This essay falls into the same trap I see among a lot of my liberal (as opposed to socialist) peers: it assumes tolerance is something admirable, desirable, or fundamentally good. That's how you fall into the "tolerance of intolerance" paradoxical rabbit hole, and IMO, it's largely performative.
My stance on the subject, in contrast, is that tolerance isn't good enough. I'm not "tolerant" of gay people, as that suggests that their sexual orientation should disqualify them from my in-group, but that I would tolerate them anyway. No, I just don't see sexual orientation as a qualification for my peer group. Same goes for any other immutable characteristic of someone's existence. People, tabula rasa, are people, and that qualifies them for my respect.
But of course, people by the time I'm interacting with them are not blank slates. They have opinions, stances, and world views that they have acquired and incorporated into their identities, which they then act on to form histories. These perfectly mutable facets of their existence are entirely open to judgement. I'm tolerant of the merely tolerant, not because it's some unqualified good, but because it's just not bad enough to warrant exclusion from my inclusive-by-default in-group. People willing to openly state their bigotry towards people I consider my peers disqualify themselves from my respect. People willing to act on those bigoted beliefs cross the line into "evil".
In my opinion, this forms a far more consistent world view compared to the "tolerance is an unqualified good" stance.
My stance on the subject, in contrast, is that tolerance isn't good enough. I'm not "tolerant" of gay people, as that suggests that their sexual orientation should disqualify them from my in-group, but that I would tolerate them anyway. No, I just don't see sexual orientation as a qualification for my peer group. Same goes for any other immutable characteristic of someone's existence. People, tabula rasa, are people, and that qualifies them for my respect.
But of course, people by the time I'm interacting with them are not blank slates. They have opinions, stances, and world views that they have acquired and incorporated into their identities, which they then act on to form histories. These perfectly mutable facets of their existence are entirely open to judgement. I'm tolerant of the merely tolerant, not because it's some unqualified good, but because it's just not bad enough to warrant exclusion from my inclusive-by-default in-group. People willing to openly state their bigotry towards people I consider my peers disqualify themselves from my respect. People willing to act on those bigoted beliefs cross the line into "evil".
In my opinion, this forms a far more consistent world view compared to the "tolerance is an unqualified good" stance.