Category: Full-length Texts

From the moment you finish the introduction of this text, it almost immediately becomes obvious that this text is either satire or an elaborate hoax to frame Jewish people in a negative light. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion walks readers through a supposed plan for Jewish domination of the world, published with the intent to expose readers to this supposed conspiracy. It’s an extreme example of fearmongering, portraying Jews as selfish and destructive. The text mentions a variety of ways that the Jewish are planning to have global domination over all others– controlling the economy and media, eliminating the Christian society, infiltrating education– these are just a few ways that the “Elders” are supposedly planning to take over. 

While the text itself perpetuates nothing but false information, the paranoia that it produced wasn’t. Society, especially back around the 1920’s when this was released, are naturally prejudiced against minority groups (whether that be race, identity, religion) such as Jews, and are willing to listen if you claim that group is doing something that will affect the comfortable lifestyle of the general public. While this would probably go unnoticed if released today, it was taken very seriously back then, and surely contributed to Nazi propaganda. 

Aside from the obvious anti-Jewish message that can be taken from this, it also seems to shed a negative light on anti-government groups such as anarchists. Whether it was intentional or not, the text itself portrays some similar values to those groups with its whole overthrowing the government concept. However, it paints it in a light where the “Evil Jews” want to dominate the government as well as the rest of the world. This in itself pushes readers towards supporting the government, whether it’s out of fear or just seeking comfort. 

Even if this text is just a work of satire, I’m sure it did more harm than it did good. It portrays Jewish people in a light of such greed and hunger for power that it acts as a weapon towards their community. It spreads a destructive narrative that, even today, some people believe may hold truth to it, despite being proven to be untrue.

I could say that the events of this book are not for the faint of heart, but honestly, I don’t think they’re for anybody. You can tell from as soon as the first few pages that Marquis De Sade was a messed up man– some could say that ‘120 days’ is just an extreme form of social commentary, but it reads more as an outlet for De Sade’s most absurd and disgusting fantasies. 

Before I read any of this book, I was curious why people made such a big deal over its contents; unfortunately, the introduction alone was more than enough to satisfy my curiosity. De Sade doesn’t hesitate to get into the grim and gruesome, opening with a description of 4 vile men, then continuing on to detail them individually, shining a light on the darkest part of each of them. It’s not a situation where each description gets worse than the previous, but a situation where each man’s description is vulgar enough that they’re all incomparable. 

After describing men who have such terrible histories, you’d think the contents of the rest of the book would be less shocking. We’ve already seen such dark parts of them, so what more could there be? That’s where I proved myself wrong. De Sade attempts to give us a plot that might hold readers attention, but it’s quickly lost in the explicit and disturbing acts that are committed on every page. He details things that nobody wants to read, and that seems like enough. I wondered, how am I only halfway through? How could this get worse? I felt guilty for ever touching this book, let alone reading it. 

By the last 100-ish pages it seems that De Sade has given up on describing these things with great detail– not because he’s sick of it, because he certainly didn’t hold back on any of the pages prior, but likely because he felt the best way to truly portray these vile acts was by simply saying them. Reading one or two sentences detailing horrific and unimaginable things is enough for anyone to be chilled, and can sometimes be more disturbing than pages upon pages describing it; once you get past the initial horror, you eventually reach a point of desensitization, and the shock value that De Sade so clearly craves is gone. This alone shows his end goal. He wants readers to be disturbed and disgusted, scared to move ahead and read what else he’s written, yet intrigued enough to keep reading. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a morbid curiosity about what he could possibly write that would be worse than the previous hundreds of pages, so I guess that he was successful. Still, knowing how to disturb readers does not make you a good writer. Marquis De Sade was not a good writer, and this book was not good literature.