There is this false ideal in leftwing politics that we need to be some unrealistic form or pure and noble. “They go low, and we go high” was a rallying call. The left has largely felt it needed to be tolerant, even of intolerance. As the right increasingly ignored standards and procedures, truth, decency, and even law; the left refused to stop playing by old rules that no longer applied. We could not risk the slippery slope; so, we needed to protect the rights of nazis.

How has that worked out? Well, the US now has a far right supreme court that has made the president effectively a king. Far right groups have gained massive influence internationally. We have two corrupt narcissist billionaires taking over the largest economy and military (by budget) in the world and promising to dismantle most of the good and necessary things the government does. Mass deportations are promised. Almost every civil right is up for grabs. We can’t stop paying for daily war crimes in Gaza.

We need to quit worrying about slippery slope arguments that assume all freedoms are equal. Hatred and racism are not protected. The real slippery slope is that, unchecked, the politics of hate will lead to authoritarianism, or worse. We saw it happen in the 1930s, and we are likely seeing it again now.

Democrats can pat themselves on the back that they didn’t stoop to levels Republicans did as we see mass deportations and a fucking underground railroad for abortion and trans healthcare. If the supreme court follows through on promises to not just eliminate gay marriage but criminalize queer sex, and queer people are rounded up by the cops; at least the Dems can know they didn’t play as dirty as the conservatives did! Millions of lives ruined - because of cowardice or devotion to lofty but meaningless ideals. As civil rights erode and war crimes jump borders, the Democrats truly are the Neville Chamberlain of our time. It’s not noble, it’s shameful and pathetic.

The paradox of tolerance says that if you want a tolerant society, you cannot have universal tolerance. The one thing you must be intolerant of is intolerance. Because if you give tolerance to intolerance, it allows intolerance to spread, and that will eventually destroy tolerance. Tolerance is not some abstract spiritual act where you have the most tolerance by remaining the most pure. Tolerance is something you work for - something you fight for.

In the free speech arena, this is even more critical. If you protect free speech because you have a tolerant space, and people begin using their free speech to harm marginalized groups in that space, then your “tolerant” space is no longer a place for the marginalized group - they can neither speak nor exist in the space safely anymore, and that impacts their free speech. The hate speech people or their victims will be pushed out. You can’t prevent that. But you can choose to side with the targets of hate not to perpetrators of hate. Free speech for all, unfortunately, requires moderation.

This is similar to the “nazi at the table” argument. If you give a fascist a seat at the table, you are complicit and are helping normalize and spread their fascist shit. So, we don’t give fascists a seat. We push them out.

Game theory also supports these. A noble/altruistic approach in game theory will consistently lose if there is a bad-faith player in the loop. The most effective strategy in these cases involves trying to cooperate, but retaliating for attacks.

This is also just common sense. The Democrats showed the Republicans that no matter how far they went with misinformation, violating legislative and legal procedures, or making bad faith attacks; the Democrats would yield. If they demonstrated that they were willing to risk a fight or retaliate, it is likely the Republicans would not have been as bold.

The argument against “going low” is that it looks bad, but the rightwing media machine will attack no matter what the left does. Facts don’t matter. Being nice doesn’t earn thanks from the right. You’re going to get called traitors and idiots no matter what. You might as well do some good to earn the attacks - something more than, say, wearing a tan suit.

We have this problem because western republics largely were created by racists and slaveholders. We promote ideas of “life and liberty for all”, but have refused to say that anyone trying to take others’ rights away arbitrarily, or for greed or malice, is not just socially unacceptable but illegal and unconstitutional.

If we made the designation that intolerance was absolutely not acceptable, it would solve the old slippery slope arguments. It is no longer “if we target this group because we don’t like their views, could that be applied to other groups?” It is “is this promoting hate and intolerance? That isn’t allowed.”

The Dems in particular, and the left in general, need to quit talking about higher ground. Yes, we should be better, but that bar is incredibly low. There’s some room to maneuver there. Should we have a propaganda machine like the right? No, but we need to figure out how we fight back against rightwing media, bots, misinformation, and billionaire influence on media - and the solutions won’t all be easy or pretty. Should we abandon legal and legislative process? Exactly as much as they do.

But most essentially we, as a people, need to organize and fight. Reagan sold weapons to Iran to keep our hostages locked up until after the election, and he sold cocaine in American cities to fund war crimes in Central America. Only one pathetic fall guy paid a price. Baby Bush stole the election, and everyone - including pre-beard Al Gore - just rolled over. They stole the supreme court. We held some modest protests. They stole abortion rights and promised to take more rights. We had some larger modest protests. We need to shut things down. We need to go after the agents of oppression with shame, criminal charges, hassle, lawsuits - whatever we can do. It’s not going to stop until people choose to make it stop. If “playing nice” was justifiable at some point, it has been absolutely discredited in the last couple of decades. We could have a fucking Reichstag fire tomorrow, and people would be talking about handing Trump emergency powers in a way that is orderly, mindful, and demure.

So…shut up about respectability and get your ass out fighting against oppression.