Quoting Heinrich Böll

"Strangely enough I like the kind to which I belong: people."

Heinrich Böll



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Quoting Simon Wiesenthal

"Tolerance and human rights require each other."

Simon Wiesenthal

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A gentle way of looking at things

"And as I've gotten older, I've had more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance, compassion, a gentler way of looking at things."
Martin Scorsese



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"In the end, it all comes down to what kind of world we want."

At times, some critics have said my comedy risks reinforcing old stereotypes. The truth is I've been passionate about challenging bigotry and intolerance throughout my life. As a comedian, I have tried to use my characters to get people to let down their guard and reveal what they actually believe, including their own prejudice. Borat did reveal people's indifference to antisemitism. When as Bruno, the gay fashion reporter from Austria, I started kissing a man in a cage fight in Arkansas nearly starting a riot, it showed the violent potential of homophobia. And when disguiised as a ultra woke developer I proposed building a mosque in one rural community prompting a resident to proudly admit "I am racist against Muslims", it showed the growing acceptance of islamophobia.



Today, around the world demagogues appeal to our worst instincts. Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream. It's as if the age of reason, the era of evidential argument is ending and our knowledge is increasingly delegitimised and scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy, which depends on shared truths is in retreat and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. Hate crimes are surging as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities. Fake news outperforms real news because studies show that lies spread faster than truth. On the internet, everything can appear equally legitimate. The rantings of a lunatic seems as credible as the findings of a Nobel Prize winner. Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

In the end, it all comes down to what kind of world we want. If we prioritise truth over lies, tolerance over prejudice, empathy over indifference, and experts over ignoranuses, then maybe, just maybe, we can save democracy. We can still have a place for free speech and free expression, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Today these rights are threatened by hate, conspiracy and lies. So allow me to leave you with a suggestion for a different aim for society. The ultimate aim of society should be to make sure that people are not targeted, not harassed and not murdered because of who they are, where they come from, who they love or how they pray.
Sacha Baron Cohen 

::: Full speech: LISTEN/WATCH  

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Quoting Sir Karl Popper

“The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.



Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, 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. — In this formulation, 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. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”
Karl Popper

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photograph of Sir Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994) taken by Steve Pyke (1990) via