The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/17/18
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
[A]nother temple must be built to the Lord in the new Zion, since the one at Kirtland had been desecrated by falling into Gentile hands …
[T]ake the spoils from the "ungodly Gentiles;" for was it not written, "The riches of the Gentiles shall be consecrated to the people of the house of Israel?" …
Joseph not only advised his people publicly to plunder from the Gentiles, but privately ordered them to do so …
Joseph did not cease his injunctions to "get all you can from the wicked Gentiles"…
It was an act pleasing to Him whenever a Gentile was put out of the way …
[T]he blood of Gentiles is not "innocent" blood; the shedding of it, therefore, is no crime …
[T]he "defiled hands" of the Gentiles …
Break the Gentile yoke …
"I wish we were in a situation favorable to our doing that which is justifiable before God, without any contaminating influence of Gentile amalgamation, laws, and traditions, that the people of God might lay the axe to the root of the tree, and that every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit might be hewn down." …
[N]o Gentile was safe in the Mormon territory …
[O]ne of the men asked Rockwell "if all the damned Gentiles were dead” …
[W]e swore that we would use every exertion to avenge the death of our Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum upon the Gentile race, by whose means they were brought to their unhappy fate, and to teach our children to foster this spirit of revenge also …
The cutting of every Gentile and apostate throat, and the "sending to hell across lots," that have been so openly and emphatically urged from the stand by Brigham Young and others, is only a public expression of the mysteries of the Endowment oaths….
I was taught from my earliest childhood that there was nothing good outside of the Mormon Church; that the Gentile men were bad to the core, possessing neither honor nor manly virtues of any kind, and that every Gentile woman was so vile as to be utterly unworthy of mention; that goodness was unknown among them, and that certain destruction awaited them and those who associated with them.
-- Wife No. 19, the Story of a Life in Bondage, Being a Complete Expose of Mormonism and Revealing the Sorrows, Sacrifices and Sufferings of Women in Polygamy, by Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young's Apostate Wife
Salt Lake City is of particular interest to Jews since it is, perhaps, the only place in the world where Christians call themselves Jews and Jews are often called “Gentiles.”
-- In Utah Mormons Call Themselves Jews and Jews Are Considered “gentiles”, by Jewish Telegraphic Agency
According to John D. Lee, the official scribe of the Council, the organization [Council of Fifty] was meant to be the "Municipal department of the Kingdom of God set upon the earth, and from which all law emanates, for the rule, government & controle of all Nations Kingdoms & toungs and People under the whole Heavens.
-- Council of Fifty, by Wikipedia
If you grew up Mormon in the first half of the 20th century, you were likely to be taught over and over–in Sunday School, genealogy, and priesthood lessons, in stake and general conferences, in church magazines, books, and pamphlets–that you were literally an Israelite, directly descended from Ephraim. This teaching would come in at least two forms:
1. The teaching one might call “Mormon Israelism” was that Ephraim’s descendants were scattered among all nations, but that almost all Mormons were Ephraimites (for some, even “pure” Ephraimites) because the people that had responded to the missionary message were the select few with Israel in their veins. It was taught (including by Joseph Smith) and assumed by some that the more pure the Israelite blood, the more open a person was to the Mormon message.
2. Somewhat in conflict with this, you would also have been taught Mormon Anglo or British Israelism: that almost all Mormons were Israelites (and to some, pure Israelites), because the Saints were of Northern European stock (largely British), which was the place the not-so-lost tribes (mainly Ephraim) had settled.
In the 20th century, the main church leaders and authors who preached Israelism and British Israelism were Church Historian and Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith, apostle and First Presidency member Anthony Ivins, Asst. Church Historian Andrew Jenson, and officers of the Utah Genealogical Society such as Archibald Bennett and James Anderson.
In dozens of articles, books, and general conference talks, these men played a significant role in teaching a couple of generations of Saints that they were literal descendants of Israel, with detailed proofs that the not-so-lost ten tribes had settled either Northern Europe or Great Britain taken directly from the prominent British-Israel works. Anderson, in God’s Covenant Race, From Patriarchal Times to the Present, a 1937 book published by the Deseret News Press, even claimed (incorrectly) Mormon credit for starting the British-Israel Movement through the church’s 1830s missionary work in England (154-155). The 1938 and later editions of the book included an appendix with 127 pages of articles copied verbatim from the “Anglo-Israel Federation” magazine Destiny.
