This post is a thing I am posting now so I don't forget to post it later, but will probably not finish right now. So it is rawww and
wriggling unedited atm. Also this could probably have been posted in the science and stuff part of the forum but I'm more interested in the political/philosophical consequences currently.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15This is an article I found pretty interesting, essentially it is trying to describe the phenomenon wherein an intolerant or inflexible minority can (or will) come to dominate a tolerant or apathetic majority. I should point out that whilst I found this principle very interesting, the article itself seemed very long winded and tedious to read to me, so if anyone knows of a better discussion on this principle then hmu fam. I also do not agree with all of the author's conclusions or suggestions.
The first example given is the prevalence of kosher soft drinks (in the US I think, but presumably all around the west) despite the fact the vast majority of folk are not Jewish (again in the US/the west). This can be explained by the fact that Jews will only drink kosher drinks, whereas very few people will refuse to drink a kosher drink, therefore since the price of production is not significantly changed it is more economical for soft drink manufacturers and marketers to just sell kosher soft drinks. Likewise the same principle applies to some extent to the sale of kosher and halal meat, although not to the same extent as a significant number of people in the west are opposed to kosher and halal meat upon the grounds of animal welfare (or sometimes simply due to antisemitism/Islamophobia) and also I imagine these forms of slaughter might be significantly more expensive.
This principle may have rather more significant implications than these examples however, particularly when it comes to politics. If it holds true in the case that there is an intolerant minority (in the sense that they will not bend of certain policies/ideologies) within a certain political movement or party whilst the majority of this movement/party is relatively tolerant or flexible then it would be seen that the views of this minority are dis proportionally over-represented within the movement/party. And to some extent I would say this does appear to happen within many left-wing political movements (although I'm not sure how true this appearance actually is) and even in the wider political landscape in the form of "political correctness gone made" (and in other forms too probably), wherein political or public figures are often very careful to avoid saying things that are not viewed as politically correct, despite the "fact" (apparent but not easy to truly determine) that the majority of the public are not usually that bothered about it, because a rather vocal minority are very bothered by it. I think in recent times we've been seeing a backlash against this, in the form of people becoming less tolerant of apparent political correctness and such like, which I would imagine is part of the rise of populist movements (Trump and brexit spring to mind).
An example of this that first springs to my mind would be a thing that happened during the (most) recent election of the head of the labour party (here in the UK) where Corbyn's rival (at this point iirc it was a two horse race) was accused of sexism after he said that Corbyn should be "rocking Theresa May back onto her heels" during prime-ministers question time. Now anyone with a functional brain should be able to realise this is a boxing metaphor, but the woman (an MP in the labour party ffs) who made the complaint thought that it was a reference to May's footwear (highheels) and so was a sexist statement. This could and should have been easily clarified without the need to apologise, but the "offender" who's name I cannot remember at all instead acted like an utter fanny and apologised and agreed that his comment was somehow sexist. Now I don't know if this a particularly significant example, but hopefully it illustrates the point.
An actually decent example might be the Stop Funding Hate campaign, which is an attempt to apply serious financial pressure to the Daily Mail (a rightwing armadilloheap of a newspaper that really does try to spread a fair bit of hate tbf) by encouraging people to boycott companies who advertise in the Daily Mail, and it has met with some successes so far. Now I don't know if people who hate the daily mail are actually in the minority or not, and personally I'm one of them. But this campaign is somewhat worrying to me, how much will it take for a media outlet to be considered hateful by a group like this? Will this actually succeed in reducing the mail's reach or will it just cause their usual readers to pushback on movements like this?
As per usual I'm getting bored of writing this long arse rambling post. But I want to point to what I feel is a pretty significant logical error in the article - the notion that the Islamic empire converted regions that were mostly Christian or Judaic via this principle. I think this argument is flawed because it ignores the fact that the minority (Muslims) in this case were in a position of authority backed up by military power, and so they achieved gradual mass conversion of the populace not simply by being less tolerant than the majority but by being able to enforce their intolerance to a greater extent. Ie they were actually able to execute Islamic apostates and to declare that the children of a Muslim were always Muslims whereas Jews and Christians were not.
Also I was initially just going to post this paragraph as I thought these were questions worth discussing, so I might as well still post it:
"Clearly can democracy –by definition the majority — tolerate enemies? The question is as follows: “ Would you agree to deny the freedom of speech to every political party that has in its charter the banning the freedom of speech?” Let’s go one step further, “Should a society that has elected to be tolerant be intolerant about intolerance?”"
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