Cory Bernardi mistakenly 'quotes' Voltaire on Twitter with neo-Nazi's line

The Australian conservative politician Cory Bernardi has tweeted a quote he mistakenly attributed to the French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, but is instead believed to be from a neo-Nazi convicted of possessing child abuse material.

“To know who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise,” the South Australian Liberal senator tweeted on Sunday. “The answer is pretty obvious isn’t it?”

Like “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”, another quote mistakenly attributed to Voltaire, it is often invoked in the comments sections of news stories, but there is no record linking it to the 18th-century writer and philosopher.

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, said it was one of the many that were falsely attributed to the writer.

“There are lots of quotations that are attributed to Voltaire that aren’t actually by him, and that’s one of them,” he said. “Voltaire has been copied and imitated and pastiched ever since he produced his first writings ...

“If you put Voltaire’s name to it, it certainly has much more authority than if it was just your own quotation.”

But “in terms of its spirit”, the quotation was “not un-Voltarian”, in that it captured his resistance to authority. “So even though it’s not by Voltaire, you can see why people might think it was,” he said.

As several Twitter users pointed out to the senator, the quote is most often attributed to Kevin Strom, an American white nationalist, neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier.

The suspected source of the quote is Strom’s 1993 essay, 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 criticise? We all know who it is that we are not permitted to criticise. We all know who it is that it is a sin to criticise. Sodomy is no longer a sin in America. Treason, and burning and spitting and urinating on the American flag is no longer a sin in America. Gross desecration of Catholic or Protestant religious symbols is no longer a sin in America. Cop-killing is no longer a sin in America – it is celebrated in rap ‘music’.”

In 2008 Strom was sentenced to 23 months in prison for possessing child abuse material. He served four months.

Bernardi’s office was contacted for comment.

His tweet had received just over 100 retweets and about the same number of favourites on Friday afternoon – among them, a retweet by Miranda Devine and a favourite from Rita Panahi, both rightwing commentators with News Corp papers.

Although Bernardi had been active on Twitter since users had pointed out the faux pas, tweeting a link to an “interesting story and video” about the European migrant crisis, he neither acknowledged nor deleted the misattributed quote.

It is not the first time Bernardi has attracted attention. He spearheaded the recent inquiry into links between terrorism and halal certifiers.

In 2012 he was criticised for suggesting that allowing same-sex marriage would lead to the legalisation of polygamy and bestiality.

“The next step, quite frankly, is having three people that love each other should be able to enter into a permanent union endorsed by society – or four people ...

“There are even some creepy people who say it’s OK to have consensual relations between humans and animals. Will that be a future step? Will that be one of the things we’ll say, these two creatures love each other, they should be able to join in a union?”

Then-Liberal party leader, Tony Abbott, confirmed that he did not share the views and that “many people would find [them] repugnant”.

Bernardi quit as Abbott’s parliamentary secretary over the incident.

“Throughout his time in politics Cory has become one of the most recognisable senators across Australia,” his website states.