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When the British voted for Brexit, or when the Americans voted for Trump, we heard a lot about how they voted badly, that they had “been fooled by fake news”, and that they were “ignorant”. Jacques Rancière is a philosopher, professor emeritus at the University of Paris VIII and he is one of the thinkers on democracy who has had the most intellectual impact on me. One of his most powerful hypotheses is “the equality of intelligence”, an idea that completely contradicts the current tendency to deplore people’s credulity or irrationality. But can we really say that everyone has the same intellectual capacity? What are the political implications of such an assertion? What if we stopped taking people for fools? References: Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster, Five Lessons on Intellectual Emancipation, Fayard, 1987 Jacques Rancière, Hatred of Democracy, La Fabrique, 2005 Jacques Rancière, The Thirty Inglorious, La Fabrique, 2022 Subscribe to the ARTE channel / @arte Follow us on social media! Facebook: / artetv Twitter: / artefr Instagram: / artefr