Author: Lynn

Last weekend, I went with my fellow Forbidden Text classmates to DC for a visit to the Holocaust Museum.

After going through security, checking in, we joined a line to for the elevator to get the fourth floor, the first part of the exhibit. While waiting in line, you could grab an “identification” card, that held the name and background story of either victims, soldiers, or political figures during the time of Holocaust who are in relation to it. I’ll create another blog post with the person I got.

Once you got into the elevator, a staff memeber explained that once you are on the fourth floor, the only way out is to go through the entire museum. You could get out in 15 minutes just passing though, or stay 3-4 hours reading every word and memorizing every photo. My classmates and I respectfully decided to stay for a couple hours to go through the history and exhibits around.

The elevator itself was designed as a prison block or gas chamber, I couldn’t really tell. The fourth floor, the start, was dedicated to the rise of the Nazi party and the slow start of the genocide movement.

The rise of the party started within civil constraints. Boycotts of Jewish materials and practices, strong military presence in streets, silencing political opponents (no matter Germanna, Jewish, or other – if it opposed, it got silences), propaganda against the jews, violent and brutality from the police, rally’s for Hitler and the nation, etc. To respect the history of the Holocaust, I won’t make a strong assertion but I will point out, a lot of the methods imposed by Hitler, we are seeing in our own country with the Trump Administration. But that’s an idea for another time.

After spending some time going through, we get to the part about separating and eliminating the Jewish. They started out with prohibiting Jewish selling, practices, and inclusion of Jewish children in schools and sports. Then, the ghettos. Bricked off and separated parts of cities that Jewish communities were forced to settle in, ran by a Jewish figurehead controlled by the government.

During this segregation activities, there were murders, rapes, and brutality towards the Jewish people. It was not, and did not, stay a peaceful movement.

Even through these difficulties, the Jewish people relented through art, music, and creation of their own safe spaces.

There was protest and movements from Germans against the new regime, but as stated before, they were quickly silenced. The Museum featured an exhibit about what other countries did to help. Long story short, nothing. Absolutely nothing was done. Barely any countries let in refuges, those that did only let in a very small amount, and overall, the genocide of Jews in Germany, was considered a European problem, not an American one. Not even most European countries cared, until Hitler started to take over.

Parts of the third, and most of the second floor, was dedicated towards information about the inside of the camps.

Utterly inhumane in every way possible.

From tearing off body parts, clothes, belongings, to starvation while overworking, it was just absurd. Possibly the worst forms of habitation imaginable.

What stood out to me was the starvation part. I don’t think people quite understand how starvation works. I, unfortunately, have had experience with limiting food intake and I have met many others who, unfortunately, went any further than I did.

Restricting food only hurts the first week or so as your body still gives hunger system. You feel weaker and shakier the first week or so. But after that, it’s almost like you don’t feel anything at all in terms of hunger and weakness. You can push the body to utterly impossible lengths. What I think the scariest part is, you cannot think while in starvation. Thoughts are harder to form, reason is not there, and memory fades. So, for those in the camps, it could have felt like repeating each day without full memory of knowing what is coming next, even if the routine feels the same. Thinking anything, good or bad, becomes harder. Starvation leaves you as a complete shell.

Anything regarding the camps, was just…disgusting. And I think absolutely every person in the world should know about it. Know how far humans can go. And after learning about the camps and it’s torture, the writings of marquis De Sade in 100 Days of Sodom, felt less like a fantasy, and more like a plan. Because torture beyond comprehension is possible and has been implemented.

I would not say I enjoyed the information I learned, instead I value and respect understanding what happened and reading the names or stories of those who faced it.

Rough draft of what I am thinking for our upcoming paper

Exploring the themes and connections of women and felines in political atmosphere or at least a social construct

Abstract:

Felines, Females, and Feminism have been long connected before modern society’s creation of the “crazy cat lady.” Taking roots to the beginning in time of women as goddesses of or towards felines, the creature is a strong representation of independence, liberty, boundaries and everything a woman should not be according to social expectations. Yet women have fought long to be free and as calm as our feline companions through a history of sexist associations from untamed wives, witches, or lonely spinsters, to fierce women looking for their rights to vote or grow as an independent free women. This essay creates a focus on the star of hte shows in our world, women and cats. I will create an analysis of the different eras cats and women together held a strong resemblance/role in the creation and view of society starting with ancient egypt and other civilizations of women and goddesses being shown as power, ending with our modern day phrase of crazy cat lady and how that continues to create the sexists atmosphere. In between that, the importance of Victorian England art of women and their pet cats, along with political cartoons continues to carry an important message. We will see this message bloom into the witches and their feline companions, and how that created a social view of women having cats before falling into an analysis of the propaganda surrounding postcards and posters in the time of the Suffrage movement. The depiction of women and cats is something that still holds water today, and has been used in many political campaigns, propaganda, sexist bigotry, and much more as a tool to oppress women. I will be analyzing Victorian paintings from a few different artists as well as scholarly articles discussing history and uses of older images to discuss and create conclusions from.  

Open to comments on what parts are strong, weak, need to be clarified, or brainstorm ideas for the paper!

Chapter 9: Hitler Starts

Chapter 9 of Mein Kampf, written by Adolf Hitler while imprisoned, takes place in 1919, and is the first political move that Hitler Makes in his life.

As an officer in the German Army, he is sent to listen to the ‘German Workers Part’, a small political party in 1919 Germany. What stood out about this retelling wasn’t the ideas of the party itself, but instead the vison that Hitler had for being a leader and guiding a political movement to be something greater and bigger.

The German Workers party was a political party in Post World War 1 Germany that promoted the ideas of nationalism and connection between the Masses. Hitler was sent as an army officer to keep watch over political parties and became somewhat interested in the group. While he states that he cared little for the public speakers presentations, he continuously admired his vision of turning the party into something greater that is representative of something that belongs to him.

As he attends the meeting, he finds that is rather unimpressed by Gottfried Feder, the founder and one of the early Nazi Party members, stating “Its impression on me was neither good nor bad.” Throughout the leccture, Hitler’s impression and understanding of poltical parties being made after hte collapase of the German Empire was that they were inefficient and unintelggible due ot the founder lack of understanding in leadership and poltics, proving rather ineffective in creating a change for the german country.

“The founders, in most cases, had no idea what it means to develop a society into a or even into a movement. Thus these foundations
nearly always suffocated in their ridiculous bourgeois atmosphere.”

This introduction is meant as a foundation of Hitler’s desire to become a leader in the hopes of creating change and political power for his country. After the lecture by Feder was over and discussion was open amongst the group, Hitler decided to voice his opinions on the topic, noticing how the crowd in the room stood to his attention and seemed taken by his intellectual argument. At the end of his rant, he was given a booklet of the parties ideology to read and think over, rather than attending the meetings he found little interest in.

Once I had started, I read the entire little
document with interest; for in it an event was reflected
which I had gone through personally in a similar way
twelve years ago.

The booklet captured Hitler’s interest, leading to his personal attendance to a small affair dinner, to which he accepted the invention of joining after much thought and consideration.

During his days of thinking it over, we see more into the thought process of Hitler’s ideology around social and political movements

Even in those days I had always
had an instinctive aversion to people who start something
without, however, also carrying it out; I loathed these
jacks-of-all-trades.

Hitler joining the German Workers Party was one of the first political moves he made. In contrast to his thoughts of how useless the society was, was the, main goal of creating a real movement that would bring about beneficial change to his country in his name. This insight into Hitler’s beliefs is another notion of ours to study the motivation and behind the scenes building of one of the arguably most powerful and influential leaders ever been.

Chapter 10: The Great Collapse

The next chapter of Mein Kampf moves a little bit away from Hitler himself, and focuses on the German Empire, the Second Reich collapse.

Hitler made it very clear that he did not believe that the collapse happened due to weak military advances or combat. Instead, he placed blamed on traitors to the empire, Jews, and Marxists.

“The collapse of that army was not the cause of our present distress. It was itself the consequence of other crimes. But this consequence in turn ushered in a further collapse, which was more visible.”

In Hitler’s idea, if the Empire fell due to poor military strength and intelligence, there would be anger and mass motivation against the enemy rather than the discomfort and lost of trust the Germans face in their civilization at the time.

Instead, the fall of the Second Reich was inevitable due to the lies and political destruction prompted by the Jews, who act for personal gain.

“It required the entire bottomless falsehood of the Jews, and their fighting comrades the Marxists, to lay blame for the collapse precisely on the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe that he had foreseen, and to save the nation from that time of humiliation and disgrace”

Hitler, interestingly enough, does consider the fall to be fortunate because if things had continued as they were with the Jewish slowly lying and taking over, than the fall of Germany could potentially be permeant, with no way to come back out on top.

“Then it is a good fortune (however bitter) if Destiny decides to intervene in this slow process of putrid corruption and, at one blow, to put before the eyes of him who is stricken the end of the disease.”

He later discusses that the Treaty of Versailles was a poor decision contact to sign that further promotes and flourishes other countries at the expense of Germany because it caused Germany to fall into national debt, unable to care for their own people.

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The combination of the two chapters is arguably some of the most important because it tells of the beginning of Hitler’s reign to power and the mindset behind his motivation and actions that were able to lead him so far in his life.

That fun little how to take over the world story? Fabricated and propaganda meant to stir up trouble.

Beginning

The idea of Jews taking over the world through tricky politics and manipulation started back in 1860. Jacob Brafman, a Lithuanian Jew from Minsk, started this idea after a conflict that lead to his resignment from the local qahal (an ancient Israelite theocracy society). He began a series of written works that brought up the topic of a conspiracy theory of Jews secretly trying to undermine Christian values and society as a way to take over the world governments, ultimately creating their own regime.

This idea started to spread across Russia and Germany, turning into Nazi German propaganda against the Jewish.

The Protocols was a fabricated and plagiarized content from the works of Maurice Joly political satire work Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu from 1864 and German Hermann Goedsche novel Biarritz 1868.

Upon closer inspection, Philip Graves, a journalist for The Times in 1921 found pieces of the Protocols that were almost identical to the ones in the mentioned above works.

Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu

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

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

History Timeline

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – Wikipedia

• 1902
  Journalist Mikhail Osipovich Menshikove: Saint Petersburg’s conservative newspaper
  “a conspiracy against the world”
• 1903
  Articles in Znamya, a Black Hundreds newspaper owned by Pavel Krushevan.
• 1905
  Appeared as a final chapter in Velikoe v malom i antikhrist (“The Great Within the Minuscule and Antichrist”), a book by Sergei Nilus
• 1906
  Phamplet made by Georgy Butmi de Katzman.
• 1920
  Eyre & Spottiswoode published the first English translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Britain.
• 1921
  Princess Catherine Radziwill gave a private lecture in New York about how the Protocols was a forgery and fake manuscript meant to stir up distrust
  First Italian version of the Protocols by Fascist Giovanni Preziosi
• 1944
  Russian journalists Matvei Golovinski was identified as an author by Konrad Heiden, a german author.
• 1998
  Italian scholar, Cesare G. De Michelis restored a “purported original edition” after the first one had been lost
• 2004
  Cesare G. De Michelis edition was translated into English and published
• 2020
  Russian historian Ljubov’ Vladimirovna Ul’Janova-Bibikova found a typescript version of The Protocols in the manuscripts collections of the Moscow Central Library.

The Protocols Paper has gone through a large history of editions, press, teachings, and forgery exposure.

It’s origins come from a place of resentment, and it lived its life as a work meant to stir hate and distrust amongst people of many cultures.

Written by a rapist and sexual predator, 120 Days of Sodom had quite an adventure before getting to our hands.

Marquis De Sade was a well-known “libertine” in France 13th century. He was constantly imprisoned and tried for sexual abuses, religious blasphemy, and petty crimes.

He grew up in a noble family, as a child being prone to fits and tantrums. In his time during a religious boarding school, it is alluded that he possibly faced sexual abuse and criticism from his teachers and peers. As he grew older, he often was involved in sexual scandals. As a way to contain him, he was married to Renée-Pélagie, another noble woman. Though he initially rejected the marriage, he finally relented to sign papers. In later years, his wife would be included in many of the famous orgies and abuse that De Sade committed towards others.

De Sade served in the military but was kicked out due to sexual scandals and blasphemy language. There are four sexual encounters of De Sade that stood out to me as clear inspiration for the novel 120 Days of Sodom.