One collection of Mormon British-Israelism teachings was the 1942 Sunday School course book, Birthright Blessings; its 48 lessons included topics such as “The Chosen Race Being Gathered,” “Early Israelite Colonies,” “Mound Builders of Europe,” “Sagas and Civilization of Scandinavia,” “Who Are the Anglo-Saxons?,” “Early Welsh Customs,” ”Ancient Irish Pedigrees,” and “The Royal House of David.”
A very similar collection was the 1937 Junior Genealogy Class manual, Children of the Covenant. Its 40 lessons covered most of the Birthright topics mentioned and others such as “A White and a Blessed People,” “The Day of Ephraim,” and “The New Race of Israel.” The activity for one of the lessons instructed students to “Write a one page explanation, and read it in class or in a public meeting, of the topic: “My Heritage as a Descendant of Ephraim.”
Articles preaching British Israelism and Mormon Israelism were also common in the quarterly journal of the Church’s Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine.
Examples of this were the paired 1930 articles, “Mission of Ephraim,” by Joseph Fielding Smith, and “Children of Ephraim,” by Archibald Bennett. [Bennett, Archibald F. 1930, "The Children of Ephraim," Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine 21 (April): 67-85)]
The latter even contained a detailed explanation and ancestral charts explaining how the Norse God Odin (Woden) was ancestor of “most of the kingly and noble races of the north,” and therefore, of Anglo-Saxons and Mormons. Consequently, you can find Mormon family trees from that period that include both Odin and Thor (there’s a current example of this in my extended family). Odin is also discussed in detail in the Birthright Blessings and Children of the Covenant manuals, in a lesson called Sagas and Civilization of Scandinavia that recounts Icelander Snorri Sturluson’s Ynglinga Saga. Both books included a photo of a B.E.F. Fogelberg’s statute of Odin (the graphic at the top of this post).
-- British Israelism, by Stirling
The protocol used in Mormon temple ritual has been received by revelation line upon line and precept upon precept. Most of the protocol was revealed by God to Joseph Smith, the first prophet of the Last Days, and founder of the LDS Church. However, the protocol was received gradually. Baptism for the Dead, for instance, was not practiced until the Latter-day Saints were established in Nauvoo, Illinois. Other small changes have been made more recently, according to received revelation. A few changes have come because of technological improvements. For instance, parts of the instruction on the creation and Plan of Salvation used to be presented live, but now are presented in a film. This has enabled easier translation into foreign languages as temples are built all over the world.
-- Mormon Temple Ritual, by mormonwiki.com
Cover of first book edition, The Great within the Minuscule and Antichrist
Author Unknown. Plagiarised from Hermann Goedsche and Maurice Joly, plagiarized in turn from Eugène Sue and Alexandre Dumas, père
Original title Програма завоевания мира евреями (Programa zavoevaniya mira evreyami, "The Jewish Programme to Conquer the World")
Country Russian Empire
Language Russian, with plagiarism from German and French texts
Subject Antisemitic conspiracy theory
Genre Propaganda
Publisher Znamya
Publication date
August–September 1903
Published in English
1919
Pages 417 (1905 edition)
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 text purporting 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.
Creation
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.
Political conspiracy background
Towards the end of the 18th century, following the Partitions of Poland, the Russian Empire inherited 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.
The Book of the Kahal (1869) by Jacob Brafman, in the Russian language original.
