Citing this "paradox" is a great way to shut down discussion by claiming the other person is being intolerant. Basically the only time I've ever seen this invoked is on Reddit in a dishonest way.
Yeah, that's clearly not what was meant with the authors writing. One concrete example would be "should you allow a political party who promises to get rid of democracy and replace it with a dictatorship if they win?" which if you take democracy to its extreme, you should allow, but if you allow it, democracy might disappear, so you should not be accepting it.
How would you propose to stop them? If they're popular enough to win in a national election, they're popular enough to win in a violent overthrow, too. Kicking them off of Twitter would be sticking your finger in the dam at that point.
in a first past the post election system it isn't sure that someone who wins 51% of the vote would win in a civil war, as other factors than sheer numbers apply there.
I’ve only ever invoked it against neo-neo-Nazis and conspiracy theorists demanding to be taken seriously.
Would you call that dishonest?
Yes, in a good-faith discussion between two parties, not taking them seriously is a quick way to lose ground with lots of smart people and further fringing the people already outside of the normal "accepted" thoughts.
Yes, because the dishonest part is the how often those labels are thrown around with no real basis.
I've seen it used against people spouting QAnon, Big Pharma mind control vaccine theories and support for fascist elements of various governments like USA, China, Turkey, Russia, and Poland. Seems appropriate to me. It's not healthy to tolerate these folks, especially the fascists.
I’ve only seen it being invoked on people who support the freedom of speech. The people who invoke it obviously missed the irony that based on the paradox of tolerance the way to keep our freedom of speech is to pull a GPL and silence these that disagree with it.
That’s because when you eject a disruptive patron from a bar or stadium, nobody claims you’re violating their free speech rights.