Fact Check: ‘To learn who rules over you’ quote wrongly attributed to Voltaire

A quote shared on social sites is wrongly attributed to the French writer and philosopher Voltaire. White nationalist Kevin Alfred Strom penned the quote.

Examples of social media posts misattributing the quote to Voltaire are reviewable (here), (here), and (here).

The quote, which reads, “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize,” was quickly identified by some users online as a quote by Kevin Alfred Strom.

“Congrats, you just quoted Kevin Alfred Strom, an American neo-Nazi, who first said those words in 1993,” responded (here) one user. Another commented, “This quote is actually from Kevin Alfred Strom, a white supremacist and Holocaust denier who pled guilty to possession of child pornography.” (here)

Research by Reuters into a database of Voltaire’s writings (here) by the University of Chicago and a Britannica search of notable Voltaire quotes (here) found no evidence to suggest that Voltaire ever wrote the passage.

Media sources (here) and (here) in addition to a 2017 academic blog from Oxford University Press (here) credit Strom for the 1993 quote .

A 2017 essay written by Kevin Alfred Strom (archive.is/DLQek) titled, “Voltaire Didn’t Say It” takes ownership of the of routinely paraphrased quote. According to Strom, the quote is based on something he said in a 1993 broadcast, “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?”

The Southern Poverty Law Center described Storm (here) as a producer of “anti-Semitic and racist material” who pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography in a federal trial in 2008. The BBC described him as a neo-Nazi (here).

VERDICT

Misattributed. The ‘to learn who rules over you quote’ was not written by Voltaire but by White Nationalist Kevin Alfred Strom.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .