That's true. But it also requires that both sides have the same definition of tolerance and the same definitions of good an evil.

For instance, what if that religion being practiced believed that homosexuality is a sin, and you did not?

In their eyes they'd be justified in thinking you were intolerant of their god-given righteousness and you'd be justified in thinking that they were being intolerant of the liberty of others.

Maybe they actively roam the streets harassing gay people, maybe they have laws about a death penalty, or maybe they just talk about them as unclean. Where does your tolerance start? Is it only at words and not action? Does that mean hate speech is ok?

The paradox here isn't to do with tolerance and intolerance, but the assertion that either of those things exist as objective view points.

my existence as a connoisseur of cock

A penis sommelier, if you will

I’ll tolerate you as long as you tolerate me.

I'd only comment that it's not just about tolerating me. I am intolerant of people who are intolerant of others, unless they follow this contract.

But then not everything is about tolerance of other people. I don't tolerate people who litter, for example, even if they tolerate me.

When the general society is intolerant of nazis, they are not usually calling for nazis to be killed or harmed.

And why aren't we doing that? They're literally Nazis?

I view it as a contract. If you don't abide by it, you are not covered

I don't think that's "the problem." There's been a global resurgence of actual fascism over the last 20 years. Nationalistic, racist, xenophobic, dictatorially structured, scapegoatism, corporatist, all the boxes checked. It's been my experience people complaining about the term being "watered down" have dipped their own toe too much in that pool, i.e., they think some elements of it are excusable, sympathize with the actual fascist figures, and hence rush to their defense.

Fascism never caught on anywhere with the public in any country because the whole population was all suddenly cartoon villains. The public got sold a belief system that was appealing to them, that made sense to them, that's how they fell for it. They'd put in elements of truth into what they were saying, or appeal to basic grievances that the population had.

absolutely it gets abused. any time anyone wants you to tolerate what they want you to(defend their own tolerance), they might suggest that you're not being tolerant enough. (suggesting you intolerant)

this means that both intolerance of reasonable rules, as well as intolerance to unreasonable rules can always be twisted as "intolerant of the tolerant ruling".

essentially, whatever an authority establishes as being right/good must be tolerated, whereas what they consider wrong/bad will not be tolerated.

of course most reasonable people know that what people think is good/bad/right/wrong varies massively, and how tricky and meaningless this fact can make the whole idea of "tolerating the intolerant". it certainly doesn't help in convincing the intolerant to be tolerant, so i think it's not worth talking about.

This assumes that censorship is inherently bad. Censorship against speech regarding the government should be protected. However it's perfectly legitimate to censor harmful ideas, and many countries censor hate speech. We censor people's ability to physically and emotionally harm others. We censor threats. Censorship isn't inherently bad, and is already used functionally everywhere, just ask ChatGPT.

I do however think censorship can be dangerous. I think the censorship we see in public forums (including lemmy) already treads on the toes of legitimate intellectual conversation of objective views on hate speech and offensive language. Tone policing is incredibly intellectually disingenuous, but is widespread because feelings trump literacy. I think the censorship of individual words is supremely dangerous because it also bans or limits the conversation around those words, their usage, etymology, and understanding their use. Comprehension of offensive things is just as valuable as understanding anything else, if not more so should you wish to fight them, but censorship of offensive things without context destroys the capacity for understanding to permeate the social consciousness.

Your point doesn't come with an eloquent webcomic and I think having fantasies about punching Nazis is cool

If anything, the model of a paradox is too mind-boggling for people to grasp it intuitively. A simpler model for it is that of a peace treaty, or of a social contract. Picture this: a contract whereby we agree to uphold rights and protections for everyone, in exchange for receiving the rights and protections thereby upheld.

Tolerance by itself is too easily conflated with having no standards whatsoever, (eh? Nazis? I guess we have to tolerate them if tolerance is the rule of the day, right?) but when it's a question of enforcing the terms of the contract, it becomes quickly clear that when they start working to break the contract they're no longer covered by it.

It's not a paradox when you're enforcing a contract or a treaty. The protections of a treaty extend only to those abiding by its terms. When the outlaws rode into town to do their outlaw thing, were they entitled to the protections of the laws? No, that's what the word outlaw means.

Of course, this framing-in-neutral-sounding-language suffers from the problem whereby in cases of oppression, neutrality aligns with the oppressor. Who gets to say what the contract is, and who enforces it? Should the organs of law and justice fall into the hands of people bent on oppressing others, that's when this neutral-sounding-framing can be used as a tool of oppression. That's how Jim Crow worked, it's how white supremacy works, it's how every colonial/settler nation functions.

There is one group of people intent on using the language of tolerance as a tool of oppression, and it's high time there was a clause in the paradox/contract/treaty that explicitly calls out that fascists aren't covered because their whole program is to subvert the contract such that they have rights and power but others do not.

That's not what Popper is talking about. He's talking about maintaining the option to be intolerant of the act of intolerance, not of people.

“I'm pretty tolerant person, but trans people should just die” is just an opinion. “Gay people should live in internment camps while they get cured of their disease”, is also an opinion. “Black people are just naturally inclined to live in slavery, it's easier for them that way” is also just and opinion. “It's perfectly OK for a 12 y.o. girl to marry a widowed man if her parents agreed, it's the natural order”, look at that, another opinion. “People with disability shouldn't be allowed to reproduce, it's unnatural and they risk spreading their disease”, one more opinion. Where do we draw the line? Where's the spectrum?

People easily forget that intolerance is also very selective and targeted. The vast majority of people with intolerant ideas would look pretty regular and normal most the time. The line is pretty clear though, someone's dignity (or straight up their lives) is stripped from them. That's not rocket science, it's not an unsolvable moral conundrum, or a spiritual mystery. If someone's dignity and life is being done away with, then you are looking at intolerance.