“They are not men, except in their stature, with the faculty of speech and thought at a degree far distant to ours. Such are the ones that I have seen and examined.” – Voltaire on black people.
The polymath and satirist Voltaire today occupies an esteemed position in history as one of the major figures of the Enlightenment period. He wrote around roughly 2,000 books and his works covered a diverse range of topics from plays and studies of the theatre to history, politics, philosophy and the natural sciences. He is remembered as one of France’s greatest writers.
He was also incredibly racist. And not in the “well everybody had those views at the time” kind of racist. He was vehemently racist even by the standards of his time – putting the veneer of intellectual respectability to what was to become known as scientific racism. The depths of his anti-Semitism is still debated amongst scholars but it is broadly agreed that it went well beyond the sardonic streak found in his anti-clerical rhetoric, and owed much more to a biological essentialist view of Jews. In other words, he was a racialist.
Today, in the Information Age (for lack of a better them) – modern cranks, conspiracy theorists and other related paranoiacs who can’t or won’t read his works find it considerably easier to quote – or misquote him on the internet. And so we see stuff like this:
As I said before, Voltaire didn’t say it – and he wouldn’t anyway. The man was famous for decimating the sacred cows of French society during his time, and as a polemicist, he made a living of winding up the French establishment. It is also an erroneous statement – you don’t need to criticize a group who should not be criticized to know your rulers. They often make a show of making themselves known, and even the ones who don’t would be so powerful, it renders criticism irrelevant. The influence of the critics is what encourages a reaction – not the criticism itself. But we’ve already entered into conspiracy-land so logical consistency is not what we’re going to find dealing with this.
This is one instance where it can be said that this is a blatant dog-whistle for Jews, since almost every time, it leads into some tripe around “Zionist-controlled government” or something. I first saw it in relation to “Gamergate”: the manufactroversy born from the gaming community fuelled by the conspiracy theory that video game developer Zoe Quinn slept with a game reviewer for good reviews for her game Depression Quest*. Once they directed their attention to media critic Anita Sarkseesian (…for some reason – possibly being a woman who approaches video games from a feminist analysis) – it became weirdly anti-Semitic (Sarkeesian has Armenian heritage, not Jewish) and got into some overlap with the beginnings of the alt-right movement. Sad to say, I’ve seen it used by segments of the left as well.
During the Labour Party leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, a number of individuals and Jewish organisations insisted that Corbyn had introduced to the party a scale of anti-Semitism unseen in decades. Multiple studies on the prevalence of anti-Semitic attitudes by Labour Party members suggested that while anti-Semites almost certainly did exist in the Labour Party – the number was even less than what could be found in comparable political organisations. Despite this, the groups which were Campaign Against Antisemitism, the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Labour Movement and others insisted that the atmosphere had become increasingly hostile towards Jewish members, some even going as far as to charge Corbyn himself with anti-Semitism.
As the furore intensified, an aggravated section of Corbyn supporters – who sensed (rightfully) that this had much less to do with an earnest concern around anti-Semitism becoming acceptable in British society, and more of a panic that a potential Corbyn-led government could mean the shift in the United Kingdom’s relationship with Israel – and with such a visible supporter of Palestinian rights as Prime Minister could mean greater pressure from the the UK for Israel to impove its human rights; expressed their anger in various ways – from condemning the Parlimentary Labour Party members who weren’t being team players (many of them were also members of Labour For Israel), to hostile (or at least critical) media journalists – this section charged them alike as “Zionist”. It grew significantly worse when the Labour Party lost the general election in December 2019, and some of those groups who charged Corbyn’s Labour with anti-Semitism seemed to boast about “destroying Corbyn”**.
Infuriated with the barriers that denied Corbyn the satisfaction of being Prime Minister – the section of the supporters became increasingly rabid. Some of them declared their departure (while not actually leaving) when left-wing candidate for Labour Party leader Rebecca Long-Bailey seemed to have a friendlier relationship with the JLM (ironically, Corbyn himself tried to give a fig leaf to the JLM) and made promises to deal with the anti-Semites in Labour. The more brain-dead of them started posting that false quote whenever the Labour anti-semitism controversy came up, indicating either a descent into racism, or bog-standard unthinking crankery. To explain why this is the straw that broke the camel’s back for me is to have an understanding of why using that quote is a complete self-own whatever the context or motivations – and why it can really piss off a saner person who happens to fly the same red flag:
This man is Kevin Alfred Strom. A former member of the John Birch Society, presumably because they weren’t fascist enough for him, he joined the National Alliance – a white supremacist organisation led by neo-Nazi William Pierce. He was the editor of its pamplet – the National Vanguard. After Pierce’s death in 2002, despite being the heir apparent for leadership of the NA, he was passed over in favour of former boxer Erich Gliebe. In 2007, he was arrested from his Virginia home for possessing child pornoography, and charged with possession along with witness tampering. After agreeing to a plea deal, he was sentenced to 23 months in prison – of which he served four months. Southern Law Poverty Center described Strom thus:
“Arguably the only true intellectual remaining in the American neo-Nazi movement following the 2002 death of National Alliance founder William Pierce, Kevin Alfred Strom is a bookish yet dogmatic neo-Nazi whose predilection for child pornography ultimately ruined his efforts to claim his former master’s legacy.”
The strongest attribution of the quote “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you’re not allowed to criticize”, is to him. He is a true believer of the “Zionist Occupied Government” conspiracy theory. Ergo, when cranks “quote Voltaire” because they’re pissed off with “Zionists” (or women) – they are unwittingly quoting a neo-Nazi convicted peadophile. And worse, some of them will insist they’re not racist – which Voltaire was!
It is that jaw-droppingly stupid, but in an age where attention spans are so short – the implications of using a dog-whistle so blatant is lost on them. In the pursuit of faux-depth by trying to quote a “galaxy-brain” French fop, reveals the true shallowness of these people.
In summary: Fuck Voltaire. Fuck Nazis. And fuck anyone who can’t let go of paranoid bullshit like this.
Notes:
*The ruumours of Zoe Quinn sleeping with a game reviewer to get good reviews was started by a spurned ex-boyfriend, who later retacted some of his comments.
**If sincere about this statement, the commenter was then, surprisingly grandiose, and overestimated his own capacity to bring about Corbyn’s collapse. If anything, Brexit damaged Corbyn more than anti-Semitism.
See also:
- “ZOG”
- “Cultural Marxism”
- The Enlightenment and respectable racism
- What do you mean by “globalist”?
- Anti-semitism
- Dog-whistle politics
Because It Doesn't Affect You 