For the people who might be thinking "Maybe it could be from Voltaire. Where's the proof that it isn't?"
Where's the proof that it is from Voltaire?
Here's the quote from Kevin Strom's 1993 "All America Must Know the Terror That is Upon Us":
To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize? We all know who it is that we are not permitted to criticize. [...] But anti-semitism is the ultimate sin in America.
Kevin Strom talks about it himself in 2017's "Voltaire Didn't Say It":
Since that time, my statement, sometimes an exact quote but more often a paraphrase (and some of the paraphrases are more elegant than my original), has become the stuff of Internet memes, quote collections, graphics, and motivational posters. There are over 926,000 entries for one variation of it alone on Google search. Trouble is, the quote is almost always attributed to the 18th-century French writer Voltaire, and not to me.
[...]
Looking at online archives, not only of Web pages but of digitized books going back centuries, we find that — except for my use of the statement starting with my 1993 American Dissident Voices broadcast — it does not appear in large numbers until 2012 and not at all before 2007. Even a Jewish scholar, Barry Popik, thoroughly debunked the Voltaire connection in 2012, just as the quote was “going viral.” Here’s what he said:
[...] The quotation does not appear at all in the Google News Archive. There is no evidence for the quotation in any of Voltaire’s writings.
(I'm being circumspect in directly linking this stuff, mostly because I don't like spreading around neo-Nazi propaganda. If you don't trust these direct quotes, however, it's easy enough to Google them with the info I give here.)
Google search has a function that lets you only see pages within a certain date. If we search for that quote - "Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?" - on Google but only for pages before 1/1/2012, then all of the quotes are either unattributed or attributed to Strom.
The most common variation of the quote is "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." It's probably so popular because somebody plastered it on a picture (and if it's a sourceless quote on a picture on the internet, it's gotta be true!).
Nothing appears more ridiculous in the eyes of a sensible man than for one denomination to criticize another whose creed is equally foolish.
If an ignoramus, a pamphleteer, presumes to criticize without discrimination, you can confound him; but make rare mention of him, for fear of sullying your writings.
Is it still possible that Voltaire said this, perhaps some variant translation waiting some where in one of his obscure letters? Of course it's possible. However, the preponderance of evidence shows that this quote is from Kevin Strom. This quote or variations of it didn't exist before Strom's writing. Nobody has given a source that shows it comes from Voltaire. The rational conclusion is that Kevin Strom created the quote and not Voltaire.
rawrc on April 15th, 2018 at 16:53 UTC »
Yeah if it was a quote from Voltaire it would be more like "Meh, fuck it."
SpotNL on April 15th, 2018 at 19:06 UTC »
Voltaire - 1777
HildredCastaigne on April 15th, 2018 at 19:15 UTC »
For the people who might be thinking "Maybe it could be from Voltaire. Where's the proof that it isn't?"
Where's the proof that it is from Voltaire?
Here's the quote from Kevin Strom's 1993 "All America Must Know the Terror That is Upon Us":
Kevin Strom talks about it himself in 2017's "Voltaire Didn't Say It":
(I'm being circumspect in directly linking this stuff, mostly because I don't like spreading around neo-Nazi propaganda. If you don't trust these direct quotes, however, it's easy enough to Google them with the info I give here.)
Google search has a function that lets you only see pages within a certain date. If we search for that quote - "Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?" - on Google but only for pages before 1/1/2012, then all of the quotes are either unattributed or attributed to Strom.
The most common variation of the quote is "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." It's probably so popular because somebody plastered it on a picture (and if it's a sourceless quote on a picture on the internet, it's gotta be true!).
If we search "who you are not allowed to criticize" from before 2012, then we get most people attributing it to Voltaire but without any sources for it. It's always just "-Voltaire" instead of "-Voltaire's Candide", etc. If we search for it before 2001, then we don't get that phrase anywhere except as an unattributed quote on somebody's random family page.
I have gone through every English-translated book of Voltaire on Project Gutenberg searching fro the word "criticize". It shows up twice; neither resembles the quote:
Is it still possible that Voltaire said this, perhaps some variant translation waiting some where in one of his obscure letters? Of course it's possible. However, the preponderance of evidence shows that this quote is from Kevin Strom. This quote or variations of it didn't exist before Strom's writing. Nobody has given a source that shows it comes from Voltaire. The rational conclusion is that Kevin Strom created the quote and not Voltaire.