Middle Eastern Christians are not liked in Israel for several reasons. Middle Eastern Christians have teamed up with the Muslims to attack Jews and Israel. Now that most of the Jews have left the Muslims Countries leaving the Christians there with no one to blame and all Islamic attention is now on them. But they have been taught by their church like so many American Coptic Christians have been and still spewing their hate. Hate is a contagious disease and seems to affect everyone in the neighborhood once a Church points their finger with the
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (
Russian:
Протоколы сионских мудрецов) or
The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion is an
antisemitic fabricated textpurporting to describe a
Jewish plan for global domination. The forgery was first published in
Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century. According to the claims made by some of its publishers, the
Protocols are the minutes of a late 19th-century meeting where Jewish leaders discussed their goal of global Jewish
hegemony by subverting the morals of
Gentiles, and by controlling the press and the world's economies.
Henry Ford funded printing of 500,000 copies that were distributed throughout the United States in the 1920s. The
Nazis sometimes used the
Protocols as propaganda against Jews; it was assigned by some German teachers, as if factual, to be read by German schoolchildren after the Nazis came to power in 1933,
[1] despite having been exposed as fraudulent by
The Times of
London in 1921. It is still widely available today in numerous languages, in print and on the Internet, and continues to be presented by some proponents as a genuine document.
The
Protocols is a fabricated document purporting to be factual. Textual evidence shows that it could not have been produced prior to 1901. It is notable that the title of
Sergei Nilus's widely distributed edition contains the dates "1902–1903", and it is likely that the document was actually written at this time in Russia, despite Nilus' attempt to cover this up by inserting French-sounding words into his edition.
[2] Cesare G. De Michelis argues that it was manufactured in the months after a Russian Zionist congress in September 1902, and that it was originally a parody of Jewish idealism meant for internal circulation among antisemites until it was decided to clean it up and publish it as if it were real. Self-contradictions in various testimonies show that the individuals involved—including the text's initial publisher,
Pavel Krushevan—deliberately obscured the origins of the text and lied about it in the decades afterwards.
[3]
If the placement of the forgery in 1902–1903 Russia is correct, then it was written at the beginning of the
anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire, in which thousands of Jews died or fled the country. Many of the people whom De Michelis suspects of involvement in the forgery were directly responsible for inciting the pogroms.
[citation needed]
Political conspiracy background
Towards the end of the 18th century, following the
Partitions of Poland, the
Russian Empireinherited the world's largest Jewish population. The Jews lived in
shtetls in the West of the Empire, in the
Pale of Settlement and until the 1840s, local Jewish affairs were organised through the
qahal, including for purposes of taxation and conscription into the
Imperial Russian Army. Following the ascent of
liberalism in Europe, the Russian ruling class became more hardline in its reactionary policies, upholding the banner of
Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality, whereby non-Orthodox and non-Russian subjects, including the Jews, were not always embraced. Jews who attempted to
assimilate were regarded with suspicion as potential "infiltrators" supposedly trying to "take over society", while Jews who remained attached to traditional Jewish culture were resented as undesirable aliens.
Resentment towards Jews, for the aforementioned reasons, existed in Russian society, but the idea of a Protocols-esque
international Jewish conspiracy for world domination was minted in the 1860s. Jacob Brafman, a Russian Jew from
Minsk, had a falling out with agents of the local kahal – the semi-autonomous Jewish government – and consequently turned against
Judaism. He subsequently converted to the
Russian Orthodox Church and authored polemics against the
Talmud and the kahal. Brafman claimed in his books
The Local and Universal Jewish Brotherhoods (1868) and
The Book of the Kahal (1869), published in
Vilna, that the kahal continued to exist in secret and that it had as its principal aim undermining Christian entrepreneurs, taking over their property and ultimately seizing power. He also claimed that it was an international conspiritorial network, under the central control of the
Alliance Israélite Universelle, which was based in Paris and then under the leadership of
Adolphe Crémieux, a prominent
freemason. The Vilna Talmudist,
Jacob Barit, attempted to refute Brafman's claim.
