Myth#01
Popper never believed anything like what this implies.
He wrote:
“I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise.”
This is no warrant here for laws against hate speech. On the contrary, Popper appears to have called such laws “unwise.”
To Popper, intolerance is not to be deployed when the utterance of intolerant ideas might make you uncomfortable, or when those ideas seem impolite, or when they get you really mad. Intolerance – if that’s the right word for it – is only warranted when we are already facing “fists and pistols,” or, presumably, worse.
We know this not merely from a close reading of the passages I’ve quoted, but from a look at The Open Society and Its Enemies more broadly. The entire book is an exposition of intolerant ideas, a dissection of them, and a sustained, reasoned defense of pluralism. Here Popper proved himself liberal; his first resort was to make a rational argument. It was only in a footnote that he considered the possibility of using violence, and he did so with obvious disdain.
For an in-depth dive into this, please check this article.






