Illiberalism Quotes

If you believe free speech is for you but not your political opponents, you're illiberal. If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist. If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you're a totalitarian. If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you’re a terrorist.

Is Donald Trump a fascist? It's an interesting question that has generated insightful commentary over the past few months, with the best answers situating Trumpian illiberalism within America's long history of racial oppression, slavery, Jim Crow apartheid, and the ongoing backlash to the loss of white privilege.

Donald Trump is a demagogue. Period. The fervor of his crowds recalls Nasser's Egypt. His convictions are illiberal. His manners are disgusting. His temper is frightening.

The echoes of history are unmistakable in our current climate. The rise in extremist views has created a dangerous environment and radical intolerance (that) leads to a society that no longer celebrates differences, but to instead conspire to demonize those who are different to the point of creating the ‘other.’ The idea of the ‘other’ is an idea that poisons discourse and creates a dangerous wedge throughout our communities. ‘Othering’ rationalizes prejudice. It encourages the willful denial and distortion of reality to enforce preconceptions. ‘Other’ is the kindling that fuels extremism and illiberalism. … The creation of the ‘other’ and that dehumanization of any group based on their differences are the foundations of fascism. It’s an old playbook that has been dusted off and being widely distributed today. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

I don't think that our European Union membership precludes us from building an illiberal new state based on national foundations.

We have to abandon liberal methods and principles of organizing a society.

But of all Nonsense, Religious Nonsense is the most nonsensical; so enough, & more than enough of it - Only, by the bye, will you, or can you tell me, my dear Cunningham, why a religioso turn of mind has always a tendency to narrow and illiberalise the heart?

If you're always in the company of people who agree with you, you're going to think of people who don't agree with you as venal or stupid. I constantly tell my students that if they're in the company of people who always say "amen" to what you say, find other company. And that is the source of illiberalism, when you are unable to listen to someone who thinks differently. That's when democracies are in trouble.

What is illiberal is not persuasion but imposition of one's views.

Vladimir Putin wants to become the de facto head of an illiberal, xenophobic, hypernationalist trend in world politics.

All Fundamentalists are conservatives, but not all conservatives are Fundamentalists. The best conservatives can often give lessons to the liberals in true liberality of spirit, but the Fundamentalist program is essentially illiberal and intolerant.

I believe the regressive Left - the group of people who use illiberal tactics to silence those defending liberal principles - to be the Left's version of the Tea Party.

National antipathy is the basest, because the most illiberal and illiterate of all prejudices.

This was a good example of the fascist policing of public discourse in this country by nominal liberals who have become as unthinkingly wedded to dogma as any junior member of the Spanish Inquisition.

It's getting worse under Prime Minister Modi. The economic miracle has failed, to a degree, and people are reaching back to a kind of imagined Hindu past for a feeling of pride. And that feeling of pride necessarily comes from denying any kind of Muslim heritage. People my age seem to be becoming illiberal in a way that I'm surprised by.

Thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous..