Continuing my series on the Hallmarks of Tyranny, I am looking at the role of anti-Jewish propaganda, in 3 short parts. Please feel free to comment! ⭐️
Throughout the last two millennia, Jews have been scapegoated at times of political turmoil. In the last 120 years, anti-Jewish propaganda, centred on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, have deliberately been used to turn the gaze of populations, away from those in power, sideways to Jews. Today, with rising antisemitism, in an increasingly unstable world, are the Protocols again being purposefully deployed?
Since the document that is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first appeared, it has been the most widely used anti-Jewish document, certainly in recent history. It’s proponents claim it shows a plot by Jews, to dominate the world. Given that the Protocols have so often been used against the Jews, why has its use, in the Covid era, left me so uneasy? Witnessing groups relish Protocol related material, am I, as Caplan puts it, sensing ‘the pounding echoes of previous anti-Jewish mobs?’ (1).
Proponents claim The Protocols contain the minutes of the first Zionist conference, in Basel in 1897, in which, supposedly, Jews conspired for world domination. In fact, the text shows, the Protocols couldn’t have been written before 1901 (2). The document is, in fact, a forgery composed of plagiarised material, taken in the main, from a political work, which does not figure Jews: Dialogue aux Enfers enter Montesquieu et Machiavel, written by Maurice Joly in 1864. Philip Graves was the first of many to expose the document as a forgery in August 1921 (2).
The forged document first appeared at a time of political instability in Russia, in the lead up to the Bolshevik revolution, when the Russian Czars were under threat from communism and the People’s Will Party. The Russian secret police perpetrated them, and circulated the document in France between 1903 and 1906. Rumours circulated that the Party was a front for a Jewish takeover of Russia. During 1903 and 1905, many Jews were massacred there, in the pogroms. Even the communists betrayed their Jewish comrades.
However, Jews on the ground were not involved in the Bolshevik revolution because they were Jews (2). Given the Czarist treatment of Jews, it is hardly surprising that some were involved. Incidentally, Czarist antisemitism continued in modern day Russia.
The Protocols were not just used on the ground, to divert disquiet from the Czars, but to also accuse Jews of an international plot to take over the world. Jewish bankers, it was said, funded the Bolshevik revolution. This myth still abounds today. Jews, it is claimed, create and fund revolutions, and wars, to achieve world domination.
Bankers did, in fact, fund the Bolshevik revolution, but it was not ‘the Jews’. The meticulous research of Anthony C. Sutton (3) has shown Wall Street funded the Bolsheviks. Those who happened to be Jewish played a minor role, while those who were Gentiles - Morgan, Rockefeller and Thompson - had major roles. As Sutton puts it:
What better way to divert attention from the real operators, than by the medieval bogeyman of antisemitism?
Part 2 continues to look at how the Protocols were used more recently as a smokescreen by the Nazis for their own expansionist ambitions; and
Part 3 relates this to how the Protocols are showing up on social media today.
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/laurelevy3O
https://whiterosemagazine.com/the-big-lie-comes-to-colleyville
Trials of the Diaspora Anthony Julius (2010) OUP
Wall Street and the Bolshevik RevolutionAnthony C. Sutton (1974) Clairview Books