On Tolerance

"John Stuart Mill argues clearly for tolerance, and he is very popular in this modern era. People quote him in school essays and formal debates. But Frank Furedi, in his new book on tolerance, looks at how the spirit of John Stuart Mill has been destroyed in the contemporary era, despite our paying lip service to the term “tolerance”. He talks about an insipid understanding of tolerance. We have come to interpret the very opposite of what Mill meant, that tolerance means that we should be respectful of all opinions. When we say our society has got to be tolerant, it becomes a relative thing – almost therapeutic mush that we are not allowed to offend anybody. This kind of tolerance leads to a situation where we refuse to challenge or test out arguments in the public sphere. That is what is so ironic about the contemporary understanding of tolerance. It effectively says you must bite your lip and tolerate all views. This was not at all what Mill meant. Furedi takes on how tolerance has become degraded. He says tolerance has to be robust, interventionist and judgemental. You should tolerate all views, but that does not mean silently sitting by and agreeing with them. He makes a very interesting point about how in the name of defending tolerance, we’ve seen the introduction of hate-speech legislation which defends people from intolerant views. Actually, in the name of tolerance we have seen the growth of illiberalism. A kind of intolerant tolerance. Yes, we basically say you are intolerant therefore we won’t tolerate you. To clarify, it is not just that everyone has the right to speak. Most importantly, I think that we all have the right to listen to all views. Because if you don’t say that, then someone else says which ones you can and can’t listen to. All speech is powerful but I do not think there is a direct line between speech and action. “Actually, in the name of tolerance we have seen the growth of illiberalism. A kind of intolerant tolerance.” The assumption that speech immediately incites people to act treats us as if we lack any autonomy or decision-making powers. It attacks moral autonomy and treats people as if they are no more than attack dogs. Do you really think that if you let people hear a racist homophobic speaker then that is what they will become? The key word that you have used is “vulnerable”. That word gets used to imply that there is a feeble-minded kind of person who can be easily influenced, which I think is quite insulting. The idea is that I can resist these ideas while other people, who are living on a council estate or are Muslim youths, can’t. I think that is a very dangerous “them and us” approach to free speech. Another argument that people use in the free speech debate is that if people hear certain words or insulting ideas, then they will be wounded and damaged forever, so the state needs to step in and protect us. There is the idea that we are no longer prepared to trust each other, and this goes back to Mill. Mill is forever arguing that we should be able to trust each other, hear these things, and then argue back. I am sure that people don’t like hearing those ideas, but if they exist in society you can’t just silence them. There is increasingly a culture of shutting down debate, which results in no one being able to speak their mind. People think a way of gaining recognition is to say, “I find that offensive and damaging for my particular community.” We then get fixed in a sense of identity, instead of it being something where we are prepared to take on these arguments and deal with them, regardless of identity."