Rodney Hide: Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance

In “The Open Society and Its Enemies” (written during the Second World War, in New Zealand), Karl Popper identified a structural problem for liberal societies. Unlimited tolerance, he argued, is self-defeating. If a tolerant society extends unlimited tolerance even to those who are themselves intolerant — and who would, if they gained power, abolish the tolerant order — then the tolerant will eventually be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

Roger Partridge: An Open Society Requires Constant Vigilance

Who is responsible for defending liberal democracy when its norms come under attack? Karl Popper, writing as fascist armies swept Europe, understood this was not an abstract question. Popper championed societies that were fundamentally “open” – sustained by critical inquiry and peaceful disagreement, rather than imposed unity. But Popper grasped a paradox: openness could only survive if actively defended against those who would exploit its openness to destroy it.

Ani O'Brien: The Paradox of Tolerance and the Islamification of the West

We are running out of time to change course

Note: this Substack is mostly written with a New Zealand lens and a sprinkling of international stuff. For context, I was born in the UK and moved to New Zealand as a four-year-old. I still have family in London and stay pretty plugged into the politics over there. I am very concerned about several issues in my place of birth currently and will write about it from time to time. Free speech (or lack thereof), the migrant crisis, and the Islamification of Britain are top of mind.

If Karl Popper were alive today, he’d be branded an Islamophobe by the very people who claim to revere his intellectual legacy.

Dr James Kierstead: The open academy and its enemies

A couple years before the outbreak of the Second World War, the philosopher Karl Popper moved across the world to take up a position at what was then Canterbury College. Popper, who lost no fewer than sixteen family members in the Holocaust, was under no illusions about what would have happened to him had he stayed in Vienna.

While in Christchurch, Popper wrote The Open Society and its Enemies, one of the classic defences of liberal democracy against totalitarianisms of the left and the right. Canterbury had a poor research culture at the time, and Popper butted heads with the chair of his programme. But his academic freedom – his freedom to think and write what he wanted – was never seriously in doubt.

Ron Smith: Greenpeace and the Temptations of Utopianism

The Greenpeace response to the actions of the Russian authorities, following the invasion of their oil-drilling platform by Greenpeace activists, has been revealing and deeply ironic.  The Russian actions, they said, were an ‘assault on the very principle of peaceful protest.  Most pointedly, Greenpeace also said of the Russian tactics, that they were, ‘intimidatory’.

Of course, they were right in this latter comment.  What the Russians did (and are continuing to do) is indeed, intimidatory.  They are intent on putting up the price of the kind of ‘protest’ that is Greenpeace’s stock-in-trade.  And this is where the irony comes in.