You know originally when I concieved of creating this blog I thought the politics would be relegated to criticising IP restrictions and the odd "blast from the past" style of commentary. Didn't pan out that way. This week on social media I was reminded of a terrible piece of conspiracist material that refuses to die. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is arguably the most sucessful and pernicious piece of bigoted propaganda to have existed in the world. And it sunk its roots deep decades before smart phones and global connections.
If you're not familiar with that text then congratulations, though I have some bad news for you, since you have internet access you will almost certainly have been exposed to some of its arguments in some form or other. The Protocols is a piece of antisemitic fiction, to be more specific it claims there is a secret conspiracy of Jewish plotters seeking to subvert and conquer the world. It is not the originator of that subgenre of antisemitic litreture, in fact it plagiarised an older work, but it spread wild fire once it receive a public release.
Since its debut its ideas have never gone away, the text has been translated into over a hundred languages and is regularly reprinting in many parts of the world. In the United States Henry Ford (yes the car man) serialised it in his newspapers. What cause me concern was a post by a history teacher detailing how her students told her they had seen its ideas on tiktok and other internet platforms.
This work by the Okhrana, the secret police force of the Russian Empire has outlived the Tsar's and the Soviet Union, and will almost certainly outlive us all. Despite repeated challenges including an expert exposing of it in the The Times newspaper as far back as 1921, this weed continues to sprout. I know republishing that expose here won't be the final nail in its coffin, but like Tolstoy I find it difficult to remain silent. Plus it is public domain and an excellent example of old school journalistic investigations.
"There is one thing about Constantinople that is worth your while to
remember," said a diplomatist to the writer in 1908. "If you only stay
here long enough you will meet many men who matter, and you may find the
key to many strange secrets." Yet I must confess that when the
discovery which is the theme of these articles was communicated to me I
was at first incredulous. Mr. X., who brought me the evidence, was
convinced. "Read this book through," he said, "and you will find
irrefutable proof that the 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Sion' is a
plagiarism."
Mr. X., who does not wish his real name to be known, is a Russian
landowner with English connexions. Orthodox by religion, he is in
political opinion a Constitutional Monarchist. He came here as a refugee
after the final failure of the White cause in South Russia. He had long
been interested in the Jewish question as far as it concerned Russia,
had studied the "Protocols," and during the period of Denikin's
ascendancy had made investigations with the object of discovering
whether any occult "Masonic" organization, such as the "Protocols" speak
of, existed in Southern Russia. The only such organization was a
Monarchist one. The discovery of the key to the problem of the
"Protocols" came to him by chance.
A few months ago he bought a number of old books from a former
officer of the "Okhrana" (Political Police) who had fled to
Constantinople. Among these books was a small volume in French, lacking
the title-page, with dimensions of 5½in. by 3¾in. It had been cheaply
rebound. On the leather back is printed in Latin
capitals the word Joli. The preface, entitled "Simple avertissement,"
is dated Geneva, October 15, 1864. The book contains 324 pages, of which
numbers 315–322 inclusive follow page 24 in the only copy known to Mr.
X, perhaps owing to a mistake when the book was rebound. Both the paper
and the type are characteristic of the "sixties and seventies" of the
last century. These details are given in the hope that they may lead to
the discovery of the title of the book [See Preface].
Mr. X. believes it must be rare, since, had it not been so, the
"Protocols" would have speedily been recognized as a plagiarism by
anyone who had read the original.
That the latter is a "fake" could not be maintained for an
instant by anyone who had seen it. Its original possessor, the old
Okhrana officer, did not remember where he obtained it, and attached no
importance to it. Mr. X, glancing at it one day, was struck by a
resemblance between a passage which had caught his eye and a phrase in
the French edition of the "Protocols" (Edition de la Vieille France,
1920, 5, Rue du Préaux-Clercs, 5, Paris 7th Arrondissement). He followed
up the clue, and soon realized that the "Protocols" were to a very
large extent as much a paraphrase of the Geneva original as the
published version of a War Office or Foreign Office telegram is a
paraphrase of the ciphered original.
