Demands for biased tolerance strengthen ruling powers’ merely apparent impartiality.

Evidence

But who, apart from the ruling authorities and institutions, was able either to withdraw or to enforce civil rights? In a society in which, as Marcuse assumed, unilateral restrictions of tolerance had always been in force in the background, every demand for biased tolerance could only strengthen the attitudes of those in power, with their merely apparent impartiality. In situations like this, only one demand seemed useful: the demand that everyone should be able to exercise their civil rights. If, for example, conflict were to arise between the right to freedom of opinion and information, on the one hand, and the capitalist structure of the mass media, on the other, then one could demand democratization of the mass media and campaign for that demand. It could not be correct to demand the replacement of the hidden censorship' that permeated the media by an open form of pre-censorship’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2596 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Marcuse’s call for repressive tolerance would only reinforce the powerful’s apparent impartiality — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2596; Granting new legal rights can weaken rather than strengthen one’s position. — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 789; Under asymmetric power, the rationality of the ruled serves the rulers’ aims. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 424

Broader Connections

• Marcuse’s call for repressive tolerance would only reinforce the powerful’s apparent impartiality #corroborates (0.97) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2596