Tomorrow marks UNESCO’s International Day for Tolerance. If I'm honest, this is the first year I’ve been aware it exists, and ironically in a year where tolerance seems in short supply.
Horror continues to unfold in Ukraine, the Middle East, Sudan and elsewhere; the far-right across Europe are making electoral progress; and Donald Trump’s MAGA movement secured a comprehensive victory in the Presidential and Congressional elections.
At home, any brief comfort we got from Keir Starmer’s landslide, which ended the increasingly intolerant tenure of the Tories, was quickly dampened by Reform UK surpassing most expectations and a wave of racist rioting across the country.
Add to that the general uptick in intolerance towards refugees and asylum seekers, the LGBT+ community and other minority groups and all in all, it’s been a depressing period in our history.
And that reminded me, we should never be tolerant towards those responsible for the above.
Professor Karl Popper, author of the Open Society and Its Enemies, warned, “If we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”
Popper was a philosopher but this wasn’t theoretical, it was a practical warning based on the hardest taught lessons of history.
'Society has fallen into the very trap Popper so clearly marked out for us'
Germane to it is the idea that the intolerant is the one group who cannot and must not be shown tolerance. And yet, for the last 10-15 years they’ve been getting it.
While claiming censorship, the peddlers of hatred and division continue to be regularly invited to contribute to public discourse.
Decrying conspiracy, they represent and are supported by some of the wealthiest and most powerful business interests in the world.
And in the interest of driving engagement, social media companies encouraged rage, fear and misinformation over facts, understanding and tolerance.
Society has fallen into the very trap Popper so clearly marked out for us. And now we have a felon in the White House, five Reform UK MPs and dozens more councillors, and a Conservative Party trying to out-populist Farage by threatening to take us out of the ECHR at every turn. So what is our response? Where do we go from here?
Well, it’s never too late to take Popper’s advice. We must stand up to those who seek to divide us on the grounds of race, faith, or sexuality.
'we all have a responsibility to each other and to everyone who calls the UK home'
The Government should avoid playing on Farage’s field on the issues of immigration and refugee rights. As the Tories learned, that’s a game you can never win. It merely legitimises his central premise, the logical conclusion of which leads to some very dark places indeed.
Instead they need to meet this disinformation head on. It is possible to manage immigration while reminding people of its value both to our economy and society.
And they must move to introduce long overdue regulations on social media giants who will cry censorship, claim state overreach and threaten to withdraw investment, but the fact remains that so long as they are given free rein, they will continue to incite intolerance for profit.
Away from Whitehall, we all have a responsibility to each other and to everyone who calls the UK home. From the hate-spewing populist politicians to the thugs who tried to burn people alive in hotels, the hard-right in the UK is emboldened and feels like the momentum is theirs.
It’s on all of us to ensure hate has no home here, to counter misinformation and stereotypes with truth and evidence, to have the difficult conversations in hope of increasing tolerance and empathy. There are a number of fantastic organisations leading this work that need your support, not only our own, but Hope not Hate, the JCWI and 38 Degrees who provide resources and advice.
'despite decades of peace, democracy and progress, those who want the opposite are never far away'
The success of Brexit and Trump in 2016 demonstrated that despite decades of peace, democracy and progress, those who want the opposite are never far away. This year has provided another object lesson.
Populism, intolerance and its advocates recalibrate, pupate, and when we let your guard down, they emerge. We must be ever vigilant.
Right now, a land war is ongoing in Europe with many more other conflicts raging around the world. We have an atrophying rules based international system with an impotent supranational body charged with defending it. Nation states are becoming more insular, more distrusting, and the major industrial power has just elected a dangerous demagogue on the promise of mass deportations and dismantling democracy.
I’m not the first to highlight the troubling historical parallels, although I might be the first to resist that most overused and potentially apocryphal Mark Twain quote. Instead, on this International Day for Tolerance Eve, a second, more hopeful message from Karl Popper,
“the future is open. It is not predetermined. No one can predict it, except by chance. We all contribute to determining it by what we do. We are all equally responsible for its success”
It is a call to action for all of us, one we cannot afford to ignore.