Should there be political toleration for intolerance?
Dead philosophers pondering the paradox of toleration: is there room for anti-democrats in a democracy?
In the previous newsletters, we successively discussed the fascist terror of Mussolini and historical situations in which the voter was fed up with democracy.
We came to remarkable conclusions:
The result has almost always come about under heavy pressure, violence and manipulation.
In Italy, Germany and France, decent democratic parties helped the dictator in the saddle.
There has never been an instance in history where the majority of the electorate knowingly helped a party to power that explicitly promised to abolish democracy. Much more common are evildoers who, once democratically elected, thoroughly undermined or even abolished the democratic system.
The greatest threat today is from the Islamists, although they are not necessarily anti-democratic.
In this newsletter about political toleration is about the paradox of toleration: what do we learn about this from various, dead philosophers?
The question of the paradox of toleration is this: should toleration also accommodate intolerance? This question applies not only to political parties, but also, for example, to religious denominations or to associations.
And even individually: is someone with very intolerant views, for example about the rule of law or about freedom of expression, still entitled to protection by the same rule of law, or to the same freedom of expression?
Do the intolerant lose their right to toleration?
The issue is not new: in the late 17th century, John Locke wrote already about Protestant English sects that held that contracts with persons they considered heretics were not binding. Locke did not grant toleration to those sects, because they demanded toleration for themselves which they did not grant to others.
(Those,) who attribute unto the faithful, religious, and orthodox, that is, in plain terms, unto themselves, any peculiar privilege or power above other mortals, in civil concernments; or who upon pretence of religion do challenge any manner of authority over such as are not associated with them in their ecclesiastical communion, I say these have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate; as neither those that will not own and teach the duty of tolerating all men in matters of mere religion.
— John Locke, A letter concerning toleration (1689)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau wanted a ban on religions that do not give room to other religions:
Those who distinguish civil from theological intolerance are, to my mind, mistaken. The two intolerances are inseparable. You can’t possibly live at peace with people you regard as damned; loving them would be hating God who punishes them: we absolutely must either reform them or torment them. Wherever theological intolerance is admitted, it must inevitably have some civil effect, and as soon as it does, the sovereign is no longer sovereign even in the temporal sphere; from then on, priests are the real masters, and kings only their ministers.
Now that there no longer are, and no longer can be, any exclusive national religions, tolerance should be given to all religions that tolerate others, so long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of citizenship. Anyone who ventures to say: ‘Outside the Church is no salvation’ should be driven from the state, unless the state is the Church and the prince the pope.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social (1762)
The classic argument of Locke and Rousseau has a Kantian feel: whoever violates a right may not invoke that same right. According to Kant, a thief forfeits his right to property, a murderer his right to life.
Whoever harms another through no fault, harms himself. (...) Whoever steals makes other people's property unsafe; he thereby deprives himself (according to the right of retaliation) of the security of all possible property; he has nothing and can acquire nothing, yet he wants to live; which now cannot be otherwise than that others feed him.
— Immanuel Kant, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre (1797)
That is very consistent, but more radical than we find humane today. From a Kantian point of view, do intolerant people and movements have no claim to tolerance?
How much leniency can we muster for anti-democrats?
What do people lose, who want to impose their religious standards on us? Their right to religious freedom? Are communists not allowed to own a business? Don't people who want to ban homosexuality have the right to their own sex life? How much leniency can we muster for anti-democrats?
Your answer probably also depends on the proportions. If an individual wants to establish a dictatorship, introduce a ban on swearing, campaign for the nationalization of all means of production, or have gays imprisoned, then we let that pass. When it comes to movements of millions, then things are different. In the days of Locke and Rousseau, many Christians were still teeming with wanting to force their religious standards on others.
What‘s the sanction for (political) intolerance? Do we want Kantian retaliation?
Karl Loewenstein: At war with fascism, legality is on vacation
The German constitutional lawyer Karl Loewenstein (1891-1973) saw in 1937 that the fascist regimes spread like an oil slick across Europe. In 1924 in Italy, Mussolini had received 66 percent of the vote, whereupon he introduced a one-party state.
Democracy is not a suicide pact
One-party states had also been introduced in a number of other countries, but not by majority vote, but by force. In most Western European countries, the fascists and their allies hovered around 10% of the vote.
Nevertheless, Loewenstein was deeply concerned that the fascists would abuse democracy to gain power and then abolish democracy, as had happened in Germany and Italy, among others. It was clear that the fascists had little regard for the rules of parliamentary democracy. Democracy was defenceless against the tactics of demagoguery, seduction, sabotage and violence used by the fascists, Loewenstein believed. The fascists had declared war on democracy, and in a time of war “legality is on vacation”. Fascism should be fought with unconstitutional means. Democracy had to become militant.
