A photo of Henry Ford, who was responsible for Protocols’ circulation in the United States

As many modern analyses of Protocols have noted, the work is, somewhat unsurprisingly, fraudulent. While it was purported to have been written by a secret Jewish society bent on world domination, the real origin of the book is that it is a piece of anti-Semitic propaganda, published in the early 20th century in Imperial Russia, and it wasn’t until 1919 when the first English translation was released, shortly before the work was exposed as a hoax. The fraudulent nature of the work, I feel, is one of the most interesting aspects about it. What could compel somebody to write and publish something like this?

I think that to analyze the themes of Protocols, it’s important to look at the conditions in which it was written. When it was first published in the original Russian, Jews made up a very sizable portion of the Russian populace, and due to Orthodox Christianity being the major religion present at the time, people were often distrustful of Jewish people just for being outsiders. Additionally, in an era brimming with Revolutionary sentiment, a text decrying Communists, Anarchists, and Socialists was sure to strike a nerve with more conservative Russian citizens.

Additionally, ntisemitism was already raging in the United States, and Henry Ford, who was referred to by Heinrich Himmler as  “one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters” and was the only American mentioned favorably in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, was certainly no exception. His publication of Protocols was another step in furthering his antisemetic agenda. On that note, Protocols has the unfortunate distinction of being one of the most far-reaching pieces of anti-Semetic literature, being distributed among Germans by the Nazi Party, which no doubt contributed to the anti-Semitism already brewing among Germans at the time.
As previously mentioned, Protocols was debunked, with it’s existence as a forgery being proved by the Philip Graves and Allen Dulles, (The latter, interestingly enough, going on to be the first director of the CIA), in a series of articles published in the British newspaper, The Times.

Today, one of the few remaining copies of Protocols remains in the United States Holocaust museum, where it is displayed along with many other examples of anti-Semitic propaganda. Protocols has gone on to inspire various groups, with it being frequently cited throughout Neo-Nazi organizations, despite it being proven to be fraudulent. While the book itself may be a forgery, the ideas that it holds within are sadly still spreading throughout the world.

According to the preface, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was published in 1905 at Tsarskoye Sielo, Russia. As of 1920, a copy of the original is displayed at the British Museum Library.

This work presents itself as the meeting minutes of a group called the “Elders of Zion” and claims that the Jewish leaders were planning to gain cover over every aspect of life. However, these meetings never actually occurred, and these “Elders” didn’t exist. It has been found that the idea of a Jewish conspiracy present in the text can be traced back the older European antisemitic stereotypes.

When The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was originally published, it was during a period of instability in the Russian Empire, and the idea antisemitism was on the rise. As Russian moved towards the 1905 Russian Revolution, this work was used to encourage persecution of Jewish communities and provided justification to violent attacks against Jewish people.

By the 1920s, this text had been translated into multiple languages and appeared all over the world. In the United States, Henry Ford directed a publisher called The Dearborn Independent, which published The International Jew series. This series adopted elements in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Since Ford was an influential person, from my understanding, he used his platform to distribute and circulate antisemitic ideas. The distribution of these thoughts increased and amplified social fears and existing antisemitism.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was also used by Nazis. During the Hitler’s reign, publications were produced that further promoted conspiracy claims found in the text. This was useful to them because it helped spread hatred and fear towards Jewish people.

In my opinion, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are extremely historically significant. This is because the reception of the work demonstrates how a completely fake and fabricated conspiracy theory can disguise itself as a legitimate leaked document and then be used as propaganda years later.

What I find interesting about the background of this text is how much it has been translated. Too many, it was known that these protocols were 100% fake, but it kept spreading and gaining traction.

Overall, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an antisemitic propaganda filled with fake news in order to grow antisemitism.

One of the things that struck me most about The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was how it portrayed the Nazis. Several of the main characters in the movie, including Bruno’s mother, his grandmother, Lieutenant Kotler’s father, and even Lieutenant Kotler himself, who are all in effect Nazis, show sympathy for the Jews or take actions that defy the expectations of the Nazi regime. For example, Bruno’s mother, from the moment after learning from Lieutenant Kotler that the horrid smelling smoke coming from the chimneys are Jews’ bodies being burned, she immediately starts to go on a downward spiral: she constantly is crying, arguing with her husband, the Commandant, about how much of a monster he is and how the Nazis could be doing something so horrible like this. However, she also seems to understand at the beginning of the movie that the “farm” Bruno speaks of is a concentration camp. She even refers to the Jews as being “strange” and “different.” Yet, suddenly after learning about the Nazis burning the Jews’ bodies, she starts to feel more morally conflicted. Additionally, Bruno’s grandmother openly opposes the Nazi regime and the work that her son, the Commandant, is doing, which she demonstrates at the celebration at the beginning of the movie and even when she chooses deliberately to not visit Bruno and his family in the countryside (at least that is what I think really happened, meaning she was not actually sick). Additionally, Lieutenant Kotler’s father allegedly fled to Switzerland, likely because of his opposition to Nazi actions, but instead of speaking out, he ran. Even Kotler himself deliberately chooses not to report his father for fleeing, even though that was his duty to the regime. All of these characters, whether they were blindly following the Nazi law and order, were just trying to be on the winning side, or were just plain ignorant about the extent to which the Nazis were treating Jews, they were all still complicit in the Holocaust. So, it is interesting that the movie decided to go in that direction and portray the perpetrators (Nazis) as if not all of them were terrible people, which is fair to say because not everyone is completely bad, but that still does not take away from the results of their complicity in their silence.

Overt in its prejudice and overwhelming with its distortion of the truth, “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was almost boring to read. Not only was the text extremely repetitive, it also contradicted itself, then explained away its inconsistencies by stating Gentiles will never be able to understand the world around them. Taking on a eugenicist perspective, the text mentions seeing a clear difference in mentality between “Gentiles” and Jewish people, something attributed to God rather than a difference in culture, community, education, means, etc. The focus on making Jewish people all-powerful and Gentiles all stupid annoyed before I reached 50 pages; it seems so childish, as any scholarly text should be able to use better language or benchmarks than “he doesn’t follow the same religion as me, so he is intellectually inferior.” It is circular reasoning, something that people use when they can’t think of anything else; clearly the author was not Jewish, as any self-respecting human would be able to come up with better insults for their supposed mortal enemies.

Focusing on the section of the text discussing removing history from education, I am annoyed to see the very next sentence come into conflict with the prior by saying the previous Gentile governments will be used as examples of failures. Again, the text disagrees with itself, this time in terms of setting up future public education. This inconsistency just proves to me that either the author did not believe in the point they were trying to make, or whoever wrote this did not do enough research into the topic they are covering. Both show the lack of experience and pretentiousness of the author, someone clearly pretending to be something they are not in an attempt to discredit the people they “represent”. Knowing the contextual background for this text, I understand why such mistakes continued to stick out to me while reading, but as a scholar, I simply do not like such an exaggerated account.

Something that plagued me while reading “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was how French it seemed. Several times, “Liberté, Égalité, [and] Fraternité” are mentioned as part of Jewish political philosophy; not to mention how multiple words have French spelling, instead of Russian or even Yiddish phrases. At the end of the text, it is explained that these “minutes” were discovered in France, supposedly where the Zionist headquarters is located. However, this makes no sense to me, as there was a large population of Jewish people living in Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century.

Something that specifically caught my attention in this matter was the term “Dreyfus schools”, a term that likely refers to the case of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Mr. Dreyfus was a Jewish man living in France who was falsely accused of treason in 1894, and he is mentioned as the source of French antisemitism in the twentieth century. According to my research, this was worsened by the world-wide effects of the Great Depression, as extremists and fascists with France and throughout Europe took the opportunity to blame the hard times on the Jewish people. As this occurred only a few years before the publishing of “Protocols”, I find it hard to believe that powerful Jewish world leaders were gathering in France to discuss world domination. And further, it increases my belief that whoever wrote this book was not only an Anti-Semite, but someone who had French experience or connections.

