Marcuse’s call for repressive tolerance would only reinforce the powerful’s 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

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s accumulated critical-theory reading on tolerance, censorship, and the Frankfurt School’s split on political violence. — connects to: Marcuse asserted a natural right of minorities to extralegal resistance — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2592; Marcuse argued bourgeois notions of freedom actually sanctioned existing authority — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 424; Marcuse demanded revolutionary theory oppose both neo-fascism and Soviet communism equally — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1664 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Marcuse argued bourgeois notions of freedom actually sanctioned existing authority #corroborates (0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 424
• Resistance efforts can be complicit with the very exclusionary power they oppose #expands (0.75) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 1243
• Marcuse held bourgeois democracy’s blocked change justified extra-parliamentary direct action #corroborates (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2672
• Marcuse demanded revolutionary theory oppose both neo-fascism and Soviet communism equally #contradicts (0.70) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1664