Loewenstein's argument, while influential, is rather weak. Only in Italy had the fascists obtained a majority in elections. In the rest of Europe, if they had come to power, it was by force, without having obtained an electoral majority. And the rise of fascism, a threat from within, comparing it to a war, an attack from without, also falls short.
What he also fails to consider is how to ensure that the concept of a resilient democracy is not misused by the establishment to defend itself against legitimate attacks.
What makes democracy so special that it may defend itself with undemocratic means?
Above all, he does not address the essential question of what makes democracy so special that it is allowed to defend itself by undemocratic means. What is a democracy worth that does not trust itself, that only applies if the people dutifully do what is expected of them?
Karl Popper: Incitement to intolerance is criminal
The Austro-British philosopher of science Karl Popper (1902-1994) addressed the paradox of toleration in 1945, in his book The open society and its enemies. He wrote the book during World War II, from New Zealand, where he had emigrated to in 1937 because of Nazism in his native Austria. His ancestors were Jewish; he himself had been baptised Lutheran.
The wartime, the battle between good and evil, between the world of democracy and free trade on the one hand, and the world of totalitarianism on the other, must have touched Popper to the core. But he shows such academic detachment that in the book he talks almost exclusively about the history of classical Greece.
The book is about the transition of Athenian civilisation from a tribally ruled city-state to the open democracy it became. The book is essentially one big reckoning with the political ideas of Plato, whom he accuses of getting stuck in the ideas of a tribal society and, moreover, betraying the more modern views of his teacher Sokrates, out of vanity and ambition.
Approvingly, Popper cites from a speech by Perikles in his book. The general and statesman Perikles (ca. 495-429 BC) gave in 430 BC. a memorial speech Logos epitafios. In it he made a rhetorical combination of the concepts of open society, democracy and equality. Athens was at the peak of its power, having won all the wars. Perikles linked those successes to the unique, experimental form of government in which frankness, equality and justice played a key role. Popper contrasts Perikles' views with those of Plato, who knew democracy well and commented on Perikles' words.
Plato came to the conclusion that a democracy and an open society are doomed to degenerate into tyranny. According to Plato, too much freedom inevitably leads to someone who will manipulate the mob and abuse the freedoms that democracy offers him.
Popper disagrees, viewing Plato as still thinking in terms of a tribal, organic society, who had lost sight of the fact that a large, open society is fundamentally incompatible with the system of the philosopher-ruler that Plato envisioned as an ideal. In Popper’s book, Marx gets it too.
I read Popper's book, and was surprised to find nothing about the paradox of toleration. It turned out that he had confined his remarks, which have preoccupied philosophers to this day, to a footnote:
If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.
But we should claim the right even to suppress them, for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their own followers to listen to anything as deceptive as rational argument, and teach them to answer argument by the use of fists.
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, exactly as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping; or as we should consider incitement to the revival of slave trade.
— Karl Popper, The open society and its enemies (1945)
Popper's stance is clear: Apart from isolated eccentrics, we must crack down on intolerance. Preaching intolerance is tantamount to a crime.
Why is it a crime? Because democracy is the only structured way to bring about social change peacefully. Interests always involve conflict. You can solve that with coercion or with consultation. Whoever rejects consultation therefore opts for coercion, for tyranny, and that’s a crime.
Popper was above all a philosopher of science, a rationalist. His book on open society was, in a sense, an excursion. He equated democracy with truth-finding in science. Falsification was central to Popper's theory of science. Anyone who rejects democracy was equivalent to a scientific charlatan: someone who is not open to falsification of his hypotheses.
Democracy is peaceful consultation and organized dissent
Did Popper thereby solve the paradox of toleration? Not quite. Whoever stands in the way of peaceful deliberation, and who does not facilitate contradiction, can’t participate; he wants tyranny. But that in itself does not say much about democracy. And was Popper's preference for consultation and contradiction actually open to contradiction? And democracies are not always that peaceful. And must the people necessarily have the say; aren't there other forms of government conceivable with consultation and contradiction? Is democracy an end in itself, or an instrument for the functioning of the underlying values of the open society?
John Rawls: Only intervene when political freedom is under threat
In his famous book A theory of justice (1971), the American philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) included an article on the paradox of toleration.
He starts with this question: there is an intolerant group in a tolerant society. What do the group and the society owe each other?
First of all, according to Rawls: can a supporter of an intolerant group complain if he is not given equal freedom? Rawls thinks not. Someone is only entitled to complain on the basis of a violation of principles that he himself also adheres to.
