Already addressed this elsewhere in the thread, but dropping a Wikipedia link to the Paradox of Tolerance is the most predictable, lazy response I receive anytime free speech is discussed.

I would strongly encourage you to actually go read Karl Popper's original text—or even just the link you just dropped—rather than just throwing out the title of the theory.

If you had done the reading, you would know Popper explicitly wrote: "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." He stated that suppression is only justified when a group abandons debate and starts using fists and weapons.

By cheering for a mob to use physical violence to preemptively shut down someone speaking, you are acting as the exact intolerant, anti-democratic threat that Popper warned about. You are using a philosopher's warning against political violence to justify political violence.

Go read the literature, along with the subsequent challenges by modern sociologists, before dropping the link.

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.

I encourage you to read my other comments, where I address Karl Popper directly.

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

Listen, it is clear your responses are devolving into bad-faith, contradictory claims just to avoid admitting that a mob committing battery isn't a noble political act.

I've said everything I intend to say. Either sit on it and reflect on why you are so desperate to justify vigilante street violence, or keep doing logical backflips to defend a mob. Either way, I am leaving the conversation here. You can have the last word if you need it.

You are accusing me of "strawmanning" and arguing in bad faith, but you seem to have forgotten how a comment thread works. I was responding directly to the specific claims made by the previous commenter.

The person I was replying to explicitly claimed that the mob's violence was politically motivated—they called it a "crucial defense of democracy" designed to ensure people "stay afraid." I responded directly to their stated ideological motive. It is not a "strawman" to quote a person's exact words and reply to the argument they actually made.

Now you have jumped in with a completely contradictory defense. You are arguing the mob had no political ideology at all, and was just acting like unprincipled thugs "beating up a drunk at a bar."

I had no reason to address your alternative explanation at the time, because the person I was talking to was actively claiming this was a noble political crusade. Ironically, by stripping the mob of their political motive, you are actually arguing against the person I was responding to.

If you want to completely scrap their defense and present your own distinct viewpoint—that this wasn't about defending democracy, but was just a senseless, apolitical street assault—I'm more than happy to address your argument separately. Let me know if that is the premise you want to go with.

I mean, I want to agree with you.

I genuinely appreciate you saying that, and for what it's worth, I actually understand the fear driving your perspective.

The media and political machines run on algorithms designed to make us terrified of each other. When you are constantly told that the people you disagree with are an existential threat to society, the instinct to just shut them down completely—even physically—makes sense emotionally. But history and psychology prove it is the absolute worst way to actually fix the problem.

Some things shouldn’t be debated. Some “opposing views” shouldn’t be given a platform or granted the light of day.

If you want to actually change minds and protect society, declaring that bad ideas "shouldn't be heard" is the biggest mistake you can make.

Think about it from the perspective of psychology. If a child or a patient comes to a therapist with deeply troubled, harmful, or antisocial views, what happens if the therapist says, "Those ideas are unacceptable, and you are not allowed to speak them in here"?

The ideas don't go away. They just fester in the dark. The therapist loses any ability to understand where those ideas came from, diagnose the root cause, or help the person untangle them. Listening to someone’s ideas—even abhorrent ones—isn’t about validating them. It’s about exposing them to the light so they can actually be treated and dismantled.

When you push bad ideas off the public platform, you don't destroy them. You just force them into echo chambers where they are never challenged by better arguments, and where they metastasize into actual extremism.

Does that mean things may get messy and that mistakes may be made? Yeah. Probably... You can’t reason someone out of a position they haven’t reasoned themselves into.

You might not always be able to reason them out of it, but you absolutely cannot beat them out of it.

Using violence against bad ideas is a trap. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. understood this better than anyone when he wrote about the descending spiral of physical escalation: "Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate."

When you use a street mob to violently silence someone, you don't prove their ideas wrong. You just prove their paranoid worldview right. You convince them—and anyone watching—that they are a victim, and you guarantee that the next time they come back, they will bring their own weapons. Violence begets violence.

The only way to actually defeat bad ideas is to drag them out into the open, expose how weak they are, and defeat them with better ones. It is harder, it takes longer, but it is the only method that doesn't end with us destroying society to save it.

They should be allowed to express their opinion until it becomes tangible and problematic for said outgroup?

Yes. Exactly. That is the fundamental basis of a free society and the legal system. The line is drawn at tangible actions and imminent threats.

You do not get to physically assault people based on hypothetical future crimes you imagine their words might lead to. Using physical violence to punish someone preemptively before anything "tangible" has actually happened isn't justice. Redefining offensive speech as "violence" is just a rhetorical cheat code you are using to grant yourself permission to throw the first punch.

Also that twat called for it... As a crowd gathered behind him, he said: "All of you who throw water are cowards."

"Fight for what you believe in" is arguably the most common idiom in all of political activism. When labor unions say "fight for your rights," or progressive activists say "fight for climate justice," they aren't asking for a literal fistfight. You know exactly what that phrase means.

Deliberately misinterpreting a standard political metaphor as an invitation to a physical brawl is the definition of arguing in bad faith.

Furthermore, throwing liquid on someone is legally physical battery. The mob had already started the physical altercation. He was calling them cowards because they were hiding in a crowd throwing things at a single person instead of actually defending their beliefs with their words.

Your entire argument boils down to intentionally twisting a common figure of speech so you can fall back on the classic abuser's defense: "Look at what he was saying, he was asking for it."

That opposing political view: “you cannot live your life. I want to deport, imprison, or execute you.”

First, you are inventing an imaginary, extreme quote to justify actual, physical battery. If we are playing that game, should I take the most unhinged, violent statement made by anyone I believe shares your political alliance and permanently assign it to you?

Second, a random citizen on the street has zero institutional power to deport, imprison, or execute anyone. They are not an imminent threat. The state is the only entity with the power to imprison people, and as we've seen, the UK government is currently using that exact power to arrest 82-year-old pensioners simply for holding Palestine Action placards.

If someone is actively trying to physically harm you, you have every right to self-defense. But claiming that hearing a civilian's political opinion on the street is the equivalent of an impending execution is intellectually dishonest. You are redefining speech as "violence" so you can use actual, physical violence while pretending to be the victim.

By cheering for the violent suppression of political expression, your worldview aligns perfectly with the actual authoritarianism of the current UK government, which is busy crushing dissent to ignore actual victims in Gaza.

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.

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.

They are cheering for the violent suppression of speech.

You can disagree with bad ideas with better ideas. That is Democracy. But you are defending the use of physical violence to ensure people with different ideas "stay afraid." That is the exact definition of terrorism.

But yeah, go ahead and sing your little song while acting as the cheering section for literal authoritarian terrorism. I'm sure your brand of beating people into silence is the good kind and won't be used against you.