr.12152/abstract

 

If I was talking about regulating hate speech that would be a good counterargument. 

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

So other than the evidence we have I don't have any evidence? Good talk.

I thought I was pretty clear on why I don't consider comparing the US to all of Europe valid evidence - if even one were to attempt to do so systematically, which is not provided.

11 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Counterpoint: there is absolutely zero evidence to indicate that Democratic countries with more censorship are more right-wing, zero evidence that countries with less censorship are less right wing. 

My prior is to tend to agree with this - at least in terms of hate speech and anti-Nazi laws, I assume they don't have much of an effect one way or the other.  That's also why I suspect there's a dearth of empirical work on the subject - null findings rarely get published.

5 minutes ago, Ran said:

@dmc515

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lasr.12152/abstract

 

Thanks!

[Kalbear]

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

I won't disagree here. I said in my first post in this thread how every speech inciting unlawful behavior (Nazis definitely count here) should not be tolerated - and I believe that's a fine line to draw.

Others disagree, and that's what we've been debating. Or at least that's what I care about; others seem to feel that I'm talking about wiping out half of the population in some kind of mad evil plan. They're not arguing in good faith. 

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

How? They all provide same principle applied through history.

They really don't. None of them are dealing with groups that are willing to use violence to further their political goals. 

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

You expect family and friends of rasists/sexists etc. to correct their behaviour? They're probably the source of it.

They're by far the most likely ones to get things done. People don't change their behavior most of the time, and when they do it's almost always because of emotional connections with people that they care about. 

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Than try something different, just don't continue with the same old approach. Because it's obvious that that one doesn't work either.

Again, there's a lot of evidence that going after nazi extremists hard works really well to suppress nazi views and make them less acceptable. 

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Since I feel you're steaming from Europe-->more censorship-->less problems; USA-->no censorship-->more problems viewpoint a lot, I'll ask you to elaborate more on this. Is there any way to determine whether America's problems are due to lack of censorship, and not due to any number of other possible factors? If Europe introduced censorship as reaction to its trauma of WWII, then do other non-European countries also face similar problem as USA? Where do New Zealand or Canada stand in this, for example?

I don't think that censorship is the be-all,end-all of dealing with this, and point of fact I think  that censorship largely doesn't matter here; I don't really care about generalized ideas being stopped, I care about heavily prosecuting people who have shown a willingness and an ability to kill, say, Jews. The original topic was the idea that somehow I have to tolerate their viewpoint or be illiberal, and I think that's false; I think that one can be liberal AND be intolerant of illiberal ideas, and it's hard to get less liberal than the viewpoint that all Jews must die. 

My point in pointing out Europe is that despite their having more censorship, they do not in any way appear to be more extremist than the US. Any argument that indicates that more censorship towards hate groups leads to more extremism is therefore obviously not backed by evidence. Canada and New Zealand fit in well here too.

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Sorry, I'm not American and can't immediately draw a connection to know which document you refer to? Declaration of independence? Some law? Some amandmant? Some important proclamation? It any of them outlines good system on how to choose acceptable values and norms - I'd be interested in hearing it.

The Constitution of the US has a lot of rules on dealing with tyranny, as well as many of the papers associated with it. Among those there are rules for the electoral college to specifically reject candidates that would be tyrannical, even if the voters voted for them. We ignore this, entirely. We are currently ignoring the idea of impeaching the president despite numerous unconstitutional offenses he has committed because it would be against the party; we have those instructions and are ignoring them. 

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

A digression - I'd like to ask you is there anything special then with regards to Trump voters? Is there any demographics that he in particular attracted more than other Republican candidates before him?

White people. Across the board, white people turned out more for Trump than Clinton. Being white was by far the most predictive value on voting for Trump - across regions, across affluence, across education level. 

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

I don't think I've gotten my point across well, so I'll try to rephrase. Concepts such as sanctity of human life, equal rights for all sexes and races, religious tolerance etc. are absolutely essential to moral framework of our current society - for clarity and brevity I'll call them core beliefs.

Equal rights for all sexes is an incredibly modern concept. Equal rights for all races didn't exist in the US until 1964. And both are under massive attack in the US. 