The impact of Brafman's work took on an international aspect, as it was translated into English, French, German and other languages. The image of the "kahal" as a secret international Jewish shadow government working as a
state within a state was picked up by anti-Jewish publications in Russia and was taken seriously by some Russian officials such as P. A. Cherevin and
Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev who in the 1880s urged governor-generals of provinces to seek out the supposed kahal. This was around the time of the
Narodnaya Volya attempted assassination on
Alexander II of Russia and the subsequent
anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire. In France it was translated by Monsignor
Ernest Jouin in 1925, a proponent of Catholic
intégrisme, who was also a supporter of the Protocols. In 1928,
Siegfried Passarge a geographer active in the
Third Reich, translated it into German.
Aside from Brafman, there were other early writings which posited a similar concept to the Protocols. This includes
The Conquest of the World by the Jews (1878),
[4] published in
Basel and authored by Osman Bey (born Frederick Millingen). The author, Millingen, was a British subject of
Dutch-Jewish extraction (the grandson of
James Millingen), but served as an officer in the
Ottoman Army where he was born. He traveled around much, spending time as a
Muslim before ending up a Russian Orthodox Christian. He was last seen alive in Paris in 1901. Bey's work was followed up by
Hippolytus Lutostansky's
The Talmud and the Jews (1879) which claimed that Jews wanted to divide Russia among themselves.
[5] Incidentally, in a 1904 edition of
The Talmud and the Jews, Hippolytus directly quoted verbatim the first, little-known 1903 edition of the
Protocols.
[6]
Sources employed
A major source for the
Protocols was
Der Judenstaat by
Theodor Herzl, which was referred to as
Zionist Protocols in its initial French and Russian editions. Paradoxically, early Russian editions of the
Protocols assert that they did not come from a Zionist organization. The text, which nowhere advocates for
Zionism, resembles a parody of Herzl's ideas.
Literary forgery
The Protocols is one of the best-known and most-discussed examples of
literary forgery, with analysis and proof of its fraudulent origin going as far back as 1921.
[11] The forgery is an early example of "
conspiracy theory" literature.
[12] Written mainly in the first person plural,
[a] the text includes
generalizations,
truisms, and
platitudes on how to take over the world: take control of the media and the financial institutions, change the traditional social order, etc. It does not contain specifics.
Maurice Joly
Elements of the
Protocols were plagiarized from Joly's fictional
Dialogue in Hell, a thinly veiled attack on the political ambitions of
Napoleon III, who, represented by the
non-Jewish character
Machiavelli,
[15] plots to rule the world. Joly, a
monarchist and
legitimist, was imprisoned in France for 15 months as a direct result of his book's publication. Scholars have noted the irony that
Dialogue in Hell was itself a plagiarism, at least in part, of a novel by
Eugène Sue,
Les Mystères du Peuple (1849–56).
[16]
Identifiable phrases from Joly constitute 4% of the first half of the first edition, and 12% of the second half; later editions, including most translations, have longer quotes from Joly.
The Protocols 1–19 closely follow the order of Maurice Joly's Dialogues 1–17. For example:
| Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu | The Protocols of the Elders of Zion |
How are loans made? By the issue of bonds entailing on the Government the obligation to pay interest proportionate to the capital it has been paid. Thus, if a LOAN is at 5%, the State, after 20 years, has paid out a sum equal to the borrowed capital. When 40 years have expired it has paid double, after 60 years triple: yet it remains debtor for the entire capital sum.
— Montesquieu, Dialogues, p. 209
|
A loan is an issue of Government paper which entails an obligation to pay interest amounting to a percentage of the total sum of the borrowed money. If a loan is at 5%, then in 20 years the Government would have unnecessarily paid out a sum equal to that of the loan in order to cover the percentage. In 40 years it will have paid twice; and in 60 thrice that amount, but the loan will still remain as an unpaid debt.
— Protocols, p. 77
|
Like the god Vishnu, my press will have a hundred arms, and these arms will give their hands to all the different shades of opinion throughout the country.
— Machiavelli, Dialogues, p. 141
|
These newspapers, like the Indian god Vishnu, will be possessed of hundreds of hands, each of which will be feeling the pulse of varying public opinion.
— Protocols, p. 43
|
Now I understand the figure of the god Vishnu; you have a hundred arms like the Indian idol, and each of your fingers touches a spring.
— Montesquieu, Dialogues, p. 207
|
Our Government will resemble the Hindu god Vishnu. Each of our hundred hands will hold one spring of the social machinery of State.
— Protocols, p. 65
|
Philip Graves brought this plagiarism to light in a series of articles in
The Times in 1921, the first published evidence that the
Protocolswas not an authentic document.
[18]
Hermann Goedsche
"Goedsche was a
POSTAL CLERK
and a spy for the
Prussian Secret Police. He had been forced to leave the
POSTAL WORK
due to his part in forging evidence in the prosecution against the Democratic leader
Benedict Waldeck in 1849."
[20] Following his dismissal, Goedsche began a career as a conservative columnist, and wrote literary fiction under the pen name Sir John Retcliffe.
[21] His 1868 novel
Biarritz (
To Sedan) contains a chapter called "
The Jewish Cemetery in Prague and the Council of Representatives of the
Twelve Tribes of Israel." In it, Goedsche (who was unaware that only two of the original twelve Biblical "tribes" remained) depicts a clandestine nocturnal meeting of members of a mysterious
rabbinical cabal that is planning a diabolical "Jewish conspiracy." At midnight, the Devil appears to contribute his opinions and insight. The chapter closely resembles a scene in
Alexandre Dumas'
Giuseppe Balsamo (1848), in which Joseph Balsamo a.k.a.
Alessandro Cagliostro and company plot the
Affair of the Diamond Necklace.
[22]
In 1872 a Russian translation of "The Jewish Cemetery in Prague" appeared in
Saint Petersburg as a separate pamphlet of purported non-fiction. François Bournand, in his
Les Juifs et nos Contemporains (1896), reproduced the soliloquy at the end of the chapter, in which the character Levit expresses as factual the wish that Jews be "kings of the world in 100 years" —crediting a "Chief Rabbi John Readcliff." Perpetuation of the myth of the authenticity of Goedsche's story, in particular the "Rabbi's speech", facilitated later accounts of the equally mythical authenticity of the
Protocols.
[21] Like the
Protocols, many asserted that the fictional "rabbi's speech" had a ring of authenticity, regardless of its origin: "This speech was published in our time, eighteen years ago," read an 1898 report in
La Croix, "and all the events occurring before our eyes were anticipated in it with truly frightening accuracy."
[23]
Fictional events in Joly's
Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu, which appeared four years before
Biarritz, may well have been the inspiration for Goedsche's fictional midnight meeting, and details of the outcome of the supposed plot. Goedsche's chapter may have been an outright plagiarism of Joly, Dumas père, or both.
[24][b]
Structure and content
The
Protocols purports to document the minutes of a late-19th-century meeting attended by world Jewish leaders, the "Elders of Zion", who are conspiring to take over the world. The forgery places in the mouths of the Jewish leaders a variety of plans, most of which derive from older antisemitic canards. For example, the
Protocols includes plans to subvert the morals of the non-Jewish world, plans for Jewish bankers to control the world's economies, plans for Jewish control of the press, and – ultimately – plans for the destruction of civilization. The document consists of twenty-four "protocols", which have been analyzed by Steven Jacobs and Mark Weitzman, who documented several recurrent themes that appear repeatedly in the 24 protocols,
[c] as shown in the following table:
| Protocol | Title | Themes |
| 1 | The Basic Doctrine: "Right Lies in Might" | Freedom and Liberty; Authority and power; Gold = money |
| 2 | Economic War and Disorganization Lead to International Government | International Political economic conspiracy; Press/Media as tools |
| 3 | Methods of Conquest | Jewish people, arrogant and corrupt; Chosenness/Election; Public Service |
| 4 | The Destruction of Religion by Materialism | Business as Cold and Heartless; Gentiles as slaves |
