The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion

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==External Links==
 
==External Links==
 
*[http://www.geocities.com/net3431/Dialogues_In_Hell.html ''Dialogue in Hell'' online text (English)]
 
*[http://www.geocities.com/net3431/Dialogues_In_Hell.html ''Dialogue in Hell'' online text (English)]
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[[Category:Racism]]

Revision as of 15:49, 5 August 2007

The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is a faked booklet originally published by the Okhrana (Tsarist Russia's secret police) in order to foment Anti-Semitism. Despite being shown to be a hoax as far back as 1921,[1] it is still distributed and believed by people who swallow whatever fiction fits with their racist views.[2]

The origin of the Protocols can possibly be traced back to the time of the French Revolution; in 1797, a French Jesuit, Abbe Barruel, published a treatise blaming the Revolution on a Masonic conspiracy. He was influenced in this by an anti-Masonic mathematician. Barruel did not himself blame the Jews. However, in 1806, Barruel circulated a forged letter, probably sent to him by anti-Semitic members of the state police, claiming a Jewish role in the supposed conspiracy.[3]

The main text of the Protocols was created in 1897, but first publicised in 1905;[4]. Serge Nilus, minor Czarist official in Moscow, edited several editions of the Protocols, each with a different account of how he discovered the document, even claiming that his source had stolen it from the (invented) Zionist headquarters in France. Other editors stated that the document was read at the First Zionist Congress held in 1897 in Switzerland.[5]

Much of the material for the protocols may have been lifted from Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, a French satirical pamphlet of 1864. This work comments on French politics, and has no racial or religious theme. Dialogue itself may have plagiarised an even earlier work attacking the Jesuits.

References

  1. in The Times of London; this is a transcript
  2. a Google search of this title brings up, in first place, a site that accepts the Protocols as true.
  3. The Nizkor Project
  4. Skepdic
  5. Anti-Defamation League

External Links

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