intolerance of intolerance. Is it going anywhere and where will it lead us.

[Legendary Sidekick]

Steerpike made some excellent points about how people on both the left and the right are capable of civil debate, and both sides are also capable of demonizing each other. Sadly, there are examples of both the civil and the demonizing in some of these posts. I don't want to give infractions over this. I'm not crazy about locking the thread either, especially since my overall feeling is positive about this discussion, but I think this has gone as far as it can go.

 

[Amanita]

Seriously, I'm having my doubts that this discussion about US right-wing or left-wing politics is really taking us any further.
For me, there are some opinions that simply cannot be tolerated. These include wanting to deny human rights to people because of their gender, ethnic background or similiar reasons and injuring or killing people for the same reasons or encouraging others to do so. In this case, the police has to interfere and legal punishment has to follow. If it's directed against an entire state and is a serious threat, replying with violence is justified if other means fail. Trying "not to be a person that is hated" isn't useful advice in this case because we don't choose which gender, sexual orientation or gender we belong to. Tolerance is the wrong answer in this case and especially if groups (like women) who are traditionally seen as weak "tolerate" this kind of thing, there's litte change of it getting better.

Different opinions on all the issues discussed in the course of the last pages are a completely different matter. Most of them don't have easy answers and people taking one side on them doesn't show if they're good or evil.
The question is how we define "hate" here. Do we want to define it like I did above or do we call every harshly-worded comment "hateful". To say it again, for me "hatred" implies a disregard for the hated person's mental or physical health or even their life and an active desire to see the person or persons in question harmed.
Just two comments I've found somewhere on the internet for examples. (Don't remember the exact wording but I do remember the message.)
1) "I don't like fantasy. It's only read by people who are too stupid to understand about science and to cowardly to deal with reality. Most of them probably don't have any friends either and only sit in front of their computers playing stupid games.
(From a Wikipeda discussion page.)
2)"Muslims are like a disease. I really wonder how we could get rid of them. Killing them all? But how could this be done?
(From a British newspaper comment section.)
We (probably) all disagree with poster one and we don't approve of their personal attacks. Still, we might want to explain to them why they're wrong and it might be worth to start a discussion with them. (Maybe not, but then they're still free to hold this opinion.)
Poster two on the other hand crossed the line very far and it's unlikely that any polite counter-arguments from others would be any help. Reporting the post would be the right option in this case. (And hoping that the poster wasn't serious.)

If the thread here is about political correct speech and the like, a few quick words about this too. I do think that it is taken to an extreme sometimes and I don't approve of it. Sometimes, wordings seem completely harmless to people not belonging to the targeted group but are completely different for those who do. Sometimes, certain wordings might simply wake up reflective reactions while the person who actually used them, didn't mean to use them in an offensive context at all. In these cases the suggested approach of discussing it calmly and listening to the opinions of all sides is best. Everyone going off to their corner sulking isn't helpful even though it's happening quite often.
A short example for how specific terms effect people differently due to their background. The use of the term "race" refering to humans seems to be absolutely normal to you. For me, this took a while to get used to because the German translation is at least bordering on being offensive and the idea that people are asked about their race is rather strange. The whole idea of dividing people into races is rather unpopular, it's more about ethnic groups and nationalities.

 

[Chilari]

Thread locked.