| 5 | Despotism and Modern Progress | Jewish Ethics; Jewish People's Relationship to Larger Society |
| 6 | The Acquisition of Land, The Encouragement of Speculation | Ownership of land |
| 7 | A Prophecy of Worldwide War | Internal unrest and discord (vs. Court system) leading to war vs Shalom/Peace |
| 8 | The transitional Government | Criminal element |
| 9 | The All-Embracing Propaganda | Law; education; Freemasonry |
| 10 | Abolition of the Constitution; Rise of the Autocracy | Politics; Majority rule; Liberalism; Family |
| 11 | The Constitution of Autocracy and Universal Rule | Gentiles; Jewish political involvement; Freemasonry |
| 12 | The Kingdom of the Press and Control | Liberty; Press censorship; Publishing |
| 13 | Turning Public Thought from Essentials to Non-essentials | Gentiles; Business; Chosenness/Election; Press and censorship; Liberalism |
| 14 | The Destruction of Religion as a Prelude to the Rise of the Jewish God | Judaism; God; Gentiles; Liberty; Pornography |
| 15 | Utilization of Masonry: Heartless Suppression of Enemies | Gentiles; Freemasonry; Sages of Israel; Political power and authority; King of Israel |
| 16 | The Nullification of Education | Education |
| 17 | The Fate of Lawyers and the Clergy | Lawyers; Clergy; Christianity and non-Jewish Authorship |
| 18 | The Organization of Disorder | Evil; Speech; |
| 19 | Mutual Understanding Between Ruler and People | Gossip; Martyrdom |
| 20 | The Financial Program and Construction | Taxes and Taxation; Loans; Bonds; Usury;MONEYLENDING |
| 21 | DomesticLOANS AND Government Credit | Stock Markets and Stock Exchanges |
| 22 | The Beneficence of Jewish Rule | Gold = Money; Chosenness/Election |
| 23 | The Inculcation of Obedience | Obedience to Authority; Slavery; Chosenness/Election |
| 24 | The Jewish Ruler | Kingship; Document as Fiction |
History
Publication history
The Protocols appeared in print in the Russian Empire as early as 1903, published as a series of articles in
Znamya, a
Black Hundredsnewspaper owned by
Pavel Krushevan. It appeared again in 1905 as the final chapter (Chapter XII) of the second edition of
Velikoe v malom i antikhrist ("The Great in the Small &
Antichrist"), a book by
Sergei Nilus. In 1906, it appeared in pamphlet form edited by
Georgy Butmi de Katzman.
These first three (and subsequently more) Russian language imprints were published and circulated in the
Russian Empire during the 1903–6 period as a tool for
scapegoating Jews, blamed by the monarchists for the defeat in the
Russo-Japanese War and the
Revolution of 1905. Common to all three texts is the idea that Jews aim for world domination. Since
The Protocols are presented as merely a
document, the
front matter and
back matter are needed to explain its alleged origin. The diverse imprints, however, are mutually inconsistent. The general claim is that the document was stolen from a secret Jewish organization. Since the alleged original stolen manuscript does not exist, one is forced to restore a purported original edition. This has been done by the Italian scholar,
Cesare G. De Michelis in 1998, in a work which was translated into English and published in 2004, where he treats his subject as
Apocrypha.
As the
Russian Revolution unfolded, causing
White movement-affiliated Russians to flee to the West, this text was carried along and assumed a new purpose. Until then,
The Protocols had remained obscure; it now became an instrument for blaming Jews for the Russian Revolution. It became a tool, a political weapon, used against the
Bolsheviks who were depicted as overwhelmingly Jewish, allegedly executing the "plan" embodied in
The Protocols. The purpose was to discredit the
October Revolution, prevent the West from recognizing the
Soviet Union, and bring about the downfall of
Vladimir Lenin's regime.
First Russian language editions
Conspiracy references
The great importance of
The Protocols lies in its permitting antisemites to reach beyond their traditional circles and find a large international audience, a process that continues to this day. The forgery poisoned public life wherever it appeared; it was "self-generating; a blueprint that migrated from one conspiracy to another."