If two burglars break into each other’s houses, both will be prosecuted
But I don't agree. Can a burglar report a burglary to the police? Of course he can! Perhaps the police will not pull out all the stops to find the perpetrator. And if he complains to friends, hopefully they'll laugh at him. But once caught, the perpetrator deserves prosecution. Even if two burglars break into each other’s houses, they will both be prosecuted.
Rawls' second point: the tolerant have the right to defend themselves if their freedom is threatened, he argues.
As long as that freedom is not endangered, intolerant parties should be tolerated, says Rawls. First, because of the pedagogical effect: intolerant parties may gradually become aware of the protection they enjoy. And second, because a tolerant system would undermine itself if it started to put salt on all the snails. You also have to dare to rely a little on the tension of the system. After all, political toleration is a fair system: even opponents of democracy will have to admit that it is still less bad than a competing totalitarian system. If an Islamist has to choose between democracy and communism or fascism, he wisely chooses democracy.
But as soon as their freedom is under threat, toleration for the anti-democrats is over.
Justice does not require that men stand idly by when others destroy the basis of their existence.
- John Rawls, A theory of justice (1971)
Let's dwell on the statement of defence. Should you defend yourself if someone is after your freedom? Certainly. If someone wants to kidnap you, you can defend yourself tooth and nail, no doubt about it.
Unless it is the police who want to take you into custody in accordance with the law. Then the game is played according to the rules. You can hire a lawyer, argue as best as you can, but you can't punch the police in the face.
How far can you go with your defence against anti-democratic parties? I mean, citizens and democratic parties have all the democratic means to fight an anti-democratic party. They can debate, they can protest, they can vote, and the voter has the last word. That is a defence according to the rules of the game.
What if anti-democrats play by democratic rules?
But can you also proceed to disqualification? That’s only allowed if the anti-democratic party does not comply with the democratic rules. Hitting it off, sabotaging elections, preparing a coup d'état, those sorts of things. As long as that’s not the case, both sides will continue to fight each other according to the rules of the game. Even if one of the parties does not agree with the rules of the game, which he will change after winning.
In his book Militant Democracy, the legal philosopher Bastiaan Rijpkema has yet another objection to Rawls' defence argument. Namely that consensus on equal freedom as the moral ideal of justice is a requirement. Rijpkema does have a point there. You can also have a completely different system of moral ideals in which freedom plays no significant role. Two teams face each other; one team plays football and the other team hockey. Who can disqualify whom?
Rawls' second point is therefore not as strong as it seems.
Summarised
Intuitively I lean towards toleration for the intolerant. A system is only tolerant if it also opens itself to its own undermining. Whether I would also feel the same way in 1937, or if Sharia for Europe threatens to become the largest party, I dare not say.
“Everybody has plans, until they get hit for the first time,” said boxer Mike Tyson in 1987.
In this newsletter, and in that of next week, we look at arguments for not tolerating anti-democrats. This week the following arguments came alongside:
Those who do not grant toleration to others may not appeal to toleration for themselves either.
Democracy is fragile, but it should not be abused. Democracy must be able to arm itself against its own demise.
The core of democracy is peaceful deliberation and organised dissent. Anyone who opposes this aims to establish a tyranny, and that is a criminal act.
If your (political) freedom is threatened, you must be able to defend yourself.
Of these arguments, only the third, Karl Popper's argument, actually holds. We will continue on that next week.
To be continued!
This is the third episode in a series about political toleration. Here’s an overview of the articles in this series:
How Mussolini had a leader of the opposition assassinated
The assassination of the socialist politician Matteotti in 1924. The Italian elections of 1924 gave a majority to a dictatorship. In hindsight, should Mussolini's party have been banned?
What if the voter is fed up with democracy?
Is there a real danger that voters will want to abolish democracy? Or is it mainly a theoretical problem? The history of democracies that gave themselves up.
Should there be political toleration for intolerance?
Dead philosophers pondering the paradox of toleration. Is there room for anti-democrats in a democracy?
For these reasons, banning anti-democratic parties is a bad idea
In a democracy, the majority decides. If the majority wants someone else to decide from now on, so no longer the majority, then that is a great pity, but so be it.
These are good arguments for banning a political party
Non-violent parties should be banned that demand more room for themselves than for others, or who want to get rid of the system of overlapping consensus.
When should a political party get banned?
Let the voter decide. Except when free and fair periodic elections or unlimited opportunities for public discussion and unlimited provision of information are under threat.
How democracies can become tyrannical
Traits of intolerance in the democratic system. About discord and the common good, the tyranny of the majority, apathy, public choice and pathologic politicians.
Better alternatives for parliamentary democracy
Parliamentary democracy as the least intolerant system. Looking for a system with more legitimacy. About systemic criticism, Habermas' deliberative democracy, digital democracy, and sortition.
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