The "revered" philosopher of the French Revolution .. Did Voltaire spread the enlightenment or darkness and enslavement?

In the 18th century, many French thinkers who inspired the French Revolution of 1789-1799 AD, including François Marie Arroy, known as Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Denis Diderot, emerged in the 18th century. Their revolutionary ideas encouraged the French masses to "fight" for their rights, revealing inefficiency. The king and his government.

These philosophers and others raised the people to challenge authority through their writings, and Voltaire attacked the Catholic Church and believed that "the fate of man is in his hands and not in heaven."

His ideas encouraged people to fight against the privileges and hegemony of the Church, and the French philosopher was considered a symbol of the Enlightenment, and his fame spread due to his witty philosophical cynicism and his defense of civil liberties, especially freedom of belief.

His works and ideas left their clear mark on important thinkers whose ideas belong to the American and French revolutions.

Voltaire was a prolific writer, writing works in nearly every literary form, from plays, poetry and novels to essays, historical and scientific works, as well as more than 20,000 letters.

But this "spotless" picture is not the whole truth. According to a report by the American Foreign Policy magazine, the famous philosopher was a racist and anti-Semite and inspired the Nazi leader Hitler.

The dark face

The American magazine report, written by the French-Algerian journalist Nabila Ramadan, said that when the Voltaire statue was removed from outside the French Academy in Paris last August, it was not only members of the extreme right who expressed their anger. Moderates of all political affiliations said that the writer The prolific 18th century should not be touched.

On the other hand, angry people sprayed anti-racist graffiti on his pictures due to his links to the slave trade.

Accusations of those responsible for sabotaging his portraits and statues confirm that Voltaire personally invested in the French East India Company, founded in 1664 to exploit the New World, including the trade of African slaves who were sold as commodities for profit.

Voltaire had many enemies, and there were certainly many rumors such as forged documents linking him to the slave trade.

Nevertheless, he liked defining himself as a "merchant philosopher" and undoubtedly financed the French East India Company in the 1840s, when its armed frigates focused on commercial trips to Africa.

In addition to owning company shares, it has been documented that Voltaire put his own money directly into the adventures of slave transport by ships such as Le Saint-Georges, which left Cadiz, Spain, in December 1751 bound for Guinea.

Controversy renewed

After more than 250 years, the controversy over Voltaire returned to Paris. The removal of his statue in the middle of last month sparked outrage, and many accused the mayor of the capital of bowing to the so-called culture of abolishing the symbols of the "Black Lives Matter" movement aimed at removing the symbols of the colonial era and slavery, but an official from the Council The city of Paris confirmed that the statue was only temporarily removed for cleaning and restoration after it was subjected to acts of vandalism.

His defenders say that the philosopher - who was 83 years old when he died in 1778 - was the son of his time and era, and they consider that France had the right to compete with other imperial powers, especially Britain, and if that meant that (Voltaire) would work in an economic system that included Exploitation of slaves from the colonies, so be it, as they say.

Supporters of the French philosopher consider that his ideas of humanity are what brought Europe to the era of "enlightenment" and raised science and reason above superstition and "darkness of religion" and property, so that individual freedom became the cornerstone of France's secular culture, and the names of philosophers such as Voltaire are now becoming models of rational and liberal thought.

The author compares the French philosopher with each of Jefferson, the third president of the United States, and former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had outright racist stances, as Jefferson owned slaves that he inherited from his father, and Churchill once admitted, saying, "I hate the Indians ... they are people." Savages with a brutal debt. "

The writer says that the difference is that Jefferson and Churchill were not philosophers, but rather politicians who were involved in practical necessities and the constraints of running the state, such as fighting major conflicts, and Churchill is considered a hero in World War II and is partly attributed to the destruction of Nazism, while Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, which paved the way for the Revolutionary War. Against British rule.

On the other hand, Voltaire was a philosopher and thinker, and had an intellectual and cultural influence, including his ideas, which had a harmful effect on the minds of historical leaders, and his intense hatred for religious groups was easily enough to incite violence against them, and his biological racism confirmed that there are gradations of life forms and that blacks came Somewhere near the bottom, far from the "monkeys".

In 1769 Voltaire, in one of his books, depicted the Africans as "animals" with a "flat black nose with little or no intelligence."

She attributed to Voltaire many racist positions hostile to religions and ethnicities (communication sites)

Voltaire saw the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) at first as a typical religious fanatic, in a play bearing the name "Muhammad" which was said to have been symbolic intended to project on another French figure so that he could pass it on and avoid church oversight, yet Voltaire retracted his visions The negativity about the Prophet of Islam, who considered him in later works an enemy of superstitions, praised him in praise of his religion, which has no talismans or mysteries, and forbids gambling and wine and orders prayer and charity, according to the book "The Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today" by the French academic and historian John Tolan.

The change in Voltaire's positions was due to his knowledge of the translation of the English orientalist George Seale of the meanings of the Qur’an published in 1734, and the latter wrote in its introduction that the prophet of Islam was a creative reformer and anti-priestly, and was keen to abolish superstitious practices such as worship of saints and holy relics, and abolished the power of corrupt and greedy clerics.

Nazism and anti-Semitism

Voltaire was also an anti-Semite, writing various texts that placed Jews outside the great civilizations of Greece and ancient Rome that he admired.

For example, Voltaire wrote of the Jews in 1771, "They were all born fanatically in their hearts, just as the British and Germans were born with blond hair."

Voltaire was a model for Enlightenment philosophers, who provided disturbing justifications for the hatred of ethnic and religious groups, and this systematic racism created a pseudo-scientific hierarchy of life.

She asserted that the thinkers are inextricably intertwined with the imperialists who wanted to conquer and suppress the races that were supposed to be ethnically inferior and standard.

The effect of this "sinister" Enlightenment was not marginal. His books were widely read throughout Europe, including by Voltaire's "great" friend Frederick II of Prussia, and Voltaire traveled from Paris to join his royal court in Potsdam in 1750, At a time when Frederick II considered Voltaire as his mentor.

The writer says that it is not difficult to draw the historical line between Voltaire's anti-Semitism and Germany, which is fanatical and nationalist and is determined to kill enemies that it considers subhuman.

Certainly, Adolf Hitler was influenced by the discussions between Frederick the "Great" and Voltaire as he formulated his plans for the Third Reich.

Crucially, there are records of Hitler's private conversations in which he confirmed the study of correspondence and meetings between Voltaire and his inspired model Frederick II, whose portrait was hanging in Berlin at the place where the Nazi leader died in April 1945.

The author considers that the problem is not simply that Voltaire failed to integrate oppressed groups, such as blacks and Jews, into so-called progressive thinking, but his defense of biological racism and white supremacy still provides inspiration for all kinds of extremists.

They include Nazi sympathizers traditionally associated with the extreme right-wing National Gathering (formerly the National Front) as well as terrorists who target synagogues and Islamic mosques.

French President Emmanuel Macron insisted that the statues of people associated with extremely reprehensible ideologies are part of France's heritage and should not be removed. The author concludes by saying that this view is "reactionary and completely ignores a closely related question. Why are the Enlightenment elements sacred? .. It is time for the French to stop?" Veneration of racist philosophers, and the transition to a new era of rationalism. "