That this does not correspond to any liberal ideas is clear. But where does tolerance end – and with what justification?
35-year-old Andrew Tate – who poses with guns and fast cars – talks about hitting and choking women, trashing their belongings and stopping them from going out. In an online video, he calls an ex-girlfriend who accused him of hitting her – an allegation he denies – a “dumb hoe”.
Tate’s views have been described as extreme misogyny by domestic abuse charities, capable of radicalising men and boys to commit harm offline.
But this man is not a marginal personality spreading his ideas in a fringe corner of the dark web. In fact, he is one of the most famous people on the video platform TikTok, where videos of him have been watched 11 billion times. In a matter of months, he has become one of the most talked about people in the world – in July of this year, there were more Google searches for his name than for Donald Trump or Kim Kardashian. In August so far alone, clips tagged with his name have been watched more than a billion times.
Offering his fans a recipe for making money, “escaping the matrix” and pulling girls, Tate entertains – in his own online university – 127,000 members who pay £39 a month, many of them men and boys from the UK and US.
Supporters say his talking style is an antidote to so-called cancel culture and demand consideration of Tate's right to freedom of expression in response to criticism.
As a cornerstone of many current democracies, freedom of expression is enshrined in numerous constitutions. This refers to the principle that every individual can express their opinions and ideas without the threat of legal consequences or censorship. The set of guarantees include the freedom of speech, of the press, of association, of assembly and petition. But what if these personal philosophies harbour hatred against others or aim to suppress their freedoms? Restricting this very right of people who use it to restrict it from others would seem to contradict the principle of free speech altogether.
At a certain point, there will inevitably be ideas that do not conform to socially accepted norms. Extreme ideologies can pose a real danger to society and, more often, to certain minorities. Hate speech directed against ethnic and religious minorities, for example, emphasises disapproval of their otherness and often threatens violence. While people have the right to think and express intolerant ideas, others are free to disagree. The paradox of tolerance raises the question at what point intolerant ideas can no longer be tolerated and whether the violation of individual rights in the name of tolerance is acceptable.
The philosopher Karl Popper described the paradox of tolerance as the seemingly counterintuitive idea that "society must be intolerant of intolerance in order to maintain a tolerant society". If a so-called tolerant society allows intolerant philosophies to exist, it is essentially no longer tolerant.
Popper first formulated the paradox of tolerance in his 1945 work The Open Society and Its Enemies. Popper claims that a society that tolerates intolerant ideas succumbs to the forces of the intolerant, which are inherently dangerous. This destroys the notion of a perfectly tolerant society. Society should first combat intolerance with rational arguments and civil public discourse, but when all else fails, Popper suggests that the tolerant reserve the right to suppress intolerant opinions.
The paradox of tolerance raises several questions about individual freedoms and the power of government to control them. While freedom of speech is an essential component of democracy, extremist groups use it to spread hate speech and promote dangerous programmes. When the government restricts freedom, it moves away from democracy and transforms into an authoritarian style. Of course, the consequences of moving too far towards one end of the tolerance-intolerance spectrum are not as bad as they may seem, as cases of total extremism in one direction are very unlikely. Nevertheless, it is important to consider the paradox of tolerance in a modern society where communication is so pervasive. In assessing whether or not intolerance should be tolerated, we need to determine where our values lie – in favour of complete freedom of speech or in favour of limiting harmful dialogue.
“I inflict, I expect, absolute loyalty from my woman, I ain’t having my chicks talking to other dudes, liking other dudes. My chicks don’t go to the club without me, they are at home.”
– Andrew Tate
But although much of the content appears to violate TikTok's rules, which explicitly prohibit misogyny and copycat accounts, the platform seems to have done little to limit Tate's distribution or block the accounts responsible. Instead, it catapulted him into the mainstream by allowing clips of him to go viral and actively promoting them to young users.
The NSPCC’s Hannah Ruschen, a policy officer, added: “Viewing such material at a young age can shape a child’s experiences and attitudes, resulting in further harm to women and girls in and out of school and online.”
When asked, TikTok said it took misogyny seriously and was actively investigating whether accounts posting content of Tate were breaching its rules.
It is precisely when online platforms fail to find a moral solution that it is our task to reflect on the society in which we live and want to live.
Because: freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences and unrestricted tolerance is not real tolerance.