[30] The book's vagueness—almost no names, dates, or issues are specified—has been one key to this wide-ranging success. The purportedly Jewish authorship also helps to make the book more convincing. Its embrace of contradiction—that to advance, Jews use all tools available, including capitalism and communism,
philo-Semitism and antisemitism, democracy and tyranny—made it possible for
The Protocols to reach out to all: rich and poor,
Right and
Left, Christian and
Muslim, American and Japanese.
Pipes notes that the Protocols emphasizes recurring themes of conspiratorial antisemitism: "Jews always scheme", "Jews are everywhere", "Jews are behind every institution", "Jews obey a central authority, the shadowy 'Elders'", and "Jews are close to success."
Emergence in Russia
The chapter "In the Jewish Cemetery in Prague" from Goedsche's Biarritz, with its strong antisemitic theme containing the alleged rabbinical plot against the European civilization, was translated into Russian as a separate pamphlet in 1872.[8] However, in 1921, Princess Catherine Radziwill gave a private lecture in New York in which she claimed that the Protocols were a forgery compiled in 1904–5 by Russian journalists Matvei Golovinski and Manasevich-Manuilov at the direction of Pyotr Rachkovsky, Chief of the Russian secret service in Paris.[33]
In 1944, German writer
Konrad Heiden identified Golovinski as an author of the
Protocols.
[32] Radziwill's account was supported by Russian historian Mikhail Lepekhine, who published his findings in November 1999 in the French newsweekly
L'Express.
[34] Lepekhine considers the
Protocols a part of a scheme to persuade Tsar
Nicholas II that the modernization of Russia was really a Jewish plot to control the world.
[35]Stephen Eric Bronner writes that groups opposed to progress, parliamentarianism, urbanization, and capitalism, and an active Jewish role in these modern institutions, were particularly drawn to the antisemitism of the document.
Ukrainian scholar
Vadim Skuratovsky offers extensive literary, historical and
linguisticanalysis of the original text of the
Protocols and traces the influences of
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's
prose (in particular,
The Grand Inquisitor and
The Possessed) on Golovinski's writings, including the
Protocols.
[35]
Golovinski's role in the writing of the Protocols is disputed by Michael Hagemeister, Richard Levy and Cesare De Michelis, who each write that the account which involves him is historically unverifiable and to a large extent provably wrong.
[37][38][39]
In his book
The Non-Existent Manuscript, Italian scholar
Cesare G. De Michelis studies early Russian publications of the
Protocols. The
Protocols were first mentioned in the Russian press in April 1902, by the Saint Petersburg newspaper
Novoye Vremya (
Новое Время –
The New Times). The article was written by famous conservative publicist
Mikhail Menshikov as a part of his regular series "Letters to Neighbors" ("Письма к ближним") and was titled "Plots against Humanity". The author described his meeting with a lady (
Yuliana Glinka, as it is known now) who, after telling him about her mystical revelations, implored him to get familiar with the documents later known as the
Protocols; but after reading some excerpts, Menshikov became quite skeptical about their origin and did not publish them.
[40]
Krushevan and Nilus editions
The
Protocols were published at the earliest, in serialized form, from August 28 to September 7 (
O.S.) 1903, in
Znamya, a Saint Petersburg daily newspaper, under
Pavel Krushevan. Krushevan had initiated the
Kishinev pogrom four months earlier.
[41]
In 1905, Sergei Nilus published the full text of the
Protocols in
Chapter XII, the final chapter (pp 305–417), of the second edition (or third, according to some sources) of his book,
Velikoe v malom i antikhrist, which translates as "The Great within the Small: The Coming of the Anti-Christ and the Rule of Satan on Earth". He claimed it was the work of the
First Zionist Congress, held in 1897 in
Basel, Switzerland. When it was pointed out that the First Zionist Congress had been open to the public and was attended by many non-Jews, Nilus changed his story, saying the Protocols were the work of the 1902–3 meetings of the Elders, but contradicting his own prior statement that he had received his copy in 1901:
In 1901, I succeeded through an acquaintance of mine (the late Court Marshal Alexei Nikolayevich Sukotin of Chernigov) in getting a manuscript that exposed with unusual perfection and clarity the course and development of the secret Jewish Freemasonic conspiracy, which would bring this wicked world to its inevitable end. The person who gave me this manuscript guaranteed it to be a faithful translation of the original documents that were stolen by a woman from one of the highest and most influential leaders of the Freemasons at a secret meeting somewhere in France—the beloved nest of Freemasonic conspiracy.
