But you do see how you’re very much engaging in stereotyping by saying that “They historically chose to address that by becoming cops” as if somehow a) all Irish people in America became cops, and b) the experiences of the Irish diaspora in America are somehow representative of all Irish people… Right?

Like, seriously, go ask some Irish people in Northern Ireland how they feel about cops some time. Depending on who you ask you’re guaranteed to get some wildly different answers.

Help them out of their ignorance. Start by agreeing with their frustrations and then continue to explore common ground from there.

And when I say “agree with their frustrations” I mean the stuff that you can legitimately agree on. Start with this tax plan, which fucks over anyone making less than about $300,000 a year. Maybe let them know that Trump instituted similar tax cuts last time around; that this isn’t a one time mistake. Maybe help them to understand that a lot of the moves Trump and his team are making right now are straight out the Project 2025 playbook; studies showed that the more people learned about Project 2025 the more they hated it. Trump had to pretend he knew nothing about it, so showing them that he’s now following it to the letter might get you somewhere.

Find the places where you can agree, and work from there.

Genuine and serious question: Where does that get you?

As good as it may feel to call these people out for their ignorance and stupidity (and yes, they were very ignorant and very stupid), what is it actually doing to help stop Trump’s agenda right now?

Telling them off might feel good, and right, and incredibly justified, but it’s not going to win people over.

What America needs right now is a mass movement against Trump’s agenda, and a big part of building that movement is going to have to be reaching out to those people who are disgusted with the reality of Trump’s agenda and bringing them into the fold, even if they helped put it in motion in the first place.

Irish people were actually considered “non-white” throughout most of the history of race as a concept. They were only recently recategorized by racists when they felt their numbers dwindling and decided to expand the tent a little.

Irish people have suffered from a history of explicitly racist oppression; calling them “the oppressors” flies directly in the face of history. Their skin colour may be white, but the history of their relationship with race as a power structure is far more complex.

This does not mean that it’s impossible for Irish people to be racist themselves, or for Irish people to embrace “white” as an identity. Race is complicated; that’s exactly why trying to adopt simplistic attitudes to it never works.

Also, refusing to talk about America’s rapid slide into fascism isn’t going to slow it down.

From one of my previous comments in this exact conversation:

A tolerant society is one in which all tolerant people can exist freely and without oppression. The intolerant are those that would seek to exclude tolerant people from the protections of that society.

In other words, we don’t defend the right of Nazis to be Nazis because ultimately their goal is to strip rights and freedoms away from other people. Even if they’re not out in the streets lynching black people and Jews, they are actively working towards destroying the place our tolerant society holds for people who are different from them. Extending tolerance to their speech leads to less tolerance in society as a whole.

Conversely, we do not treat Pride parades as intolerant speech, no matter how offensive they are to Nazis, because their goal is not to reduce the tolerance of tolerant people. Nazis don’t get to be protected from other people’s intolerance of them - they don’t get to cry foul when someone says “Punch Nazis” - because their feelings of offence stem from their intolerance, and the intolerance others have towards them is a reaction to their intolerance.

In other words, if Nazis didn’t believe in a hateful ideology, no one would hate them. Whereas Nazis will hate black people no matter what black people do or don’t do.

Intolerance, in itself, is not a matter of perspective. It’s a clear criteria.

That doesn’t mean we can always clearly determine what speech is or is not intolerant. It often relies on gauging intent, which is difficult to do. The example you cited would be a judgement call for the courts; it very likely does not cross the line into intolerant speech, but if you could clearly demonstrate antisemitic intent on the part of the author, which would require other overtly antisemitic statements or actions, then you might be able to prove a case.

And this is nothing new. The law juggles questions of intent all the time. In cases of doubt, we err on the side of innocence. This is all very well trod territory. Why is it acceptable to assess the question of intent when judging between murder and manslaughter, but suddenly that becomes an unacceptable complication when we’re talking about what is or isn’t hate speech?

Except you’ll notice that I never said a word about “harassment” or things being “offensive”. Throughout this discussion I have only ever advocated for the ability to restrict speech that is “intolerant.” Not offensive. Not harassing.

Intolerance is not about what offends others. You can be as offended as you like by the phrase “Isreal should not commit genocide,” but it is not intolerant, because intolerant speech is only that which seeks to attack, constrain or eliminate tolerance itself.

