• comfy@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    It’s a dumb line anyway. There’s no obligation for us to tolerate their antisocial behavior in the first place. All that line does is betray that the fascist treats liberalist ideals as a game or a weakness, only a fool would humor their insincere appeals to liberalism.

    Jean-Paul Sartre, Réflexions sur la question juive (1946)

    “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”