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.[4] 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 conspiratorial 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.[4] 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 assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia and the subsequent pogroms. In France it was translated by Monsignor Ernest Jouin in 1925, who supported 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),[5] published in Basel and authored by Osman Bey (born Frederick Millingen). 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 converted to Islam, but later became a Russian Orthodox Christian. 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.[6] Incidentally, in a 1904 edition of The Talmud and the Jews, Hippolytus directly quoted verbatim the first, little-known 1903 edition of the Protocols.[7]
Sources employed
Source material for the forgery consisted jointly of Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu (Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu), an 1864 political satire by Maurice Joly;[8] and a chapter from Biarritz, an 1868 novel by the antisemitic German novelist Hermann Goedsche, which had been translated into Russian in 1872.[9]
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.[10] The text, which nowhere advocates for Zionism, resembles a parody of Herzl's ideas.[11]
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.[12] The forgery is an early example of "conspiracy theory" literature.[13] 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.[15]
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,[16] 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).[17]
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.[18]
The Protocols 1–19 closely follow the order of Maurice Joly's Dialogues 1–17. For example:
Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu
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
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
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
Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu
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
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
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
Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu
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
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
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 Protocols was not an authentic document.[19][20]
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."[21] Following his dismissal, Goedsche began a career as a conservative columnist, and wrote literary fiction under the pen name Sir John Retcliffe.[22] 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.[23]
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.[22] 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."[24]
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.[25]
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.[26][27]
The forgery places in the mouths of the Jewish leaders a variety of plans, most of which derive from older antisemitic canards.[26][27] 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.[26][27] 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:[28]
Protocol / Title[28] / Themes[28]
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 / Domestic Loans 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 Hundreds newspaper 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.[29]
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.[29][30]
As fiction in the genre of literature, the tract was further analyzed by Umberto Eco in his novel Foucault's Pendulum in 1988 (English translation in 1989), in 1994 in chapter 6, "Fictional Protocols", of his Six Walks in the Fictional Woods and in his 2010 novel The Prague Cemetery.
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;[30] 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.[29][30]
First Russian language editions
Conspiracy references
According to Daniel Pipes,
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."[31] 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.[15]
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."[32]
The Protocols is widely considered influential in the development of other conspiracy theories[citation needed], and reappears repeatedly in contemporary conspiracy literature, such as Jim Marrs' Rule by Secrecy, which identifies the work as a Czarist forgery. Some recent editions proclaim that the "Jews" depicted in the Protocols are a cover identity for other conspirators such as the Illuminati,[33] Freemasons, the Priory of Sion, or even, in the opinion of David Icke, "extra-dimensional entities."[citation needed]
Emergence in Russia
The front piece of a 1912 edition using occult symbols.
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.[9] 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.[34]
In 1944, German writer Konrad Heiden identified Golovinski as an author of the Protocols.[33] Radziwill's account was supported by Russian historian Mikhail Lepekhine, who published his findings in November 1999 in the French newsweekly L'Express.[35] 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.[36] 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.[37] Ukrainian scholar Vadim Skuratovsky offers extensive literary, historical and linguistic analysis 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.[36]
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.[38][39][40]
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.[41]
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.[42]
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.[29] 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.[43]
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.[44] 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."[45] Despite the order, or because of the "good cause", numerous reprints proliferated.[42]
The Protocols in the West
A 1934 edition by the Patriotic Publishing Company of Chicago.
In the United States, The Protocols are to be understood in the context of the First Red Scare (1917–20). The text was purportedly brought to the United States by a Russian army officer in 1917; it was translated into English by Natalie de Bogory (personal assistant of Harris A. Houghton, an officer of the Department of War) in June 1918,[46] and Russian expatriate Boris Brasol soon circulated it in American government circles, specifically diplomatic and military, in typescript form,[47] a copy of which is archived by the Hoover Institute.[48] It also appeared in 1919 in the Public Ledger as a pair of serialized newspaper articles. But all references to "Jews" were replaced with references to Bolsheviki as an exposé by the journalist and subsequently highly respected Columbia University School of Journalism dean Carl W. Ackerman.[49] [48]
In 1923, there appeared an anonymously edited pamphlet by the Britons Publishing Society, a successor to The Britons, an entity created and headed by Henry Hamilton Beamish. This imprint was allegedly a translation by Victor E. Marsden, who died in October 1920.[48]
Most versions substantially involve "protocols", or minutes of a speech given in secret involving Jews who are organized as Elders, or Sages, of Zion,[50] 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.[20][51][52][53][54]
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.[55] 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[56] 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?".[57]
Steed retracted his endorsement of The Protocols after they were exposed as a forgery.[58]
United States
Title page of 1920 edition from Boston.
In the US, Henry Ford sponsored the printing of 500,000 copies,[59] 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.[60] 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."[61] 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.[62] He was also an admirer of Nazi Germany.[63]
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.[64]