A tolerant society is one in which all tolerant people can exist freely and without oppression. The intolerant are those that would seek to exclude tolerant people from the protections of that society. It is paradoxical to extend tolerance to those who seek to destroy tolerance.

It’s not a hypothetical, but it’s also not responding to the specific premise of Popper’s paradox.

You’re basically doing the equivalent of saying “Some people get falsely accused of murder, therefore we should make murder legal.”

People protesting against the government are not enaging in intolerant speech. It’s that’s simple. There’s a clear cut rule that Popper lays out. You can say “Oh, but what if we decide to not follow that rule?” but then you’ve completely rejected the premise. That’s no more useful than it is to suggest that democracy is bad because democracies sometimes become dictatorships. If your argument “X is bad if you do it badly” then you’re always going to be right, but not in a way that’s useful.

Probably not as well as the Edward Cullen Twilight dildo (NSFW, obviously)

The same way you objectively decide anything else in law. You apply the principles to the facts.

Your first example there is a gimme; clear and obvious example of antisemitic hate speech. The fact that they’re protesting against Israeli genocide isn’t some magic shield that protects people from criticism. You can protest against the actions of Isreal without declaring that Hitler was right.

The second one is a grey area. That’s the thing; when you take a serious approach to the problems of the world, instead of fleeing to the simplicity of ideas like free speech absolutism, which require no degree of complex thought, you will inevitably run into grey areas. So I’m not going to give a hard answer on this one because I think it would take a lot of serious thought and debate to come up with a hard answer on it. But I will say that even if it was ruled as intolerant speech, nothing would be lost. You can protest against Isreal and stand up for Palestine without needing to celebrate the actions of Hamas. Those things are not intrinsically linked. So your examples do not demonstrate any kind of underlying flaw with Popper’s principle. Nothing of value is lost if we as a society choose to say that these kinds of speech are unacceptable.

You’re think you’re disagreeing with me, but I want to be clear that you’re advocating for exactly the same things I am.

Polls don’t matter, but public opinion absolutely does. You can’t organize a mass movement of resistance without a mass of people to organize. The fact that Trump’s agenda is becoming increasingly unpopular is an opportunity for those organizing resistance to bring in more support.

But we’re not required to evaluate the facts of the case based on what “some people” think. We can objectively examine the content of people’s speech and ask whether it’s intent is to advocate against the basic rights of a group of people or not. Criticising Isreal does not meet that test, despite what the ADL might claim.

Yes, there are grey areas. Yes, there are hard calls that have to be made. But saying “This is hard” and then throwing up your hands and resorting to free speech absolutism because you can’t handle the difficult work of building a society is just childish.

This is good. This is an opportunity to talk to people about the destructive effects of Trump’s agenda, and help them to really understand that he’s not looking out for their interests. The more people get upset about what Trump is doing, the more chance there is to potentially stop it.

Approval always matters, even without democracy.

Democracy is just a managed, fairly agreed upon process for a governed people to exercise their will. But a governed people always have the ability to exercise their will. Authoritarian tactics can make that more difficult, but they cannot ever prevent it.

Remember, if there was nothing people could do to stop them, their propaganda would not be necessary. The fact that they are engaged in information control demonstrates that they do very much care about approval - or, at least, acceptance.

It’s not a question of “extremist”. What is or isn’t “extreme” is largely a matter of how far an idea strays from the norm. Some extreme ideas are very good, some extreme ideas are terrible.

The question, rather, is of purpose, not character. Intolerant speech - that is, speech whose purpose is to limit the rights of specific groups of people to exist - is the only kind of speech that we must be prepared to limit, because without limits on intolerant speech, the intolerant will ultimately abuse their freedoms to strip away freedoms from others.

This draws a hard line. It clearly defines and delineates what is and is not acceptable. It is a simple and clear rule that any tolerant society must abide by if it is to continue to be a tolerant society.

For the proof of this, you only need to look at what is happening in the US right now.

The right wing assholes whining about free speech don’t actually want free speech. You can see that in the campaigns to remove books from school libraries all across the country. All across the world the right are demonstrating time and again how little they actually support free speech.

What they want is the freedom to spew hate speech, which is the only kind of speech that a tolerant and free society should not tolerate. All other forms of speech they will gladly and eagerly suppress unless it agrees with them.