Karl's Popper Paradox of Tolerance

   Described in 1945, it is influenced by Popper's personal experience under the Nazi Regime because he was Jewish. Karl Popper was an Austrian-British philosopher very interested in philosophy of science, but he also developed other theories about politics in society.
The paradox, written in The Open Society and its Enemies, was formulated as it follows:
"Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly, be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."
This is a good example of limits on freedom of speech and it can perfectly answer the recurrent question in our topic "Is everyone allowed to say anything they want?". The answer to the question is, in our opinion, no, because to preserve democracy and open society we are forced to fight ideas which can put in danger democracy. We are letting populist parties over Europe spread messages of hatred, risking to enlarge racist, sexist, xenophobic opinions. The problem is that sometimes it is hard to define which opinions are actually intolerant and which ones are not.