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.