[42]
Stolypin's fraud investigation, 1905
A subsequent secret investigation ordered by
Pyotr Stolypin, the newly appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers, came to the conclusion that the
Protocols first appeared in Paris in antisemitic circles around 1897–1898.
[43] When
Nicholas II learned of the results of this investigation, he requested, "The Protocols should be confiscated, a good cause cannot be defended by dirty means."
[44] Despite the order, or because of the "good cause", numerous reprints proliferated.
[41]
The Protocols in the West
Most versions substantially involve "protocols", or minutes of a speech given in secret involving Jews who are organized as
Elders, or
Sages, of
Zion,
[49] and underlies 24 protocols that are supposedly followed by the Jewish people.
The Protocols has been proven to be a literary forgery and hoax as well as a clear case of plagiarism.
[50][51]
English language imprints
On October 27 and 28, 1919, the
Philadelphia Public Ledger published excerpts of an English language translation as the "Red Bible," deleting all references to the purported Jewish authorship and re-casting the document as a
Bolshevik manifesto.
[54] The author of the articles was the paper's
correspondent at the time,
Carl W. Ackerman, who later became the head of the journalism department at
Columbia University. On May 8, 1920, an article
[55] in
The Times followed German translation and appealed for an inquiry into what it called an "uncanny note of prophecy". In the leader (editorial) titled "The Jewish Peril, a Disturbing Pamphlet: Call for Inquiry",
Wickham Steed wrote about
The Protocols:
What are these 'Protocols'? Are they authentic? If so, what malevolent assembly concocted these plans and gloated over their exposition? Are they forgery? If so, whence comes the uncanny note of prophecy, prophecy in part fulfilled, in part so far gone in the way of fulfillment?".
[56]
Steed retracted his endorsement of
The Protocols after they were exposed as a forgery.
[57]
United States
In the US, Henry Ford sponsored the printing of 500,000 copies,
[58] and, from 1920 to 1922, published a series of antisemitic articles titled "
The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem", in
The Dearborn Independent, a newspaper he owned. The articles were later collected into multi-volume book series of the same name.
[59] In 1921, Ford cited evidence of a Jewish threat: "The only statement I care to make about the
Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on. They are 16 years old, and they have fitted the world situation up to this time."
[60] Robert A. Rosenbaum wrote that "In 1927, bowing to legal and economic pressure, Ford issued a retraction and apology—while disclaiming personal responsibility—for the anti-Semitic articles and closed the
Dearborn Independent in 1927.
[61] He was also an admirer of
Nazi Germany.
[62]
In 1934, an anonymous editor expanded the compilation with "Text and Commentary" (pp 136–41). The
PRODUCTION
of this uncredited compilation was a 300-page book, an inauthentic expanded edition of the twelfth chapter of Nilus's 1905 book on the coming of the anti-Christ. It consists of substantial liftings of excerpts of articles from Ford's antisemitic periodical
The Dearborn Independent. This 1934 text circulates most widely in the English-speaking world, as well as on the internet. The "Text and Commentary" concludes with
a comment on
Chaim Weizmann's October 6, 1920, remark at a banquet: "A beneficent protection which God has instituted in the life of the Jew is that He has dispersed him all over the world". Marsden, who was dead by then, is credited with the following assertion:
It proves that the Learned Elders exist. It proves that Dr. Weizmann knows all about them. It proves that the desire for a "National Home" in Palestine is only camouflage and an infinitesimal part of the Jew's real object. It proves that the Jews of the world have no intention of settling in Palestine or any separate country, and that their annual prayer that they may all meet "Next Year in Jerusalem" is merely a piece of their characteristic make-believe. It also demonstrates that the Jews are now a world menace, and that the Aryan races will have to domicile them permanently out of Europe.
[63]
The Times exposes a forgery, 1921