So That the Hate Doesnt Continue Happening

Source: David Kyle Johnson

I've seen the signs around in a few people's yards. "Hate Has No Home Here," they say, followed by translations of the phrase in Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, Korean, and Urdu. I didn't think much of them, other than that the sentiment was nice. But when a colleague of mine got hate mail from a neighbor for displaying one in her front yard, I had to look further into it. Hate mail for not hating? There had to be a logical fallacy to be found somewhere!

The phrase, it turns out, was the brainchild of … children … a third-grader and kindergartner at Peterson Elementary, which services the extremely diverse Chicago neighborhood of North Park, Illinois. The sign project was the result of the cooperation of a North Park neighborhood organization. The stated purpose of the sign is as a "public declaration that hate speech and hateful actions against others will not be tolerated by the person or organization displaying the sign." What's to hate, right?

Karen Pansler Lam thinks the signs are a hate crime, and her explanation of why is what my colleague received as an email forward. I won't go into the details here (like I did here), but in short her argument is that putting up a "Hate Has No Home Here" sign in front of your house, which implies that you do not hate "foreigners"—i.e., people of other cultures, who speak other languages, and belongs to other religions—is tantamount to saying that you do hate those who do not tolerate such people. She apparently sees signs that suggest "you should love and accept everyone" as a personal affront to her and her views. And apparently my colleague's neighbor does too. To them, my colleague putting up a "Hate Has No Home Here" sign was tantamount to saying "In my home we don't hate … unlike in that other home down the street, where they do hate. I hate them."

Now, there is certainly is a strawman fallacy here. My colleague was only trying to express that her home does not tolerate hate speech or actions. She did not have her neighbors in mind. Saying otherwise misrepresents her view. But my colleague also, most certainly, hates hate. And this got me thinking about the paradox of tolerance.

The paradox of tolerance, first identified by Karl Popper, suggests that tolerance leads to intolerance—or, more specifically, that complete and pure tolerance of everything would lead to the elimination of tolerance for anything. How so?

If every view is tolerated, then viewpoints that are intolerant must be tolerated. But intolerant viewpoints, left unchecked, will wipe out everything besides themselves—leaving us with only intolerance in the end. So, to champion tolerance, one must be intolerant to a degree—one must not tolerate intolerant views. Indeed, Popper argued, such views must be made illegal (like how Germany effectively made Nazism illegal after WWII).

A similar paradox arises it seems, not about tolerance and intolerance, but about love and hatred. If you truly love everything, then you must also love hate. But if hate is loved, and thus left unchecked, it will wipe our everything but itself, and all we will be left with is hate. So, to champion love, one must hate to a degree—one must hate hatefulness. And that, in a way, is what the "Hate Has No Home Here" signs declare: "In this house, we hate hate."

Source: Steven Luce and the Hollywood-North Park Community Association, used with permission

But is this truly a paradox? Perhaps we can just "hate the sin but not the sinner," or "hate the hate without hating the hater." Indeed, perhaps we can even love the hater, but hate their hate and not leave it unchecked. Maybe. But, on the other hand, is it really possible to separate people from their actions in this way—especially their actions towards others? As author Mayur Ramgir put it, "Your actions define your character, your words define your wisdom, but your treatment of others defines [the] real you." Can I really love Hitler, but just hate his actions? Didn't his actions reveal him to be a deplorable human being deserving of hatred? Indeed, one might even argue that a person is morally deficient if they don't hate Hitler. So is one morally deficient if they do not hate people who take calls for love and tolerance as personal affronts? I'm not really sure. But if one vocally stands against an "anti-hate" message, one should not be surprised if one receives criticism from people who hate hatefulness.

Copyright David Kyle Johnson, 2020.

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Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/logical-take/202007/hate-has-no-home-here-and-the-paradox-tolerance