Before receiving the book from Mr. X, I was, as I have said,
incredulous. I did not believe that Sergei Nilus's "Protocols" were
authentic; they explained too much by the theory of a vast Jewish
conspiracy. Professor Nilus's account of how they were obtained was too
melodramatic to be credible, and it was hard to believe that real
"Learned Elders of Sion" would not have produced a more intelligent
political scheme than the crude and theatrical subtilties of the
Protocols. But I could not have believed, had I not seen, that the writer who supplied Nilus with his originals was a careless and shameless plagiarist.
The Geneva book is a very thinly-veiled attack on the despotism
of Napoleon III. in the form of a series of 25 dialogues divided into
four parts. The speakers are Montesquieu and Machiavelli. In the brief
preface to his book the anonymous author points out that it contains
passages which are applicable to all Governments, "but it particularly
personifies a political system which has not varied in its application
for a single day since the fatal and alas! too distant date when it was
enthroned." Its references to the "Haussmannisation" of Paris,
to the repressive measures and policy of the French Emperor, to his
wasteful financial system, to his foreign wars, to his use of secret
societies in his foreign policy (cf., his notorious relations with the
Carbonari) and his suppression of them in France, to his relations with
the Vatican, and to his control of the Press are unmistakable.
The Geneva book, or as it will henceforth be called the Geneva
Dialogues, opens with the meeting of the spirits of Montesquieu and
Machiavelli on a desolate beach in the world of shades. After a lengthy
exchange of civilities Montesquieu asks Machiavelli to explain why from
an ardent Republican he had become the author of "The Prince"
and "the founder of that sombre school of thought which has made all
crowned heads your disciples, but which is well fitted to justify the
worst crimes of tyranny." Machiavelli replies that he is a realist and
proceeds to justify the teaching of "The Prince," and to explain its
applicability to the Western European States of 1864.
In the first six "Geneva Dialogues" Montesquieu is given a chance
of argument of which he avails himself. In the seventh dialogue, which
corresponds to the fifth, sixth, seventh, and part of the eighth
"Protocols," he gives Machiavelli permission to describe at length how
he would solve the problem of stabilizing political societies
"incessantly disturbed by the spirit of anarchy and revolution."
Henceforth Machiavelli or in reality Napoleon III., speaking through
Machiavelli, has the lion's share of the dialogue. Montesquieu's
contributions thereto become more and more exclamatory; he is profoundly
shocked by Machiavelli-Napoleon's defence of an able and ruthless
dictatorship, but his counter-arguments grow briefer and weaker. At
times, indeed, the author of "L'Esprit des Lois" is made to cut as poor a
figure as—parvum componere magno—does Dr. Watson when he attempts to talk criminology to Sherlock Holmes.
The "Protocols" follow almost the same order as the Dialogues.
Dialogues 1-17 generally correspond with "Protocols" 1-19. There are a
few exceptions to this. One is in the 18th "Protocol," where, together
with paraphrases of passages from the 17th Dialogue ("Geneva Dialogues,"
pp. 216, 217), there is an echo of a passage in the 25th "Geneva
Dialogue," viz.: "Quand le malheureux est opprimé il dit 'Si le Roi le
savait'; Quand on veut se venger, qu'on espère un secours, on dit 'le
Roi le saura.'" This appears on page 68 of the English edition of the
"Protocols" (4th Edition, published by "The Britons," 62, Oxford-street,
London, W.) as "In order to exist, the prestige of power must occupy
such a position that the people can say among themselves, 'If only the
King knew about it,' or 'When the King knows about it.'"
The last five "Protocols" (Nos. 20-24 inclusive) do not contain
so many paraphrases of the "Geneva Dialogues" as the first 19. Some of
their resemblances and paraphrases are, however, very striking, e.g., the following:—
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 per cent., then in 20 years the Government
will 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.
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 per cent., 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."—"Geneva Dialogues," p. 250.
But generally speaking "Protocols" 20 and 21, which deal (somewhat
unconvincingly) with the financial programme of the Learned Elders, owe
less to the "Geneva Dialogues," Nos. 18-21, than to the imagination of
the plagiarist author who had for once in a way to show a little
originality. This is natural enough since the "Dialogues" in question
describe the actual financial policy of the French Imperial Government,
while the "Protocols" deal with the future. Again in the last four
"Geneva Dialogues" Machiavelli's apotheosis of the Second Empire, being
based upon historical facts which took place between 1852 and 1864,
obviously furnished scanty material for the plagiarist who wished to
prove or, very possibly, had been ordered to prove in the "Protocols"
that the ultimate aim of the leaders of Jewry was to give the world a
ruler sprung from the House of David.
