“I am not intolerant… I am only intolerant of intolerance.”
Do we spend too much time attempting to silence people… instead of debating them?
It’s a question Rowan Atkinson asked over a decade ago, and it’s one that still divides opinion today.
Rowan Atkinson’s point still strikes a nerve because it exposes a fundamental tension in modern public life — the conflict between protecting people from harm and protecting the freedom to argue, disagree, and even be wrong.
More than a decade later, we’re still wrestling with where that line should be drawn.
“I am only intolerant of intolerance” — sits in a lengthy tradition of thinking about free expression. It echoes the paradox of tolerance: a society that wants to remain open must sometimes push back against those who want to shut it down.
But the real debate is about how we push back.
Do we debate people, or do we silence them?
Open debate tests ideas in public, social consequences enforce community boundaries, and legal limits step in only when speech crosses into genuine harm.
Speaking in 2012, he warned about what he called “The New Intolerance”. Not intolerance itself, but the growing belief that views we disagree with should simply be shut down rather than challenged.
He said:
“I am not intolerant… I am only intolerant of intolerance.”
At first, he said, that sounds perfectly reasonable.
But he argued that if you think about it for a moment, it simply replaces one form of intolerance with another.
It doesn’t represent any progress at all — just a shift in how we police speech rather than how we engage with it.
Rowan wasn’t arguing that every opinion is right, or that offensive ideas deserve applause.
His point was something different: in a free society, bad ideas are often better exposed by being challenged openly than by being silenced altogether.
More than a decade later, debates about free speech, cancel culture and where the line should be are still making headlines.
Whether you agree with Rowan Atkinson or totally disagree, his words have continued to spark discussions years after he said them.
Do you think he’s right… or has the world changed too much since 2012?
Whether he’s right depends on perspective, but the world has changed so profoundly since 2012 that his warning now lands in a completely different landscape.
The landscape is one where social media amplifies every voice, public judgement moves at lightning speed, and the power to silence or elevate ideas now sits with online crowds rather than institutions.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 
As when still named Cassius Clay 19 years old, just back from winning the Olympics, in his hometown Louisville, seated himself in a diner to be told “ We don’t serve nigra’s [sic] “ He answered “ That’s okay , I don’t eat them “ A comment on hateful inbred racism – extreme intolerance that is so relished by those who are bound as fascisti to a central axe of … volcanic anger… Still after decades a classic resounding intelligence of a very great man.xxx >
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