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

To use a Luther example: his land (Europe, and more specifically Germany of 16th century) has no such beliefs. They were obviosuly religiously intolerant, in fact religious wars had happened and will have happened several times; they cared not about (every and each) human life nor did they believe in equality between men and women. Their core beliefs were different, and one of them was living according to religious doctrine (call it God's plan or whatever) and belief that Pope is God's chief messenger and should thus be respected and obeyed.

And in the same manner that rasist attacks our society's core beliefs, so did Luther beat on 16th century Europe's ones. Purely on conceptual level - the level of ideas, how do they spread and how do they influence people - it doesn't matter that out of these two, one was right and the other wrong; one progressive, other regressive; one opposing the existence of others and other not. What I wanted to draw parallel between is that both of them were ideas going against core beliefs of their times, and both could not be stopped by censorship.

Luther's peaceful coexistence didn't really happen for another 200 years, and was kind of a breakthrough - and it was largely a breakthrough because both sides happened to be fairly evenly matched, and they were tired of fighting all the time. The treaty of Westphalia was kind of a big deal here - but it didn't happen because of Luther, nor did it happen because of nonviolence.

I'd personally rather not go through 150 years of continental war to achieve this.

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Let me take your example of racial slurs. The problem is not that people could express their rasist opinions though said slurs, the problem is that people had these opinions in the first place. Hushing them up won't change anything. Bringing their ideas in the open and beating them time and time again maybe could. In one month or 15 years - but it stands a chance of making lasting change.

Hushing up bad ideas and making it clear that they are not to be tolerated at all does, in fact, help things quite a bit. Things that were perfectly acceptable to think about 40 years ago are largely gone from public discourse now because of this. It isn't perfect, but it absolutely does help.  

The problem in the US is that for the most part things were tolerated. They were not condemned right away. They were allowed provided that they were not too explicit. The US has for 150 years told the story that the South was not fighting for slavery, they were fighting for state's rights, and we continue to respect this absurd lie. 

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

From my standpoint, this could be another argument.for the reduction (not abolition) of censorship and generally more more openness for all kinds of ideas. Let's look at history: from our viewpoint, viewpoint of modern 21st century people living in liberal democracies - history is full of failures. All these feudal, autocratic, sexist, religiously fundamentalist, segregationist, oppressive societies are wrong and inferior of our own. And the fight for what we call human rights was usually opposed, oftentimes drastically to these systems. Imagine how different and quicker would human rights progress if their ideas were accepted quicker, without any censorship? You find the idea of racism to be utterly wrong and even disgusting, wanting to shut it down as soon as you see it appears (aka censor it)? Well, the average man of 19th century also found the idea that women should vote as wrong and ridiculous, wanting to shut it down whenever it appeared.

Counterpoint: people don't win debates based on good ideas or not. The most powerful nation on earth is still fairly repressive on women's rights, on human rights, on free speech, and is doing just fine.

Second counterpoint: naziism rose almost entirely because the viewpoints were excused as just 'ideas'. Hitler was at the time stated that he was just playing up to his base and didn't really mean it, and there were plenty of liberal newspapers who patted themselves on the back saying that he wouldn't actually do these things. Chamberlain thought that as well. 

The problem with the idea of a free exchange of ideas is that a lot of times the best ideas don't remotely win - the most popular ones do. And the most popular ones often are the ones that involve doing bad things to people that aren't like you. You need a framework put in place to defend against ideas that will break the framework in the first place. You have to. 

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

And lastly, I could add that censorship in general promotes complacency. However naive I may sound, I want a society brimming with ideas and ideologies; where each and every individual, as well as community as a whole, has to constantly think about them and choose which ones to reject immediately, which ones to implement, which ones to partially accept etc. Where and idea is implemented because it's valid, not because its alternative has been censored. Where people would actually stand behind their values and know why they have them. And if, in such a society, majority of people would choose regressive beliefs, then we're screwed in either way and no amount of censoring can help us.

That'd be awesome, but humans don't work like that. I used to think this way too - but humans again and again have been shown to be largely guided by irrationality, xenophobia, greed and lust. I wish that weren't the case, but it is. 