The scores of parallels between the two books and a theory
concerning the methods of the plagiarist and the reasons for the
publication of the "Protocols" in 1905 will be the subject of further
articles. Meanwhile it is amusing to find that the only subject with
which the "Protocols" deal on lines quite contrary to those followed by
Machiavelli in the "Dialogues" is the private life of the Sovereign. The
last words of the "Protocols" are "Our Sovereign must be
irreproachable." The Elders evidently propose to keep the King of Israel
in good order. The historical Machiavelli was, we know, rather a
scandalous old gentleman, and his shade insists that amorous adventures,
so far from injuring a Sovereign's reputation, make him an object of
interest and sympathy to "the fairest half of his subjects."
While the Geneva Dialogues open with an exchange of compliments
between Montesquieu and Machiavelli, which covers seven pages, the
author of the Protocols plunges at once in medias res.
One can imagine him hastily turning over those first seven pages
of the book which he has been ordered to paraphrase against time, and
angrily ejaculating, "Nothing here." But on page 8 of the Dialogues he
finds what he wants; the greater part of this page and the next are
promptly paraphrased, thus:—
| Geneva Dialogues, p. 8.
|
Protocols, p. 1 ("The Britons" edition).
|
| Among mankind the evil instinct is mightier than the good. Man is
more drawn to evil than to good. Pear and Force have more empire over
him than reason. . . . Every man aims at domination; not one but would
be an oppressor if he could; all or almost all are ready to sacrifice
the rights of others to their own interests. . . .
|
It must be noted that people with corrupt instincts are more
numerous than those of noble instinct. Therefore in governing the world
the best results are obtained by means of violence and intimidation, and
not by academic discussions. Every man aims at power; every one would
like to become a dictator if he only could do so, and rare indeed are
the men who would not be disposed to sacrifice the welfare of others in
order to attain their own personal aims.
|
| What restrains those beasts of prey which they call men from
attacking one another? Brute unrestrained Force in the first stages of
social life, then the Law, that is still force regulated by forms. You
have consulted all historic sources; everywhere might precedes right.
Political Liberty is merely a relative idea. . . .
|
What restrained the wild beasts of prey which we call men? What has
ruled them up to now? In the first stages of social life they submitted
to brute and blind force, then to law, which in reality is the same
force, only masked. From this I am led to deduct that by the law of
nature right lies in might. Political freedom is not a fact but an idea.
|
The
gift of liberty according to the Machiavelli of the Geneva Dialogues,
of self-government according to the Protocols (page 2), leads speedily
to civil and social strife, and the State is soon ruined by internal
convulsions or by foreign intervention following on the heels of civil
war. Then follows a singular parallel between the two books which
deserves quotation:—
| Geneva Dialogues, p. 9.
|
Protocols, p. 2.
|
| What arms will they (States) employ in war against foreign enemies?
Will the opposing generals communicate their plans of campaign to one
another and thus be mutually in a position to defend themselves? Will
they mutually ban night attacks, traps, ambushes, battles with
inequality of force? Of course not; such combatants would court
derision. Are you against the employment of these traps and tricks, of
all the strategy indispensable to war against the enemy within, the
revolutionary?
|
. . . I would ask the question why is it not immoral for a State
which has two enemies, one external and one internal, to use different
means of defence against the former to that which it would use against
the latter, to make secret plans of defence, to attack him by night or
with superior forces ? . . .
|
Both "Machiavelli" and the author of the
Protocols agree (Prot. p. 3, Genova Dialogues,
p. 11) almost in the same words that politics
have nothing in common with morality. Right is described in the Protocols as "an abstract
idea established by nothing," in the Dialogues
as an "infinitely vague" expression. The end,
say both, justifies the means. "I pay less
attention," says Machiavelli, "to what is
good and moral than to what is useful and
necessary." The Protocols (p. 4) use the same
formula, substituting "profitable" for "useful."
According to the Protocols he who would
rule "must have recourse to cunningness (sic)
and hypocrisy." In the second Dialogue (p.
15) Montesquieu reproaches Machiavelli for
having "only two words to repeat—'Force'
and 'guile.'" Both Machiavelli and the "Elders" of
the Protocols preach despotism as the sole safeguard against anarchy.
In the Protocols this despotism has to be Jewish and hereditary.
Machiavelli's despotism is obviously Napoleonic.
There are scores of other parallels between the books. Fully 50
paragraphs in the Protocols are simply paraphrases of passages in the
Dialogues. The quotation per me reges regnant, rightly given in the Vieille France edition of the Protocols (p. 29), while regunt is substituted for regnant
in the English version (p. 20), appears on p. 63 of the Geneva
Dialogues. Sulla, whom the English version of the Protocols insists on
calling "Silla," appears in both books.
After covering Italy with blood, Sulla reappeared as a simple citizen
in Borne: no one durst touch a hair of his head. Geneva Dialogues, p.
159.
Remember at the time when Italy was streaming with blood, she did
not touch a hair of Silla's head, and he was the man who made her blood
pour out. Protocols, p. 51.
Sulla, who after the proscriptions stalked "in savage grandeur home,"
is one of the tyrants whom every schoolboy knows and those who believe
that Elders of the 33rd Degree are responsible for the Protocols, may
say that this is a mere coincidence. But what about the exotic Vishnu,
the hundred-armed Hindu deity who appears twice in each book? The
following passages never were examples of "unconscious plagiarism."
Geneva Dialogues, p. 141:—
Machiavelli.—"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."
Protocols, p. 43:—
"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."
Geneva Dialogues, p. 207:—
Montesquieu.—"Now I understand the figure of the god Vishnu; you have a hundred like the Indian idol, and each of your fingers touches a spring."
Protocols, p. 65:—
"Our Government will resemble the Hindu god Vishnu. Each of our
hundred hands will hold one spring of the social machinery of State."
The Dialogues and the Protocols alike devote special attention to the
Press, and their schemes for the muzzling and control thereof are
almost identical—absolutely identical, indeed, in many details. Thus
Machiavelli on pp. 135 and 136 of the Dialogues expounds the following
ingenious scheme:—
"I shall extend the tax on newspapers to books, or rather I shall
introduce a stamp duty on books having less than a certain number of
pages. A book, for example, with less than 200 or 300 pages will not
rank as a book, but as a brochure. I am sure you see the advantage of
this scheme. On the one hand I thin (je rarifie) by taxation that
cloud of short books which are the mere appendages of journalism; on
the other I force those who wish to escape stamp duty to throw
themselves into long and costly compositions, which will hardly ever be
sold and scarcely read in such a form."
The Protocols, p. 41, has:—
"We will tax it (the book press) in the same manner as the newspaper
Press—that is to say, by means of Excise stamps and deposits. But on
books of less than 300 pages we will place a tax twice as heavy. These
short books we will classify as pamphlets, which constitute the most
virulent form of printed poison. These measures will also compel writers
to publish such long works that they will be little read by the public
and so chiefly on account of their high price."
Both have the same profound contempt for journalists.
Geneva Dialogues, pp. 145, 146:—
Machiavelli.—"You must know that journalism is a sort of Freemasonry;
those who live by it are bound . . . to one another by the ties of
professional discretion; like the augurs of old, they do not lightly
divulge the secret of their oracles. They would gain nothing by
betraying themselves, for they have mostly won more or less
discreditable scars . . ."
Protocols, p. 44:—
"Already there exists in French journalism a system of Masonic understanding for giving counter-signs.
All organs of the Press are tied by mutual professional secrets in the
manner of the ancient oracles. Not one of its members will betray his
knowledge of the secret, if the secret has not been ordered to be made
public. No single publisher will have the courage to betray the secret
entrusted to him, the reason being that not one of them is admitted into
the literary world without bearing the marks of some shady act in his
past life."
But this contempt is nothing compared to that which both Machiavelli
and the Elders evince towards the masses whom tyranny is to reduce to a
more than Oriental servitude.
Geneva Dialogues, p. 43:—
Machiavelli.—"You do not know the unbounded meanness of the peoples .
. . . grovelling before force, pitiless towards the weak, implacable to
faults, indulgent to crimes, incapable of supporting the contradictions
of a free régime, and patient to the point of martyrdom under
the violence of an audacious despotism . . . giving themselves masters
whom they pardon for deeds for the least of which they would have
beheaded twenty constitutional kings."
Protocols, p. 15:—
"In their intense meanness the Christian peoples help our
independence—when kneeling they crouch before power; when they are
pitiless towards the weak; merciless in dealing with faults, and lenient
to crimes; when they refuse to recognize the contradictions of freedom;
when they are patient to the degree of martyrdom in bearing with the
violence of an audacious despotism. At the hands of their present
dictators, Premiers, and Ministers, they endure abuses for the smallest
of which they would have murdered twenty kings."
Both the Elders and Machiavelli propose to make political crime
thoroughly unpopular by assimilating the treatment of the political
criminal to that of the felon. Both devote not a little attention to
police organization and espionage; the creator of Machiavelli had
evidently studied Napoleon III.'s police methods and suffered at the
hands of his agents. Each proposes to exercise a severe control over the
Bar and the Bench. As regards the Vatican, Machiavelli-Napoleon, with
recent Italian history in mind, aims at the complete control of the
Papacy. After inflaming popular hatred against
the Church of Rome and its clergy, he will intervene to protect the
Holy See, as Napoleon III. did intervene, when "the chassepôts worked
wonders." The learned Elders propose to follow a similar plan "when the
people in their rage throw themselves on to the Vatican we shall appear
as its protectors in order to stop bloodshed." Ultimately, of course,
they mean to destroy the Church. The terrible chiefs of a Pan-Judaic
conspiracy could hardly have any other plan of campaign. Machiavelli,
naturally, does not go so far. Enough for him if the Pope is safely
lodged in the Napoleonic pocket.
Is it necessary to produce further proofs that the majority of the
Protocols are simply paraphrases of the Geneva Dialogues, with wicked
Hebrew Elders, and finally an Israelite world ruler in the place of
Machiavelli-Napoleon III., and the brutish
goyim (Gentiles)
substituted for the fickle masses, "gripped in a vice by poverty, ridden
by sensuality, devoured by ambition," whom Machiavelli intends to win?
There is no evidence as to how the Geneva Dialogues reached Russia. The following theory may be suggested.
The Third Napoleon's secret police, many of whom were Corsicans,
must have known the existence of the Dialogues and almost certainly
obtained them from some of the many persons arrested on the charge of
political conspiracy during the reign of Napoleon III. In the last two
decades of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th there
were always a few Corsicans in the Palace Police of the Tsar, and in the
Russian secret service. Combining courage with secretiveness, a high
average of intelligence with fidelity to his chief, the Corsican makes a
first-class secret agent or bodyguard. It is not improbable that
Corsicans who had been in the service of Napoleon III., or who had had
kinsmen in his secret service, brought the Geneva Dialogues to Russia,
where some member of the Okhrana or some Court official obtained
possession of them. But this is only a theory.
As to the Protocols, they were first published in 1905 at
Tsarskoye Selo in the second edition of a book entitled "The Great
Within the Small," the author of which was Professor Sergei Nilus.
Professor Nilus has been described to the writer as a learned, pious,
credulous Conservative, who combined much theological and some
historical erudition with a singular lack of knowledge of the world. In
January, 1917, Nilus, according to the introduction to the French
version of the Protocols, published a book, entitled "It is Here, at Our
Doors!!" in which he republished the Protocols. In this latter work,
according to the French
version, Professor Nilus stated that the manuscript of the Protocols
was given him by Alexis Nicolaievich Sukhotin, a noble who afterwards
became Vice-Governor of Stavropol.
According to the 1905 edition of the Protocols they were obtained
by a woman who stole them from "one of the most influential and most
highly initiated leaders of Freemasonry. The theft was accomplished at
the close of the secret meeting of the 'initiated' in France, that nest
of Jewish conspiracy." But in the epilogue to the English version of the
Protocols Professor Nilus says, "My friend found them in the safes at
the headquarters of the Society of Zion which are at present situated in
France." According to the French version of the Protocols, Nilus in his
book of 1917 states that the Protocols were notes of a plan submitted
to the "Council of Elders" by Theodor Hertzl at the first Zionist
Congress which was held at Basle, in August, 1897, and that Hertzl
afterwards complained to the Zionist Committee of Action of the
indiscreet publication of confidential information. The Protocols were
signed by "Zionist representatives of the 33rd Degree" in Orient
Freemasonry and were secretly removed from the complete file of the
proceedings of the aforesaid Zionist Congress, which was hidden in the
"Chief Zionist office, which is situated in French territory."
Such are Professor Nilus's rather contradictory accounts of the
origin of the Protocols. Not a very convincing story! Theodor Hertzl is
dead; Sukhotin is dead, and where are the signatures of the Zionist
representatives of the 33rd Degree?
Turning to the text of the Protocols, and comparing it with that
of the Geneva Dialogues, one is struck by the absence of any effort on
the part of the plagiarist to conceal his plagiarisms. The paraphrasing
has been very careless; parts
of sentences, whole phrases at times, are identical: the development of
the thought is the same; there has been no attempt worth mentioning to
alter the order of the Geneva Dialogues. The plagiarist has introduced
Darwin, Marx, and Nietzsche in one passage in order to be "up to date";
he has given a Jewish colour to "Machiavelli's" schemes for
dictatorship, but he has utterly failed to conceal his indebtedness to
the Geneva Dialogues. This gives the impression that the real writer of
the Protocols, who does not seem to have had anything to do with Nilus
and may have been some quite unimportant précis writer employed by the
Court or by the Okhrana, was obliged to paraphrase tho original at short
notice. A proof of Jewish conspiracy was required at once as a weapon
for the Conservatives against the Liberal elements in Russia.
Mr. X, the discoverer of the plagiarism, informs me that the
Protocols, shortly after their discovery in 1901, four years before
their publication by Professor Nilus, served a subsidiary purpose,
namely, the first defeat of Monsieur Philippe, a French hypnotist and
thought-reader, who acquired considerable influence over the Tsar and
the Tsaritsa at the beginning of the present century. The Court
favourite was disliked by certain great personages, and incurred the
natural jealousy of the monks, thaumaturgists, and similar adventurers
who hoped to capture the Tsar through the Empress in their own interest,
or in that of various cliques. Philippe was not a Jew, but it was easy
to represent a Frenchman from "that nest of Jewish conspiracy" as a
Zionist agent. Philippe fell from favour, to return to Russia and find
himself once more in the Court's good graces at a later date.
But the principal importance of the Protocols was their use during the first Russian revolution.
This revolution was supported by the Jewish element in Russia, notably
by the Jewish Bund. The Okhrana organization knew this perfectly well;
it had its Jewish and crypto-Jewish agents, one of whom afterwards
assassinated M. Stolypin; it was in league with the powerful
Conservative faction; with its allies it sought to gain the Tsar's ear.
For many years before the Russian revolution of 1905-1906 there had been
a tale of a secret council of Rabbis who plotted ceaselessly against
the Orthodox. The publication of the Protocols in 1905 certainly came at
an opportune moment for the Conservatives. It is said by some Russians
that the manuscript of the Protocols was communicated to the Tsar early
in 1905, and that its communication contributed to the fall of the
Liberal Prince Sviatopolk-Mirski in that year and the subsequent strong
reactionary movement. However that may be, the date and place of
publication of Nilus's first edition of the Protocols are most
significant now that we know that the originals which were given him
were simply paraphrases.
The following conclusions are, therefore, forced upon any reader
of the two books who has studied Nilus's account of the origin of the
Protocols and has some acquaintance with Russian history in the years
preceding the revolution of 1905-6:—
1. The Protocols are largely a paraphrase of the book here provisionally called the "Geneva Dialogues."
2. They were designed to foster the belief among Russian
Conservatives, and especially in Court circles, that the prime cause of
discontent among the politically minded elements in Russia was not the
repressive policy of the bureaucracy, but a world-wide Jewish
conspiracy. They thus served as a weapon against the Russian Liberals,
who urged the Tsar to make certain, concessions to the intelligentsia.
3. The Protocols were paraphrased very hastily and carelessly.
4. Such portions of the Protocols as were not derived from the
Geneva Dialogues were probably supplied by the Okhrana, which
organization very possibly obtained them from the many Jews it employed
to spy on their coreligionists.
So much for the Protocols. They have done harm not so much, in
the writer's opinion, by arousing anti-Jewish feeling, which is older
than the Protocols and will persist in all countries where there is a
Jewish problem until that problem is solved; rather, they have done harm
by persuading all sorts of mostly well-to-do people that every recent
manifestation of discontent on the part of the poor is an unnatural
phenomenon, a factitious agitation caused by a secret society of Jews.
Leading Article reprinted from
| The
|
|
Times
|
We publish to-day the last of the articles on the so-called
"Protocols of the Elders of Zion," from our Constantinople
Correspondent, who has effectively exposed a remarkable forgery. We
have, of course, no political object in making this discovery known. On
the general aspects of the Jewish problem our attitude is known to be
impartial, and we have no intention of taking sides in those political
controversies on this question which too frequently engender excessive
passion and obscure its real character. In the interests of objective
truth, however, it was of great importance that a legend like that so
long connected with the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" should be
exposed at the earliest possible opportunity.
Briefly summarized, the facts of this curious historical incident
are as follows. A Russian book, published in 1905 by an official named Sergei Nilus,
contained a document described as "The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion," and purported to be a summary of the proceedings of a secret
meeting of a Jewish organization that was plotting in France to
overthrow Gentile civilization and establish a Jewish world State. The
document attracted little attention until after the Russian revolution
in 1917, when the astounding collapse of a great country through the
action of the Bolshevists and the presence of a large number of Jews in
the Bolshevist ranks caused many to search for some simplified
explanation of the catastrophe. The "Protocols" appeared to provide such
an explanation, more particularly since the tactics of
the Bolshevists in many respects resembled those advocated in the
"Protocols." The book was translated into several European languages and
made the basis for impassioned dissertations on an alleged Jewish world
peril. There was a certain plausibility about this thesis that
attracted many; but the authenticity of the "Protocols" was very
vigorously called in question, and the whole matter was shrouded in
doubt until our Correspondent made his remarkable discovery. A Russian
in Constantinople, who had bought some books from an ex-officer of the
Russian Secret Police, found among them one in which many passages
struck him by their resemblance to the "Protocols." Our Correspondent,
whose attention was called to the matter, found on examination that the
"Protocols" consisted in the main of clumsy plagiarisms from this little
French book, which he has forwarded to us. The book had no title-page,
but we identified it in the British Museum as a political pamphlet
directed against Napoleon III. and published in Brussels in 1865 by a French lawyer named Maurice Joly,
and entitled "Dialogue aux Enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu." The
book was published anonymously, but the author was immediately seized by
Napoleon's
police and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. A second edition was
published in Brussels in 1868, with the author's name and a note on his
imprisonment.
The author of the "Protocols" simply copied from the "Dialogues" a number of passages in which Machiavelli is made to enunciate the doctrines and tactics of despotism as they were at that time practised by Napoleon,
and put them into the mouth of an imaginary Jewish Elder. There can be
little doubt that the forgery was perpetrated by some member of the
Russian Secret Police. Nilus, who may have acted in good faith, declared that the manuscript of the "Protocols" had been given him by an official named Alexander Sukhotin,
who professed to have received it from a woman who had stolen it from
an Elder of Zion. On the leather back of the copy of the "Dialogues"
sent us by our Correspondent we notice the letters A.S., and, seeing
that the book was bought from an ex-officer of the Secret Police, it
seems possible that this copy belonged at one time to Sukhotin,
and that it was the copy actually used in the compilation of the
"Protocols." For many years there was a close connexion between the
Russian and the French police, and one of the confiscated copies of Joly's book may easily have falled into the hands of a Russian agent—such as Rachkovsky,
at one time head of the Russian Secret Police in Paris, to whom other
and more clumsy forgeries have been traced—and may have inspired him to
invent a weapon for use against Jewish revolutionaries. At any rate, the
fact of the plagiarism has now been conclusively established, and the
legend may be allowed to pass into oblivion. The historical interest of
the discovery is considerable, though, as we have indicated, it does
not, in our opinion, affect the Jewish problem, which happily, in this
country, cannot be said to exist in its Continental form.
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