Of course, it is difficult to determine who exactly forged this text, but I think all hypotheses should be considered. Additionally, something I thought while re-reading was that the text may have been created by multiple authors, thereby making certain sections of the book seem to hold certain attributes from certain nationalities, and making other sections a bit more unclear. All in all, reflecting on the historical context and linguistic characteristics has been interesting and I want to do this again with future blog posts.

While reading The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, one thing that I found strange was how the text talks about a secret group controlling almost everything. It talks about governments, money, the press, and the way people think. What surprised me was how seriously the speakers talk about these ideas. They do not really question what they are saying. They just present it like it is the truth. 

Another thing I noticed was how much the text talks about control. The speakers want to have power over governments and over the information that people receive. I found this interesting because they seem to believe that controlling what people know is one of the easiest ways to control society. Some parts were also confusing to me because the text keeps connecting many different problems to the same group. 

The part that stood out to me the most was the way the text talks about money and power together. It makes money seem like one of the main ways to influence governments and people. I found this interesting because even though the text is focused on a secret plan, a lot of the ideas keep coming back to things that are common in society, like politics, money, and the media. 

Overall, I found the text strange and uncomfortable to read. What stayed with me the most was how confident the speakers were about their ideas and how they connected almost everything to control. I did not always understand why they were making certain connections, but that was also what made the text interesting to me. 

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is one of the most infamous examples of an anti semitic text. The work depicts itself as a real account of a meeting of Jewish leaders that are planning world domination. (The validity that this is an account of a real meeting has been disproven numerous times). During the many years since its publication, It has been spread around the globe and endorsed by various anti-Semites including Adolf Hitler and Henry Ford. Despite being over one-hundred years old, many of the conspires presented in the book are still repeated today.

The book contains many “protocols” that are laid out by the elders during the meeting on how to control the gentiles, or non-Jews. These protocols invoke many negative stereotypes of Jewish people such as them controlling the world’s finances, the press, and the government. These elders want to utilize these protocols to promote liberalism/socialism, undermine religion, and encourage materialism. The ultimate goal of these elders is control of the world through a global regime using authoritative and tyrannical rule.

The thing that most stood out to me about this text was how little anti semitic conspiracies have changed over one-hundred years. I have heard and seen many of the talking points that are featured in this book online, albeit more dressed up and not directly mentioning jews. I think this is a strong testament to the effects that text like this can have on people who haven’t even read it more than a century later.

I’m not sure exactly where to start with this text. There are so many things that go on in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

First off, the preface of the text ends with “Gentiles-Beware!” Which is telling non-Jewish readers to watch out and protect themselves from what will be detailed. Moving on to the introduction, the narrator acknowledges that these protocols won’t read like meeting minutes and will lack some information. However, the narrator claims that the missing evidence is further proof that the conspiracy has a lot of secrecy and power. I find this interesting because the author is trying to justify that the text shouldn’t be doubted because of the lack of evidence.

As the text progresses to the protocols, it starts by saying that non-Jewish people are selfish and power-hungry. It states that people cannot govern themselves because people become divided, which allows a coup. They state that they are already manipulating these groups of people to create chaos to provide an opening for their takeover. I believe the purpose of this idea is to stir up fear that these protocols are already in motion. The piece states that Jewish people believe whoever is strong enough should rule and that the current government is weak and flawed because if one system goes down, the whole government will go down. It also says that when they come into power, the non-Jewish people will bow down for the right to exist.

The text also describes how once the Jewish people take power, they will go to war if a country opposes them. From my understanding, the text is saying that violence is the answer to demonstrate power and domination.

One of the big ideas in the text is the degradation of individual thoughts and ideas. Once power is seized, they will reeducate the public using their doctrines and teach obedience. As education continues onto universities, these schools will teach people not to question things and will remove education programs that may upset people, and the program left will teach people to love their leader. I believe that the “upsetting” education programs are programs that cause cognitive dissonance and make them question the morality of their leadership. These protocols also claim that the Jewish people will erase everything from the public’s mind except the bad parts of the non-Jewish government. From my interpretation, the main point of reteaching people is to lose independent thinking and create minds that solely rely on the government for knowledge and ideas. I believe this interpretation is furthered by the fact that this government plans not to let people older than 55 serve in court because it is harder to control someone who can be “set in their ways.”

Another big idea I grasped was the power of the press. The text described how the Jewish government will control the press by using stamps and controlling certain publications. The idea with stamps is that a stamp is needed and paid for to publish information. By requiring a stamp, the government will be able to control what is published. When getting a stamp for a book shorter than 300 pages, it will be more expensive which will cause writers to write more books and therefore decrease readership. To me, this seems like a way to decrease creative and independent thinking by placing taxes upon it. Additionally, the government will control a variety of newspapers. They will have an official one that supports the government, an unofficial one that attracts people who are lukewarm or indifferent, and a paper that is in complete opposition to the government. The papers that pose a negative view of the government will be used to find people who doubt or reject the system. From my interpretation, I believe the text says that this paper will also have false information, so it doesn’t provide a valid negative point against the new Jewish government. This government will also control papers tailored to different political parties and, to me, the reasoning behind this is to make people feel like their parties are different; however, these parties only desire what the government deems acceptable. By controlling the forms of publishing, the government will make people feel whatever they want and silence the people who oppose them. I feel like this control over the press is a way of saying that the press can control the masses and make their coup more effective.

Overall, I do understand that everything in the text is made up. However, I did analyze it like the text was real because that is how people used to perceive this work. I believe that interpreting the writing like it isn’t real goes too far into the context of the book, which is not the focus of the blog post.

One of the questions that arose for me while I was reading the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was whether it was a direct precursor to the Holocaust. After doing some digging, I found that Adolf Hitler, Germany’s Nazi era dictator from 1933 until 1945, and Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler’s closest, most devoted followers and chief propagandist for the Nazi party, both knew of the existence of the protocols and of the fact that they were forgeries. In fact, the protocols had been disproven by journalists and experts in a series of 1921 articles by The Times. Even Goebbels himself wrote in his diary that he knew the protocols were phony. However, that did not stop the Nazi regime from propagating the “inner truth” of the text and using it to advance their political agenda at the time. As evidence of this, the protocols were even assigned by German teachers across Nazi Germany, as if they were factual, to indoctrinate and brainwash German schoolchildren to express hatred towards Jews. 

Even earlier than Hitler and Goebbels, Erich Ludendorff, one of Germany’s top military leaders, announced in 1919 that Jews were one of several groups responsible for the nation’s defeat. By 1922, he was focusing entirely on Jews as “the enemy,” to which he cited the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. So, to answer my initial question, it seems like the protocols were heavily cited by German authority from the 1910s up until the fall of the Nazi regime to scapegoat Jews and blame them for the nation’s problems at the time, which suggests they played an instrumental role in inciting/justifying the Holocaust.

Something else that I investigated was the history of Jews in Russia and how they were perceived by Russians throughout history. Way before the protocols were even written, there already existed a heavy anti-Jew sentiment in the Russian Empire due to the Christian belief that Jews killed Jesus. In fact, Jews were even barred from entering the Russian Empire because this hatred was so prevalent. Later, after the Russian Empire acquired more Polish-Lithuanian and Ottoman territory, its Jewish population increased dramatically because it had gained several regions that had large populations of Jews from 1772-1815. This territory acquisition caused Imperial Russia to have the largest Jewish population in the world at one point. In 1903, the same year that the protocols were first distributed, there were a series of pogroms, or anti-Jewish riots that occurred. It is possible that the protocols fostered anti-Jewish sentiments even more, potentially escalating the scale of these pogroms.

Overall, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is one of the most notorious antisemitic documents that has ever been distributed. So much so that it has been controversial through various eras of global history, first in early 1900s Russia, second in Nazi Germany, and has even resurfaced in recent presidential election campaigns. The longevity of this text and its direct involvement in some of the most notably horrific moments in history certainly serve as a reminder of its impact.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is, sadly, hardly anything that I haven’t seen before. Unfortunately, throughout the world’s history the Jewish people have been target to countless attempts to defame and villainize them, and this book is unsurprisingly no different. The work is presented as a text stolen from a meeting of the so-called Elders of Zion, an alleged group of Jewish leaders, and documents how they control the world and plan on subjugating humanity to their whims. The book is said to be 100% factual, and it is clear that the information presented, detailing how the Jews want to achieve total world domination and how any non-Jews will be ruled cruelly over, is intended to spread Anti-Semitism, and provoke non-Jewish readers into distrusting and even hating them.

I think one of the things that surprised me the most about reading Protocols is how it echos many modern-day conspiracies, those focusing on a shadowy “world elite” pulling the world’s strings from the shadows, e.g., the concept of an Illuminati-type organization that controls world leaders and influences politics. I’m willing to bet that this text is where that concept came from, considering just how similar the theory put forward by Protocols and these newer conspiracy theories are. The book also echos many anti-Semitic tropes, like the Jewish people looking down on Gentiles, and controlling things like the economy, the media, politics, the judicial system, etc. There is also a brief mention on how these elders want to make use of things like subways to “bomb every city”, so there’s an aspect of immediate danger likely intended to rile up the audience.

This is getting more into the context side of things, but the book also makes mention of how communists and socialists are apparently puppets of this Jewish organization, a writing choice that was no doubt influenced by the pre-revolution climate of Imperial Russia (and why staunchly capitalist Henry Ford may have chosen this specific anti-Semitic text to spread), as well as the large Jewish population present in Russia at the time. I find it interesting that there’s a possible motive for writing beyond sheer anti-semitism, as because throughout history Jewish people have been persecuted and blamed for countless things, by attaching socialists/communists to them the original authors may be trying to discredit those groups and their messaging.

I think, unlike the other readings presented in this class, this work truly has very little, if any, meaning or value. Even 120 days, gratuitous as it is, attempts to comment on the nature of human sexuality. Protocols, however, exists only as a piece of antisemitic propaganda, and doesn’t make any attempt at literary insight outside of “The Jews control all the world governments and are plotting to dismantle democracy”. It has been shown to lead directly to dangerous and hateful thoughts and actions and, despite my interest in banned or controversial books, I feel like this one is better left forgotten.

The first literary element employed in the prologue to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion by the author is ethos. Right off-the-bat, the author is trying to establish the credibility and legitimacy of the text by saying that its contents are “truisms” (ordinary truths) no matter how “pungent” and “hateful” they get. I found this aspect very ironic since this document is famously known to be a forgery. This also struck me as interesting because it sounds like the author was worried that these protocols would be too controversial for the masses that he had to try and beggingly convince the audience that there is still truth to them.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion follows the alleged plans of Jewish leaders to ascertain global domination by controlling the media, economy, government, and education systems. One of my biggest takeaways from the text was how it labeled liberalism as “bad” and the constant comparisons there are between the existing constitutions among the Gentiles and the Jews’ “plans” that will improve these conditions. The protocols also discuss how the Gentiles cannot be left to rule themselves, which is the opposite of democratic governments like that of the United States where we have popular sovereignty. The alleged Jewish solution to this is to establish an autocracy where the Elders select an all-powerful king that rules with firmness and cruelty. This reminded me of Hobbes’s Enlightenment philosophy which now democratic countries like the U.S. rejected. It is as if the author of these fake protocols wanted readers to be fearful that global domination by the Jews was a serious threat because it would set countries back from some of the improved governmental systems the many had adopted by the time of the protocols’ publication.

The reasoning behind having power concentrated in one cruel king is that evil is the only way of attaining good which demonstrated parallels for me with Raskolnikov’s “extraordinary man” theory from Crime and Punishment. This may be reach, but it may be possible that a reference like this may have reached a lot of people and made them even more concerned about a possible Jewish threat because it was likely written for a Russian audience due to the large presence of Jews in Russia at the time the protocols were published as well as the alleged threat that Russia would soon be subdued next by Jewish authority if action was not taken.