 

[Ran]

27 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It's not, however. Law enforcement makes this less of a priority because of a bunch of things - that the police have themselves been infiltrated by a lot of white supremacists, that the police have higher priorities to deal with per their government, that the community doesn't care as much. All of these things stem directly from the idea that these hate crimes are tolerable.

There's no evidence or even hint in the Propublica piece that secret white supremacist cops are at all a reason for this. I'm aware of the studies and articles on this, but you're going to have to provide evidence rather than spin a conspiracy theory that any of the cited cases are related to that. German argues for lack of resources and training, several of the law enforcement groups asked cited resources, etc.

That seems straight forward. As to where decisions are made, I'd say it's less about saying "this is acceptable" as saying "protesters fighting it out is more acceptable than Muslim terrorists blowing up Americans". What's cited in the article, for example, is the idea that law enforcement has been pushed for a very long time to focus on Muslim terrorists. And to be sure, we shouldn't consider that acceptable. In reality, you're probably much likelier to catch a beating from a white supremacist than you are to be killed by an Islamic terrorist, but the whole political theater situation has driven a narrative and even in this thread you have people getting wound up about there not being enough focus on terrorism.

The obvious solutions would be for law enforcement to be allowed to prioritize based on the things that are likeliest to cause trouble. I'm not sure what legislation would cause this, however. It's more of a matter of political decision making at that end, and as we've established, politics=discourse.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Ran said:

There's no evidence or even hint in the Propublica piece that secret white supremacist cops are at all a reason for this. I'm aware of the studies and articles on this, but you're going to have to provide evidence rather than spin a conspiracy theory that any of the cited cases are related to that. German argues for lack of resources and training, several of the law enforcement groups asked cited resources, etc.

The FBI specifically stated that white supremacists are infiltrating the police. I'm not talking about the specific cited cases in that article - only noting that it is a pattern of behavior in law enforcement, and relying on law enforcement to do the right thing when they are part of the problem is obviously going to fail. Saying 'it's a law enforcement failure' is accurate but misleading, as it's failure is largely by design. 

Just now, Ran said:

That seems straight forward. As to where decisions are made, I'd say it's less about saying "this is acceptable" as saying "this is more acceptable". What's cited in the article, for example, is the idea that law enforcement has been pushed for a very long time to focus on Muslim terrorists. And to be sure, we shouldn't consider that acceptable. In reality, you're probably much likelier to catch a beating from a white supremacist than you are to be killed by an Islamic terrorist, but the whole political theater situation has driven a narrative and even in this thread you have people getting wound up about there not being enough focus on terrorism.

I don't think that local law enforcement investigating hate crimes is bogged down by their paying attention to Islamic terrorism. My suspicion is that it's because for the most part white people just don't care that much about hate crimes or problems against minorities. If they did care, we wouldn't have movements like Black Lives Matter actively opposed by white people. 

Just now, Ran said:

The obvious solutions would be for law enforcement to be allowed to prioritize based on the things that are likeliest to cause trouble. I'm not sure what legislation would cause this, however. It's more of a matter of political decision making at that end, and as we've established, politics=discourse.

It's partially political and partially communal. People have to care in order for it to be an issue. This goes into the 50% thing mentioned earlier; while I don't think 50% of the country thinks that sexual assault is good, I think that 50% are willing to tolerate it in order to get other things they want. I suspect strongly that if you surveyed people and asked them if they think Nazis are good or bad, they'd say that they're bad - but they're a lot more concerned with jobs, or with education, or healthcare, and running on an anti-Nazi platform isn't going to win you votes.

[Rippounet]

9 hours ago, Ran said:

I was responding to someone else who insisted a very negative picture of how things work, and my remark was continuing on that line rather than as a direct response to you.

My bad, I was self-centered there.

9 hours ago, Ran said:

I could look back at other things in our history -- the Civil Rights movement, for example, which certainly featured _violence_ from the majority against the minority, but the minority used discourse and ultimately carried the day as the majority shifted opinion.

Right. But you're using a pretty broad definition of "discourse" here. Non-violent resistance (as in sit-ins and marches) is still resistance.
Also, fears of black radicalisation played their part in the civil rights movement. And history has it on record that Malcom X promised "maximum retaliation" to anyone that would harm MLK and his followers - and some historians think that such threats played a significant part as well.

9 hours ago, Ran said:

Ultimately, the long history of many nations in the West to liberalization of thought and expression, and while there are points of turmoil and sometimes great ugliness, the trend is positive. I find it disturbing to find people wanting to roll that back.

I understand. In my case, I am really just defending my country's perspective on this issue, so from my perspective there's no roll back involved.

8 hours ago, Jo498 said:

I don't want to nitpick but what I highlighted is obviously wrong in practice. (A simple example: It is totally wrong wrt distribution of economic power in western democracies, individual rights to get rich clearly trump any claim for equality. They even often trump the invidual right not to be harmed, e.g. by pollution)

As per your example, yes, to some extent. But that's a hot topic, isn't it? And it's largely admitted throughout the West that the fact that some people become rich through their own hard work does not violate the principle of equality. As for pollution, most developed countries are supposed to have laws regulating that.
I'd be curious to know if you can find other examples. I'm keeping an open-mind on this.

8 hours ago, Jo498 said:

One should rather say that the principle of equality and individual rights limit each other and different countries find different, often precarious balances between those two.

Correct. I am coming at this from the perspective of my country where the balance is clearly toward equality over individual rights. I should have made this clearer, my bad.

9 hours ago, FalagarV2 said:

I'm curious as to what you're basing this on. To be sure, violence of some kind was involved in all these instances, but there's a difference between violence being 'involved' and violence being instrumental. To my knowledge, the gay community never threatened to radicalize to any large degree. Nor was the decision to protect sexual minorities through legislation, around here at least, effected because of violence against gay people - which has been around for ages, and in which the state previously actively participated, - it was changing attitudes in certain sections of the population which led to protection being seen as desirable, and violence against gay people as illegitimate. 

Hmmm... Are you aware that the Gay Liberation Front pretty much used the same strategy as blacks after 1969 and the raid on the Stonewall Inn?
I think we could quickly end up debating semantic issues here (like the definition of violence, the degrees of violence... etc).

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Yes, I believe this part is quite important. It's not enough to be able to voice your "politically incorrect" opinion between family, friends and like-minded people in general - one should also be able to express them openly - in public - as long as opinion isn't violent and doesn't incite lawbreaking behavior.

Ah. This may have been some kind of grammar mistake, but it is actually quite interesting. I happen to believe that speech can be incredibly violent, even if it doesn't call for immediate action.

I think the defenders of free speech often overlook just how violent some speeches that deny other people their humanity are.

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Let me take your example of racial slurs. The problem is not that people could express their rasist opinions though said slurs, the problem is that people had these opinions in the first place. Hushing them up won't change anything.

But it does: it changes the climate within the society. It makes racial slurs socially unacceptable. That in itself is quite a victory.

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

That corresponds to every society ever. In medieval Europe you could also say whatever you want, for example that the king is a big fat coward who should kiss your ass every morning. But you also had to be accountable for what you said: namely in the form of king's men who could beat or kill you. The fact that form of punishment is different: being beaten in the first case and facing fine/jail time/having to apologize - doesn't detract from the idea that each society tries to protect it's values by introducing censorship.

I was speaking about the way the law works. In order for a legal procedure to begin, someone has to demand it. In the most serious cases it's a state prosecutor, but quite often it's the anti-racist league.

5 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Let's look at history: from our viewpoint, viewpoint of modern 21st century people living in liberal democracies - history is full of failures. All these feudal, autocratic, sexist, religiously fundamentalist, segregationist, oppressive societies are wrong and inferior of our own.

In fact, if you un-construct your argument " Hate speech laws make sure that members of a society are forced to respect one another" and apply it to broader scale, you'd get something like "Censorship laws make sure that members of a society are forced to obey the societal norms". Given how (again, from our perspective) backwards all the historical societies were, you'll see the reason why I'm opposed to censoring ideas in general.

Many of these ideas are not seen as "inferior" throughout the world to this day. Most of them are seen as inferior in Western societies.
It's a matter of choice. Societies choose in which direction they go.
Your position stems from the belief that history necessarily moves in a certain direction, the one you are accustomed to, in your own society.
There is absolutely no guarantee that the ideas you believe in are the ones that will prevail.