1. Jeanne Testard
   Four months after his wedding, he hired a prostitute that later tested that he locked her in a room, shouted religious obscenities towards her, masturbated on a crucifix, and tried to force her to engage in canning and sodomy. He threatened her with a pistol and threatened to kill her, forcing her to comply with his treacherous acts.
2. Rose Keller
   De Sade approached a widowed beggar on the street to join him as a housekeeper. He instead locked her in a room where he beat her with a whip, but her with a penknife, and poured hot wax on her wounds. She managed to escape and placed a complaint towards the man.
3. Marseilles affair
   After his arrest, De Sade took his manservant to an isolated home and hosted multiple sexual orgies where they poisoned the four prostitutes that they hired.
4. The Little Girls Affair
   This act had included his wife. In September 1774, De Sade and his wife hired seven new servants, including five females of about 15 years of age. After a series of orgies that possibly included mutilation and flagellation, the girls’ families pressed charges against the couple, adding to the family scandels.

Now, De Sade was constantly being charged, chased, imprisoned, and criticized in his adult life due to these actions. Many of the affairs he engaged in, match rather greatly to the story details of 120 Days of Sodom. After reviewing these cases, I think it makes for a stronger argument that the 120 days of Sodom story teeters more towards sick fantasy than a meaningful work.

How did the story end up in our hands?

A lot of illegal stealing and trading.

Marquis De Sade wrote the story while imprisoned in the Bastille during the French Revolution. Before the prisoned was rush, the manuscript was stolen and hidden away by a citizen named Arnoux de Saint-Maximin. After years of traveling around between smugglers and collectors, it ended up in the hands of the Villeneuve-Trans family and sold to a German collector around 1900.

It was first published in 1904 by the Berlin psychiatrist and sexologist Iwan Bloch. The Viscount Charles de Noailles, whose wife Marie-Laure was a direct descendant of Sade, bought the manuscript in 1929 and later inherited by their daughter Natalie, who kept it in a drawer on the family estate. She entrusted the manuscript to a friend, Jean Grouet. In 1982, Grouet smuggled the manuscript into Switzerland, causing a large internation legal trial over the next decade. The French court demanded that the piece be brought back to the Noailles family. However, they were denied by a Swiss court in 1998.

In 2016, one of the largest and most credential publishing company produced copy of the story: Penguin Books. The story was never really a best seller or even widely read, however, there were other activities going on in this year that could be reason for the publication.

In the 2000s, Epstein Island was found out. In 2016, Donald Trump, a speculated visitor of the Island, started running for president.

120 Days of Sodom, undoubtly a sexual fantasy, was also a call of attention to the abuse of power politicians and authority figures make. Perhaps a subtle jab at the Orange Republican Candidate 2016.

I love reading works that bring to question and attention our authority structure.

Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a work from the early 1900s, with the central claim that freedom and democratic notions are destablizing to a country, instead favoring the idea that government control and manipulation through muitple forms of media are path to creating a strong state and overarching power in world dynamics.

It creates a blueprint and maps that planners could take in order to achieve world domination and sole control.

It grows ever terrifying learning about how government and officials grow and change to take power.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a warning, explanation, and outline in one. It describes the steps to taking over world powers through centralized government reforms and manipulation. And much of it sounds exactly like what is happening in our society today.

Bread and Circus

Every heard of Bread and Circus? It was something that the ancient Roman authorizes did with their citizens to keep them content in their poor life. Occasionally providing food and a show to the masses so they would feel well taken care of.

This was and is a manipulation tactic to keep the people from realizing their regime government went darker and deeper into control than they realized.

This particular text alludes to something similar. Our idea of freedom and democracy is an idea fed to us by our government to keep us content while they form a tighter connection and inner political circle that slowly corrupts the world to their own control.

“Republican rights irony for the pauper, for the necessity of every
day’s labor keeps him from gaining any advantage by such
rights and it only takes away the guarantee of continuous fixed wages, making him dependent on strikes, employers and comrades.”

The plan proposed offers lines for authority to create a public indifference towards social issues and reforms in order to create a collapse society that is instead led by the wealthy elite. This involves controlling policy, education, and media in order to rule over the general public.

In order to create power, you must have a sense of dismay and destruction. The planners begin the world domination, create a sense of disorder and chaos for the people, alluding that existing infrastructures are incapable of caring and providing for the people. This is to create the idea that favoring socialism or planners are manipulating the public to favor the socialist and democratic values that give the impression of them having control. After people become desperate for order, the planner is able to stake a move in the public eye.

“Having then inspired every man’s mind with the idea of his own self-importance, we will destroy the family life of the Gentiles and its educational importance; we will prevent men with clever brains from coming to the front”

Limiting the information the public has access to is a critical step. Full control over knowledge via owning books, media outlets, educational centers, and purchasing the narrative.

