I’m sure even in America, where you have, like, free speech people self-censor themself. And it’s not – it happens because of different reasons. Because maybe it’s politically incorrect, it doesn’t have to really to be put in jail.
BASSEM YOUSSEFI’m sure even in America, where you have, like, free speech people self-censor themself. And it’s not – it happens because of different reasons. Because maybe it’s politically incorrect, it doesn’t have to really to be put in jail.
BASSEM YOUSSEFEverybody grows up with comedy. I mean, Egyptian comedy has a very, very old tradition. Our theater and our movies are just, like, amazing.
BASSEM YOUSSEFI don’t care about Donald Trump himself. I care and I worry about the very big base that supports him because this kind of language would have been absolutely nonexistent maybe 15, 20.
BASSEM YOUSSEFPeople went out there and they wrote articles and went on television shows saying that I am an operative that the CIA who used Jon Stewart to recruit me. So Jon Stewart, who actually – a guy from America was used by the CIA in order to recruit me for the CIA and be.
BASSEM YOUSSEFSatire has its limits. It is really up to the people to make the change. The satirist’s role ends at the screen.
BASSEM YOUSSEFThe only the way that you can live and function without seeing the facts in front of you is to put yourself in a constant state of denial.
BASSEM YOUSSEFPeople say, ‘Are you afraid? Are you scared for your life?’ and I tell them: If I choose today to tone it down, if I choose today to shut up, tomorrow me, you, and all of us will be forced to.
BASSEM YOUSSEFEgypt is kind of like the Hollywood of the Middle East. I mean, we had cinema maybe decades before the other Arab countries ever got independence.
BASSEM YOUSSEFI always tell people that a revolution is not an event, it’s a process. It is a struggle. And it doesn’t usually go smoothly.
BASSEM YOUSSEFMake me a CIA agent to use sarcasm to bring down the government and bring down the country because this was all, of course, part of a worldwide conspiracy against the country.
BASSEM YOUSSEFPeople would believe propagate, spread rumors or conspiracy theories in order to protect their own system of denial.
BASSEM YOUSSEFThis transcends any kind of religion and any kind of belief. This is actually an offense and attack on human values. He’s just saying out there I will shoot people in the face and people wouldn’t care.
BASSEM YOUSSEFBy the way, I follow the American elections, and I have never seen someone who is that offensive. I have seen people who are stupid. But stupid and offensive, that’s new.
BASSEM YOUSSEFI think by the time I left Egypt, there was about like 400 accusations against me in the drawer of the public persecutor office. It’s a way for them to exhaust you, to push you, to put you under pressure, to distract you.
BASSEM YOUSSEFIt doesn’t matter if the truth is right there out in front of your eyes. You will find a way, a mechanism, in order to keep your own system of denial. So as I always say it, denial is a river that runs in the – in Egypt. So we became very good in that.
BASSEM YOUSSEFIt is very depressing to see that in the 21st century people are still using the same 1950s and ’60s style of propaganda.
BASSEM YOUSSEF