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Comment by jmnicolas | Hacker News Reader

Voltaire said something like "to know who your masters are, look at who you can't criticize".

That quote seems to be coming from nazist and convict Kevin Alfred Strom, not Voltaire. According to Wikipedia, the full quote is "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?" and Strom first published "All America Must Know the Terror that is Upon Us" in 1993.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/27/cory-...

I'm pretty sure Voltaire didn't say it in English, meaning the full quote above it like the one that parent comment said was like something Voltaire said - a translation of something that Voltaire actually said.

In that case I think the two translations convey the meaning about equally well, and I don't think that because one translation comes from a bad person makes it any worse a translation of what Voltaire intended.

> I'm pretty sure Voltaire didn't say it in English, meaning the full quote above it like the one that parent comment said was like something Voltaire said - a translation of something that Voltaire actually said.

Dr Paul Gibbard, of the University of Western Australia, one of the world’s leading experts in Voltaire who worked as a researcher at the Voltaire Foundation in Oxford, disagrees with you and says that Voltaire never said anything like that, in English or what I presume could also be French. Source for that: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/27/cory-...

And I never meant to say that the quote is good/bad/wrong/correct, simply that it was mis-attributed to Voltaire, when in reality doesn't seem to come from him.

ah ok, sorry I misunderstood your comment as saying that the quote was wrong and that voltaire had actually said the quote you gave.

And the popular reply to that is "orphans with leukemia"

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/comedian-mike-ward-seeks-permiss...

That meets the "can't criticize" criteria, but not the "are your masters" criteria, unless there's some sort of secret cabal of disabled boys ruling over us.

right, which means that Voltaire's quip, although clever as everything he said, did not happen to actually cover all the possibilities of censorship in every possible society.

In his time, certainly, the people you couldn't criticize were the rulers, in our time there is a wider range of people you can't criticize.

The statement makes much more sense for today's world if the "who" in the question "Who you can't criticize" is specific instead of broadly targeting a demographic. You won't get hunted down for saying "rich people are bad and should die", but if you start spewing facts with names and pointing fingers ("CIA is a terrorist organization, and this is why"), or e.g. in Greece you say "Marinakis is a drug dealer" publicly, you should start worrying for yourself.

I'm not sure joking about drowning someone meets the usual definition of criticism.

You don't go in court nor in jail for that. So you can indeed criticize them even if it probably will cost you socially.

I think you could make a good case that orphans with leukaemia are a stereotypical example of a utility monster, where the moral halo around them leads our society to waste tons of resources that would go much further doing something unglamorous like, say, free mass vitamin D supplementation. Would this rise to the level of criticism? Because I wouldn't be particularly worried about making that statement and signing it with my real name. Sure, the Society for Saving Orphans with Leukaemia and the ten people who read their tweets may be very upset at me, but I doubt that my employment or social situation would be seriously threatened, I'd find my phone calls mysteriously redirected, be rejected at the US border or barred from flights altogether.

I think any public figure would be eviscerated for such a suggestion. It would certainly cost you tech jobs if it were known to the hiring committee. Perhaps the ‘masters’ statement would apply to the people profiting from public funding of such causes.

And in a totally different response, the vitamin D comment reminded me of the ad council messages of the 80s and 90s, which would tell people things that were unambiguously good for them, like “go play outside”, in a mitigation effort for their negative effects. The Mormon church also ran a lot of these type of ads. This was intended to be the opposite form of social good, one with high leverage through a small positive effect on everybody. This sort of thing seems unrecognizable today in the corporate media.

That quote is often attributed to Voltaire, but, sadly, it actually belongs to Kevin Alfred Strom, a white nationalist.[0]

Doesn't make the quote less true though.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Alfred_Strom#%22True_Rul...

Yeah, the dying orphans with leukemia are holding all the reigns.

Well whether or not you think the quote is true, the only point I was trying to make is that the truth of the quote doesn't depend on who said it.

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