Talk:Fanaticism

Cleaning up after a bunch of socks who used articles about "bad" things to push POV about things they disliked. For example, Hysteria, Propaganda, Deceit, etc. were used to showcase editorializing about how the US was guilty of hysteria, of propaganda, of deceit, etc. Such "quotes" are not in fact about the article theme, even if they do include a mention of it. (Similarly, if Joe DiMaggio said "Marilyn Monroe is a beauty," that isn't a quote about Beauty.)

But of all the weird misuse of negative articles to POV-push against enemies, this April 5 edit adding several quotes from Hitler includes this 1771 quote from Voltaire:

''All of the other people have committed crimes, the Jews are the only ones who have boasted about committing them. They are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and the Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race.''

I hope others will agree with me that this is not a quote "about" fanaticism. It is a quote promoting hatred against Jews, an anti-Semitic trope tucked into a random page where socks hoped it could long remain. Nope. HouseOfChange (talk) 00:50, 20 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Looks a lot better now, thank you.
 * Just skimming the page, it looks like we could add more, e.g. from Eric Hoffer who had an aphoristic gift well suited to being excerpted on WQ, and who wrote extensively about fanaticism. Will pull the book (The True Believer) off the shelf and have a look. Antandrus (talk) 01:07, 20 April 2022 (UTC)