There are people who believe in Egypt that I – I’m actually – I’m getting paid by external powers and external intelligence entities in order to use satire to bring down the government.
BASSEM YOUSSEFSatire has its limits. It is really up to the people to make the change. The satirist’s role ends at the screen.
More Bassem Youssef Quotes
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People would believe propagate, spread rumors or conspiracy theories in order to protect their own system of denial.
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I 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.
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It is very difficult to imagine that you can actually get rid of a dictatorship that has been there for 60 years only in 18 days.
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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.
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Everybody grows up with comedy. I mean, Egyptian comedy has a very, very old tradition. Our theater and our movies are just, like, amazing.
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We have Internet now and people are not stupid. But it seems that some people are trying to push the same agenda of the Cold War of conspiracy theories and amazing achievements that are very easily traced and validated.
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I was accused of insulting the president, insulting Islam, insulting – spreading rumors, disturbing the peace.
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Egypt 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.
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It 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.
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This 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.
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What I saw day-to-day is like people who are actually asking for freedom, calling for freedom – protesting, singing, chanting, calling for the removal of the regime – plain and simple.
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People 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.
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Donald Trump is not stupid. He knows exactly what he’s saying. And he’s just saying out there – I mean, forget about Muslims. He said I could go down on Fifth Avenue in New York and shoot someone in the face and people – and the voters will have no problem with it.
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Make 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.
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And of course there were clashes there because people, they tried to remove those protesters from Tahrir. And I was, like, doing my job as a doctor treating them.
BASSEM YOUSSEF