Raj Patel may spend the rest of his life trying to convince some people that he is not a messiah, said Scott James in The New York Times. A little over a month ago, the London-born activist began receiving e-mails from members of Share International, a New Age
religious sect, who had long been taught that their messiah would be a dark-skinned former resident of London. In mid-January, the group’s leader, Scottish painter Benjamin Creme, announced a further revelation: that this still-unidentified man had recently appeared on television. A few followers noted that Patel had just been a guest on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, flogging his recent book The Value of Nothing. Patel quickly denied the deity rumors. “It’s absurd to be put in this position when I’m just some bloke,” he says.
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