Defensive tolerance

Militant Tolerance

The contradictions of tolerance will escalate to the point where tolerance itself becomes intolerance.
The word “tolerance” comes from the Latin “tolerare” and literally means “to endure” or “to bear”.
“Tolerance is a virtue that makes peace possible, and helps to overcome the cult of war through a culture of peace,” writes the German UNESCO Commission.
The bourgeois understanding of tolerance almost seems to equate it with harmony and peace – tolerance is the “culture of peace” and intolerance the “cult of war”.
So, tolerance means enduring and bearing one another, until it has been endured for so long that the cult of war simply breaks.
But what if the “culture of peace,” the culture of lived tolerance, is disrupted because tolerance itself exceeds its limits?
Because tolerance will sooner or later negate itself; if one tolerates intolerance, if one endures the intolerant, “the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance along with them.”

Popper and the AfD

British philosopher and epistemologist Karl Popper, himself a democratic pluralist and (moderate) socialist of Jewish descent who lost large parts of his family in the Shoah, addressed the contradiction of tolerance intensively in 1944:
“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance.
Because if we extend unlimited tolerance even to the intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and with them tolerance.”
Popper’s well-known writing “The Open Society and Its Enemies”, about this very “paradox of tolerance”, has since, despite its significance, seemingly not been properly understood, let alone taken seriously. Former FDP member and later (now also resigned) AfD spokesman for the Bavarian state association writes in the blog “strong opinions” about the above quote from Popper the following:
“Freedom of speech includes enduring right-wing radicals just as much as stone-age communists.
As long as political sectarians do not take actions to abolish democratic order, the rule of law need not act. (…) Incidentally, the presumption of knowing better than the Office for the Protection of the Constitution whether and how Höcke should be monitored is also absurd, because the Office is by no means inactive when it comes to radical right-wing movements.”
This eerie ignorance, combined with arrogance, horseshoe theory, and a naive trust in the state, manifesting in this strongly (stupid) opinion, is creepy but clearly representative of the bourgeois and dominant understanding of tolerance and democracy.
I firmly claim that freedom of speech does not include tolerating right-wing radicals.
I also claim that Höcke is a fascist and that the BfV is obviously not to be trusted. I can make these claims because in Germany we have largely free expression, which must be defended.
But if, as Popper says, we endure the intolerance of the enemies of tolerance, they will “necessarily” bring about the “disappearance of tolerance.”
If we tolerate right-wing radicals, the declared enemies of our tolerance, we practically open the door for fascist forces in this country to our collective ruin.

Militant Tolerance – Lina E.

If the state fails again and again to defend tolerance against the intolerance of the right, then I ask: Is militant intolerance toward Nazis not the strictest manifestation of lived tolerance itself?
If the state, especially in the East, has long been a right-wing state itself, the BfV co-financed the NSU and its accomplice André Eminger – an accomplice in 10 cowardly racist murders – was punished more leniently than Lina E.’s accomplice Jonathan M., then anyone interested in tolerance must ask themselves how important this tolerance is to them and how much they trust this state.
The hypocritical babble of bourgeois media around Germany’s duty to convict Lina, because the FRG is supposedly a constitutional state, reflects a naive Nazi-apologetic dogmatism regarding the very understanding of the rule of law.
In Germany, we have 33,900 right-wing extremists – and since this number ironically comes from the BfV, we can undoubtedly assume at least 50,000. The German rule of law has been complicit in 219 deaths from right-wing violence since 1990.
The Nazi (Leon Ringl) injured by those convicted around Lina was planning the step into terrorism through the race war-promoting “Atomwaffen Division” – without Lina, would he have become the 220th death?
A resilient democracy needs militant tolerance; militant tolerance means resisting intolerance. Solidarity with the defenders of tolerance.