Now, this being said, it's actually quite hard to say whether censorship helps or is counter-productive. It would be better to say that censorship is ineffective against strong ideas, while it's rather effective against weak ones.
What censorship does is reflect the values that a society adopts at a given point in time, no more no less. Therefore, I support some forms of censorship that reflect my views, and oppose the forms that don't. Nothing more, nothing less.
I think the mistake you're making is believing that racism is a weak idea that can only die out eventually. It's a possibility. I certainly hope that this is what will happen. What I'm absolutely certain of is that I will be long dead when this occurs. So I'm defending my view of society today.

I think you put far too much faith in liberal values. I think many of them are really not that strong and require a great deal of societal pressure to endure. If you look at the world as it is today, it takes rather a lot of faith to think that sexism, religious fundamentalism or autocratism (for instance) are weak and will necessarily lose in a "free marketplace of ideas."
I happen to share that faith. But I'm thinking incredibly long-term. In the short-term, I think liberalism as you define it is actually losing, and will tend to lose for the next couple of centuries at least. Even the West will struggle to remain true to its "enlightened" values.
And when the light comes back, I don't think societies will be as liberal as you imagine. I would posit that state censorship will have become unnecessary because the societal pressure will be much greater than anything any of us can imagine.
 

[Yukle]

1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

I just wanted to emphasize that Popper in general is arguing for openness in society and would find some of what's being asserted in this thread antithetical to his main arguments.

Yes, I think he would.

I also think that he is essentially optimistic in his outlook for a society's ability to regulate its worst.

I enjoy reading your posts, you support points well and elaborate in a way that's straightforward without being condescending.

[DMC]

13 minutes ago, Yukle said:

I enjoy reading your posts, you support points well and elaborate in a way that's straightforward without being condescending.

Thanks - right back at ya.  

[Martell Spy]

What Machiavelli can teach us about Trump and the decline of liberal democracy
The infamous philosopher had a lot to say about why democracies fall.

https://www.vox.com/2017/7/24/15913826/machiavelli-donald-trump-democracy-america-erica-benner

[Yukle]

Good article @Martell Spy.

It also, interestingly, seems to understand Machiavelli's purpose: he was never out to show how to take power, but how to moderate those who try to take it. Suppression of free thoughts is one of the tenets of a tyrant, in his view, since the first step after taking power is to eliminate all rival keys to power. Once they're gone, given enough time with no resistance to your rule from organised sources, the populace at large will forget your earlier ruthlessness and lack the means to coalesce into a strong force if they haven't.

[GAROVORKIN]

On 11/29/2017 at 6:24 AM, Yukle said:

Good article @Martell Spy.

It also, interestingly, seems to understand Machiavelli's purpose: he was never out to show how to take power, but how to moderate those who try to take it. Suppression of free thoughts is one of the tenets of a tyrant, in his view, since the first step after taking power is to eliminate all rival keys to power. Once they're gone, given enough time with no resistance to your rule from organised sources, the populace at large will forget your earlier ruthlessness and lack the means to coalesce into a strong force if they haven't.

A pattern that has repeated throughout recored history.

[James Arryn]

On 2017-11-24 at 11:46 AM, Werthead said:

This is the key difference between the United States and Europe. Europe has seen where unquestioning tolerance gets you (Nazis, WWII and so forth), and puts limits on speech that leads to the same place. American hasn't, at least not internally. The concern, I think, is that only a major internal strife would get the United States to the same place where Europe is.

I don’t really think the Nazis, Fascists etc. were the result of excessive tolerance. At all. In fact both groups were born out of the idea that beating people up for holding views you don’t like (communism) was the way to go, and neither pre-Mussolini Italy nor Weimar Germany were especially tolerant by modern standards. 

[GAROVORKIN]

6 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

I don’t really think the Nazis, Fascists etc. were the result of excessive tolerance. At all. In fact both groups were born out of the idea that beating people up for holding views you don’t like (communism) was the way to go, and neither pre-Mussolini Italy nor Weimar Germany were especially tolerant by modern standards. 

Italy and Germany had long history of intolerance and prejudice.