The Authoritarian Left: Wonkette Loses The Plot

Ban anything that scares you,
’cause you don’t understand.
Ban it ’cause you want to,
ban it ’cause you can.

I genuinely like Wonkette; the only scheduled recurring donation I have set up is to them, and has been for many years.

But man, today they lost the plot completely.

Because today Wonkette called for the United States to ban a political party for its beliefs:

The Republican Party Has No Place In A Democracy

And that is frankly reprehensible.

You cannot ban political viewpoints in a free country.

Even if that viewpoint is that the country should not be a democracy.

Because in a free and equal society, every citizen must have the same rights to advocate for their political beliefs that any other citizen has.

No matter what those beliefs are.

You cannot ever allow a portion of the population to establish a limit on legally acceptable discourse, because that privileges their right to political beliefs over the rights of their opponents.

And that makes you a threat to democracy, too.

Which means that, by the same logic that Wonkette uses to justify this call for a ban on Republicans, Wonkette would also have to be banned.

And so would whoever called for Wonkette’s banning.

And so on.

It’s a never-ending Ouroboros of intolerance.

This is, in fact, a fine example of the “paradox of tolerance“, which I’ve discussed here before in relation to theocratic movements in the U.S.

That paradox, however much I may admire Popper’s work, is an illusion; what I said there applies just as well to fascist movements:

The intolerant should be disputed, mocked and shunned; these are the tools of society. But they should not be dis-enfranchised, arrested or jailed; these are the tools of the State.

So here I am disputing Wonkette’s failure to come to grips with the paradox of tolerance.

I’ll save the mocking and shunning for later.

One lapse of principles doesn’t make a fascist, but it does reveal an underlying authoritarian streak; one that I’ve argued before is quite widespread in the American left.

(And is especially strong here in California.)