No tolerance for the intolerant.

"No tolerance for the intolerant" was the most predictable thing you could say and is incorrectly weaponizing a philosophical theory to try and justify preemptive street violence.

A true threat involves immediate, impending violence. Self-defense applies to imminent physical harm, not to hearing a political statement you hate.

The supreme irony is that using physical violence to forcibly silence people with opposing political views is the absolute pinnacle of intolerance.

Yes. They are suppressing violent speech.

I didn’t read the rest of your comment. Go apologize for fascists somewhere else.

Saying "I didn't read the rest of your comment" because it challenges your worldview isn't the flex you think it is; it's an admission of defeat. You can add the word "violent" in front of "speech" all you want, but words are not fists. You are cheering for physical assault against someone for talking. If you have to refuse to read opposing arguments just to protect your bubble, you don't have the moral high ground, you just have a fragile ideology.

You. You, I like you. Carry on being you!!

Everything you’ve said is wrong.

No, I believe what I'm stating are facts, and I'll do my best to prove it in good faith hoping you'll do the same.

No, they are cheering for the violent suppression of fascism.

Fascism is an authoritarian system of government that uses state power and violence to forcibly suppress political opposition. A citizen with zero institutional power having a restrictive stance on immigration isn't a fascist state; they are just a voter you disagree with.

Let's look at the actual power dynamic in the UK right now. The government wielding state power is the Labour Party. The citizen you are calling a "fascist" is arguing against the state's current immigration policies. That makes the citizen the political opposition.

If you want to see what actual authoritarian suppression looks like in the UK right now, look at the state. The government recently upheld the use of the Terrorism Act to arrest hundreds of people—including an 82-year-old former magistrate—simply for peacefully holding placards that read, "I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action." Amnesty International explicitly called this a "grave misuse of sweeping counter-terrorism powers."

You are blinding yourself to the actual authoritarianism being wielded by the state right in front of you. For them to be cheering for the suppression of fascism, they would have to be protesting the state's use of anti-terror laws to violently crush political dissent. Instead, they are cheering for a street mob to violently crush a powerless citizen. You are redefining a voter's opinion as "fascism" simply to justify using violence against the political opposition.

No, that is a debate. Democracy is more complicated than that, and includes the duty to defend the right to free speech by preemptively suppressing the free speech of those who would use free speech to suppress free speech. It sounds hypocritical at first, but if you sit with it for a little while, the logic of it is unassailable.

The logic isn't unassailable; it is a complete misreading of the very philosophical concept you are trying to lean on. Popper explicitly wrote that we should not suppress intolerant philosophies as long as we can counter them with rational argument and public opinion. Popper argued that suppression is only justified when a group abandons rational debate and begins answering arguments with fists and pistols.

Let that sink in. The philosopher you are trying to use to justify your position explicitly warned that the line is crossed when people abandon debate and resort to physical violence to silence their opponents. By cheering for a mob to use physical violence to preemptively shut down someone's speech, you are acting as the exact intolerant, anti-democratic threat that Popper warned about. You aren't defending free speech; you are destroying it.

No, they are defending the use of physical violence to ensure people with fascist ideas stay afraid. This is a crucial defense of democracy. Someone this far gone isn’t going to respond with an open mind to better arguments. There is always hope that they might at some point realise how stupid they’ve been, but in the meantime, they do need to be afraid to voice their ideas.

First, by your logic, any group of citizens has the right to violently assault their political opponents, as long as they unilaterally declare the victim's ideas to be unacceptable. That isn't a defense of democracy. It is the definition of a lynch mob.

Second, democracy is a system explicitly designed to replace physical violence with debate, laws, and the ballot box. Delegating the suppression of speech to extrajudicial street thugs is the exact opposite of democracy.

Finally, look at your own words. You are explicitly defending the use of "physical violence" to ensure a specific group of people "stay afraid to voice their ideas." You are arguing that physical violence should be used to induce public fear for political purposes. Which brings us perfectly to your final claim...

No it isn’t. Look it up.

Let's look at the exact legal definition under UK law.

Under Section 1 of the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000, an action legally constitutes "terrorism" if it meets three specific criteria:

1. The action "involves serious violence against a person" (Section 1(2)(a)).
2. The use or threat of action is "designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public" (Section 1(1)(b)).
3. The use or threat is made "for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause" (Section 1(1)(c)).

Now, let's look at what you just explicitly defended in your previous paragraph:

1. You defended "the use of physical violence" (meets criteria 1).
2. You said the goal was to ensure people "stay afraid" (meets criteria 2: intimidating a section of the public).
3. You said this must be done to advance your political ideology (meets criteria 3: advancing a political/ideological cause).

You didn't just advocate for terrorism; you literally typed out all three legal prerequisites for terrorism under UK law, defended them as a "crucial defense of democracy," and then arrogantly told me to look up the definition.

You’ve not proved any of this, so you don’t get this triumphant bit, sorry.

I have just cited the actual actions of the UK government, quoted the exact philosopher you tried to use to justify your stance, and mapped your own words directly onto the statutory definition of the UK Terrorism Act 2000.

You are cheering for terrorists because you have convinced yourself that as long as you use the right buzzwords, your brand of authoritarian violence is the "good kind." History is full of people who thought exactly like you, right up until it was wielded against them.

How has doing nothing against the rise of fascism worked so far?

Dismantling bad ideas through debate, exposing their flaws, and addressing the root psychological and economic causes of extremism isn't "doing nothing." It is doing the actual, difficult work required to maintain a democracy.

If you want to know why authoritarianism is actually on the rise, it isn't because society has "too much free speech." It is rising because of corporate capture, oligarchy, and the systematic destruction of the working class. When a society’s institutions fail its citizens, and those institutions then attempt to censor and suppress the resulting public anger, desperate people turn to extremists who promise to tear the system down.

By cheering for censorship and street violence, you aren't fighting the rise of authoritarianism. You are helping to create the exact polarized and violent environment it needs to thrive.

He challenged his critics to a fight.

No he didn't. Saying people are scared to fight for what they believe in does not invite or mean they are afraid to attack him physically. Regardless, someone saying you're scared to fight them, and you actually committing assault to prove them wrong, makes you the idiot in that scenario.

One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.

A "freedom fighter" risks their life to fight an oppressive state and its military apparatus. A terrorist targets unarmed civilians to induce fear and enforce political conformity.

You aren't fighting an oppressive state. If you want to see an oppressive state, look at the UK government currently using the Terrorism Act to arrest 82-year-old pensioners and bundle them into police vans simply for holding placards that read, "I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action." That is actual state oppression.

But you aren't fighting that state. Instead, you are cheering for a street mob to violently beat a civilian who holds zero institutional power, simply to ensure that people who share his political opinions "stay afraid."

Punching up at an authoritarian regime makes you a freedom fighter. Using violence to silence a civilian while completely ignoring the actual authoritarianism being wielded by the state right in front of you makes you a street thug. Don't flatter yourself by dressing up mob violence as a liberation movement.