I also noticed that the text propagates several negative Jewish stereotypes. For example, the idea that all Jews control the media, banks, the world, that they are conniving, calculating, ruthless, arrogant, greedy, obsessed with money, and rich. The text utilizes all these stereotypes extensively. These examples are illustrated in the several sections of the protocols that put emphasis on money and how it will result in total control for the Jewish “super-government,” how the new Jewish government will tax internally to make more revenues for their government, how the Jewish government will control information that the press reports on to trick the “bestial” Gentiles into thinking that they have liberty when they do not, etc.

Overall, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is definitely an antisemitic text that is worthy of controversy.

The Marquis de Sade was an aristocrat and writer who lived from 1740 to 1814. He came from the class of pre-revolutionary France but his personal life was full of scandals, legal problems and imprisonment. He was imprisoned at the Bastille in 1784. While he was there he worked on The 120 Days of Sodom. Because he was afraid that the manuscript would be taken away from him he had to write it 

One of the interesting things about the book is how it was originally written. Sade wrote the manuscript on a roll of paper made from 33 pieces of paper connected together measuring almost 12 meters. He wrote it in small handwriting so that it could be rolled up and hidden. He started it in October 1785. Finished the manuscript in only 37 days. However the work was never completely finished. Only the first section was fully written, while the later sections were mostly left as plans and notes. 

The manuscript also had a history after Sade left the Bastille. In July 1789 just before the Bastille was stormed Sade was moved to another prison. Was not allowed to take his belongings with him. His manuscripts were then taken during the looting of the Bastille. For a time Sade believed that the manuscript had been destroyed. Instead it. Was passed between different people and collections. Eventually it was bought by the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 2021, where the original manuscript is now preserved. 

The book did not become publicly available away. Its first publication was in 1904 than one hundred years after Sade wrote it. Eugen Dühren, the pseudonym of the German psychiatrist Iwan Bloch published the edition in Berlin. Later Maurice Heine produced a new edition between 1931 and 1935 which became a basis for later editions. The book also developed a reputation as a forbidden text because of its content and history of censorship and limited circulation. 

What I find interesting about the context is that the book almost had as complicated a life as its author. It was written secretly in prison almost disappeared was passed between collectors and was not published until, than a century later. Knowing this makes the book feel like a normal novel and more like a text that somehow survived despite everything that happened to it. 

120 Days of Sodom was written during the Ancien Régime. This was a period with a strict social hierarchy. During this time, there was increasing social and economic unrest due to the population growing and an economic crisis. In France, an era of Enlightenment was rising which challenged religion and absolute monarchy. These events are reflected in my interpretation of the text. A strict social structure is seen as the four libertines distinguish themselves from the other people in the castle by controlling their schedule and when they can use the bathroom. Additionally, themes of enlightenment can be seen in the text. This theme can be observed because the libertines were actively against religion and punished the girls in the castle who were caught praying.

Marquis de Sade wrote 120 Days of Sodom in 37 days during his imprisonment in the Bastille. De Sade was a French nobleman, writer, and active in politics. During de Sade’s life, he was imprisoned multiple times. From 1763-1768, de Sade was arrested for blasphemous sexual acts and abusing a widow named Rose Keller. In 1772, he was sentenced to death for sodomy and poisoning; however, he escaped this fate by running to Italy. In 1777-1785, he was imprisoned for moral corruption and scandalous conduct, and this is where de Sade wrote 120 Days of Sodom. During the French Revolution, he had a chance at freedom, but in 1801, de Sade was arrested for circulating erotic texts. He ended up dying at Charenton asylum. The constant imprisonment for scandal leads me to question whether de Sade wrote this text as a way to defy his imprisonment or to expel his inner desires and cravings. I wonder if he wishes he was one of the four libertines because they did what they wanted and didn’t face any consequences.

De Sade’s description of the text also led me to question who exactly he thinks his readers are. He constantly refers to the readers through the text and exclusively uses male terminology. My only idea as to who the readers could me are the other inmates in the Bastille. Or maybe he only uses male terminology because female literacy was so uncommon? De Sade also uses “we” and “our” as a narrator. From my interpretation, this could suggest that his mental state wasn’t the best or there was another author (which is unlikely).

Overall, the context surrounding the text makes me question more and more de Sade’s personal message by writing 120 Days of Sodom.