Power is not created just by owning something or having a loud voice. It’s created through constraining others.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is telling of how or why our governments do what they do.

Politics has nothing to do with morals and everything to do with silent movements.

120 Days of Sodom is a story written by the libertine Marquis De Sade. It features four main characters that lock themselves away for 120 days in an isolated castle with four main story tellers to indulge in their darkest sexual and tortuous desires onto dozens of victims. The writing includes descriptive actions of rape, torture, mutilation, murder, and grotesque sexual fetishes.

Due to the intensity of the story, I personally found myself unable to get through the whole story and instead depended on the class discussions and internet reviews of the story to gain an idea of how I should take the work. All reviewed resources are included below.

Literary Genius or Pervert?

The story was created while De Sade was imprisoned due to…a lot of things. He was a well known libertine who took sexual liberties throughout his life but we will save that for later. 

120 Days of Sodom feels like both a metaphor for the four major powerhouses of the world: Finance, Aristocrats, Church, and Judicial System but also reads as a screwed up fetish relief. 

The four main characters have the positions that represent the powerhouses of our world, today and in 1780s France. Finance manager, Bishop of Church, President/ Judge, and Aristocrat of high society. I would be pressed into not believing that these occupations are purposeful in the story.

The four main characters are capable of significant evil and carnage towards their victims, a possible representative of how those in power take to abusing the ones they control and demand over the generalized public. 

This was our main discussion in class and is certainly the outstanding theme. 

On the other hand, though, I beg the question as to why go into such horrific details about what the main characters do to their victims? 

The theme of those of high authority committing ghastly and horrific acts isn’t an unusual or extravagant idea, maybe not as commonly talked about in that time of France though. In the story, the details of how disgusting the characters are in terms of hygiene and sexual desires is predominantly built upon and continuously referenced. 

Maybe De Sade was mocking the representatives. Or maybe other thoughts were going through his head. 

De Sade himself was notoriously known for sexually and physically abusing women and girls, I have no doubt doing more atrocious than what we do know. 

This is why I consider the idea that the story was not meant as a commentary on authority, and instead meant to be a pleasurable written fantasy for De Sade to have in his time imprisoned. 

Should this text exists?

Okay this is the hard one in which I have a bit of a clearer idea on. 

Should the story be read? No. No, absolutely not. I don’t think it should be read in detail or analyzed. 

Should the story be known and taught? I’ll answer this with two other questions. 

Should we know and understand the Epstein Files? Or should we ignore its existence? 

Well how does this fantasy story written by a depraved man in prison relate to the horrendous acts of how beautifully admired lovely politicians in today’s world? 

As I have said before: people in power abusing their power for their own entertainment and fulfillment at the cost of others is a theme of our sad world. 

There are videos, pictures, descriptive written accounts of what happened on the island. They certainly are not blasting those scenes everywhere.

The details of 120 days are arguable for the screwed up pleasure from De Sade. But the metaphorical allusion and theme of high power abuse is for the people and public to understand the corruption of systems that control our world. 

I see no reason why one of the earlier accounts for this system callout cannot be discussed and talked about. However, the reading and furthering analysis of the descriptions conducted by the characters unto others can be a reason to have the details banned. 

Just like, watching the videos and pictures of what was done to the children on Epstein islands does not need to be worldly scrutinized, but the names and actions of the people that conducted the acts should be heavily judged and prosecuted. 

Sources Reviewed

Ainehi Edoro. 2010. “120 Days of Sodom.” Brittle Paper. September 27, 2010.
https://brittlepaper.com/2010/09/120-days-sodom/.

Givens, Harold. 2023. “The 120 Days of Sodom.” WikiSummaries. June 13, 2023.
https://wikisummaries.org/the-120-days-of-sodom/.

McMorran, Will. 2016. “‘The Most Impure Tale Ever Written’: How The 120 Days of Sodom
Became a ‘Classic.’” The Guardian. The Guardian. October 7, 2016.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/07/marquis-de-sade-120-days-of-sodom-published-classic.

The complete review – all rights reserved. 2016. “The 120 Days of Sodom – The Marquis de
Sade.” Complete-Review.Com. 2016.
https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/sade/120_days.htm.

Wikipedia Contributors. 2025. “The 120 Days of Sodom.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation.
September 10, 2025.