(This is an archived extract from the book Patterns of Power: Edition 2)
Karl Popper, in his book The Open Society and its Enemies, pointed out that unlimited tolerance allows intolerant people to suppress other people’s free speech; he then argued that intolerance and incitement to it should therefore be considered to be outside the law.[1] Popper’s aspirations for an “Open Society” might be beyond reproach, but to use the law as an instrument to prevent intolerance might be problematic. A defence could plead that the accused was merely expressing opinions or recounting facts, as legitimate criticisms, and it would be difficult to prove intolerance.
Society as a whole benefits if the law can be used to prevent people from trying to stir up ethnic conflict. It is undeniably difficult to do so, but the attempt has been made and many countries have introduced some legislation (with varying success) – despite a reasonable and necessary bias in favour of free speech.[2] And such laws can be supplemented by establishing human rights to protect individuals from harm – as discussed next (5.4.7).
© PatternsofPower.org, 2014
[1] Karl Popper, in The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato, explained the “paradox of tolerance” in these terms:
“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, 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. But we should claim the right even to suppress them, for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument ; they may forbid their followers to listen to anything as deceptive as rational argument, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, exactly as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping ; or as we should consider incitement to the revival of the slave trade.” (Note 4 to chapter 7, p. 226)
In this passage he is clearly distinguishing between the mechanisms of the Moral Dimension, using the terms "rational argument" and "public opinion", and the mechanisms of the Legal Dimension, using the words "law" and "criminal".
[2] The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 was available in May 2014 at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/1/contents.
The Act failed to secure a conviction in a high-profile prosecution in 2006, of the “far-Right” politician Nick Griffin, as reported by the BBC in an article entitled BNP leader cleared of race hate – which was available in May 2014 at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/6135060.stm. This prosecution failed despite the fact that Griffin was quoted as describing Islam as "this wicked, vicious faith" at the event in question (19 January 2004).
On 7 November 2006 the BBC published an item entitled BNP and leader 'no longer racist', which reported that Griffin had told the court: "This isn’t a racial thing. It’s not an Asian thing. It’s a cultural and religious thing." It was available in May 2014 at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/6125834.stm.