Intoleration

...inspired by Herbert Marcuse's essay, "Repressive Tolerance."

I made the meme below in my spare time while taking a Social Theory course in grad school sometime around August 2012. We were assigned to read from the Frankfurt School, and so this meme was inspired by Herbert Marcuse's essay, "Repressive Tolerance." I was also talking back to a group called Being Liberal, which occasionally posts illiberal calls to action. Instead of respecting individuals for their personhood, cognizance, and self-interests, people are treated as part of groups, and those groups are positioned in mutually exclusive antagonistic relationships.

The explicit message of what I call “intoleration” is that stigmatization and ostracization of members categorized into alleged dominant groups, while granting privilege to alleged subordinated groups, is justified, let alone justifiable. For example, if there were statistically tiny minority of people, say 1% of the population, who claimed to have or who actually have special rights, each individual would be able to do something(s) 99% would not be able to choose without repercussions the 1% would be spared. To speak out against those privileges would be deemed outrageous and unacceptable, unless that 1% were, say, viewed as part of an oppressor class. Then, all bets are off.

The implicit message of intoleration is that some are more equal than others. But, by the nature of how neo-Marxist postmodernism functions, the rebuttal would be that I’ve contorted and distorted the original meaning. For example, this post (image below) implies that groups have rights, that those rights should be distributed equally, i.e. granted, not by God but by government, and that anyone in opposition believes some imputed concept of how rights function. Incidentally, individual rights are automatically equal, but maybe Being Liberal agrees? What if 1% of the population claimed to have the right to access spaces, times, or resources in a way that the other 99% could not choose due to some alleged group right of the minority? Is that equal? Surely not.

We’re now in the twisted fork in the road, and we must answer the question: Are we talking about individual rights, or group rights? It should be self-evident that individual rights are inherently equal among all. We’re not talking about rights tailored to an individual, but rather rights that all individuals have by nature of being born human. If a group has rights, then it automatically means that other groups (possibly) do not have those same rights. And if all groups have the same rights, then it follows that in reality, we’re back at individual rights. The very notion of group rights implies that socially constructed categories of people, blurry lines of demographics and identity transformations included, possess rights based upon group membership, which necessarily means that other groups have different rights.

When Marcuse spoke of repressive tolerance, he had in mind an oppositional group deemed “regressive.” It is a political agenda from the start, and we’re now at the end of the road, at least where we stand. If you do not stand on the side of the oppressed, disadvantaged, or otherwise marginalized minority groups, then you are a bad person. You must be repressed in body, mind, and spirit. It’s the “either your with us or against us” mentality of tribalistic collectivism. It is a mindset intentionally constructed in order to further progressive politics, which have been fashioned as the underdog savior of the Earth and its inhabitants, save for deplorable and detestable groups who think otherwise.

Here's part of the 1969 prologue to the original essay by Marcuse:

"Within the solid framework of pre-established inequality and power, tolerance is practiced indeed. Even outrageous opinions are expressed, outrageous incidents are televised; and the critics of established policies are interrupted by the same number of commercials as the conservative advocates. Are these interludes supposed to counteract the sheer weight, magnitude, and continuity of system-publicity, indoctrination which operates playfully through the endless commercials as well as through the entertainment?

Given this situation, I suggested in 'Repressive Tolerance' the practice of discriminating tolerance in an inverse direction, as a means of shifting the balance between Right and Left by restraining the liberty of the Right, thus counteracting the pervasive inequality of freedom (unequal opportunity of access to the means of democratic persuasion) and strengthening the oppressed against the oppressed. Tolerance would be restricted with respect to movements of a demonstrably aggressive or destructive character (destructive of the prospects for peace, justice, and freedom for all). Such discrimination would also be applied to movements opposing the extension of social legislation to the poor, weak, disabled. As against the virulent denunciations that such a policy would do away with the sacred liberalistic principle of equality for 'the other side', I maintain that there are issues where either there is no 'other side' in any more than a formalistic sense, or where 'the other side' is demonstrably 'regressive' and impedes possible improvement of the human condition. To tolerate propaganda for inhumanity vitiates the goals not only of liberalism but of every progressive political philosophy."

And here is a critique: