Hate Hoax History I
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion
This was a hoax that Hitler and Henry Ford took part in.
At the beginning of the 1900s, someone forged a document called The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion or The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion and other variations, often shortened to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or abbreviated to The Protocols. The document appears to be a manuscript written by a secret group Jewish elites called the Elders of Zion (a group that never existed according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum) to lay out a plan for Jews to rule the world.
It is often contained, in whole or in part, within books with titles like The Jewish Peril - The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and with introductions that claim that The Protocols was a real manuscript written by Jews for Jews and so on. It is an attempt to confirm anti-Semitic views and the belief is that Jews are racist against everyone else and conspire to rule over everyone else.
In other words, it is a hate hoax1. As hate hoaxes go, this one is unusual. I can think of only one other hate hoax that involves forged documents (The Jyllands Posten Muhammad Cartoons Controversy Hoax is the other). Also, it is a hate hoax that is a fakery of one kind of racism but which is motivated by real racism of an other kind. Also, it is a hate hoax that Hitler helped to perpetuate. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states…
Despite these repeated exposures of the Protocols as a fraud, it remains the most influential antisemitic text of the past one hundred years, and it continues to appeal to a variety of antisemitic individuals and groups.
One publisher’s description states that…
Henry Ford funded printing of 500,000 copies that were distributed throughout the US in the 1920s.
…and that…
Adolf Hitler and the Nazis publicized the text as if it were a valid document, although it had already been exposed as fraudulent. After the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, it ordered the text to be studied in German classrooms. The historian Norman Cohn suggested that Hitler used the Protocols as his primary justification for initiating the Holocaust—his “warrant for genocide”.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states…
Nazi Party ideologue Alfred Rosenberg introduced Hitler to the Protocols during the early 1920s, as Hitler was developing his worldview. Hitler referred to the Protocols in some of his early political speeches, and, throughout his career, he exploited the myth that "Jewish-Bolshevists" were conspiring to control the world.
During the 1920s and 1930s, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion played an important part in the Nazis' propaganda arsenal. The Nazi party published at least 23 editions of the Protocols between 1919 and 1939. Following the Nazis' seizure of power in 1933, some schools used the Protocols to indoctrinate students.
Historian Robert Gellately writes in Lenin, Stalin and Hitler - The age of Social Catastrophe (pages 68-68)…
The accusation that the Jews were behind the Russian Revolution which was part of a larger conspiracy to win control of the world, was common currency among
…the anti-communist armies of the Russian Civil War…
Although the notorious forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion appeared well before 1914, it was popularized in Russia during the civil war…the theory was that the Jews were behind the Russian Revolution…The murder of the royal family helped to turn the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into a publishing success…New forgeries updated the conspiracy charges. These “revealing documents” had aftereffects, and not just in Russia. They were widely published in German and found a ready audience on the right-wing fringes where conspiracy theories linked Jews to the disastrous end of
…World War I…
and the rise of Communism…the nefarious role of the Jews was beyond dispute. The catchwords circulating in the Donbass ran as follows: “Beat the Jews and save Russia,” or “Death to the Jews and Communists,” and “Jews and Russians, Get out of Ukraine.”
Gellately writes (page 99) that refugees from Russia from the anti-communist side who fled West brought The Protocols with them to Germany.
On August 12, 1921, Hitler first referred to the “Wise men of Zion” in a speech and did so again a week later. He internalized the theory completely and took it as fact. Reception for The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was prepared by news flooding out of Russia about the revolution and the terror. Newspapers covered the story widely.
He writes furthermore (page 534) that Hitler…
and Goebbels had long been convinced by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and now spent fruitless hours trying to figure out how their knowledge of the supposed international conspiracy could be turned to political advantage.
For more than a century, the fabricated text “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” has advanced a persistent anti-Semitic trope: that Jews are plotting to take over the world. From Hitler to Henry Ford, rabid anti-Semites have long shared the notorious text.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica states it is a…
fraudulent document that served as a pretext and rationale for anti-Semitism mainly in the early 20th century. The document purported to be a report of a series of 24 (in other versions, 27) meetings held at Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, at the time of the first Zionist congress. There Jews and Freemasons were said to have made plans to disrupt Christian civilization and erect a world state under their joint rule. Liberalism and socialism were to be the means of subverting Christendom; if subversion failed, all the capitals of Europe were to be sabotaged.
The Protocols were printed in Russia in abbreviated form in 1903 in the newspaper Znamia (“Banner”) and subsequently (1905) as an addendum to a religious tract by Serge Nilus, a tsarist civil servant. They were translated into German, French, English, and other European languages and soon came to be a classic of anti-Semitic literature. In the United States Henry Ford’s private newspaper, Dearborn Independent, often cited them as evidence of a Jewish threat.
The spurious character of the Protocols was first revealed in 1921 by Philip Graves of The Times (London), who demonstrated their obvious resemblance to a satire on Napoleon III by the French lawyer Maurice Joly, published in 1864 and entitled Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu (“Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu”).
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum specifies that the Times of London did more than show a resemblance; they…
confirmed that the Protocols had been copied in large part
..from Joly’s work and that…
other investigations revealed that one chapter of a Prussian novel, Hermann Goedsche's Biarritz (1868), also "inspired" the Protocols.
Encyclopedia Britannica adds…
Subsequent investigation, particularly by the Russian historian Vladimir Burtsev, revealed that the Protocols were forgeries compounded by officials of the Russian secret police out of the satire of Joly, a fantastic novel (Biarritz) by Hermann Goedsche (1868), and other sources.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum adds…
In 1935, a Swiss court fined two Nazi leaders for circulating a German-language edition of the Protocols in Berne, Switzerland. The presiding justice at the trial declared the Protocols "libelous," "obvious forgeries," and "ridiculous nonsense."
The US Senate issued a report in 1964 declaring that the Protocols were "fabricated." The Senate called the contents of the Protocols "gibberish" and criticized those who "peddled" the Protocols for using the same propaganda technique as Hitler.
Authors Landes and Katz write…
The Protocols stands out as both one of the most malicious forgeries in history—“an atrocity-producing narrative”—and the most widely distributed forgery in the world. Soon after publication, believers translated its “revelations” about an international Jewish conspiracy to enslave mankind into dozens of languages and spread the text from its Russian foyer to the...
Charles B. Strozier writes…
The Protocols is a text that operates at several historical and psychological levels simultaneously. Most important, it is a malevolent expression of anti-Semitic rage. Jews in this text become cunning monsters scheming to take over the world. At this level, the Protocols fit into a long tradition of hatred against Europe’s designated victim, though the text should be privileged for its role in helping to shape Nazi justification for policies that led to the Holocaust. Read today, however, the Protocols is so banal that one wonders how it captured the imagination of so many readers.
Though this was revealed to be a hoax long ago, the hoax is repeated in different times and places. It reappeared in Japan in the 1980s where it was sold as if it were genuine. It was included in Palestinian school text books in the early 2000s to fool students and influence them to hate Jews. Moreover, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum..
Many school textbooks throughout the Arab and Islamic world teach the Protocols as fact. Countless political speeches, editorials, and even children's cartoons are derived from the Protocols. In 2002, Egypt's government-sponsored television aired a miniseries based on the Protocols, an event condemned by the US State Department. The Palestinian organization Hamas draws in part on the Protocols to justify its terrorism against Israeli civilians.
The book The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion - The Great in the Small & Antichrist (Original Unabridged Edition) by Sergei Nilus, Victor E. Marsden (Translator) is available on the market. It seems to be an edition that does not have an intro explaining that it is a forgery, but rather an intro that says that it is genuine. I mean, look at what just the cover says…
But, whereas some publishers explain on their website in the product description that this is a forgery, others, well, don’t quite agree about the book. This one claims that the document was a real and plan by “crypto-Jew revolutionaries” to set up a “Jewish dictatorship.” It claims the Russian Revolution and communism “with its torturous massacres of innocent people, its monstrous gulag concentration camp” was carried out by “masonic Jews” using the Protocols as an instruction manual to set up a “Jewish dictatorship,” the U.S.S.R.
The book’s publisher description claims…
The entire world witnessed horrors that were a direct result of the heinous prescriptions laid out earlier in the Protocols. Find out how the Protocols are still being worked in our day and how our freedoms, even our very lives, are in jeopardy.
A web search will show you that there is no shortage of such examples. It will continue to appear and to be believed as long as people hate Jews.
We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
Thanks for reading, ~ Justin Trouble Be sure to see... Hate Hoax History I - The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion Hate Hoax History II - The Tawana Brawly & Al Sharpton Hate Crime Hoax Hate Hoax History III - "Skinheads" and Backward Swastikas Hate Hoax History IV - Americans Believe Outrageous Lies About Racism in America Hate Hoax History V - When Sarah Silverman Lost Her Sense of Humor ...and subscribe to get future episodes and more!
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Liberty my right ∴ Truth my sword
Laughter my shield ∴ Knowledge my steed
Love my solace ∴ Honor my rewardThe following is from my Culture War GlossaryPedia…
Hate hoax is a term to include hate crime hoaxes and hate incident hoaxes.
A hate crime, as defined by the US Dept of Justice, is a crime motivated by “hate”. In this context, by hate they mean…
bias against people or groups with specific characteristics that are defined by the law.
…such as…
race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability.
Arguments have been made about whether or not hate crime laws are wise or fair. The DOJ, for example, argues that such laws should exist because…
Hate crimes have a broader effect than most other kinds of crime. Hate crime victims include not only the crime’s immediate target but also others like them. Hate crimes affect families, communities, and at times, the entire nation.
A hate crime hoax is a hoax of a hate crime.
Hate incidents (also called a bias incidents)…
are acts of prejudice…that are not crimes and do not involve violence, threats, or property damage.
A hate incident hoax would, of course, be a hoax of a hate incident.