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Quote by Steven Magee

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Steven Magee

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“Changing mainstream media will be hard, but you can help create parallel options. More academics should blog, post videos, post audio, post lectures, offer articles, and more. You’ll enjoy it: I’ve had threats and blackmail, abuse, smears and formal complaints with forged documentation. But it’s worth it, for one simple reason: pulling bad science apart is the best teaching gimmick I know for explaining how good science works.”

“The great man of the masses. It is easy to give the recipe for what the masses call a great man. By all means, supply them with something that they find very pleasant, or, first, put the idea into their heads that this or that would be very pleasant, and then give it to them. But on no account immediately: let it rather be won with great exertion, or let it seem so. The masses must have the impression that a mighty, indeed invincible, strength of will is present; at least it must be seen to be there. Everyone admires a strong will, because no one has it, and everyone tells himself that, if he had it, there would be no more limits for him and his egoism. Now, if it appears that this strong will is producing something very unpleasant for the masses, instead of listening to its own covetous desires, then everyone admires it all the more, and congratulates himself. For the rest, let him have all the characteristics of the masses: the less they are ashamed before him, the more popular he is. So, let him be violent, envious, exploitative, scheming, fawning, grovelling, puffed up, or, according to the circumstances, all of the above.”

“If we suggest that it is okay to make fun of everything except certain aspects of Islam because Muslims are much more sensitive than the rest of the population, isn’t that discrimination? Shouldn’t we treat the second largest religion in France exactly as we treat the first? It’s time to put an end to the revolting paternalism of the white, middle-class, “leftist” intellectual trying to coexist with these “poor, subliterate wretches.” “'I’m educated; obviously I get that 'Charlie Hebdo' is a humor newspaper because, first, I’m very intelligent, and second, it’s my culture. But you—well, you haven’t quite mastered nuanced thinking yet, so I’ll express my solidarity by fulminating against Islamaphobic cartoons and pretending not to understand them. I will lower myself to your level to show you that I like you. And if I need to convert to Islam to get even closer to you, I’ll do it!” These pathetic demagogues just have a ravenous need for recognition and a formidable domination fantasy to fulfill.”