The Global Impact of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Century-Old Myth 0415598923, 9780415598927

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The Global Impact of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Century-Old Myth
 0415598923, 9780415598927

Table of contents :
Front Cover
The Global Impact of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Copyright Page
Contents
List of figures
Contributors
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction - hate and absurdity: the impact of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Esther Webman
Part I: Revisiting the origins of the Protocols
2. Toward the prehistory of the Protocols: Iustin'ia Dmitrievna Glinka and her letter to Emperor Alexander IIl: Lev Aronov, Henryk Baran, and Dmitri Zubarev
3. The enemy of humanity: The Protocols paradigm in nineteenth- century Russian mentality: Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern
Part II: The impact of the Protocols since the 1920s till the end of World War II
4. Why the Jews?: The impact of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on Nazi ideology and policy: Wolfram Meyer zu Uptrup
5. Philosemites embracing the Protocols?: American fundamentalist Christians and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Yaakov Ariel
6. Hugo Wast and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Argentina: Graciela Ben-Dror
7. Political dissemination of the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory and the outbreak of La Violencia in Colombia, 1920−1946: Thomas J. Williford
Part III: The appeal of the
Protocols after World War II
8. The re-emergence of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Łódź, 1968: Beate Kosmala
9. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on the internet: How radical political groups are networked via antisemitic conspiracy theories: Juliane Wetzel
10. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Japan: David G. Goodman
11. Adoption of the Protocols in the Arab discourse on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Zionism, and the Jews: Esther Webman
12. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Iranian political and cultural discourse: Orly R. Rahimiyan
13. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Turkey: Rifat N. Bali
14. Rationalizing the Hidden Hand: ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri’s theory of the “Judaization of Society”: Goetz Nordbruch
Part IV: The Protocols on trial
15. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in court: The Bern trials, 1933−1937: Michael Hagemeister
16. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in South Africa: From radical white right to radical Islamists: Milton Shain
17. The case of the Brazilian revisionist S.E. Castan: Luiz Nazario
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Global Impact of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has attracted the interest of politicians and academicians and generated extensive research since the tract first appeared in the early twentieth century. Despite having repeatedly been discredited as a historical document, and having served as an inspiration for Hitler’s antisemitism and the Holocaust, it continues, even in our time, to have wide appeal. Exploring the Protocols’ successful dissemination and impact around the world, including for the first time in Muslim and Arab countries, this volume attempts to understand their enduring popularity, one hundred years after their first appearance, in so many diverse societies and cultures. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, the book covers themes such as: • • • • •

Why have the Protocols survived to the present day and what are the sources from which they draw their strength? What significance do the Protocols have today in mainstream worldviews? Are they gaining in importance? Are they still today a warrant for genocide or merely a reflection of xenophobic nationalism? Can they be fought by logical argumentation?

This comprehensive volume will be of interest to specialists, teachers, and students working in the fields of antisemitism, the far right, Jewish studies, and modern history. Esther Webman is a senior research fellow at the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism and the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. She is also head of the Zeev Vered Desk for the Study of Tolerance and Intolerance in the Middle East in the Roth Institute.

Routledge Jewish Studies Series Series Editor: Oliver Leaman, University of Kentucky

Studies, which are interpreted to cover the disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology, culture, politics, philosophy, theology, religion, as they relate to Jewish affairs. The remit includes texts which have as their primary focus issues, ideas, personalities and events of relevance to Jews, Jewish life and the concepts which have characterised Jewish culture both in the past and today. The series is interested in receiving appropriate scripts or proposals. Medieval Jewish Philosophy An Introduction Dan Cohn-Sherbok Facing the Other The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas Edited by Seán Hand Moses Maimonides Oliver Leaman A User’s Guide to Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption Norbert M. Samuelson On Liberty Jewish Philosophical Perspectives Edited by Daniel H. Frank Referring to God Jewish and Christian Philosophical and Theological Perspectives Edited by Paul Helm

Judaism, Philosophy, Culture Selected Studies by E. I. J. Rosenthal Erwin Rosenthal Philosophy of the Talmud Hyam Maccoby From Synagogue to Church: the Traditional Design Its Beginning, its Definition, its End John Wilkinson Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt Margaret Betz Hull Deconstructing the Bible Abraham ibn Ezra’s Introduction to the Torah Irene Lancaster Image of the Black in Jewish Culture A History of the Other Abraham Melamed

From Falashas to Ethiopian Jews Daniel Summerfield Philosophy in a Time of Crisis Don Isaac Abravanel: Defender of the Faith Seymour Feldman Jews, Muslims and Mass Media Mediating the ‘Other’ Edited by Tudor Parfitt with Yulia Egorova Jews of Ethiopia The Birth of an Elite Edited by Emanuela Trevisan Semi and Tudor Parfitt Art in Zion The Genesis of National Art in Jewish Palestine Dalia Manor Hebrew Language and Jewish Thought David Patterson Contemporary Jewish Philosophy An Introduction Irene Kajon Antisemitism and Modernity Innovation and Continuity Hyam Maccoby Jews and India History, Image, Perceptions Yulia Egorova Jewish Mysticism and Magic An Anthropological Perspective Maureen Bloom

Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed: Silence and Salvation Donald McCallum Muscular Judaism The Jewish Body and the Politics of Regeneration Todd Samuel Presner Jewish Cultural Nationalism David Aberbach The Jewish-Chinese Nexus A Meeting of Civilizations Edited by M. Avrum Ehrlich German-Jewish Popular Culture before the Holocaust Kafka’s Kitsch David Brenner The Jews as a Chosen People Tradition and Transformation S. Leyla Gürkan Philosophy and Rabbinic Culture Jewish Interpretation and Controversy in Medieval Languedoc Gregg Stern Jewish Blood Reality and Metaphor in History, Religion and Culture Edited by Mitchell B. Hart Jewish Education and History Continuity, Crisis and Change Moshe Aberbach; Edited and translated by David Aberbach Jews and Judaism in Modern China M. Avrum Ehrlich

Political Theologies in the Holy Land Israeli Messianism and its Critics David Ohana Collaboration with the Nazis Public Discourse after the Holocaust Edited by Roni Stauber

The Global Impact of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion A Century-old Myth Edited by Esther Webman

The Global Impact of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion A century-old myth Edited by Esther Webman

First published 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2011 Esther Webman for selection and editorial matter; individual contributors for their contributions The right of Esther Webman to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The global impact of the Protocols of the elders of Zion : a century-old myth / edited by Esther Webman. p. cm. – (Routledge Jewish studies series ; 35) “This volume ... comprises a compilation of papers presented at a conference held in October 2004 at Tel Aviv University”– Introd. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Protocols of the wise men of Zion–Congresses. 2. Antisemitism– History–Congresses. I. Webman, Esther. DS145.P7G56 2011 305.892’4—dc22 2010050644 ISBN 978–0-415–59892–7 (hbk) ISBN 978–0-203–81429–1 (ebk) Typeset in Baskerville by Pindar NZ, Auckland, New Zealand

Contents

List of figures Contributors Acknowledgments 1 Introduction – hate and absurdity: the impact of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

x xii xvi

1

ESTHER WEBMAN

PART I

Revisiting the origins of the Protocols 2 Toward the prehistory of the Protocols: Iustin'ia Dmitrievna Glinka and her letter to Emperor Alexander III

25

27

LEV ARONOV, HENR YK BARAN, AND DMITRI ZUBAREV

3 The enemy of humanity: The Protocols paradigm in nineteenth-century Russian mentality

44

YOHANAN PETROVSKY- SHTERN

PART II

The impact of the Protocols since the 1920s till the end of World War II 4 Why the Jews? The impact of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on Nazi ideology and policy

67

69

WOLFRAM MEYER ZU UPTRUP

5 Philosemites embracing the Protocols? American fundamentalist Christians and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion YAAKOV ARIEL

89

viii

Contents

6 Hugo Wast and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Argentina

101

GRACIELA BEN- DROR

7 Political dissemination of the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory and the outbreak of La Violencia in Colombia, 1920−1946

112

THOMAS J. WILLIFORD

PART III

The appeal of the Protocols after World War II 8 The re-emergence of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Łódź, 1968

131

133

BEATE KOSMALA

9 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on the internet: How radical political groups are networked via antisemitic conspiracy theories

147

JULIANE WETZEL

10 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Japan

161

DAVID G. GOODMAN

11 Adoption of the Protocols in the Arab discourse on the Arab− Israeli conflict, Zionism, and the Jews

175

ESTHER WEBMAN

12 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Iranian political and cultural discourse

196

ORLY R. RAHIMIYAN

13 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Turkey

220

RIFAT N. BALI

14 Rationalizing the Hidden Hand: ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri’s theory of the “Judaization of Society” GOETZ NORDBRUCH

229

Contents ix PART IV

The Protocols on trial

239

15 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in court: The Bern trials, 1933−1937

241

MICHAEL HAGEMEISTER

16 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in South Africa: From radical white right to radical Islamists

254

MILTON SHAIN

17 The case of the Brazilian revisionist S.E. Castan

269

LUIZ NAZARIO

Bibliography Index

281 309

List of figures

4.1

The Nazi edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 13th ed., 1933 4.2 “The Structure of the Jewish Internationale,” SS-Leitheft, vol. 2, ed. Reichsführer SS, SS-Hauptamp, Berlin, April 1936 4.3 “Political Configuration of the Jews in Germany,” SS-Leitheft, vol. 2, ed. Reichsführer SS, SS-Hauptamp, Berlin, April 1936 4.4 “Many People – Same Leaders,” Völkischer Beobachter, August 31, 1925 4.5 “Appeal: Productive people of Germany! Citizens! Farmers! Civil servants! Workers! National Socialists! Antisemites!” Völkischer Beobachter, February 28, 1926 4.6 “To the productive people of Germany!” Völkischer Beobachter (special edition), March 1, 1928 4.7 “Führer, command, we obey!” Parole der Woche, July 2−8, 1941 4.8 Original drawing in Schulungsbrief, January 1942 4.9 “The Big Three …,” Das Schwarze Korps, July 8, 1943 4.10 “Forward, the Jew expects everyone to do his duty,” Der Durchbruch, Soldiers Newspaper at the Eastern Front, September 3, 1944 4.11 NSDAP fighter, “The Attack” (“You won’t defeat us”), in Joseph Goebbels, Knorke (Munich, 1928) 12.1 From the English translation of the Persian version of the Protocols, published by the Islamic Propagation Organization (1985), p. 7 12.2 Cover of re-edition of “R.Sh.,” The Secrets of the Concealed Jewish Organization (Tehran, 2002−3) 12.3 Cover of Mudaresī, The World Plaything of Judaism (Tehran, 2002) 15.1 Plaintiffs and their lawyers; far right Georges Brunschvig (Courtesy of Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, Zürich) 15.2 Ulrich Fleischhauer, expert witness for the defense (Courtesy of Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, Zürich)

71 74 75 76

77 78 82 83 84

85 86

205 206 207 244 246

List of figures xi 15.3 15.4

The courtroom in Bern (Courtesy of Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, Zürich) (From left to right) Judge Walter Meyer, Arthur Baumgarten, expert witness for the plaintiffs, and Carl Albert Loosli, independent court expert (Courtesy of Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, Zürich)

247

248

List of contributors

Yaakov Ariel is professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published a number of books and articles on Protestant thinkers and groups and their attitudes toward Judaism and Jews. His book, Evangelizing the Chosen People (2000), received a prize from the American Society of Church History. Lev Aronov is a researcher at Moscow’s State Archive of the Russian Federation. Rifat N. Bali is an independent scholar, a research fellow of Alberto Benveniste Center for Sephardic Studies and Culture at the Religious Studies Department of EPHE (École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne, Paris), and a member of the Ottoman-Turkish Sephardic Culture Research Center. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the history of Turkish Jews, antisemitism, and conspiracy theories in contemporary Turkey, as well as the editor of several monographs on the history of the Turkish Republic. Henryk Baran is professor of Slavic Studies at the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Albany. Baran’s research has been included in some seventy articles and book chapters, as well as in four edited books. He is a founding editor of Elementa: Journal of Slavic Studies and Comparative Cultural Semiotics. Graciela Ben Dror is director of Moreshet, Mordechai Anielevicz Memorial, the Center for Holocaust Study and Research, and a senior researcher of Latin America at the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, Tel Aviv University. Her Ph.D. dissertation, entitled “The Catholic Church in Argentina and the Jewish People during the Holocaust Era, 1933–1945,” was published both in English and Spanish. She has also written numerous articles on various aspects of the Church’s relations with the Jews, and is often invited to participate in conferences on the subject. David G. Goodman is professor of Japanese literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His books include Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and Uses of a Cultural Stereotype (co-authored with Masanori

List of contributors xiii Miyazawa); After Apocalypse: Four Japanese Plays of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; The Return of the Gods: Japanese Drama and Culture in the 1960s; and Angura: Posters of the Japanese Avant-Garde. In addition to his publications in English, Goodman has written four books in Japanese, including Israel: Voices and Faces (1979). Michael Hagemeister is a researcher in the Department of History at the University of Basel. He studied history, and Slavic languages and literature at the Universities of Basel and Marburg, and was a lecturer in East European history at the Universities of Marburg, Bochum, Basel, Innsbruck, Frankfurt (Oder), and Berlin. His research interests include Russian philosophy, and utopian and apocalyptic thought. He is currently preparing an edition of documents on the Bern trials against The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and a monograph on Sergei Nilus and the Protocols. Beate Kosmala is a historian and senior researcher at the German Resistance Memorial Center in Berlin since 2005. She was a staff member at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University Berlin, and in 2000/2001 a visiting scholar at the International Institute for Holocaust Research in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. Her main fields of research are the persecution of the Jews in Germany 1933–1945 and Polish-Jewish and German-Polish relations in the twentieth century. Luiz Nazario is professor of film history at the Fine Arts School of the Federal University of Minas Gerais. His doctoral thesis, Imaginários da destruição (Imaginaries of Destruction, 1994), dwelt on the role movies played in the preparation of the Holocaust. He is the author of several books, including A cidade imaginária (The Imaginary City, 2005), Autos-de-fé como espetáculos de massa (Autos da Fe as Mass Spectacles, 2005) and Todos os corpos de Pasolini (All the Bodies of Pasolini, 2007). Goetz Nordbruch is assistant professor at the Center for Contemporary Middle East Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense. His research interests include the history of Arab-European intellectual encounters and the development of modern Arab political culture. He is currently working on a research project on Arab students in interwar Europe. Dr. Nordbruch has published several articles on conspiracy theories and antisemitism in the Arab world. His book, Nazism in Syria and Lebanon: The Ambivalence of the German Option, 1933–1945, was published in December 2008. Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern teaches European Jewish history in the History Department and the Crown Family Center for Jewish Studies at Northwestern University. He has published some one hundred articles and authored two books, The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making and Unmaking of the Ukrainian Jew (Yale University Press, 2009) and Jews in the Russian Army: Drafted into Modernity, 1827–1917 (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

xiv

List of contributors

Orly R. Rahimiyan is a Ph.D. student in the Middle Eastern Department at Ben-Gurion University and a Fulbright Scholar. She is a teaching assistant at Ben-Gurion University and a research fellow at Ben Zvi Institute, specializing in Jewish communities of the Middle East. During the spring semester 2007 she was a research fellow at the Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University, New York. Her doctoral dissertation is entitled “Images of the Jews in 20th Century Iran.” Milton Shain teaches modern Jewish history and is director of the Isaac and Jessie Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research at the University of Cape Town. He has written and edited several books on South African Jewish history and the history of antisemitism, including The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa (1994) and Antisemitism (1998). His most recent book (co-authored with Richard Mendelsohn) The Jews in South Africa: An Illustrated History, was published in 2008. Wolfram Meyer zu Uptrup obtained his doctorate from the Technische Universität Berlin in 1999. Since 1994 he has been employed by the government of the State of Brandenburg in the development of historical and political education in schools, and education projects with partners in Poland. His book, Kampf gegen die “jüdischen Weltverschwörung”: Antisemitismus der Nationalsozialisten von 1919 bis 1945 was published in Berlin in 2003. Esther Webman is a senior research fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University. She is acting director of the Stephen Roth Institute and a member of the editorial board of Moreshet, Journal for the Study of the Holocaust and Antisemitism. Dr. Webman has published extensively on antisemitism and the representation of the Holocaust in the Arab world. Her prize-winning book From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust, co-authored with Meir Litvak (Columbia University Press), came out in 2009. Juliane Wetzel has been a senior researcher at the Center for Research on Antisemitism, Technical University Berlin, since 1991. She also serves as chair of the Academic Working Group of the International Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. She has published extensively on antisemitism today, right-wing extremism, Jewish persecution during the National Socialist era and Jewish Displaced Persons in Germany after World War II. Thomas J. Williford is assistant professor of history at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, Minnesota. His work examines the discursive framework that helped inspire the eliminationist violence that erupted between Liberals and Conservatives in Colombia in the late 1940s. Dr. Williford lived and worked in Bogotá from 1991 to 2000, where he

List of contributors xv completed an MA in Colombian history at the Universidad Nacional. His MA thesis was published by Editorial Planeta in Bogotá in 2005 as Laureano Gómez y los masones, 1936–1942. He received his doctorate in Latin American history from Vanderbilt University in 2005 after successful completion of his dissertation, “Armando los espíritus: Political Rhetoric in Colombia on the Eve of La Violencia, 1930–1945.” Dmitiri Zubarev is a researcher at the International Historic-Enlightenment Human Rights and Humanitarian Society “Memorial.”

Acknowledgments

The essays in this volume were presented at a conference held in 2004 at Tel Aviv University by the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism to mark the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Bearing in mind the time that has elapsed, it is a pleasant task to reach the acknowledgments phase so that I can finally thank all those who have borne with me and helped bring this book to fruition. First and foremost, I would like to express my deep gratitude to the Stephen Roth Institute, and especially its then head Prof. Dina Porat, for having confidence in me and entrusting me with the daunting task of editing this volume; to the distinguished contributors, for their cooperation and patience; and to my right and left hand Beryl Belsky, the Institute’s publications editor, who spared no effort to assist me with her sharp eye and meticulous style. Special thanks are due also to Routledge for their initial interest in the manuscript, and particularly to Prof. Oliver Leaman, editor of the Jewish Studies Series, senior editorial assistant Susanne Richardson and project manager Camille Lowe. Last but not least, I dedicate this book to my beloved children Adi and Oded, who had to endure my constant chatter about this endeavor.

1

Introduction Hate and absurdity: the impact of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion1 Esther Webman

As a forgery and a construct of antisemitism, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (hereafter, the Protocols2) has attracted the interest of politicians and academicians, and generated extensive research. Attempts have been made to identify the roots of the document, analyze it in a historico–political context, and examine its abiding reception and dissemination, as well as its influence and exploitation.3 Yet, an enigmatic aspect remains, and in spite of the many critical studies the questions raised by historian of antisemitism Richard Levy are still valid: “Why has the Protocols seized the imagination and informed the political judgment of men and women throughout the twentieth century? Why did it survive to the present day and what are the sources from which it draws its strength?”4 To these one can add others: Why is “the abstract Jew” such an ideal instrument for conspiracy theories in so many languages and diverse cultures − ranging from Europe to Japan and from North America to the Arab/Muslim world? What significance do the Protocols have today in mainstream worldviews? Are they gaining in importance? Are they still today a warrant for genocide or merely a reflection of xenophobic nationalism? Can they be fought by logical argumentation? This volume, which comprises a compilation of papers presented at a conference held in October 2004 at Tel Aviv University, in collaboration with the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung in Berlin to mark the one hundredth anniversary of their publication in Russia, does not pretend to answer all these questions. Rather, it is an attempt to understand the Protocols’ continuing popularity, over a century after their first appearance, in so many diverse societies and cultures. In his monumental analysis of the Protocols, Pierre-André Taguieff suggests four approaches toward their study: within the framework of a history, typology, and psycho-sociology of conspiracy theories connected to the phenomenon of modern secret societies both as fact and myth; the history of antisemitism and the development of anti-Jewish ideologies in the modern age; the history of forgeries linked to police falsifications; and the history or anthropology of devil worship and Satanism.5 Since the following chapters are written mostly by historians, they adopt in the main a historical approach for reassessing the dissemination of the Protocols and the social conditions that facilitated their diffusion before and after World

2

E. Webman

War II, as well as examining their significance, centrality, and impact in different periods of time and place. It is still not certain who wrote this antisemitic pamphlet, but the evidence suggests that it was cobbled together from pre-existing sources by agents of the Russian secret police (Okhrana) working in France during the years of the Dreyfus affair (1894−1906). The accusations against Jews in the Protocols were commonplace in popular French publications in the 1890s, and the authors of the tract plagiarized numerous sources. In particular, Maurice Joly’s anti-authoritarian A Dialogue in Hell: Conversations between Machiavelli and Montesquieu about Power and Right (1864) provided the nucleus for at least nine of the twenty-four chapters. If the plot ascribed to Jews in the Protocols has a pronounced Machiavellian character, it is because the authors put the words of Joly’s fictional Machiavelli into the mouth of the Grand Rabbi (also known as the Jewish Elder), whose address to a secret conclave in a cemetery in Basel, Switzerland, forms the core of the book. The conceit of the Grand Rabbi’s delivery derives from another of the Protocols’ sources, an 1868 novel titled Biarritz, by the German antisemite Hermann Ottomar Friedrich Goedsche (1815−78), known by his pseudonym Sir John Retcliffe.6 The Protocols were in part a reaction to contemporary events. A real Jewish gathering, the first Zionist Congress, was in fact held in Basel in 1897. A financial crisis did arise in Russia in 1898. And there were powerful Jewish financial families such as the Rothschilds, who at times exercised a measure of influence over the western political scene. But the Protocols were less a response to any real-world event than they were a product of the Jew-hatred that was rampant at the time, evidenced in the Dreyfus affair in France and the frequent murderous assaults on Jews in Russia, such as the Kishinev pogrom of 1903. By the outbreak of World War I, several versions of the Protocols had appeared in Russia. The most well known was the adaptation by Sergei Nilus (1862−1929) in his devotional book The Great within the Small and Antichrist, an Imminent Political Possibility, first published in 1905 as an appendix to the second edition of a 1903 book.7 In 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, Nilus published an expanded edition of the book, re-titled He Is Near, He Is Hard by the Door! warning of an imminent apocalypse initiated by the Jews. The Protocols were interpreted as an uncanny predictor of the revolution, offering a simple explanation for what had happened and absolving the defenders of the ancien régime from their failure to prevent or reverse it. The revolution was construed as the product of an irresistible, centuries-old global Jewish conspiracy to wreak havoc upon the gentile nations through financial manipulation and theories such as rationalism, materialism, and atheism, in order to overthrow legitimate and divinely appointed monarchs like the tsar and subjugate the world to a Jewish dictatorship. Beyond Russia’s borders the Protocols remained unknown until after the 1917 revolution. The first, anonymous English translation of the Protocols appeared in 1920 under the title The Jewish Peril. It was published by the respected house

Introduction 3 of Eyre and Spottiswoode, which had also issued the Authorized Version of the Bible and the Prayer Book; it thus bore the stamp of His (or Her) Majesty’s Printers, which gave the volume an imprint of authority. That same year, Victor Marsden, Russian correspondent for the British newspaper Morning Post, produced another translation, and it was this one that became the standard English edition. German and American versions also appeared in 1920.8 In the United States, the automobile magnate Henry Ford, who published the Protocols in 1920 under the title The International Jew, made the tract truly famous. Under pressure, Ford renounced the Protocols in 1927, but with his backing they had achieved prestige and staying power.9 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a barely coherent, self-contradictory collection of twenty-four supposed “lectures,” purportedly delivered by the Grand Rabbi to Jewish Elders of the “twelve tribes of Israel” assembled in the aforementioned Basel cemetery for one of their periodic conclaves to plot the conquest of the world. The essence of the Grand Rabbi’s “lectures” is that world history has been manipulated for centuries by a secret Jewish cabal whose only aim is ruthless self-aggrandizement. Accordingly, the Jews, who scheme indefatigably, with supernatural cunning, to transform humanity into docile cattle, have invented every evil known to humanity, including capitalism, communism, liberal democracy, and mindless popular culture as diverse means to a single nefarious goal: the enslavement of the world and the establishment of a Jewish world government. In Germany the Protocols found fertile soil in the Völkisch nationalist movement. Emerging in the course of the nineteenth century out of Social Darwinist, Germanic, and antisemitic thought, the Völkisch movement developed into a nationalist and racist ideology on the eve of World War I. Propagating the alleged right of the stronger, its proponents strove to establish its dominance in eastern Europe. With the radicalization of the Völkisch movement after the war, this ideology paved the way for National Socialism. Ultranationalist aspirations joined forces with racist notions of superiority and antisemitic delusions to form a political creed which, ever defiant and resolutely obstinate because of its irrational basis, had no hold in reality. After World War I, which became a national trauma for the Germans, the doctrine of “the Jews’ goal of world dominion” was taken up avidly by those disappointed and embittered by the outcome of the war. With their illusions and ambitions swept away by defeat, they were forced to seek explanations for German misfortune that lay beyond the bounds of rationality, because any rational explanation for the military and political demise of the Wilhelminian Reich would have called into question their own position, power, and political aspirations, as well as their self-perception as members of a superior nation and “race.” Rooted in Social Darwinism of the nineteenth century, pervaded by the belief in the necessity of extending the Germanic people’s “living space,” and deeply convinced of the doctrines of antisemitism that racially stigmatized the Jews as inferior and held them responsible for all of

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the world’s troubles, the Völkisch movement was the ideal vehicle for adopting and disseminating the messages of the Protocols. The Völkisch movement comprised groups and organizations such as the Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-German league), the antisemitic Reichshammerbund, the secret society of the Germanenorden, and the Deutsch-völkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund (German-nationalist union for defense and defiance), one of the precursors of, as well as an organization parallel to, the National Socialist Party. The Lebensreformer and agrarian romantics, supporters of social-reactionary utopias, also belonged to the Völkisch movement. National egoism, persecution mania, fundamentalism, and the inability to rationally come to grips with existing political, social, and economic conditions, characterized Völkisch supporters who, in a diffuse expectation of salvation, sought to escape reality and restore their sense of self-esteem through the exclusion of minorities, which they blamed for their woes. The reception of the Protocols in Germany began in these Völkisch and nationalist circles. The Protocols were published in July 1919 by the Völkisch publishing house Auf Vorposten and edited by Gottfried zur Beek, whose real name was Ludwig Müller von Hausen. The book went through eight impressions by 1923, and the ninth came out in 1929 from the publishing house of the NSDAP, which had acquired the rights of Beek’s translation. In 1924, the antisemitic publisher Hammer-Verlag issued another edition edited by Theodor Fritsch. Discussing the issue of authenticity of the Protocols in the preface, Fritsch expressed doubts that “the gullible, naïve, and credulous German” would believe them and that an “Aryan mind” could even imagine such a vile system. Fritsch concluded that as the Protocols arrogantly proclaim, international Jewry has ruled and continues to rule nations for centuries, steering their fates using every possible means, including cunning, deception, witchcraft, and financial machinations. Describing the Jews as the sworn enemy of decent humanity, he blamed them for all the disasters and misery suffered by nations, including the horrific crime of the Great War. The Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg published another version, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Jewish World Policy, with the Deutsche Volksverlag Dr. Ernst Boepple (an antisemitic Völkisch branch of the Munich publishing house J. F. Lehmann) in 1923, dating its origins to Basel in 1897. Rosenberg’s tract quickly underwent several reprints, reaching 25,000 copies by the autumn of 1933. Such sales demonstrate the extent to which the Protocols became integrated into the canon of National Socialist doctrine.10 Hitler adopted the Protocols as a textbook for global conquest, and it was required reading under the Nazis. Not only was the supposed existence of an unscrupulous Jewish conspiracy to destroy Germany widely accepted among the German people, who made the extermination of the Jews and elimination of the threat they allegedly posed a sacred national mission, but the Protocols became a model that Hitler and the Nazis diligently sought to follow. Indeed, as Hannah Arendt points out, the Protocols

Introduction 5 presented world conquest as a practical possibility [and] implied that the whole affair was only a question of inspired or shrewd know-how, and that nobody stood in the way of a German victory over the entire world but a patently small people, the Jews, who ruled it without possessing instruments of violence − an easy opponent, therefore, once their secret was discovered and their method emulated on a large scale.11 In Mein Kampf, claimed renowned German scholar of antisemitism Wolfgang Benz in his lecture presented at the Tel Aviv University conference, Adolf Hitler used the Protocols as a building block in his antisemitic program. He attributed to the text − which already served as a basis in Germany for reaching a consensus about “the Jews” − a dual function: proof of the existential falseness of “the Jews,” and a weapon against them. One need not read the text in order to regard it as authoritative, just as one need not read Mein Kampf in order to be a National Socialist, or to declare one’s support for Hitler’s movement and promote the aspirations of the Nazi party, he added. German writer and anti-war activist Arnold Zweig considered the Protocols the “core of the Völkisch persecution psychosis.” Their reception by the right-wing political spectrum, which found in it confirmation of their assumptions, as well as their certainty of the text’s authenticity, indeed demonstrates psychotic antisemitic demagogy.12 Explaining in Mein Kampf that what many Jews unconsciously wished to do was clearly set forth in the Protocols, Hitler praised them for being absolute proof of the constitutive evilness of the Jews and their aspirations for world domination. “With an almost terrifying precision” the essence and actions of the Jewish people are revealed, he states; then, in an impelling reversal of reality, he claims that the repeatedly furnished proof of forgery, especially by Frankfurter Zeitung, a liberal newspaper banned in 1943, was evidence of the document’s authenticity. Hitler further alluded to events that were currently unfolding as the best way of judging the authenticity of the document. If the historical developments that had taken place within the last few centuries were studied in the light of the Protocols, he claimed, the incessant repudiations and denouncements would be clearly understood. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is the wellspring of antisemitism worldwide, asserted Benz. No other text about a supposed Jewish world conspiracy has had a greater impact than this one, simply because the public wanted to believe its pithy explanation of how the world works. The murderers of German foreign minister Walter Rathenau on June 24, 1922, were familiar with the tract and believed their victim to be “one of the 300 Elders of Zion.”13 After the National Socialists seized power, the Protocols were included in the official curriculum of German schools, in line with a decree issued by the Reich minister for science and national education, on October 13, 1934. The question of their authenticity was irrelevant to antisemites, since its propaganda effect rendered such an issue to be secondary. The arguments and evidence used to prove that the pamphlet was indeed a forgery had long

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been an integral element in its dissemination. Using methods that the deniers of Auschwitz would later apply – paranoid fantasy and a refusal to accept reality – the conspiracy theory elaborated in the Protocols was continually reinforced with new fictitious notions. In the US, the text fascinated Henry Ford, who found in it archaic meaning. Reading the Protocols revealed to him “the terrible completeness of the World Plan.” Besides the tasks they looked forward to doing, the Jews announced the deeds they had done and were in the act of doing. The evidence that Ford provided to demonstrate that the intentions and plans of world Jewry had already been executed was just as vague and nebulous as the arguments put forward by other antisemitic authors purporting to prove the authenticity of the Protocols. Their common claims have been, first, that it is obvious the Protocols are genuine because of their content; and second, that, in any event, this question is basically irrelevant because, after all, they are the very embodiment of a higher truth, namely the Jewish world plan.14 In seeking to identify an adequate image for this type of textual exegesis, Benz likened it to the alchemists’ search for the legendary philosopher’s stone, the lapis philosophorum. Believing in its existence for centuries, alchemists were convinced that this matter transformed base metals into gold and silver and that it could serve as a life-extending and rejuvenating elixir (aurum potabile). There are sound arguments for drawing a comparison between antisemites who propagate the Protocols as a fundamental document, and alchemy, a pseudo-science which from late antiquity to the seventeenth century focused on the elements and substances of life, he said. Both alchemy and the ideology of antisemitism are secret “arts” and their activities stem from a weltanschauung that represents a conglomeration of religion, philosophy of nature, esotericism, and magic, in anticipation of salvation. As to why the Protocols have exerted such a long and sustained effect, the observation that we are dealing with an absurd construct born of hate is of little help, he asserted. The absurdity of the conspiracy myth is not an objection, but one of the ingredients ensuring its effect. He cited political theorist Carl Schmitt who stated that no line of argumentation, no matter how clearly articulated, can match the power of genuine mythical images. Ideologues and demagogues have always exploited this power − whether the tsarist secret police, National Socialists, or Muslim agitators, for whom the myth of a Jewish world conspiracy is welcome ammunition in their struggle against Israel, Christian fundamentalists in Eastern Europe intent on settling the score with communism, or anti-American agitators in Japan who seek to explain capitalism. All these groups have used the stereotyped image of the Jewish people striving for world hegemony. Insights into how myths function are therefore far more helpful in understanding the appeal of the Protocols, Benz contended. Myths are used to place symbolic signs in the political and communicative process. They create orientation, and supply codes for explaining unresolved predicaments. In myths, symbols and beliefs replace reality and rationality and transform facts

Introduction 7 into fiction or fiction into facts. French intellectual Roland Barthes15 analyzed the origins and effect of everyday myths and formulated basic insights that are valid for the Protocols. Myth, he explained, does not deny things; on the contrary, its function resides in speaking of them. However, it does not speak of things as they are but reverses them and gives them a new meaning which endows them with a lucidity that is not one of explanation but of conclusion. Normally, a historical event, such as the French Revolution with its ideas of freedom and equality, or the resistance to National Socialism, is the starting point of a myth. As the Protocols demonstrate, however, fiction can also serve as the source of a myth and gain validity through incessant quoting and association. The imagined is ultimately perceived and recognized as a real event. As a myth, the Protocols, a thoroughly anti-enlightenment document, have attained a persuasive power and become “proof” of a Jewish world conspiracy. National Socialist ideologue Alfred Rosenberg established articles of faith that came to represent valid “truths” that brooked no rational discussion. He sought to found a new pagan religion based on racism and entitled his programmatic work The Myth of the Twentieth Century, clearly underlining his claim to furnish an ultimate explanation of the world. The fact that his book, like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, was more quoted and referred to than actually read does not reduce its significance. What is decisive is how the myth is constructed as a narrative that addresses emotions, possesses symbolic value, and offers an easily comprehensible explanation for the connections steering the fate of the world, but at the same time both defies reality and makes logical sense. This description can be applied to the Protocols, albeit in an especially perfidious way: first, by simulating a manuscript that initially received its title through the type of text it purportedly represented (a “protocol”), then through tradition and dissemination, and above all through its mythical quality as a “secret document,” filled with alleged revelations and accusations as a way of stigmatizing the Jews. Thus, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has become a code for antisemitism that can be employed arbitrarily in any cultural context. Representing the Protocols as a myth that has struck deep roots in world consciousness is no doubt a plausible way to explain their reception and resilience. However, a vast body of work on conspiracy theories from the mid-1960s on and particularly originating in the US, could provide additional perspectives and methods that shed light on various aspects of the Protocols and may provide some answers to the questions raised at the beginning of this chapter. An examination of the Protocols was not always included in these studies and, in fact, many of the early publications did not mention them at all, or only in passing. Similarly, they did not relate to works done in other parts of the world, including the Arab one. This lacuna has been filled since the mid-1990s with research by Michael Barkun, Daniel Pipes, Chip Berlet, Stephen Bronner, and others, who explored the links between conspiracy theories and the Protocols. Marouf Hasian Jr. even asserted that

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study of the origins of the Protocols helps in understanding the development of conspiratorial rhetorics built on earlier fragments and selective interpretations of historical moments.16 Belief in conspiracy theories has become a topic of interest for sociologists, psychologists, historians, political scientists, and researchers of cultural studies, communications studies, and folklore. They examine the extent to which belief in conspiracies is a generalized ideological trait; the likelihood that people who believe in one conspiracy will believe in others; the origins of conspiracy theories; the characteristics of human nature that drive people to create alternative worlds peopled by shadowy figures; the depth of conspiratorial thinking in society; the impact of conspiracy theories on the course of historical events; and the degree of their effect on democratic systems. There is no comprehensive definition of conspiracy theory but scholars have offered various characterizations and typologies. Generally, the term is used to refer to any fringe theory which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by conspirators of almost superhuman power and cunning.17 British scholar of cultural studies Clare Birchall defines conspiracy theory as “a narrative that has been constructed in an attempt to explain an event or a series of events to be the result of a group of people working in secret to a nefarious end.”18 In his pioneering work on conspiratorial thinking, acclaimed historian Richard Hofstadter coined the term the “paranoid style,” describing its central preconception as the existence of “a vast and sinister conspiracy, a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to undermine and destroy a way of life … whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values.”19 The typical conspiracy theory, wrote Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab, is international in scope, extends both in space and time, dates back in history, and is destined to endure forever. The second element, flowing indispensably from the same moralistic approach, is “the manipulation of the many by the few.”20 American studies scholar Peter Knight quoted Karl Popper’s definition of conspiracy theory as “the view that whatever happens in society – including things which as a rule people dislike, such as war, unemployment, poverty, shortages – are the results of direct design by some powerful individuals or group.”21 More pithily, historian Daniel Pipes described conspiracy theories as “fears of nonexistent conspiracies,”22 and pointed to several recurring assumptions in them: Power is the goal; benefit indicates control; conspiracies drive history; nothing is accidental or foolish; appearances deceive.23 Political scientist Michael Barkun explains conspiracy theory as “the belief that an organization made up of individuals or groups was or is acting covertly to achieve some malevolent end.” A conspiracist worldview implies a universe governed by design rather than by randomness, he says, and identifies three principles found in virtually every conspiracy theory: Nothing happens by accident; nothing is as it seems; and everything is connected.24 Conspiracism, he argues, is first and foremost, an explanation of politics.25 Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political Research Associates (PRA), a non-profit group that tracks

Introduction 9 right-wing networks, considers it “a distinct narrative form of scapegoating that uses demonization to justify constructing the scapegoats as wholly evil, while reconstructing the scapegoater as a hero.”26 Barkun divides conspiracies into three categories: event conspiracies, responsible for a limited, discrete event or set of events; systemic conspiracies, which have broad goals, usually conceived as securing control over a country, a region, or even the entire world; and superconspiracies − multiple conspiracies linked together hierarchically.27 Pipes speaks of two types: petty and grand conspiracies,28 which correspond with Barkun’s event and systemic conspiracies, respectively. There is tacit agreement among researchers that conspiracy theories serve an important social function and fill various psychological needs. Conspiracy theories, including the Protocols, provide their believers with a prism with which to understand complex local and global events. They make intricate historical patterns comprehensible by oversimplification, and claim to identify the underlying or hidden source of human misery.29 The appeal of conspiracism, explained Barkun, is threefold. First, conspiracy theories claim to explain what others can’t. They appear to make sense out of a world that is otherwise confusing. Second, they do so in an appealingly simple way, by dividing the world sharply between forces of light and forces of darkness. They trace all evil back to a single source, the conspirators and their agents. Finally, conspiracy theories are often presented as being extraordinary, containing secret knowledge, or unappreciated by others.30 They are “part of the response to impersonal forces and diffuse structures generated by contemporary societies … They give meaning to occurrences, to equivocal or dramatic situations [and] … are attempts to find a narrative for the contradictions and transformations that are animating the world.”31 They draw their strength from deep-seated needs and emotions, not from ideology, and impose a sense of order and coherence on the world at the expense of accuracy.32 Fears of a petty conspiracy – a political rival or business competitor plotting to harm you – are as old as the human psyche, wrote Pipes, but fears of a grand conspiracy go back only 900 years and have been “operational” for just two centuries, since the French Revolution. Like Pipes, Levy considers the French Revolution of the eighteenth century, as well as the English Revolution of the seventeenth century, as the periods when conspiracy was frequently regarded as the most convincing explanation for real events. Conspiracy theories then developed with the rise of Hitler and Stalin until World War II.33 American anthropologist George Marcus attaches great importance to the Cold War era as a crucial context for the current atmosphere of fear and suspicion, since it was “defined throughout by a massive project of paranoid social thought and action that reached into every dimension of mainstream culture, politics, and policy.” Furthermore, interventions, subversions, and intimidations pursued in the interests of global conspiratorial politics of the superpowers shaped the thinking of client states and most regions, thus turning the paranoiac

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mindset and conspiracy theories into “an eminently reasonable tendency of thought for social actors to embrace.”34 This culture of paranoia, which has pervaded American political history since its inception, spread to other regions of the world. Explaining disturbing events or social phenomena by means of conspiracy theories has another common factor: deflecting responsibility and transferring it to another party. Criticizing this prevailing tendency in the Arab world to explain events, Mshari al-Zaydi wrote in al-Sharq al-Awsat that “the entire issue is reduced to saying that there are conspiracies that no one knows about except those in the know, but we are a perfect nation with a healthy society, culture, and civilization.” Knight also considered conspiracy tropes as being “crucial not only in organizing questions of blame, responsibility and agency, but also in linking the personal and the political in one transcending metaphor.”35 Most researchers agree that while in the past conspiracy theories tended to fizzle out when the sense of crisis passed, “today’s unsettled climate – dominated by scandal, economic turmoil, war, and intense partisan conflict – stimulates a search for explanations that often reach extremes.”36 These have come to constitute a central feature of political discourse since the 1960s with the assassination of President Kennedy. They have become “a way of understanding power that appeals to both marginalized groups and the power elite,” and they fashion both the right and the left wing with the same vigor. Political exigencies and historical moralism are behind the need of right- and left-wing extremism to invoke conspiracy theories. However, in non-western countries, Pipes observes, they lose their association with left or right and become much more virulent.37 The communications revolution has allowed the spread of conspiracy theories more widely and quickly than ever before, and most recently the internet has emerged as a major new medium for their dissemination. In view of these definitions and classifications, the Protocols may be seen as the quintessence of a conspiracy theory. They exploit “this all-too-human need in an unoriginal, yet powerful, manner,”38 and constitute “an extreme form of conspiracy theory, one that is fully linked to a fascist racism,” claims expert on legal and cultural theory Mark Fenster. Berlet sees them as “the Protocols of conspiracism.”39 They conform to the category of systemic conspiracies, attributing to the Jews the goal of achieving world domination and perceiving them as the source of all evil. They combine two distinct motifs: the conspiratorial and the antisemitic, encapsulating “the historical legacy of antisemitism and reflect[ing] its transformation.”40 Evolving from a religious and social concept into a new political phenomenon from their first publication in 1903, they were meant to serve a political function, to influence powerful individuals or mobilize large groups of people to think or act in particularly destructive and self-deluding ways. Over time, the political agendas of the publishers

Introduction 11 of the Protocols have changed, but the sowing of hatred and the urge to self-defense against the “enemy of mankind” have remained common to them all.41 Tracing the origins of the myth of a Jewish world conspiracy to the Christian perception that the Jews were demons in human form, Norman Cohn, Taguieff, and Pipes consider the Protocols a modern adaptation of this ancient demonological belief. According to Pipes, the West developed two traditions of grand conspiracy, a mainly right-wing version concerned with Jews and a largely left-wing one fearful of secret societies: Anti-Semites trace a single conspiracy beginning with Herod and including the Sanhedrin, medieval rabbis, Karl Marx, Theodor Herzl, Sigmund Freud, and the ‘Elders of Zion’. Secret society theorists trace an alternate tradition that includes such names as the Assassins, Templars, Jesuits, Freemasons, Illuminati, Jacobins, Rosicrucians, Philosophes, Carbonari, Catholics, and the Council on Foreign Affairs.42 The popular reception of the Protocols cannot be understood without referring to “the way that modernity is experienced by those whose material existence and existential self-identification are both threatened by it.”43 They are “a particularly degraded and distorted expression of the new social tensions which arose when, with the French Revolution and the coming of the nineteenth century, Europe entered on a period of exceptionally rapid and deep-going change,” explained Norman Cohn. “It was a time when traditional social relationships were shaken, hereditary privileges ceased to be sacrosanct, age-old values and beliefs were called in question.”44 These assertions also prove viable for an understanding of the willing reception of the Protocols in the Arab and Muslim worlds, where conspiratorial thinking became entrenched in the political culture as a result of their traumatic encounter with the western world and incapacity to match it militarily, scientifically, economically, socially, and politically since the eighteenth century.45 The Protocols exploited strategies of antisemitic politics. Characteristics of other conspiracy theories too − religious fanaticism, national rivalry, hatred of aliens, economic and social competition, scapegoating, and demonization − converge on a single group, the Jews. Lipset and Raab considered that the Protocols have proved so effective throughout the years because they are associated with the Jews.46 But, the question remains, why the Jews, and why do they flourish even where there are no Jews? Several explanations may be given, all seeming to derive from similar conditions that kept antisemitism alive for centuries. “The Jews, on the one hand, remained an exclusive community, but on the other hand, were a symbol of the modern world for those who most detested that world.”47 Modernity and idealism are the two outstanding characteristics, added Pipes,48 and hence any new ideology − democracy, liberalism, secularism, socialism, communism,

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capitalism, globalization, the new world order – was portrayed as the work of the Jews, a way of making them suspect in the eyes of a growing but illeducated electorate. The Jews are perceived as “a threat to the status quo and the continuity of the established world order.”49 Levy attributed their success, at least in part, to the tract’s literary qualities. “By pretending the book was of Jewish authorship, an ‘authentic’ document that had luckily fallen into the hands of the intended victims of Jewish plotting, the authors skirted the issue of their own motives and relieved themselves of the necessity of proving their horrific charges.”50 The ambiguity of the Protocols meant that they could be appropriated “by liberals, moderates, and reactionaries who wanted to legitimate a number of repressive political and social policies,” and were searching for conspiratorial explanations for the massive national, industrial, and urban changes that were taking place around them. Thus, they could be easily adopted by other cultures and adapted to their own needs. Unlike the Russian version of the Protocols, for example, “which focused on the political and the religious shortcomings of the Jews, the Ford conspiracy concentrated attention on the social and economic perils that threatened the United States.”51 Pipes also agrees that their vagueness – almost no mention of names, dates, or issues, their purportedly Jewish authorship, and their inherent contradictions: accusing Jews of using all available tools for their advancement, including capitalism and communism, philosemitism and antisemitism, democracy and tyranny, Zionism and Nazism − contributed to their success and wide appeal to both rich and poor, right and left, Christian and Muslim, American and Japanese.52 Despite the Holocaust, the Protocols continued to exercise fascination after World War II. Moreover, a new postwar variation of the Jewish conspiracy theory emerged, in which Zionists and Jews are accused of “inventing” the Holocaust. Denial of the Holocaust depicts the Jews as a sophisticated and powerful world organization, capable of talking the entire world into believing in a hoax which they invented … The story of the Holocaust as the Jews present it is the best possible proof that the world is indeed in their hands, because this baseless horror story rewards them with money and sympathy … Denying the Holocaust also implies that the Jews have a sick and morbid imagination able to invent gas chambers, mass murders and indescribable tortures – in itself a pinnacle of evil.53 Chip Berlet argues that conspiracy theories are on the upswing both in volume and influence, and are moving from the fringe to the mainstream. Other analysts agree that they have grown in numbers but consider their impact on government policies to be very limited.54 The Protocols, too, continue to circulate as part and parcel of antisemitic literature, which began to escalate in quantity and intensity after 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet

Introduction 13 Union and the rise of the notions of globalization and a New World Order. Global crises such as 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the 2008 economic crisis, as well as natural disasters such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, perpetually feed them with new meaning. In the Arab and Muslim worlds especially they have penetrated the mainstream, initially through indoctrination and later through popularization in the media and the internet. According to Barkun, not all conspiracy theories are antisemitic, but contemporary conspiracy theories manifest a dynamic of expansion and can develop from event conspiracy through systemic conspiracies to superconspiracies. As this progression occurs, he contends, “the villains who populate … [them] tend to multiply.” Ufologists, for instance, may begin with conspiracy theories that have nothing to do with antisemitism, yet in some cases end up testifying to the veracity of the Protocols.55 At the conclusion of his lecture, Benz asserted that refutations were useless from the outset, and only contributed to the success of the forgery because they generated publicity and confirmed the suspicion that “where there’s smoke there’s fire.” This first became evident during the dissemination of the Protocols in Great Britain. After their publication in July 1920 by the conservative Morning Post, and later that same year in a book edition, the Times took up the case and demanded an official inquiry into the origins of the work. The newspaper’s Istanbul correspondent Philip Graves came across a copy of Maurice Joly’s book from 1864, which, as noted, had formed one of the text’s sources, and wrote a series of articles proving they were a forgery.56 By that time, however, hundreds of thousands of copies were already being sold. German Jewish intellectual Binjamin Segel subtitled his critique of the Protocols, first published in Berlin in 1924, “A Disposal” (Eine Erledigung). However, its impact was insignificant because it was issued by a Jewish publishing house, a fact that antisemites seized on in order to defame it as serving Jewish interests, cynically casting the study as an attempt to limit the damage caused by the tract. Nonetheless, in his insightful preface, Segel pointed to premonitory signs, paraphrased thus by Levy: Although one might expect the Protocols to raise the gravest doubts in readers, no matter the degree of their sophistication, the book clearly does not always do so. In the 1920s and 1930s, a significant number of people of all social strata believed in the authenticity of the document and took its revelation of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy at face value … We would be mistaken to dismiss the Protocols as arrant nonsense. We ought instead, to consider the reasons why the book has survived to the present day and examine the sources from which it draws strength.57 Barkun adds that precisely because the claims in the Protocols are so sweeping they ultimately defeat any attempt at challenging them.

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The idea that sinister forces could control the lives of people from behind the scenes only “enhanced the credibility of the ‘Elders of Zion.’”59 Moreover, in the era of postmodernism, which accepts all narratives on equal terms, the discourse on conspiracy theories has become a form of knowledge-production, whether stigmatized, informal, popular, or illegitimate,60 alongside official, verified, and legitimate knowledge, thus legitimizing it, too. This trend encompasses the Protocols, facilitating their popularization and proliferation. Clare Birchall speaks of popular knowledge “shaped within and by different (para)institutional contexts.”61 Such knowledge circulates by way of mouth, television, talkback radio, the internet, tabloids, and magazines, among others, rather than by verified, peer-reviewed academic journals, books or more ”serious” or ”elitist” forms of cultural output. Knight and Marcus contend that the culture of paranoia is in tune with a postmodern distrust of final narrative solutions, and with the crisis of representation. “The proliferation of narratives about the conspiratorial activities of the authorities has in effect helped undermine the authority of narrative,”62 they claim. The felt inadequacy over the past decade of metanarratives and conceptual frames to explain the world is generated “not so much by the radicalized intellectual fashion of the critique of knowledge of recent years as by the rapidity and extent of actual changes themselves.” There remains, concluded Marcus, “a healthy respect for facts and evidence, but accompanied also by a high tolerance for speculative associations among them – an impulse to figure out systems, now of global scale, with strategic facts missing that might otherwise permit confident choices among competing conceptions.”63 In such a climate of thought, it is no wonder that 9/11 is represented as an American or Zionist conspiracy and the Protocols continue to flourish unchallenged. In the 1920s and 1930s, a significant number of people among all social strata believed in the authenticity of the document at face value, and found in its pages a credible explanation of world events. The following chapters demonstrate that in the twenty-first century this forgery still prevails as a handy interpretation of local and global events. The hidden, imaginary power of the Jews as exemplified in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion continues to bedazzle antisemites around the world, whether Right or Left wing, religious fundamentalist or secular, whether resident in the West, the East, or the Third World. From Russia and eastern Europe, through the Middle East to north and south America, the notion of Jews striving for global domination still finds adepts and believers.64

Introduction 15 This volume consists of four sections that deal with prominent issues pertaining to the Protocols in different countries, and provides a comprehensive examination of the uses and abuses made in their name from their origins until today. Its main aim is to draw the broad contours of their dissemination and throw light onto why such a blatant fabrication is still, to this day, believed by so many. The issues discussed cover various periods and regions. Yet, they prove repeatedly that the Protocols resist geographical or cultural boundaries. In each place and time similar constellations of historical conditions enabled their reception and absorption. All the chapters indeed show that the myth continues to thrive, spreading even to countries without Jews. Written by acclaimed scholars, the chapters in the first section revisit the origins of the Protocols in nineteenth-century Russia. Lev Aronov, Henryk Baran, and Dmitri Zubarev explore the identity of the daughter of a Russian general, Mademoiselle Iustin'ia Glinka, the lady who supposedly translated the Protocols into Russian and brought them to Russia, and introduces new documents and letters relating to the alleged French original of the tract from which her translation was made. The dearth of reliable data on Glinka is a lacuna common to the literature on the Protocols as a whole. Most scholars have not thought it necessary to look at either the period press of the late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries, including the short-lived Frenchlanguage newspaper published by Glinka herself, or archival sources, be they western or Russian. The authors of this chapter have located several hundred letters by Glinka to several individuals of various social ranks, including one to Emperor Alexander III, which sheds new light on the role which its writer attempted to play in Russian political life during the 1880s, and touches on themes that appear in far greater detail in the Protocols. Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern tentatively reconstructs the pre-natal period of the Protocols. He emphasizes the necessity of embracing the wider European context and broadly conceived history of culture, not infrequently ignored by students of antisemitism in general and of the Protocols in particular. Petrovsky-Shtern argues that one hundred years before their publication, Russian conservative sensibilities intersected with Russian anti-Jewish perceptions, producing a document that should be placed toward the bottom of the genealogical tree, if not at its root. Moreover, he seeks to prove that long before the document equated what it presented as the two most destructive entities, world Jewry and the French bourgeois revolution, the two met on the Russian political scene in one and the same political drama, finding themselves partners in time, place, and action. This unexpected encounter shaped the Semitic profile of Napoleon Bonaparte (1804−14) and informed the destructive image of European Jewry in the Russian cultural imagination. The study illuminates how and why this happened. It traces the unfolding of an antisemitic and anti-Jewish paradigm in nineteenth-century conservative Russian mentality from the early 1800s to the early 1900s, when the archconservative Pavel Krushevan (1860−1909) first published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Znamia, his notorious antisemitic newspaper.

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The second section includes four chapters that tackle the impact and dissemination of the Protocols since the 1920s till the end of World War II in Germany and the Americas. Wolfram Meyer zu Utrup revisits the question of the sources and essence of Nazi ideology and genocidal policies. He claims that after World War I Germany was already disposed to absorb the Protocols and explain political events in terms of conspiracy theories. He examines their role in Nazi antisemitism, their exploitation as a means for mass mobilization, and their impact on the persecution of the Jews. Emphasizing the unique structure and message of National Socialist antisemitism, zu Utrup attempts to explain how and why it differed from antisemitism in countries such as France or Russia, which did not pursue genocidal policies, and contends that Nazi policies were supported or approved by a large majority of German society. Yet, he rejects the notion of “eliminationist antisemitism” as being part of the German national character. Yaakov Ariel returns to Christianity in the New World, focusing on developments in the attitudes of American Christian fundamentalists toward the Jews and the Protocols from the late nineteenth century to the 1940s. His chapter highlights the ambivalence that existed among those who supported the adoption of antisemitic notions alongside positive sentiments toward the Jews and their historical role. Ariel contends that while fundamentalist Christians came to regard the Jews as heirs to the Covenant between God and Israel and the object of biblical prophecies, they also considered them to be morally and spiritually lacking, thus retaining negative cultural stereotypes. The fundamentalist leaders’ endorsement of the Protocols and their wide circulation in fundamentalist circles were due to the manner in which they corresponded with their worldview. By the late 1930s, fundamentalist Christians began omitting the Protocols from their exegetical and polemical writings, and since the 1940s the Protocols have become a litmus test indicating where groups stand in relation not only to Jews but to the American mainstream as a whole. In South America, Graciela Ben-Dror profiles the influential Argentinean writer and politician Hugo Wast in order to examine the attitude of the Catholic Church in Argentina toward the Jews. In the course of her inquiry she asks whether his philosophy represented the norm of the times among Argentina’s Catholic hierarchy, or whether it was a deviation. Was he accepted by Church circles, and if so, was he instrumental in shaping the attitude of the religious public toward the Jews? Or was he, perhaps, part of a small group of intellectuals whose extreme antisemitic stance made them pariahs? She reaches the conclusion that in the pervading atmosphere of the 1930s and 1940s, during which the main concern was maintaining Catholic cultural homogeneity, Wast’s writings and theories on the Jews articulated the views of highly reputed members of the Church establishment whose influence extended far beyond Argentina’s borders. In 1930s’ and 1940s’ Colombia Jewish residents numbered fewer than 7,000 out of a total population of nearly 9 million. Notwithstanding, Thomas

Introduction 17 J. Williford shows how antisemites believed that Jewish influence was allpervasive and that some groups and institutions – such as liberal political parties, Masonic lodges, secular schools, leftist labor unions, and the free press − were organized or controlled internationally by the so-called Elders of Zion. During those years, militant politicians and clerics associated with the Conservative Party seized upon the rhetoric of the Protocols in order to depict the leaders of the ruling Liberal Party as linked insidiously to an international Jewish conspiracy, finding proof in the fact that many prominent Liberal politicians were also Freemasons. Certain Liberal policies, especially those that attempted to separate Church and state, were cited as further evidence of a Judeo-Masonic plot set on destroying the ageless Catholic traditions of the Colombian homeland (patria). Demonstrating how such inflammatory language combined with conspiracy theories provided a pretext for the assassinations and massacres of nearly 200,000 during the long civil conflict, La Violencia (1946−64), this study further corroborates Norman Cohn’s definition of the myth of a Jewish world conspiracy as a “warrant for genocide.” The third section presents several case studies, including four groundbreaking essays on the Arab world, Turkey, and Iran, to further demonstrate the successful dissemination of the Protocols after World War II, in spite of the Holocaust and the grave consequences of their exploitation. The student protests and the “anti-Zionist” campaign in Łódź, the second largest city in Poland, known as the “March events” of 1968, serve Beate Kosmala as a test case for examining the prevalence of the Protocols and various Jewish conspiracies in Poland. She traces the roots of these notions to the early postwar years, when Łódź party activists published the first Polish reprint of the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and intermittently exploited anti-Jewish agitation to advance their goals. The 1968 anti-Zionist campaign in Poland was aimed at an imagined anti-Polish plot concocted by “Zionism,” seen as a demonic organization with links around the globe. The masterminds were the modern “Elders of Zion” and their “fifth column” in Poland. She claims that this campaign was executed particularly aggressively and unscrupulously in Łódź, partly because ambitious Łódź party committee functionaries feared that they would have to abandon the fiction of a model proletarian city and renounce control; hence, they sought to prove to Party headquarters that they had reined in the city’s “red workers.” Juliane Wetzel’s chapter, covering the contemporary period, explores the internet as a source of knowledge and its impact, especially on youth in Europe. Assuming that cyberspace continues to be a source of fascination for youth, she examines the content of internet sites and identifies them ideologically over a period of five years, from 2000, when the Second Intifada (low-intensity war launched by the Palestinians against the Israeli occupation) broke out, until 2005. Focusing in particular on Islamist and right-wing sites, she attempts to establish the relationship between the two ideological camps, while demonstrating how the Protocols were exploited by both for

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their respective political goals. She also claims that their antisemitic thought patterns connect almost seamlessly into positions adopted by the radical left and by opponents of globalization, and points to the entanglement of young people in a web-like environment characterized by a self-perpetuating, enclosed view of the world, which is extremely difficult to penetrate. Japan serves as a case study for David Goodman’s chapter, which shows that this country has not been exempt from the penetration of conspiracy theories, including the Protocols. The Japanese also had their own indigenous conspiracy theory that held that a band of alien coreligionists was plotting to destroy them and take over their country. The anti-Christian polemics of the early and mid-nineteenth century bear a strong resemblance and served as precursors to the anti-Jewish theories of the Protocols during the early 1920s. Goodman briefly reviews the history of the Protocols in Japan, introduces several authors who have exploited the tract, and analyzes their prevalence in the country. Ever since the New York Times reported in 1987 that books claiming to reveal a global Jewish conspiracy had become bestsellers in Japan, there has been concern about the popularity of the Protocols there. Particularly disturbing has been the spread of suspicions about and animosity toward Jews − and, by extension, the State of Israel − in a nonwestern country with virtually no Jewish population or historical contact with Jews. Goodman offers explanations for this phenomenon and analyzes its implications. Moving to the Middle East, Esther Webman’s chapter focuses on Arab perceptions of the Protocols and their exploitation in the discourse on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Zionism, and Jews from the 1920s to 2006. It provides a comprehensive survey of Arab editions of the Protocols, as well as an analysis of the discussion that arose around them. Seen as an integral part of Jewish heritage, they were translated into Arabic a few years after their first appearance, and as in other countries, they continuously assumed new life, meaning, and relevance. Webman claims that their adoption and internalization prove that there were no linguistic or cultural barriers to their reception, despite the different political, cultural, and religious conditions of the new environment. Moreover, she shows that traditional historic perceptions of Muslim−Jewish relations were reconstructed and remolded according to the spirit of the text, presenting the Jewish people as a threat not only to Arabs and Muslims but to humanity at large. Orly R. Rahimiyan explores the defining features of the Protocols as published in Iran, and reviews the historical context of each new edition and the manner in which they reflected important socio-political developments in the modern era. She also examines the Protocols in the Iranian media, and the reasons for their enthusiastic reception by Iranians, who perceived the tract as definite proof of a Jewish−Zionist plot to conquer the entire world and establish a global Jewish government. Finally, the chapter demonstrates the similarities between the Protocols and other forgeries disseminated in Iran, especially anti-Baha’i polemical works.

Introduction 19 Rifat N. Bali examines the publication of the Protocols since the establishment of the Turkish state in 1923 and links the rise of Islamist power after 1945 to proliferation of the tract. Until the end of the war they were published only three times by sympathizers of the Nazis, whereas from 1946 until 2008, they were issued 102 times. Bali claims that the tract was not widely circulated in the early years of the republic because in their attempts to secularize the state and society, Atatürk and his colleagues severely repressed the Islamic movement. After World War II, the implementation of multiparty democracy became a springboard for the infusion of populism into politics, allowing the dissemination of the Protocols. Bali demonstrates that the publishing cycles of the Protocols are closely related to internal political developments in Turkey, on the one hand, and to the situation in the Middle East, on the other, and that their growth in popularity parallels the development of Islamism and extreme right politics in the country. Goetz Nordbruch analyzes the works of ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri, a leading Egyptian expert on Jewish and Zionist affairs who wrote extensively on the Protocols, and belonged to a circle of Arab intellectuals concerned about the spread of conspiracy theories in the Arab world. The chapter focuses on Masiri’s analysis of the Protocols and their function within contemporary society. Masiri challenges the widespread belief in the authenticity of the tract, and rejects the notion of a group of Jews planning to take over the world or a conspiracy by which this control could be achieved. Nordbruch contends that Masiri tried to demystify the Protocols and to rationalize the ideas implied in them. His critique of the Protocols, however, is not intended to acquit Jews of being a source of evil; rather it is aimed at modifying public perceptions of society and re-directing public resistance and anger toward globalization and a generalized “West.” In his writings, he thus integrates his refutation of the Protocols into a critique of western society and globalization, and their influences on the Muslim world. What makes his theory particularly persuasive, according to Nordbruch, is that his analysis is articulated as part of a moderate Islamist worldview that is gaining increasing support. The fourth and final section consists of three chapters that examine three attempts to bring the Protocols to court in order to refute them and ban their dissemination. Revisiting the Bern trials in light of the emergence of new material, Michael Hagemeister contends that they left an ambivalent impression. On the one hand, the narrative employed by the plaintiffs in an attempt to uncover the origins of the Protocols was a dubious construction based on equally dubious witnesses, a fact of which at least some of those involved were aware. On the other, the overall aim: producing historical evidence of the forgery and a court ruling to confirm this, proved to be ineffective weapons in the battle to discredit the tract: the same narrative continues to be told. In the critically acclaimed book The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (2005) – for which Umberto Eco wrote the introduction and which has been translated into numerous languages – the well-known Jewish cartoonist Will Eisner traces, in good faith, the “true history” of the

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Protocols. It is the tale originally told by the “dubious witnesses, Catherine Radziwill, a Russian princess of Polish origin, and Alexandre du Chalya, a French count, and subsequently legitimized by the Bern trials. Emphasizing the importance of international links among antisemites, the role of individuals, and local circumstances, Milton Shain’s examines both the so-called Greyshirt trial in 1934 and the World Conference against Racism, Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerances (WCAR), held in Durban under the auspices of the United Nations in 2001, and compares the two periods to determine the prevalence of a conspiratorial mindset in South Africa. In the first, the 1930s, the radical white right – more specifically the Afrikaner right and one of its extra-parliamentary movements, the Greyshirts − exerted a strong influence on antisemitic attitudes in society. Seventy years later, radical Muslims linked to global politics and developments in the Muslim world became the main torchbearers of hatred and accusations of conspiratorial Jewish behavior. While the 1930s were marked by economic crisis, political instability, the threat of bolshevism, and the rise of Nazism, events in Durban took place within the context of burgeoning Islamism, an increasingly radicalized South African Muslim community, failed Israeli−Palestinian negotiations, and the birth of a new democratic South Africa. The last case is Luiz Nazario’s chronicle of the Siegfried Ellwanger Castan trial in Brazil, which began in the 1990s and continued into the twenty-first century. It highlights two key aspects: the new phenomenon of virtual racism that has replaced the publication of printed material by neo-Nazis in their attempt to spread their ideology throughout the world; and the intricacies of the struggle against antisemitism and racism. Castan, a Brazilian citizen of German descent and a senior partner at Editora Revisão (Revision Publishing Company) in Porto Alegre, has been publishing, selling, and distributing racist, antisemitic, and Holocaust-denying books nationally and internationally since the 1980s. The first lawsuit against him was filed in August 1990 by members of the Popular Anti-racism Movement, Mopar, composed of Jewish, black, and human rights activists. Nazario meticulously follows the various phases of the Castan trial, reflecting on the discourse accompanying it in Brazilian society. He contends not only that Ellwanger’s conviction is a first step toward the repression of crimes of racism but it will have an impact on the future of minorities in the country.

Notes 1 Based partly on a lecture delivered by Wolfgang Benz, then head of the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung in Berlin, at the conference, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – The One Hundred Year Myth and Its Impact,” held at Tel Aviv University, October 2004. 2 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a document, and, as such, we have italicized it when it appears in full and treated it in the singular. However, for ease of reading, and in order to accommodate its various meanings and permutations, we

Introduction 21

3

4 5 6 7

8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19

have frequently shortened and romanized it to “the Protocols,” accompanied by a plural verb. See for example, Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Ciico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981); Binjamin Segel, Die Protokolle der Weisen von Zion Kritisch Beleuchtet: Eine Erledigung (Berlin: Philo Verlag, 1924), translated by Richard S. Levy as A Lie and a Libel: The History of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Lincoln/ London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995); Stephen Eric Bronner, A Rumor about the Jews: Reflections on Antisemitism and The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Cesare G. De Michelis, The NonExistent Manuscript: A Study of the Protocols of the Sages of Zion (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press, 2004); Hadassa Ben-Itto, The Lie That Wouldn’t Die: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (London/Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2005). Richard S. Levy, “Introduction: The Political Career of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” in Segel, A Lie and a Libel, pp. 4−5. Pierre-André Taguieff, Les Protocols des Sages de Sion (Paris: Berg International, 1992) (2 volumes), pp. 18−24. For a comprehensive account of the origins of the Protocols see, Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, pp. 60–148; Bronner, A Rumor about the Jews, pp. 71−128. For Nilus’ biography, see Michael Hagemeister’s article in Biographical− Bibliographical Church−Encyclopedia, vol. 21 (Nordhausen: Verlag Traugott Bautz, 2003), pp. 1063−67, available at http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/n/nilus_s_a.shtml. For a shorter version, see Michael Hagemeister, “Nilus, Sergei,” in Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, ed. Richard E. Levy, vol. 2 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio Inc., 2005), pp. 508−10. In the summer of 1903 a series of articles was published in an obscure right-wing newspaper in St. Petersburg and served as the basis of Nilus’ book. “Program for World Conquest by the Jews” [in Russian], The Banner, no. 190 (August 28−September 10, 1903); no. 200 (September 7−20, 1903). “‘The Jewish Peril’: A Disturbing Pamphlet. Call for Inquiry,” The Times, 8 May 1920; The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, translated from Sergei A. Nilus’ Russian version by Victor E. Marsden (London: Britons Publishing Society, 1920). Henry Ford, Sr., The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem (Dearborn, MI: Dearborn, 1920). Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, pp. 126−48. Quoted in Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), p. 360. See also Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, pp. 169−215. Ibid., p. 169. Ibid., pp. 158−9; Robert Rockaway, “Henry Ford – No. 1 Antisemite in the US” [in Hebrew], Kesher, no. 33 (May 2003), pp. 61−5; Hadassa Ben-Itto, “The Lie That Wouldn’t Die,” Justice, no. 34 (Winter 2002), p. 32. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (France: Editions de Seuil, 1957). Marouf Hasian Jr., “Understanding the Power of Conspiratorial Rhetoric: A Case Study of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” Communications Studies 48, no. 3 (Fall 1997), pp. 195−214, available at http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did= 34656496&Fmt=3&clientId=11916&RQT=309&VName=PQD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cConspiracy_theory. Clare Birchall, Knowledge Goes Pop: From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2006), p. 34. Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (New York: Knopf, 1965), p. 29.

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20 Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790–1970 (New York/London: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1970), pp. 14−15. 21 Peter Knight, Conspiracy Culture: From the Kennedy Assassination to the X-Files (London/New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 9. 22 Daniel Pipes, Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where it Comes From (New York: Free Press, 1997), p. 1. 23 Pipes, Conspiracy, pp. 42−8. 24 Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), p. 3. 25 Ibid., p. 178. 26 Chip Berlet, “Protocols to the Left, Protocols to the Right: Conspiracism in American Political Discourse at the Turn of the Second Millennium,” a lecture delivered at the conference “Reconsidering ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ − 100 Years after the Forgery,” held at Boston University, October 30−31, 2005, http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/paradigm/protocols-2005-d_files/ slided0129.html. 27 Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, p. 6. 28 Pipes, Conspiracy, p. 21. 29 See Bronner, A Rumor about the Jews, p. 141; Birchall, Knowledge Goes Pop, p. 34; Hasian, “Understanding the Power of Conspiratorial Rhetoric”; Naomi Wolf, “A Conspiracy So Immense,” Guatemala News, October 30, 2008, www.guatemalatimes.com/opinion/syndicated/the-next-wave/483-a-conspiracy. 30 Interview with Michael Barkun by Chip Berlet, September 2004, http://www. publiceye.org/antisemitism/nw_barkun.html, accessed August 2010. 31 Cédric Vincent, “Mapping the Invisible: Notes on the Reason of Conspiracy Theories,” Sarai Reader 2006: Turbulence, p. 45, available at www.sarai.net/ publications/readers/06-turbulence/06_vincent.pdf. 32 Yaacov Schul, “Why Do Stereotypes Stick?” in Demonizing the Other: Antisemitism, Racism, and Xenophobia, ed. Robert S. Wistrich (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999), p. 34. 33 Daniel Pipes, Review of Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (University of California Press, 2004), New York Sun, January 13, 2004; Levy, Introduction, Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, vol. 2 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC−Clio, 2005), p. 6. 34 George E. Marcus, ed., Paranoia within Reason: A Casebook on Conspiracy as Explanation (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 2−3. 35 Al-Sharq al-Awsat, July 19, 2009; Knight, Conspiracy Culture, p. 118. See also Shankar Vedantam, The Washington Post, June 5, 2006, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/ washingtonpost/access/1048465121.html?FMT=ABS&F. 36 Peter Katel, “Conspiracy Theories. Do They Threaten Democracy?” CQ Researcher 19, no. 37 (October 23, 2009), p. 888, available at www.cqresearcher.com. See also Knight, Conspiracy Culture, p. 7. 37 Vincent, “Mapping the Invisible” p. 42; Pipes, Conspiracy, pp. 121−2. 38 Levy, Introduction, Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia, p. 6. 39 Mark Fenster, Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 222. 40 Bronner, A Rumor about the Jews, p. 3. 41 Levy, Introduction, Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia, p. 4. 42 Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, p. 22; Taguieff, Les Protocols, pp. 32−3; Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), p. 133. 43 Bronner, A Rumor about the Jews, p. 141. 44 Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, p. 23.

Introduction 23 45 See a broad discussion on conspiracy theories in the Arab world in Arab Insight, no. 2 (Summer 2008), www.arabinsight.org. 46 Lipset and Raab, The Politics of Unreason, p. 16. 47 Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, p. 24. 48 Pipes, Conspiracy, pp. 151−3. 49 Dina Porat, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: New Uses of an Old Myth,” in Wistrich, Demonizing the Other, p. 323. 50 Levy, Introduction, Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia, p. 11. 51 Hasian, “Understanding the Power of Conspiratorial Rhetoric.” 52 Pipes, Conspiracy, p. 85. 53 Porat, “The Protocols,” p. 325. See also Wistrich, “The Devil, the Jews, and Hatred of the ‘Other’,” in Wistrich, Demonizing the Other, pp. 9–10; Levy, Introduction, p. 38. 54 Katel, “Conspiracy Theories”, p. 890–91. 55 Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, pp. 37, 108. 56 The Times, August 16−18, 1921. 57 Levy, “Introduction,” Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia, p. 5. 58 Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, p. 7. 59 Levy, Introduction, Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia, p. 6. 60 See for example Birchall, Knowledge Goes Pop; Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy; Hasian, “Understanding the Power of Conspiratorial Rhetoric.” 61 Birchall, Knowledge Goes Pop, p. 34. 62 Knight, Conspiracy Culture, p. 116. 63 Marcus, Paranoia within Reason, p. 4. 64 Wistrich, “The Devil, the Jews, and Hatred of the ‘Other’,” p. 9f.

Part I

Revisiting the origins of the Protocols

2

Toward the prehistory of the Protocols Iustin'ia Dmitrievna Glinka and her letter to Emperor Alexander III1 Lev Aronov, Henryk Baran, and Dmitri Zubarev 2

On April 7, 1902, the well-known Russian conservative journalist Mikhail Osipovich Men'shikov reported the existence of a mysterious document – “a fairly thick manuscript” – which told of a “secret conspiracy against humanity” initiated by King Solomon himself, and which for the last three thousand years was being carried out by “Jewish wise men.”3 Men'shikov claimed that he had become acquainted with this document (subsequently termed “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”4) through a certain Petersburg lady whom he left unnamed but described in considerable detail and not without a degree of irony: “An exquisite apartment, superb French language, all the features of good society,” “elegant,” “in direct contact with the world beyond the grave.”5 According to this lady, the “protocols” had been stolen from a secret Jewish repository in Nice and come into her possession “thanks to a certain French journalist … She … in great haste translated excerpts from the precious documents into Russian.”6 Since then, more than a century later, a massive quantity of literature has been devoted to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Protokoly sionskikh mudretsov), which became one of the political bestsellers of the twentieth century. The sources of the forgery have been studied, and many hypotheses proffered regarding its authorship. Yet the identity of the “Petersburg lady” who supposedly translated the tract into Russian and brought it to Russia remains to this day largely shrouded in mystery. No one has located the French original of the Protocols, and their very existence has been called into question.7 One of the first publishers of the Protocols, Sergei Aleksandrovich Nilus, initially wrote that they had been stolen by “a woman”;8 twelve years later he added (quoting an account by Aleksei Mikhailovich Sukhotin, a landowner from the Chern district in Tula province) that Sukhotin had received the Protocols from “a certain lady, who resided permanently abroad, that this lady – also a landowner from the Chern district (Sukhotin named her, but I have forgotten her name) – had [gotten hold of] the Protocols through some very mysterious means (possibly by stealing them).”9 Unlike Men'shikov, Nilus

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insisted he had never seen “the lady.” She was likewise left unnamed by Filipp Petrovich Stepanov, Sukhotin’s former neighbor and a fellow landowner in Tula province. In 1927, while in exile in Yugoslavia, Stepanov prepared and notarized an account, according to which Sukhotin, who had given him the manuscript of the Protocols, referred to an unnamed lady “residing in Paris” as the person from whom the manuscript had been obtained. Unlike Nilus, who simply “forgot” the lady’s name, Stepanov declared that Sukhotin had never given her name.10 Thus, over a period of twenty-five years (1902–27) there appeared three written accounts of the “lady” who brought the Protocols to Russia. Only one of the authors of these testimonies – Men'shikov – declared that he had seen her and knew who she was. It was left to another lady − a passionate advocate of the claim that the Protocols were genuine, who wrote under the pseudonym “L. Fry”11 and who first published Stepanov’s testimony − to reveal the name of the mysterious woman who had translated the document. Fry identified her as “the daughter of a Russian general, Mademoiselle Iustin'ia Glinka.” According to this account, Glinka bought the Protocols in 1884 in Paris from a French Jew, Joseph Schorst−Shapiro. She then translated the text into Russian and handed over both the original document and the translation to Petr Vasil'evich Orzhevskii, commander of the Special Gendarmes Corps.12 Glinka gave another copy of the translation to Sukhotin upon returning to her “estate in Orlov province.”13 During one of the sessions of the Bern trial, which ultimately became a judicial investigation into whether the Protocols were an authentic document,14 Glinka’s name was mentioned by Boris Ivanovich Nikolaevskii (Nicolaevsky), a Social Democrat and outstanding scholar archivist. “According to the latest version circulated by the antisemites,” he testified, “the Protocols were stolen from the archives of a Masonic lodge in France on the instructions of Mlle. Glinka. As far back as 1882−83 Glinka was unmasked as an agent of the Russian secret police.”15 Nikolaevskii remained interested in Glinka and the Protocols until the end of his life.16 He claimed that Glinka’s role in transporting the forgery to Russia confirmed his hypothesis that the mysterious document originated within the circle of her friends, Parisian Franco-Russian conservatives Juliette Adam and Il'ia Tsion. Following the publication of Norman Cohn’s Warrant for Genocide, biographical facts included in this volume and focusing on the Protocols entered the literature: some were correct (daughter of a diplomat, lady-in-waiting at the Russian court, took part in secret political investigations); others were erroneous (landowner from the Chern province, year of birth – 1844). The only previous scholarly work that provides documentary information about Glinka is a historical study on the French journalist Juliette Adam, in which the author utilizes a dossier on Glinka compiled by the prefecture of the Parisian police in 1881−82.17 The question of Glinka’s possible role in the history of the Protocols remains open to this day. Significantly, the views of scholars and polemicists on this

Toward the prehistory of the Protocols 29 issue are unrelated to their position on whether the Protocols themselves are authentic. Iurii Konstantinovich Begunov, a historian of medieval Russia who, during the post-Soviet years, has argued that the Protocols are genuine, considers Glinka a central figure in the process by which the tract was disseminated in Russia. According to his version, which he summarized with the help of a diagram, Glinka (to whom he refers as “Iuliana”18) received the Protocols from a “French journalist” (who had extracted them from the “Zion kahal”), who gave them to Sukhotin, to his neighbor Stepanov, to Minister Sipiagin, to Men'shikov, and to Nilus himself.19 Glinka and her father, a well-known Russian diplomat and nineteenth-century political thinker, are discussed in detail by Vadim Skuratovskii, a noted cultural studies specialist and literary scholar from Kiev. According to Skuratovskii, Glinka “transformed her family’s ultraconservative experience into her own ultraconservative action.”20 Iustin'ia Glinka, he adds, “who undoubtedly developed spiritually in the shadow of her father’s book, was inclined to create or, at least, receive and shape such [reactionary and conspiracy-minded] literature.”21 “Thus, one cannot exclude the possibility that Glinka had some part in co-authoring the Protocols, and that – be it in oral or written form – she introduced into the text some of her father’s postulates.”22 Both Oleg Anatol'evich Platonov, a fanatical believer in and fighter against the “world conspiracy” (mirovaia zakulisa), and the Italian philologist Cesare G. De Michelis, who, unlike earlier scholars, asserts that the tract was fabricated in Russia in 1902−03, dismiss such views. Neither finds a place for Glinka in his reconstruction of the document’s history. According to Platonov, “the story that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was stolen in France by a mysterious woman, who, according to some researchers was Iu. Glinka, is probably deliberate disinformation, put out in order to protect the reputation of the Imperial Court.”23 For his part, De Michelis rejects not just the hypothesis subscribed to by some investigators that Glinka might have been the author of the Protocols,24 but also the possibility that she took part in disseminating the text. The author of an encyclopedic article from 2006 on Nilus also considers it unnecessary to mention Glinka.25 The fact, however, remains that for more than a century since Men'shikov’s article first appeared, and for more than seventy-five years since the publication of Fry’s book (where the “lady’s” name was revealed), reliable facts concerning Glinka have been exceedingly scant; moreover, to the best of our knowledge, not a single line by her has been published. The fact that she was a lady-in-waiting at the Russian court did not prompt researchers to turn to the adres-kalendari – official listings of the bureaucracy of the Russian Empire – which each year presented detailed information on court officials. In 1871, Glinka’s given name – Iustin'ia – appeared in such a volume for the first time:26 the editors did not yet know the patronymic of the newly appointed lady-in-waiting. Subsequently, and until 1917, she appears regularly in the gazetteers, progressing over the years from the bottom to the top of the list of ladies-in-waiting.27 She first served Empress Maria Aleksandrovna, then

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Empress Maria Fedorovna, until finally she was lady-in-waiting to Empress Aleksandra Fedorovna, wife of Nicholas II. Another reference work, one that is fairly accessible to scholars – Russkii biograficheskii slovar' (Russian biographical dictionary) − corrects the error in Glinka’s date of birth: Norman Cohn and other scholars who follow his lead put it at 1844, when in fact she was born in 1836.28 Turning to reference works on the nobility of Tula province, we can easily disprove mention of a “Chern district landowner,” found in Nilus’ 1917 book and accepted on faith, first by Boris Nikolaevskii and then by other authors. No one in the Glinka family ever owned lands in the Chern district, or, for that matter, anywhere in Tula province.29 Curiously, the authors of a 2004 genealogical reference work on the family of the “Smolensk Glinkas,” who worked with archival sources and set down Glinka’s precise date of birth, as well as information regarding her parents and closest relatives (they owned the family estate of Zakup in the Dukhovshchina district of Smolensk Province), also did not bother to verify Nikolaevskii’s information and attributed to Glinka an estate in the Chern district.30 The dearth of reliable data on Glinka is a phenomenon common to the literature on the Protocols as a whole. With rare exceptions, studies on this notorious fabrication typically reproduce a certain set of facts, whose reliability varies considerably, and which basically go back to publications and investigations from the 1920s and 1930s. Strange as it may seem, most scholars have not thought it necessary to look at either the press from the late nineteenth–early twentieth century, including the short-lived French-language newspaper published by Glinka herself, or archival sources, whether western or Russian (since the early 1990s the latter have become far more accessible). Since 2005, we have located several hundred letters by Glinka to a variety of individuals of various social positions, including reigning monarchs, ministers of state, priests, and journalists, as well as lawyers and speculators/adventurers. Among these documents, a letter in French to Emperor Alexander III31 is of exceptional interest: it sheds new light on the role that its author attempted to play in Russian political life during the 1880s, and touches on themes that appear in far greater detail in the Protocols. The text of the letter in English translation follows:32 Highly confidential Sire, At Your Majesty’s command I turned to Count Tolstoi,33 who, since he was ill, referred me to Monsieur Orzhevskii.34 I communicated to the latter, with regard to those matters that concerned him, that Herr Bismarck35 has conceived a plan to kill Your Majesty. In addition, I supplied him with the names of two of the assassins (there are six of them in total), who have received payment for this, I indicated my sources, and said that I hoped to receive more detailed information. In addition, I gave him the secret code of Austrian Ambassador Count Wimpfen [sic, Wimpffen], who committed suicide36 and was involved in

Toward the prehistory of the Protocols 31 shadowy doings as a secret agent of Herr Bismarck. I supplied Monsieur Giers37 with some important and reliable information concerning the chancellor’s broad overall plans. I spoke with him regarding the articles of the secret treaty concluded between Germany and Austria (by the will of Providence I have by chance learned of this treaty). These articles state that [several] military corps will be formed immediately, as well as a unified general staff and supreme command. These articles lay out scenarios of how events might develop in the eventuality that a struggle begins and determine the mode of action depending on these variants. This time I did not name my sources to Monsieur Giers, since I had given my word to communicate them only orally to Your Majesty, should Your Majesty wish to know them. I also informed him of efforts undertaken by these countries (in addition to England) designed to draw Italy into military actions in Africa in order to spoil its relations with France. I will briefly add two points that might personally interest Your Majesty. The Chief Rabbi in Paris38 informed me that if freedom of conscience and equality before the law were granted in Russia, Your Majesty might count on full support from the “Alliance Israélite Universelle.” This Alliance is an immense power, possessed of enormous funds and having at its disposal a wide network of secret connections. The second point touches on the Grand Duke Konstantin. He told a certain person that he counts on taking part in the coronation, and added that this day shall decide his fate. If he is well received, he will try to be a support for the throne,39 in the same way, in his words, as was the Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich,40 his uncle and godfather. He spoke about this for a long time. If, on the other hand, he meets an unfavorable reception, he plans to return to the life of a private individual, which he is at present. The person who informed me of these words (I myself did not see the Grand Duke) is very reliable and, I believe, wished that they be transmitted to Your Majesty. Such, Sire, is the information that I can present in writing. I also possess other knowledge that I can communicate only orally, but it is apparent that everything will be done to disrupt that. One of my friends warned me that there are people who will not hesitate to resort to calumny, intrigues and even violence in order to stop me from meeting with You or with Her Majesty the Empress.41 I begged Princess Kochubei to request that Her Majesty receive me, but the Hofmeisterin42 is linked to and corresponds with the Prussian Court, and so might even unconsciously act as its tool. I humbly beg Your Majesty not to communicate the contents of this letter to any member of the Imperial family, except, naturally, for the Empress. I have serious reasons for such a request, and they concern your personal safety, Sire, as well as my own. The purpose of my journey will be accomplished if I am able to share my information with Your Majesty.

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L. Aronov, H. Baran and D. Zubarev I remain Your Majesty’s humble and devoted subject Justine de Glinka43

The letter is undated. The time of its composition may be reconstructed from the context. The latest event mentioned in it is the suicide in Paris of the Austrian ambassador, Count Felix Wimpffen. This occurred on December 24, 1882. A future event discussed in the letter is the coronation of Alexander III, which took place in Moscow on May 10, 1883. Thus, the letter was written sometime during the period January−April 1883.

Biographical details The author of the letter, Iustin'ia Dmitrievna Glinka, was the daughter of Russian diplomat Dmitrii Grigor'evich Glinka44 and his wife Justina Christine, née Bangemann−Huygens, Comtesse de Løvendal (born ca. 1810 – died Versailles, 1893).45 She was born on July 1, 1836, probably in Copenhagen, where her father served as second secretary of the Russian embassy during the years 1831–37. It should be noted that the “general” of whom L. Fry wrote in her book was not Iustin'ia’s father, but his brother Boris (1809–95). Nothing is known of Iustin'ia s life before 1871; since she remained unmarried (until her death at age 80), she probably lived with her parents in the various countries to which her father was posted. Dmitrii Glinka’s further career included stints as secretary, counselor, and chargé d’affaires in Sweden (1837−46), in Prussia (1846−50) and at the Grand Ducal Court in Hesse (1850−53), respectively. During the period 1853−56 he was retired with the rank of Actual State Councilor (deistvitel'nyi statskii sovetnik). After Aleksandr Gorchakov was appointed minister of foreign affairs, Dmitrii Grigor'evich Glinka returned to diplomatic service at a more senior level: he was named envoy extraordinary, plenipotentiary, and minister plenipotentiary of Russia in Brazil in 1856, and was raised to the rank of Privy Councilor (tainyi sovetnik) in 1863. In 1871 Dmitrii Glinka was transferred to an equivalent diplomatic post in Portugal, where he died on May 14, 1883, having achieved the rank of Actual Privy Councillor (deistvitel'nyi tainyi sovetnik – the second highest in the Russian Table of Ranks). His son, Nikolai Dmitrievich Glinka (1838–84), followed him into the diplomatic service: during the 1880s he became an Actual State Councilor, received the court rank of chamberlain, and was Russian consul in Frankfurt-am-Main. Nikolai was Iustin'ia Glinka’s only sibling; the “sister” mentioned by various scholars, including Vadim Skuratovskii, never existed. In 1871, when her father moved from Brazil to Portugal, the 35-year-old Iustin'ia Glinka received – clearly, in response to a request by her father – the court rank of lady-in-waiting (freilina) to Empress Maria Aleksandrovna, and appears to have moved to Petersburg. Following the death in 1880 of Empress Maria Aleksandrovna, Glinka, along with many other “orphaned” ladies-in-waiting, was left without duties

Toward the prehistory of the Protocols 33 in the Russian capital. She consequently moved to Paris, where her father owned a large house and an enormous collection of west European art. After Emperor Alexander II was assassinated on March 13 (March 1 – old calendar), 1881, Glinka began to engage in political activities directed against Russian revolutionaries in exile. As a result, she came to the attention of the Parisian police, which compiled a dossier on her activities. In a police report dated March 16, 1882, Glinka is termed the daughter of a general, a secret agent of the Russian police in Paris, and a close associate of Louis Andrieux (1840–1931), prefect of the Paris police, and of Juliette Adam, editor of the journal Nouvelle Revue. Among her other contacts, the report lists journalists such as “Baron Grimm” from the newspaper Figaro and the “anti-nihilist writer Monsieur de Bélina.”46 The police established another file on her assistant Theodore Joseph Shapiro, mentioned by L. Fry, who refers to him as a “Russian Jew” and a “shady individual.”47 Not surprisingly, Glinka’s political activities, so atypical of a high society lady, attracted the attention of the left-wing radical Paris press, which sympathized with Russian revolutionaries and which termed the assassination of Alexander II an “execution.” In the summer of 1882, the newspapers L'Intransigeant (in essence, an organ of the People’s Will party in Europe48) and Le Radical published a series of journalistic investigations in which Glinka, identified as “Mlle de G …,” is assigned one of the leading roles – that of an agent of the “International Third Section.”49 Among other individuals referred to in these articles are the above-mentioned journalist “de Bélina” and an “agent of Mlle de G …,” labeled “S,” easily identifiable as the mysterious Shapiro, who supposedly stole the Protocols from the archives of the “Zion kahal.” One of the articles provides a description of Iustin'ia Glinka: And it was then, when opportunism came to power,50 Mlle de G … was sent to Paris as head of the secret police. It is possible that she was recommended to the Tsar by Mme Edmond Adam, with whom, as will be shown below, she was very close. Ever since Madame Adam fell into disfavor with the Empress (it is known that during her visit to St. Petersburg she asked the Empress for an audience but was refused) Mlle de G … has shared in her misfortune. Mlle de G … is a woman of elegant, aristocratic bearing, aged somewhere between 35 and 40 years. She is pretty rather than beautiful. Daughter of an ambassador, she lives in Paris in high style, and many very well-known artists and men of letters visit her salon, even though they know very well that she receives payment from the government. Mlle de G …’s eagerness led her to commit a mistake: she took insufficient account of [Ambassador] Prince Orlov’s warnings, counsels, and commands. An intriguer, a squabbler, a friend, a protégé, – we might even say an agent – of the opportunists, she tried to fight with Prince Orlov, who is highly favored by the Tsar.

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L. Aronov, H. Baran and D. Zubarev In the end, the ambassador informed his government that Mlle de G … makes his own activities more difficult. Mlle de G … lost all sense of proportion and in the end accused Orlov of being in league with the nihilists.51

Although Glinka’s name was not revealed in either of the newspaper series, her identity could be guessed so easily that the scandalous details, especially the description of her conflict with the Russian envoy in France, Nikolai Alekseevich Orlov (1827−85), might well have led to some kind of official reaction. Not surprisingly, therefore, Glinka’s friend and political associate Juliette Adam quickly came to her defense. In a letter sent to the editor of the newspaper Le Radical she used Glinka’s full name: Sir, I would be sorry not to be a man, if a man could avoid staining his honor by having dealings with the author of articles on the Russian police that you have published. It would be stupid to defend Mademoiselle Iustin’a Glinka from such attacks! I will cite but one fact that overturns all the remaining ones: Monsieur X … asserts that I presented Mademoiselle Glinka to Alexander II. Only someone who has not the slightest conception of Russia could ignore the fact that Mademoiselle Glinka, a lady-in-waiting to the Empress, is an official personage at Court, as are all members of her family. The Glinka family is a model of honor, loyalty, and heroic devotion to their Russian fatherland. Of course, Monsieur X …, a run-of-the-mill police agent of Count Ignat'ev, knows all this, and I would show myself to be very naïve in bothering to answer him, were it not for the fact that I count on striking those who stand behind him and want to deprive Mademoiselle Glinka and myself of the equanimity of spirit needed to continue our peacemaking activities.52 In fact, the French journalists did commit a number of factual errors. They did not know that the Third Section,53 which they condemned and with which Iustin'ia Glinka was supposedly involved, had been dissolved two years prior to the events described in the articles. It was replaced by the Department of Police, subordinated to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but Glinka had no connection to that body either. Furthermore, during this period Russia did not possess a special service tracking the activities of political émigrés, although there was discussion of the need for such a structure and it came into being in July 1883.54 After Alexander II was assassinated the most politically active, not just in Russia but also abroad, were not the police but the so-called Holy Brotherhood (Sviashchennaia Druzhina), established by a group of highly placed monarchists. The goals of this voluntary “counterterrorist”

Toward the prehistory of the Protocols 35 organization were protection of the new emperor, Alexander III, and the struggle against revolutionaries. Glinka was not a member of the Brotherhood since, according to its charter, only men could join, but she could have known something about it and tried to assist it. The 709 known members of the organization included many diplomats, including those stationed in Paris, as well as court officials, and all had been part of Glinka’s social circle since her childhood. In the Russian embassy in Paris, first secretary Count M.N. Murav'ev, secretaries Iu.P. Bakhmet'ev and K.M. Naryshkin, and counselor P.A. Kapnist all belonged to the Brotherhood. The same was true of M.K. Zografo, mentioned in the investigative French newspaper articles.55 The journalist from Le Radical did prove correct on one important point. The activity of the aristocratic amateur detectives, including Glinka, increasingly irritated ambassador Nikolai Orlov. The situation was similar to that which was taking place in Russia itself, where “members of the Holy Brotherhood often hindered the police, rather than helped them. They actively engaged in political provocations and the police placed them under surveillance. The two services interfered with and disoriented each other.”56 At the close of 1882, not long before Glinka, who had returned from Paris, was assumed to have sent her letter to the emperor, the operations of the Holy Brotherhood had come to an end.57

Analysis of Glinka’s letter Among the names Iustin'ia Glinka mentions or discusses in her letter to Alexander III – the emperor’s wife, his uncle, and some of his ministers and court officials – is Petr Vasil'evich Orzhevskii. Notwithstanding the view that was widespread in the literature on the Protocols that Glinka was Orzhevskii’s tool, her letter reveals a different picture. Contact between the lady-in-waiting and the high official was unavoidable, but she considered it necessary to carefully limit the confidential information she provided. This fact makes even less likely another theory, also prevalent in studies on the Protocols, to the effect that Glinka might have carried out some instructions given to her by Petr Ivanovich Rachkovskii – an official of lower rank, and in the civil service rather than the military. The rumors picked up by Glinka concerning assassins sent by Chancellor Bismarck to Russia became especially numerous following the sudden and untimely death of Mikhail Dmitrievich Skobelev. In February 1882, the young general, who espoused anti-German views, gave a speech in Paris regarding the inevitability of war between Russia and Germany (his statements led to a reprimand from Alexander III). Skobelev died while staying at the Angleterre Hotel in Moscow on June 25, 1882. According to a contemporary, “all Moscow knew and said that at Bismarck’s orders he was given a deadly poison in a cup of wine, and that at the time of his death a special agent left Moscow for Petersburg on an express train.”58

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When discussing the suicide of Count Wimpffen in 1883, Glinka does not reveal how she received a “secret” diplomatic code, but clearly hints at theft, possibly with the help of the “Providence” she mentions elsewhere in her text. The ambassador’s death, Glinka suggests, was linked to Bismarck’s “shadowy doings.” According to newspapers from that time, various rumors circulated in Paris regarding the possible reasons for Wimpffen’s death: these included disagreement with his government’s policy and financial problems.59 In her letter, Iustin'ia Glinka touches on one of the most acute problems of Alexander III’s early reign: the situation of Russia’s Jews. Following the wave of pogroms in Novorossiia and Ukraine in the spring of 1881, and the more limited pogroms of spring 1882, the Jewish population of the empire was subjected to new restrictions. May 3, 1882, saw the publication of the “Temporary Rules” that forbade Jews to settle and acquire real estate outside of townships and cities within the Pale of Settlement, as well as to trade on Sundays and Christian holidays. Because of this situation, the “Alliance Israélite Universelle” mentioned in Glinka’s letter, which was created in 1860 and fought for the legal equality of Jews and members of other religious minorities, began to involve itself actively in the “Russian question.” Immediately, the Alliance provided material help to victims of the pogroms and assisted them in efforts to emigrate. In France and other European countries it organized public committees of prominent citizens to help Russian Jews; the French committee was headed by Victor Hugo.60 Glinka briefly outlines the terms of an unofficial ultimatum supposedly given to the new emperor by the “chief rabbi in Paris” on behalf of an “immense power”: legal equality for Russian Jews in exchange for “full support” for Russia in the international arena. As is the case of other sensational statements made by Glinka, there are no known documents that might confirm the existence of such a proposal. This portion of the letter must have evoked a negative reaction from the tsar, who was undoubtedly well-informed about the Alliance. The organization had been working in Russia since the 1860s (in 1869 its president, Adolphe Crémieux, had visited Petersburg) and was regarded with suspicion by the Russian bureaucracy and the conservative press.61

Conclusion Glinka’s letter is not just evidence of the political ambitions of a 46-year-old unmarried lady-in-waiting, who is attempting to become a confidante of the emperor and his wife by supplying them with exclusive information – and in the process bypassing the ministers of internal and foreign affairs. It sheds light on a mysterious individual who from the beginning has been mentioned in the literature on the Protocols: to paraphrase the writer Iurii Tynianov in his famous short story Sublieutenant Kizhe (1928), a “secret person without an outward aspect” (litso sekretnoe i figury ne imeiushchee). Three motifs in the text of her letter resonate with the contents of the Protocols and the

Toward the prehistory of the Protocols 37 legend that surrounds them: 1) a demonstrated ability to obtain possession of other people’s secrets by all means necessary, including the criminal and the supernatural; 2) a fear of conspiracies against Russia and an attempt to foil them; and 3) a perception of international Jewry as a mighty power. In the letter this power is presented as undecided on its possible relationship to Russia but potentially posing great danger to the country. Given all this, it becomes more likely that Glinka might in fact have been involved in some manner with the appearance of the fabricated document in Russia. In any event, the contents of her letter, when combined with the facts of her biography, make it quite possible that the scene described by Men'shikov in his 1902 article did actually occur. Sending the letter did not bring Glinka the result she sought: to become a Russian super spy. There are no comments in the margin by its only reader, and the only other known letter from the troublesome lady-in-waiting to Alexander III met with a decidedly negative response by the recipient.62 In the spring of 1884, Iustin'ia Glinka, once again a resident of Paris, became a fanatical follower of the celebrated mystic, writer, and adventuress Helene Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society. As a result of Glinka’s contacts with Blavatsky, a far more significant figure than the Autocrat of All the Russias became her correspondent: the all-powerful – and entirely virtual – Mahatma Moria, the supposed all-powerful ruler of the mythical realm of Shambala in the Himalayas.63

Appendix Très confidentiel Sire Selon l'ordre de Votre Majesté, c'est au Comte Tolstoy, que je me suis adressée. Étant malade il m'a envoyé Mr Orjewsky, auquel j'ai communiqué, ce qui concerne sa partie, c'est à dire que Monsieur de Bismarck a conçu le plan de faire assassiner Votre Majesté. J'ai ajouté à cela, les noms de deux des assassins (il y en a six), qui ont reçu de l’argent à cet effet, et j'ai indiqué mes sources en disant, que j'ai l’espoir d'avoir des indications plus détaillées. Je lui ai en outre passé le chiffre secret de l’ambassadeur d’Autriche, Comte Wimpfen, qui s’est suicidé, et qui a été mêlé à des affaires ténébreuses comme agent secret de Mr de Bismarck. J'ai transmis à Monsieur de Giers quelques renseignements importants et authentiques sur les vastes plans généraux du Chancellier. Je lui ai parlé des clauses du traité secret, intervenu entre l’Allemagne et l’Autriche, et qu’un hasard providentiel m'a fait connaître. Ces clauses fixent dès maintenant, la composition des corps d’armées, de l’État Major, et des Chefs des armées réunies. – Elles indiquent les différentes éventualités pouvant se produire au moment de la lutte, et déterminant les modes

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L. Aronov, H. Baran and D. Zubarev d’action, qu’elles provoqueraient. Pour cette fois je n’ai osé lui nommer mes sources, ayant donné ma parole, de ne le faire que verbalement à Votre Majesté, si Elle désirait les connaître. J'ai aussi raconté les efforts qu’on faisait du même côté, joint à ceux de l’Angleterre, pour entrainer l’Italie dans une action en Afrique afin de gâter ses relations avec la France. J’ajoute brèvement deux points qui peuvent intéresser Votre Majesté personnellement. – Le grand Rabin à Paris m'a communiqué que si la liberté de conscience et l’égalité des cultes devant la loi, étaient accordeés en Russie, Votre Majesté pourrait compter sur l’appui entier de «l’Alliance Israélite Universelle». Cette Alliance est une immense force d’intelligences et d’argent. L’autre point concerne le Grand Duc Constantin. Il a dit à quelqu’un, qu’il compte assister au couronnement, en ajoutant, que ce jour déciderait de sa vie. Que s’il était bien reçu, il tâcherait d’être un soutien pour le trône de Votre Majesté, comme disait-il, son oncle et parrain le Grand Duc Constantin Pavlovitch l’avait été. Il a longuement développé ce thème. Si on le recevait mal, il compte retourner à l’existence de simple particulier, qu’il mène actuellement. La personne, qui m'a répété ces paroles (car je n’ai pas vu le Grand Duc) est très sûre, et paraissait désirer, qu’elles Vous fussent redites. Voilà les renseignements, que j'ai pu mettre par écrit, Sire. J’en ai d’autres, qui ne sont possibles, que pour une communication verbale, et il est évident, qu’on fera tout au monde pour m’empêcher de les faire. – Un ami m'a averti, qu’un ne reculerait devant aucune calomnie, intrigue ou même violence, pour m’empêcher d’arriver jusqu’à Vous ou Sa Majesté l’Impératrice. J'ai prié la Princesse Kotchoubey de demander que Sa Majesté me reçoive, mais la Grande Maitresse étant très liée, et en correspondance avec la Cour de Prusse, peut toujours, même inconsciemment leur servir d’instrument. – Je supplie humblement Votre Majesté, de ne communiquer le contenu de cette lettre absolument à personne des membres de la famille Impériale; sauf l’Impératrice s’entend. − J'ai pour faire cette prière des raisons bien grâves, qui touchent autant à Votre sécurité personnelle, qu’à la mienne, Sire. – Le but de mon voyage sera atteint, si je parviens à faire arriver tous mes renseignements jusqu’à Votre Majesté – Je me dis Sire, de Votre Majesté la très humble et dévouée sujette Justine de Glinka

Notes 1 This chapter is a slightly revised and expanded version of a text originally published in Russian in Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 82 (2006), pp. 169–82. It was part of a project undertaken by the authors and supported by the Nevas Family Foundation and Mr. David Nevas, on the history of the Protocols and their

Toward the prehistory of the Protocols 39

2 3

4 5 6 7

8 9

10

11

12

reception in Russia and western Europe in the twentieth century. The goal of the project is to uncover and make available to a wider scholarly audience previously unknown or unutilized materials on the history of this fabricated text, fill in the gaps in our knowledge of how it was disseminated, describe the struggle against it, and shed new light on the biographies of various individuals who, in one way or another, played some role in this complicated story. Two articles prepared within the framework of the project have since appeared: Henryk Baran, “On the Early Journalism of A. M. du Chayla: Contexts of the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’,” in Time and Place: Festschrift for Alexander Ospovat on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday [in Russian] (Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo, 2008), pp. 454−67; and Lev Aronov, Henryk Baran and Dmitri Zubarev, “Princess Catherine Radziwill and the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’: Mystification as a Way of Life” [in Russian], Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 96 (2009), pp. 76−107. Ultimately, a volume of documents and studies in Russian, English and French will be published; it will include, among others, contributions by Michael Hagemeister. The authors wish to thank Michael Hagemeister for his translation of the German title, and for reviewing the article as a whole; for their corrections to the text we wish to thank Michael Hagemeister and Anne Hartmann. Mikhail Men'shikov, “Letters to My Neighbors. XVI. Plots Against Humanity” [in Russian], Novoe vremia, April 7, 1902; cited in idem, “Letters to My Neighbors,” published by D.I. Zubarev in Russia’s Occult Forces [in Russian], ed. A.D. Balabukha (St. Petersburg: Severo-Zapad, 1998), pp. 710–23. Ibid., p. 713. Ibid., pp. 711−12. Ibid., p. 712. The most convincing argument against a French autograph has been put forward by Cesare G. De Michelis. See The Non-Existent Manuscript: A Study of the “Protocols of the Sages of Zion,” trans. by Richard Newhouse, Eng. ed., rev. and expanded (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004); also see the Russian version of this work: Ch.Dzh. De Mikelis, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”: The Non-Existent Manuscript, or the Forgery of the Century, trans. from Italian by G. Rotenberg (Minsk: MET; Moscow: Kovcheg, 2006). S. Nilus, The Great in the Small and Antichrist, an Imminent Political Possibility: Notes of an Orthodox Believer [in Russian], 2nd ed. corrected and supplemented (Tsarskoe Selo: Tip. Tsarskosel’skogo Komiteta Krasnogo Kresta, 1905), p. 321. S. Nilus, “It Is Close, Even at Our Doors”: Concerning That Which People Do Not Wish to Believe and Which Is So Near [in Russian], 4th ed. (Sergiev Posad: Tip. Sv.-Tr. Sergievoi Lavry, 1917); quoted in Sergei Aleksandrovich Nilus (1862–1929): A Biography [in Russian], comp. by S.M. Polovinkin (Moscow: Izd-vo SpasoPreobrazhenskogo Valaamskogo monastyria, 1995), p. 84. Curiously, Dmitri Sergeevich Sipiagin, minister of internal affairs of the Russian Empire, was killed on April 2, 1902, five days before Men'shikov’s article appeared in print. Stepanov’s testimony published on the basis of an archival document: L. Aronov, “Commentaries,” in V. Burtsev, In Pursuit of Provocateurs: “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” – A Proven Forgery [in Russian], preface by Iu. V. Davydov, commentaries by L.G. Aronov (Moscow: Slovo, 1991), p. 388. “Leslie Fry” – also known as Paquita de Shishmareff – antisemitic publicist, author of Waters Flowing Eastward (Paris: R.I.S.S., 1931), a pamphlet on Ahad Ha‘am as possible author of the Protocols (appeared in several languages), and other writings. Michael Hagemeister has prepared a biographical article on Fry for the collective volume indicated in note 1. Petr Vasil'evich Orzhevskii (1839–97), lieutenant-general, deputy minister of internal affairs (1882–87), commander of the Special Corps of Gendarmes. He signed documents relating to surveillance and investigations with the title

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13 14 15 16

17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29

30

L. Aronov, H. Baran and D. Zubarev “Head of Police.” During 1882 he was head of the Central Committee of the Holy Brotherhood (see below). Fry, Waters Flowing Eastward, p. 93. See Michael Hagemeister, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Court,” in this volume. Witness testimony, October 29, 1934, cited in Burtsev, In Pursuit of Provocateurs, p. 308. He shared the results of his investigations with the historian Norman Cohn, the author of the classic work on the Protocols, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1967); Russian-language edition: N. Kon, Blagoslovenie na genotsid: Mif o vsemirnom evreiskom zagovore i “Protokolakh Sionskikh mudretsov,” trans. by S.S. Bychkov, ed. and afterword by T.A. Karasova and D.A. Cherniakhovskii (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1990). Nikolaevskii’s correspondence regarding the Protocols from 1934 to 1965 has been published in part; see “B.I. Nikolaevskii to Vera Cohn (Broido)” [in Russian], publication and commentaries by O.V. Budnitskii, in Jews and the Russian Revolution: Materials and Studies [in Russian] (Moscow/ Jerusalem: Gesharim, 1999), pp. 223–30; O. Platonov, Russia’s Crown of Thorns: The Riddle of the Protocols of Zion [in Russian] (Moscow: Rodnik, 1999), pp. 49–522. Saad Morcos, Juliette Adam [in French] (Cairo: Dar al-Maaref, 1961). Iu.K. Begunov, Secret Powers in the History of Russia: A Collection of Articles and Documents [in Russian] (St. Petersburg: Izd-vo im. A.S. Suvorina Soiuza pisatelei Rossii, 1996), p. 91. It should be noted that no one in the Glinka family was ever called by the non-Orthodox name “Iuliana” (Juliana). By contrast, “Iustin'ia” (Justine) was the given name of her great-grandmother, her grandmother, and mother. Ibid., Hidden Powers, p. 423 – No. 3. Diagram of the path of the Protocols from France to Russia. V. Skuratovskii, The Problem of Authorship of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” [in Russian] (Kiev: Dukh i Litera, 2001), p. 24. Ibid., p. 29. Skuratovskii had in mind Dmitrii Glinka’s work The Science of Human Society [in French] (Rio de Janeiro/Paris: Hachette, 1867); however, this hypothesis is questionable. Ibid., p. 31. Platonov, Russia’s Crown of Thorns, p. 227. De Michelis, Non-Existent Manuscript, p. 123; idem, “The Protocols,” pp. 176−7. A.I. Reitblat, “Nilus Sergei Aleksandrovich” [in Russian], Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 78 (2006), pp. 385–91. A General Listing of Senior Officials and Other Officials in All Departments of the Russian Empire for the Year 1871. Part 1. Authorities and Locations of the Central Administration and Departments [in Russian] (St. Petersburg: Tip. Pravitel’stvuiushchego senata, 1871), p. 34. A General Listing … for the Year 1916. Part 1 (1916), p. 87. N. Chulkov, “Glinka Dmitrii Grigor'evich” [in Russian], in Russian Biographical Dictionary, vol. 5, Gerberskii – Gogenloe (St. Petersburg: Tip. G. Lissnera i D. Sovko, 1916), p. 272−4. See V. I. Chernopiatov, The Nobility of Tula Province. vol. II (XI), Alphabetical List of Noble Families, with a Listing of the Most Important Documents [in Russian] (Moscow: Pechatnia A. I. Snegirevoi, 1908); idem, The Nobility of Tula Province. vol. IV (XIII) Alphabetical List of Nobles Together with Information on the Location of Their Estates [in Russian] (Moscow: Tip. L.V. Pozhidaevoi, 1910). B. Fedorov, N. Deverilina, and T. Koroleva, The Smolensk Glinkas: 350 Years in the Service of Russia, 1654−2004; The Genealogy of the Glinka Clan and the Descendents of M.I. Glinka’s Sisters [in Russian] (Moscow: Gareeva, 2004), pp. 139−45, 216.

Toward the prehistory of the Protocols 41 31 Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Romanov (1845−94) – from March 1, 1881, Emperor Alexander III. Within a year (1881−82) the tsar replaced all his ministers: hardline conservatives, whom he fully trusted, succeeded the liberals left over from his father’s reign. 32 GARF (State Archive of the Russian Federation), fond 677 (Emperor Alexander III), opis’ 1, delo 763, listy no. 1−2ob. Handwritten autograph. The French original is reproduced in the Appendix. 33 Count Dmitrii Andreevich Tolstoi (1823–April 25, 1889) – from May 30, 1882, minister of internal affairs of the Russian Empire. His immediate predecessor in that post was Count Nikolai Pavlovich Ignat'ev (1832−1908), whom Juliette Adam mentioned in her letter (see below). Tolstoi was an extreme reactionary and a bureaucrat. He disliked the activities of the Holy Brotherhood and was partly responsible for the organization’s dissolution. 34 See note 12. 35 Prince Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck (−Schönhausen) (1815–98), chancellor of the German Empire. 36 Count Felix von Wimpffen (1827–82), Austro-Hungarian ambassador to France, committed suicide in Paris on December 24, 1882. 37 Nikolai Karlovich von Giers (1820–January 14, 1895) – from May 28, 1882, minister of foreign affairs of the Russian Empire. 38 “Chief rabbi in Paris,” refers to either Lazar Isidor (1813−88) – from 1847 chief rabbi of Paris and from 1867 chief rabbi of the Central Consistory (chief rabbi of France); or Zadok Kahn (1839–1905) − from 1868 his successor in the position of chief rabbi of Paris. 39 Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich Romanov (1827–92), the new emperor’s uncle, was the brother and a very close associate of his father Alexander II. He had helped implement the liberal domestic policies of the previous reign, and from 1865 headed the State Council. Following his brother’s murder and his nephew’s accession to the throne, on July 13, 1881, he was stripped of all his positions and spent the final years of his life outside St. Petersburg, entirely removed from political activity. Iustin'ia Glinka’s attempt to reconcile the emperor with his uncle was clearly inappropriate and doomed to failure. 40 Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich Romanov (1779−1831) – younger brother of Emperor Alexander I. 41 “Her Majesty” the Empress – Dagmar-Sophia-Dorothea (1847–1928), daughter of Danish King Christian IX; known as Maria Fedorovna following her conversion to Russian Orthodoxy. From 1866, wife of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich; from 1881, empress of Russia. Maria Fedorovna and her lady-in-waiting were not close, in spite of the tone in the letter: the empress’ archive, accumulated over a period of 36 years (1881–1916), contains only one letter from Iustin'ia Glinka. 42 Princess Elena Pavlovna Kochubei (in the French original – Kotchoubey) (née Bibikova) (1812–88) – 1883−84 Hofmeisterin (mistress of the imperial court); 1885−87 – Oberhofmeisterin (grand mistress of the imperial court). Widow of Kammerherr (chamberlain) Prince V.V. Kochubei. According to memoirs of the period, she dominated court life during the early years of Alexander III’s reign. See, for example, Sylvain Bensidoun, Alexandre III. 1881–1894 (Paris: SEDES, 1990), p. 159. 43 We wish to thank Dr. Maria Neklyudova for her assistance with the French texts used in this article. Emphasis in original. 44 Dmitrii Glinka was the favorite nephew of the poet Vil’gel’m (Wilhelm) Karlovich Kiukhel’beker (1808–83), a Decembrist and friend of Alexander Pushkin. 45 Cf. http://www.sadolins.com/genealogy/familygroup.php?familyID=F31145& tree=onetree (accessed July 15, 2007); date of death based on information in unpublished papers of Iustin'ia Glinka.

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46 Morcos, Juliette Adam, pp. 190, 494−97. Information regarding Glinka in Saad Morcos’ study was kindly pointed out by Michael Hagemeister. “Baron Grimm” was the pseudonym of the journalist and playwright Albert Millaud (1836–92), known for his feuilletons in Le Figaro. “De Bélina” was probably the pseudonym of the Polish journalist Apollo Mlochowski (1837– ?), author of a number of books on Russia and Poland. Presumably, this is the same person as the “expatriate Belina” listed among “an odd assortment of free-lance spies” in France during the period of the Dreyfus affair: A. Mitchell, “The Xenophobic Style: French Counterespionage and the Emergence of the Dreyfus Affair.” Journal of Modern History 52, no. 3 (September 1980), p. 417. 47 Morcos, Juliette Adam, p. 495. 48 The newspaper’s editor Henri Rochefort (1831–1913) was authorized by the People’s Will to assist the party’s representative in France; in England, this task was carried out by Karl Marx. N.A. Troitskii, Tsarism before the Court of Progressive Public Opinion. 1866–1895 [in Russian] (Moscow: Mysl’, 1979), p. 254. 49 “The Russian Police in Paris” [in French], L'Intransigeant, June 26, 1882; June 27; June 29; July 1; X …, “The International Third Section” [in French], Le Radical. July 25, July 26, July 29, August 2, August 4, August 5, August 6. 1882. 50 During this period, the term “opportunism,” from the expression en temps opportune, was applied in France to the policy of compromises and parliamentary maneuvers pursued by Léon Gambetta, leader of the Moderate Republicans. According to Gambetta, only such a policy could bring about the triumph of republican ideas. The “opportunists” came to power following the parliamentary elections of 1881, with Gambetta serving as prime minister for a little over two months. 51 Le Radical, July 25, 1882. 52 Le Radical, August 5, 1882. 53 The Third Section of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancery (Tret’e otdelenie sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva kantseliarii), the highest-level organ of political supervision and investigation, was established in 1826 by Emperor Nicholas I and, until the summer of 1880, exercised broad authority in various areas with the aim of suppressing real or potential opposition to the government. The name “Third Section” became a synonym for political repression. 54 Z.I. Peregudova, Political Investigation in Russia (1880−1917) [in Russian] (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), pp. 140–1. 55 L.T. Senchakova, “`The Holy Brotherhood’ and Its Membership,” Herald of Moscow University − History [in Russian], no. 2 (1967), pp. 67, 76. 56 Peregudova, Political Investigation, p. 141. 57 See the latest study of the organization’s foreign activities, in which Glinka’s name is not mentioned: Iu.A. Pelevin, “The ‘Holy Brotherhood’ against the ‘People’s Will’ in Emigration,” in “Without the sciences there is no and cannot be a future” (In Memory of Moscow University Professor Mikhail Gerasimovich Sedov) [in Russian] (Moscow: Izd-vo MGU, 2005), pp. 604–34. 58 A. I. Kuprin, Collected Works, 6 vols. [in Russian], vol. 5 (Moscow: GIKhL, 1958), p. 616. 59 “Suicide of the Austrian Ambassador in Paris,” The Times (London), January 1, 1883. A very different version was advanced in antisemitic writings, which named the celebrated Austrian financier and philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch as being involved in von Wimpffen’s death. See, for example, the notorious “lexicon” of German antisemite Philipp Stauff, Semi-Kürschner: or, Literary Encyclopedia of Writers, Poets, Bankers, Plutocrats, Physicians, Actors, Artists, Musicians, Officers, Lawyers, Revolutionaries, Suffragettes, Social-Democrats, etc. of Jewish Race or Laden with Jewish Family Connections, who between 1813 and 1913 were Active or Known in Germany [in German] (Berlin: Stauff, 1913), Column 559.

Toward the prehistory of the Protocols 43 60 A. Chouraqui, The “Alliance israélite universelle” and Modern Jewish Rebirth, 1860–1960: A Hundred Years of History [in French] (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965), pp. 77−8. 61 J. Klier, Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 1855–1881 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 271, 276. It should be noted that the third edition (1882) of Iakov Brafman’s antisemitic treatise Book of the Kahal paints a malignant picture of the worldwide activities of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Klier, pp. 282–3. 62 The letter, kept in AVPRI (Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi imperii – Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire) is being prepared for publication by the authors of this chapter. 63 The story of Glinka’s short-lived, though passionate involvement in the theosophical movement is the subject of a separate study by Dmitry Zubarev.

3

The enemy of humanity The Protocols paradigm in nineteenth-century Russian mentality1 Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern

Students of modern history have reached a consensus that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a product of late nineteenth-century east European ideological battles, and reflected the mentality and language of conservative Russian thinkers. In the 1920s European historians and journalists discovered textual parallels and proved direct links between mid-nineteenth-century pamphlets targeting Napoleon III and the imagery of the Protocols.2 Slavicists further contextualized these affinities, arguing that the Russian compilers of the Protocols deliberately appealed to strong anti-Napoleon tendencies firmly embedded in Russian cultural memory. Vadim Skuratovskii (Vadym Skuratovs’kyi), for example, pointed out a direct association between the Protocols and the negative perception of Napoleon in Russian culture. He also advanced a detailed linguistic and stylistic reconstruction of the Protocols, tracing them back to an anti-French, anti-liberal motif deeply rooted in conservative Russian political thought.3 Although Cesare De Michelis’s stylistic analysis of various versions of the Protocols and of the parallels between this tract and Maurice Joly’s anti-Napoleonic pamphlet Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu (The dialogue in hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, 1864) has not been surpassed by any other philological study of this subject, scholars today are more inclined to search for the specifically Russian roots of this powerful blueprint for twentieth-century conspiracy theories.4 Yet students of the Protocols have failed to notice that what could cautiously be called “the Protocols paradigm” predates the period of Louis Napoleon (1852−70), going back, in fact, to that of Napoleon Bonaparte (1804−14). This essay argues that one hundred years before their publication, Russian conservative sensibilities intersected with Russian anti-Jewish perceptions, producing a document that should be placed at the bottom of the genealogical tree of the Protocols, if not at its root. Moreover, it seeks to prove that long before the Protocols equated what they presented as the two most destructive entities, world Jewry and the French bourgeois revolution, the two met on the Russian political scene in one and the same political drama, finding themselves partners in time, place, and action. Their unexpected encounter shaped the Semitic profile of Napoleon Bonaparte and informed

The enemy of humanity 45 the destructive image of European Jewry in the Russian cultural imagination. This chapter illuminates how and why this happened. It briefly traces the unfolding of an antisemitic and anti-Jewish paradigm in nineteenth-century conservative Russian mentality from the early 1800s to the early 1900s, when the arch-conservative Pavel Krushevan (1860−1909) first published “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in Znamia, his notorious antisemitic newspaper. I argue that the discussion of one of the most influential Russian motifs linking Jews and revolution requires not only a more nuanced engagement of Russian culture but also an inquiry into French, Russian−Jewish, and Russian historical contexts. This study tentatively reconstructs the pre-natal period of the Protocols. Part of a larger project under construction, it emphasizes the necessity of embracing the wider European context and broadly conceived history of culture, not infrequently ignored by students of antisemitism in general and the Protocols in particular.5

A Jewish messiah in a three-cornered hat Initially, the circa 40,000 French Jews − both Sephardim residing in southern provinces such as Bordeaux, and Ashkenazim inhabiting eastern Alsace and Lorraine − took little if any part in the French revolutionary events. Enlightened Jewish thinkers such as Zalkind Hourwitz (1738−1812), who may have had some impact on French political reformers as the author of Apologie des Juifs, played no role in formulating the revolutionary documents concerning French Jews.6 Sephardim obtained equality in 1790 and Ashkenazim in 1791, predominantly thanks to Count Stanislas ClermontTonnerre (1752−92), Abbé Henri Battiste Grégoire (1750−1831), and Count Honoré-Gabriel de Riquetti Mirabeau (1749−91), enlightened French politicians who argued consistently in the National Assembly for the abolition of all social, cultural, and political restrictions on Jews. It took the National Assembly a year to acknowledge the equality of the Avignon Jews, mostly Sephardim, and two years to begin considering the extension of civil rights to all French Jews, including the poorly integrated Ashkenazim. On August 26, 1789, immediately after the approval of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, Clermont-Tonnerre addressed the National Assembly with a call to acknowledge Jews as free citizens of France, a right he considered a logical corollary of the Declaration. Simultaneously, he coined a maxim that informed French−Jewish relations for the next century: “Jews should be given everything as individuals and nothing as a nation.” That is to say, Jews should be granted the right to French citizenship and integrated into French society, but individually not communally. Abbé Grégoire, a stalwart champion of Jewish equality, claimed that Jewish emancipation would trigger the regeneration of the Jews, their entry into the family of European peoples, and their subsequent Christianization. Few among even the most liberal French revolutionary leaders doubted that the so-called régénération of the Jews would eventually bring about their assimilation into Christian society

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not only culturally but also religiously. Their much-acclaimed philosemitism manifested thus an idiosyncratic bias, if not the limit of Christian-informed eighteenth-century European rationalism, earlier exposed in Moses Mendelssohn’s bitter critique of enlightened thinkers such as Swiss pastor Johann Caspar Lavater (1741−1801).7 As for the Jewish constituency in revolutionary French politics, a new Jewish leadership emerged in France only in the wake of the removal of social restrictions after the revolution. It involved, among others, Abraham Furtado (1756−1817), a financier and scholar from Bordeaux representing Sephardim, and Berr Isaac Berr (1744−1828), a prominent banker and manufacturer from Nancy who represented Ashkenazim. Both performed a marginal role as advisers in Chrétien Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes’s commission on improving the condition of the Jews of France in 1789. Although in the early 1800s they moved to the epicenter of French−Jewish discourse, beyond specifically Jewish issues they had little impact on post-revolutionary French politics.8 The first post-revolutionary decade brought important changes for the Jews. Enlightened politicians made clear that military service was a key factor in the process of gaining full-fledged Jewish equality (the notion of “emancipation” became a catchword only after 1828). Abbé Grégoire argued that Jews could and should become good soldiers.9 Revolutionary French society viewed the army as a school of citizenship in which former subjects would be transformed into citizen-soldiers. Such individuals would have to stoically accept a reduction of their rights, heroically become martyrs of liberty, and readily sacrifice their lives for the sake of the nation.10 In the wake of the revolution, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish volunteers from Paris and southern France joined the National Guard.11 Their patriotic fervor was part of the slowly but steadily emerging new dual identity of the Jews, who sought to become French Jews. Berr Isaac Berr, representing Jewish interests in the National Assembly, managed to overcome the Sephardic−Ashkenazi divide and began cementing what would later become French Jewry. Yet there remained a significant rift between the new French society and the Jews, who remained far behind the requirements of the “regeneration” set for them by the revolutionary leaders. There were at least three obstacles precluding successful Jewish integration: the anti-Jewish violence of the 1790s, the reluctance of the French urban population to accept Jews as equals, and the “Year of Terror,” with its anti-religious euphoria when synagogues were renamed “temples of reason,” Shabbat observance was outlawed, and rabbinic leaders were subjected to public mockery and physical violence. The decline of Jewish religious observance, especially in the southern provinces and among Sephardim in Paris, was perhaps one of the results of the introduction of civil equality, which from the Jewish viewpoint was a less than desirable form of integration.12 While revolutionary politics created premises for further integration of the Jews and helped them appropriate the culture, symbols, and slogans of French statehood, this was not immediately followed

The enemy of humanity 47 by deeper social changes or fewer conflicts with Christians, particularly in the eastern provinces. In Alsace, neither French society nor the Jews were ready to reform the ossified medieval economic pattern in which Jews acted as small-scale merchants and money-lenders, while the French functioned as artisans and peasants. Jews in France seemed to be heading for another century as a semi-emancipated religious and ethnic entity of marginal significance, but unexpected circumstances radically changed their status quo: the Jewish question suddenly emerged on Napoleon Bonaparte’s agenda. Napoleon’s advance into central and southern Europe wiped out the rudiments of feudalism in the conquered lands. In 1797, the guns of the French army demolished the walls of the Padua ghetto, ushering in a new era, which Italian Jews welcomed as messianic. The encounter of North Italian Jews with uniformed French Jewish soldiers looking for a place to stay over Shabbat caused local Jewish communities to praise the Almighty for sending them Napoleon. Northern Italy’s Jews immediately dubbed Napoleon the helek tov, the good lot, the metaphor heavily charged with salvific connotations, signifying the beginning of the final redemption of Diaspora Jews. The end of the ghetto, the right to unrestricted settlement, the abolition of all previous privileges and restrictions, and the introduction of civil equality for Italian Jews created an impression among them that the messianic era had already begun. Between 1808 and 1815, Polish Jews in the Duchy of Warsaw were granted an almost complete package of civil rights (except the right to vote, permission to engage in jurisprudence, and membership in the guilds), which they immediately lost when the duchy was transferred to Russian control and transformed into the Warsaw Province of the Russian Empire.13 Jewish messianic expectations further crystallized during the Egyptian campaign, when Napoleon captured Jaffa, besieged Acre, and on April 20, 1799, composed and perhaps sent out his Appeal to the Jews in Arab Lands, expressing his desire to help Jews return to the Holy Land. Between 1799 and 1805, west European Jews entertained the illusion that the Egyptian corps purportedly included a special Jewish battalion (this has never been substantiated) charged with the noble task of liberating Jerusalem. Rumor had it that Napoleon sympathized with the idea of re-establishing the Jerusalem Temple.14 Yet the encounter between Napoleon Bonaparte and the Jews of Alsace demonstrated that these rumors − not to mention Jewish messianic expectations − were groundless. On his return to Paris in 1806 Napoleon, glorying in his astounding victory near Austerlitz, sojourned in Strasbourg, where representatives of the local population approached him with complaints of Jewish usury. Napoleon would have known that the French members of the National Assembly had rejected such accusations as baseless and pointed out the bigotry of the petitioners rather than the moral corruption of the Jews. Back in 1789, ClermontTonnerre had rebuffed anti-Jewish accusations, resorting to a simple and logically irrefutable argument: if Jews were not allowed to join the guilds, own land, and engage in certain trades, and their only privilege was to own money, they had to be allowed to do with their only property whatever they

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saw fit. Later it turned out that the Alsace petitioners who sought Napoleon’s intercession on their behalf were pursuing solely commercial interests: they were attempting to obtain legal exemption from their debts. Napoleon did not bother looking into the matter himself. He took the complaint at face value, with his reaction signaling that his attitude toward the Jews was by no means sympathetic. He did not appoint a committee to have the matter settled amicably between debtors and lenders and decided to enforce Jewish assimilation without delay.15 The Strasbourg Jews saddened the emperor. Unlike their French-, Portuguese-, and Spanish-speaking Sephardic brethren in southern France, the Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim in Alsace had preserved their prerevolutionary rabbinic institutions of communal, legal, and spiritual control and were much less integrated into the French social fabric. Their traditional ways and occupational pursuits manifested for Bonaparte a lack of patriotism and an insulting refusal to become full-fledged citizens of French society. Upon learning of Jewish usury, which was still an issue sixteen years after the revolution and the proclamation of Jewish equality, Napoleon angrily observed that Jews were “a state within a state,” that they represented nothing but “a cursed race,” and that they were bearers of the despised feudal past and therefore should be reformed immediately. Napoleon saw two ways to solve the problem posed by what he considered the Jews’ obstinate unwillingness to enjoy what was granted them: first, making them economically “productive” and second, assimilating them culturally into society. Before he turned to this scheme, Napoleon restored several restrictive anti-Jewish regulations, including a ban on mortgages, and on May 30, 1806, published his first decree on Jews in France, using vociferous anti-Jewish rhetoric. It portrayed all French Jews as a nation of greedy usurers who lent money at exorbitant interest and ruined the peasants. It outlined the drastic necessity of “urgently regenerating among French Jews a sense of civic ethics,” which they, according to the edict, so badly lacked. For this purpose, Napoleon decided to convene an assembly of Jewish notables (communal representatives) in Paris,16 aimed at centralizing Jewish institutions and restoring their former legal power, charisma, and authority, in order to effect speedy Jewish acculturation. His idea was witty rather then malevolent, especially if one takes into consideration that the emperor was in no rush to share with anybody his far-reaching plans.

The duped sages of Zion The assembly of Jewish notables was convened on June 26, 1806. To demonstrate the priority of state concerns over religious ones, Napoleon invited the notables to appear on Shabbat, which for observant Jews was humiliating. The assembly comprised 111 deputies who formed two factions: the “Rabbis,” representing traditional Jewish congregations, and the “Philosophers,” representing the acculturated French−Jewish bourgeoisie. The first could not

The enemy of humanity 49 express themselves in French, whereas the second did not enjoy religious authority and could not make halakhic, that is, legally binding, decisions. The two groups had to reach a consensus in order to formulate straightforward, succinct answers to the questions that Napoleon himself and his immediate advisers had put to them. The questions seemed harmless. Does Jewish law allow polygamy and divorce? Can a Jew marry a Christian woman or a Christian a Jewess − or does the law permit marrying only within the faith? Who are the French to the Jews, brethren or aliens? And how does Jewish law regulate relations between Jews and French? Do Jews consider France their own country and are they ready to defend it? Who appoints the rabbis and how do they execute their power? What kinds of trade does Jewish law forbid? Are Jews forbidden to lend money with interest to both Jews and non-Jews? The deputies prepared answers that were “politically” rather than “halakhically” correct. The rabbinic logic of the Shulkhan Arukh codex17 was not among their guiding principles. The deputies worded their answers in such a way that no one could have cast doubt on the Jews’ good intentions, patriotism, readiness to integrate, and respect for the state and its laws. Apparently the deputies resorted to the biblical treatment of legal issues and deliberately avoided the Talmudic approach. They shelved any discussion that might have betrayed the complexity of the problem and multiplicity of possible solutions. Thus, for example, the deputies confirmed that Judaic law does not prohibit mixed marriages, thus silencing the religious aspect of the subject with its painful conversion issue (from or into Judaism). They agreed that a marriage was not valid unless it was legalized by a French court, whereas the rabbinically endorsed document of divorce (get) had nothing to do with secular legislation. They also admitted that the rabbis had no executive or legislative power and that they bore responsibility only for communal rituals − an answer that reduced the spiritual leader of a community whose decisions were normally binding to a mere clerk. Finally, they infused the rest of their answers with the hope for complete equality and unrestricted integration. They concurred that all Jews considered the French their brethren and that Jews felt they were full-fledged French citizens ready to defend the state and the nation. Napoleon liked the answers. Now he decided to convoke the Grand Sanhedrin − a conclave of Jewish wise men whom he thought he could vest with the same authority as the members of the proto-rabbinic council in Ancient Israel. For French and European Jews, assembling the Sanhedrin was a mind-blowing decision: it seemed to herald the restoration of the glorious days of Israel when Jews lived in their own country, enjoyed their independence, and relied entirely on the decisions of their own spiritual and legal authority. The Sanhedrin had not been summoned for two thousand years; perhaps, Jews thought, convocation of a new supreme Jewish organ would be followed by a return to the land of their forefathers, and maybe even by the restoration of the Temple. The mysterious legend that had surrounded Napoleon’s intentions regarding Jewish settlement in Palestine

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resurfaced, confusing and misleading the Jews. Napoleon, however, planned to re-establish the Sanhedrin with a specific objective: to legally endorse the answers of the deputies. Once this task was accomplished, elaborating new forms of centralizing, controlling, and effectively integrating the Jewish community into French society was a trivial matter. Count Moulet cautiously leaked the information about the emperor’s intentions at one of the last meetings of the Sanhedrin. He made it understood that Jews would be enfranchised only if they swore under oath to abide in their activities by their own answers to Napoleon’s questions. It was a clever trap. What the Jews considered far-fetched expectations regarding some distant future and what was for them no more than a matter of politesse had suddenly turned into legally binding state regulations. Even the smartest members of the assembly could not have grasped what was in store for them and how far Bonaparte was planning to go. They encouraged the communities to send their best and most respected representatives to Paris. And send them they did. Community leaders arriving in Paris were fascinated by the project which, they thought, would bring back bygone Judaic glory, revive the parliament of the Ancient Hebrews and restore rabbinical wisdom to a place befitting it.18 Half a year later, at one of the meetings of the Paris Sanhedrin, Berr Isaac Berr appealed to Jews to abandon the ways of the medieval ghetto and return to the glorious days of the past. Jews, he argued, should aspire to become Hebrews (Israelites), and not Jews (Juifs). The Sanhedrin approved a course toward acculturation of the Jews into French society; yet according to many Jews in France, French assimilation should have complemented rather than replaced Jewish cultural allegiance. Although the hospitable French culture favored complementary assimilation, Berr’s appeal remained a rhetorical one. French cultural values eventually came to replace traditional Jewish ones. For the French, Judaism lost its communal connotations. Until the late nineteenth century, the French did not differentiate between such notions as Mosaism (Mosaic faith), Juif (ethnic denomination), and Israelite (political denomination), perceiving them as synonymous − although the commonly accepted term in French discourse was “Israelites,” which carried positive overtones without reference to talmudic−rabbinic Judaism.19 The first Grand Sanhedrin turned out to be the last. In February 1807 (and not in October 1806, as had been planned), representatives of the Jewish communities of the French Empire arrived in Paris and, in the euphoria of the honor bestowed upon them, solemnly approved all the answers drafted previously by the assembly of notables.20 Once this was done, the Grand Sanhedrin became redundant. Napoleon dissolved it, and on March 17, 1808, he issued an edict regulating the activity of the Jewish communities. The decree shocked the Jews of France.21 It enforced acculturation, but did not provide genuine civil equality. All the debts to Jewish money-lenders were annulled, free migration across France and immigration into Alsace were prohibited, new settlement in the French provinces was permitted only if

The enemy of humanity 51 the Jews engaged there in agriculture, and army service privileges granted to other strata of the French population were cancelled. Subsequent Napoleonic legislation on the Jews moved in the same direction. It subjugated institutional Judaism to the state, enforced the transformation of existing forms of Judaic praxis, and forced new liberal changes into the Jewish communal system, education, and liturgy. According to the new regulations, all synagogues would be turned into state institutions and registered with the Consistoire, which, in turn, would report to the Ministry of Religion. The autonomy of the Jewish communities was abolished. Despite the patriotic fervor that brought Jews to volunteer for the National Guard,22 they were still considered questionable citizens. Now they were included in the draft pool, yet unlike everyone else, were not allowed to send a substitute conscript to the army. Bat- and barmitzvah − the confirmation of children of twelve and thirteen − was equated with Catholic confirmation. The Ministry of Education introduced the study of a Jewish catechism which included the most important Judaic credos: while the “symbol of faith” was part of Jewish philosophical discourse (e.g., the Thirteen Principles of the Faith of Maimonides), it played no role in the Jewish tradition, and was now reduced to a number of vague statements. Jews were still made collectively responsible and found guilty of money-lending. The Jewish community was again burdened with communal debt, amounting to 116,000 francs dating from pre-revolutionary times. Simultaneously, the threshold of interest on loans in Jewish banks was set at 5 percent. Since 75 percent of debts remained unpaid, this measure resulted in the bankruptcy of hundreds of small businesses. Rabbis’ salaries were cancelled, allowing a rapidly assimilated bourgeoisie (“philosophers”) to rise to positions of communal leadership. Immediately after the closure of the Sanhedrin and publication of the Napoleonic Law, an anonymous polemicist, introducing himself as an English Israelite, came out with a blatant, well-substantiated critique of the French Jewish deputies. He accused them of unscrupulousness and political myopia, and charged Napoleon with violating the very basis of Judaism.23 The French deputies were less pessimistic, although they considered the 1808 legislation unconstitutional. Furtado tried to protest, but the decision had been made, the law published, and Bonaparte had no desire to revisit it. Thus, the Grand Sanhedrin turned out to be a disposable (yet significant) institution through which Napoleon schemed to enforce Jewish assimilation, integration, and acculturation. A prominent Polish historian dubbed it a “big performance” of a “choir of Jewish ‘priests.’”24 It was a far cry from the gathering of the wise men of Ancient Israel, and its “protocols” endorsed laws unfavorable to Jews. But in the distant capital of the Russian Empire, it provoked indignation and disgust. The Russian public considered it yet another insolent invention of the pseudo-messiah Napoleon Bonaparte. They thought he had convoked the Sanhedrin in order to revive and glorify the council of the dishonored, who had condemned the Savior to the Passion and the Cross. They argued that he wanted to appease European Jews, proclaim

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himself the Messiah, and move triumphantly into central and eastern Europe with the help of his Jewish spies.

East European communal leaders respond By the early 1800s, east European Jews who found themselves on Russian soil following the partitions of Poland (1772−95) had been legally integrated into urban estates of the Russian Empire. Yet emancipation and civil rights were not on their agenda, just as they were not on that of the rest of Russian society. Russian Jews understood freedoms solely in terms of privileges familiar to them from Polish times, as sets of rights and obligations that the szlachta (Polish gentry) granted to specific individuals or groups of people for conducting certain types of economic or trade operations. Groups of influential Jewish shtadlanim (intercessors or communal representatives) who had already tasted the fruits of German Enlightenment considered the existing legal restrictions on Jews in Russia, such as double taxation, residential limitations, and religious segregation, humiliating yet indispensable. The finale of the first part of what could be called at a stretch “the Jewish struggle for emancipation in Russia” was the condescending imperial decision not to address Jews as “Yids” in Russian state documents. This was the pitiful result of the activities of the first enlightened Russian Jews, such as Nota Notkin, Leyb Nevakhovich, and Abram Perets, which coincided with the extension of civil equality to Jews in France.25 Their dismay made them convert to Christianity and when the Jewish deputies in Paris were pondering Napoleon’s questions, none among enlightened Russian Jews voiced support for his plans. At least, there is no evidence that allows us to argue otherwise. Warsaw Jews − for a short period of time under Napoleonic rule and not under the Russian tsar − presented a unique case. Enlightened Jews of Warsaw loudly celebrated the arrival of Napoleon and even sent him some twenty young Jewish men as volunteers when the emperor (quite unsuccessfully) tried to draft local Poles. They were reported to have greeted Napoleon with a sublime ode in Hebrew and French. They followed closely and loudly discussed Napoleon’s policies toward Jews. The convocation of the Grand Sanhedrin fascinated them so much that they suggested establishing a similar “Slavic” Sanhedrin that would be responsible for the reform of Jews in Polish lands. Once the Duchy of Warsaw was established in 1807, not only did enlightened Jews evoke the decisions of the Grand Sanhedrin and argue for emancipation through conscription, but the Polish authorities also considered the decisions of the Sanhedrin a blueprint for any further discussion of Jewish reform.26 Yet, this was the case of one small, elitist, affluent Jewish community that had cut off its earlocks and beards even before the arrival of Napoleon’s troops. The feedback from the roughly one million east European Jews residing in the shtetls to the east of Warsaw proved quite different. Whatever freedoms they entailed, the French revolutionary events had a depressing impact on most east European Jews, and especially on various Hasidic leaders.

The enemy of humanity 53 Most tsaddikim (pl. of tsaddik, leader of Hasidic community) from the western provinces of the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Poland − those whom conservative Russian writers later accused of plotting against Russia − appealed to the Jews of the Russian Empire to fully support His Majesty the Russian Emperor Alexander I and to curse the outrageous impostor Napoleon Bonaparte. The famous tsaddik Levy Yitshak from Berdichev (Levy Itshak Ben Meir, 1740−1810) was reported to have gone to Warsaw where he met other Hasidic leaders and firmly rejected Napoleon’s plans for emancipating the Jews of Russia and Poland. They were convinced that a person of dubious religious commitment such as Napoleon could not be a redeemer of the Jewish people. His convocation of the Grand Sanhedrin was not only a morally questionable act but a sign of enormous pride and defiance. Piety, they understood, was not Napoleon’s forte. In addition to patriotic concerns there were also religious ones. The Hasidic masters seemed to be in no doubt that the emancipation could improve the material and social welfare of the Jews. Yet this was all about gashmiut, the physical aspects of human life. What about rukhniut, the spiritual essence of life? Enlightened Jews in Berlin and Paris were rapidly assimilating into gentile society and light-heartedly abandoning their Jewish identities. The emancipation, argued the Hasidic leadership, would deal a severe blow to the traditional institutions of Jewish learning, create a new rift in the Jewish community, loosen ties with the Judaic tradition, neutralize the authority of spiritual leaders, and in the long run, bring more harm than good. Israel Bartal noted that “R. Nachman [Rabbi Nachman of Breslov], who from his home in Ukraine observed the political changes of Napoleonic times, predicted that ‘a wave of heresy is coming into the world.’”27 The decision of Hasidic masters to condemn Napoleon’s plans was unanimous. Rabbi Yakov Yitshak, the Seer of Lublin (1745−1815), claimed that if Napoleon had known about the attempts of Hasidic masters to counteract his scheme he would have turned his cavalry against the tsaddikim rather than against the troops of his immediate adversaries. Menahem Mendel from Rimanov (Rimanowe, d. 1815), the only Hasidic leader who openly sympathized with Napoleon, preferred to join the majority opinion on this key issue. Hasidic patrons, too, participated in what modern postcolonial historians would call “non-violent resistance” to Napoleon’s plans. For example, the wealthy Warsaw Hasidic Jew Berek Sonnenberg, a donor to Hasidic causes, utilized his leverage with the Polish authorities. In his study of Polish hasidism, Glenn Dynner observes that by intervening with Polish ministers, with whom he was on good terms, Berek “was able to delay and effectively annul the Napoleonic military draft decree … by avoiding army service the ‘kahal [an umbrella organization of the Jewish community] diplomats and Hasidic politicians’ (rather then Napoleon) were to blame for preventing Jewish emancipation.”28 A leading Russian Jewish historian argued that

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Y. Petrovsky-Shtern the long-standing Jewish inclination to favor the present authorities, a visceral distrust of revolutionary sentiment by the conservative Jewish masses, and the pro-Russian exhortations of the Belorussian Hasidic leader Shneur Zalman of Liady [(1745−1813), founder and head of the Chabad−Lubavich trend of hasidism], rendered the Russian Jewish community largely indifferent to the French and relatively unmoved by the conflict’s broad political and cultural implications.29

Many Hasidic leaders not only publicly expressed their rejection of Napoleonic plans regarding the extension of Jewish emancipation to eastern Europe but also chose to undertake independently whatever measures that were available to counteract them. For example, Shneur Zalman of Liady issued a special appeal which he distributed among all the communities in Lithuania and Belorussia that adhered to his school. Shneur Zalman blatantly condemned and cursed Napoleon while crowning Alexander I the savior of the Jewish people. Despite being alone, the Maggid of Kozienice (Israel ben Shabbetai Hapstein, 1837−14) was the only one among the tsaddikim who did not scorn Bonaparte, yet he bent over backward and used all his social and political connections to prevent the introduction into the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw of elements promoting Jewish equality, such as military service. His energetic efforts helped avert certain tragedy, saving thousands of the duchy’s Jews who would have been drafted and made to serve in the 1812 Russian campaign under the French banner. A Hasidic legend notes Napoleon’s secret visit to the Maggid of Korzenice in order to receive a blessing. Accordingly, Napoleon arrived in Korzenice on the festival of Purim 1812 during the reading of the Scroll of Esther (Megillat Ester), appearing on the threshold of the synagogue exactly when the Maggid was reading the famous verse nafol tipol le-fanav [“but thou shalt surely befall before him”] (Esther 6.13). Maggid understood this as a hidden prophecy foretelling the upcoming defeat of Napoleon. He did not hesitate to convey this to his honored guest, and refused to give him a blessing.30 Although a hagiographic myth, it is still reliable as a reflection of Jewish thought, though not necessarily of real circumstances. As such, it corresponded well with mainstream attitudes toward Napoleon among east European Jewish leaders. They seemed to take pains to disassociate themselves from Napoleon and condemn his plans regarding Jews, while convincing the Russian authorities of their patriotic sentiments and political loyalties. Perhaps because of their efforts, “Napoleon did not attempt to import Jewish emancipation during his conquest of Russia in 1812, in contrast to his practice in the German and Italian territories he occupied.”31 Yet east European Jews with all their patriotic enthusiasm failed to prevent the rise of the Russian myth that lumped Jews, tyranny, and revolution together against all historical evidence.

The enemy of humanity 55

The birth pangs of the Protocols While the Grand Sanhedrin was in session and the Jews in the Pale of Settlement were seeking ways to prevent the implementation of Napoleon’s plans, Alexander I recovered from the disastrous defeat near Austerlitz, withdrew his troops from Austria, and made up his mind to rescue the rest of unoccupied Europe from Napoleon. Russia’s old rival Prussia topped his agenda. Since the army had suffered enormous losses, Alexander urgently needed to announce a call-up and instill patriotic fervor in his subjects. At his request on December 13, 1806, the Holy Synod − the umbrella institution of the Russian Church − issued an “appeal” (vozzvanie) to all people of the Russian Orthodox creed. The text was carefully worded to justify Russia’s war against France, downplay the shortcomings of the country’s unexpected alliance with Prussia, and quickly draft irregulars. The authorities did their best to publicize the Appeal as widely as possible. It was speedily dispatched to the far most corners of Russia. Priests read it to their parishioners across the length and breadth of the empire. This was one of the first attempts of the Russian authorities to create public opinion and simultaneously manipulate it. Perhaps the Appeal should be regarded as one of the first Russian propaganda documents. The Appeal is a unique document which deserves close analysis and recontextualization. The political imagination that shaped it is unparalleled. The text’s ideological metaphors and artistic images outlived the Russian Empire. In it the Russian government first formulated its attitude toward Napoleon Bonaparte, French liberalism, secularization, emancipation, and the Jews. While some of its ideas had surfaced earlier, this document assembled them, creating an ideological concoction reminiscent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which appeared one hundred years later. Urging the subjects of the empire to help Prussia militarily would hardly have promoted patriotic fervor. Nor would such a call have encouraged Russians to volunteer as irregular troops. In the nineteenth century, even the most hospitable Russian peasant considered a Prussian (nemets) an alien. The Russian for Prussian or German was derived from nemoi (mute), a person who cannot speak, and was associated with an unwelcome stranger. In addition, from the times of the Crusading Teutonic knights and the thirteenth-century Russian military genius Alexander Nevsky, German lands and the Germans signified for the Russian people a potential adversary or a straightforward enemy. Therefore, in order to attain its pragmatic goals, the 1806 propaganda campaign had to depart radically from the stereotypes shaping Russian popular myths. Contrary to Russia’s geopolitical interests and the received wisdom of the Russian people, the authors of the Appeal created a brand-new image of an enemy alien and a new vision of absolute evil. The Appeal downplayed the inconvenient overtones of the Russian−Prussian alliance and trumpeted an alert: Russia, rather than Prussia, was in danger. Hence, Russia needed defense, patriotic enthusiasm, and a people’s militia. The idea of a military

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campaign against Russia, which took another three years to crystallize on the French side, was vividly formulated in this Russian document. It portrayed Napoleon Bonaparte as a “resolute enemy of peace,” an impostor, a perfidious invader of other nations, a merciless murderer, and, last but not least, an imminent threat to the “righteous, divinely blessed, and beloved Emperor Alexander I” and to the “pristine Greek Orthodox Russian Church.”32 Previous Russian military appeals had resorted to religious metaphors and instilled xenophobia in the minds of the East Orthodox population, but this document used a deliberate, highly charged hyperbole. Napoleon is not just a political enemy, a French idol-worshipper, an evil pagan, and a dangerous heretic; he is a malevolent apostate, a satanic Muslim bastard, the devil incarnate − in a word, the Antichrist. Artfully manipulating the feelings of listeners, the Appeal slowly but steadily gains momentum. First, it intimidates, pointing to a terrifying enemy that threatens Russia and the faith of Christ. Then, having electrified them, it provokes rage, hatred, and a desire for revenge. The document climaxes with the entry of the Jews and the expansion of the Jewish theme. Outwitted by a cunning Napoleon, and disappointed by only partial emancipation, the gullible Jews of Napoleonic France are portrayed as perfidious accomplices of France and true friends of Bonaparte, a Satan who insolently revolted against the holy of holies. The embodiment of absolute evil, Napoleon Bonaparte “convened the Jewish synagogues in France” demanding an insulting public “homage to the rabbis.” He established a new Jewish Sanhedrin, which the Russian document saw as “the same godless institution which in its time conspicuously condemned Our God and the Savior Jesus Christ to the Cross.” Napoleon, maintained the “Appeal,” intended to “unify the Jews, whom divine rage dispersed throughout the land,” and more importantly, “to proclaim Napoleon a False Messiah …” And the Jews, those alleged haters of Christ, were more than eager to “assist Napoleon in his infamy.” Appropriately, the document ends by channeling popular rage: “Show him that he is a beast without a conscience and deserves contempt. Do not trust him, overturn his evil deeds, and castigate his inhuman crimes against many innocents.” Nothing remained of this exaggerated eschatology half a year after the publication of the Appeal. In early June 1807, the Christian pietist Alexander I and the “Antichrist” Napoleon met peacefully at Tilsit on the Neman, where they were joined by Friedrich Wilhelm III. They worked out mutual concessions, finalized negotiations, and signed the Tilsit agreement. Prussia lost its possessions to the west of the Elba and had to drastically reduce its troops. Russia conceded the Duchy of Warsaw to Napoleon but obtained Finland in return. France gained a new ally, Russia, which was supposed to mediate French negotiations with Britain, and in the event of failure, join France in war against Britain. The anti-Napoleon propaganda campaign, which the authorities expediently abandoned, nevertheless had a deep impact on the Russian public. Periodicals such as Genii vremen (The spirit of time), Politicheskii zhurnal

The enemy of humanity 57 (Political journal), Syn otechestva (The son of the fatherland) and Vestnik Evropy (The herald of Europe) accurately captured the key motif of the Appeal and took pains to imitate it. Napoleon emerged in the Russian media as a false Jewish Messiah who dared rise up against the Almighty. His main goal was to overthrow the only true Christianity and the epitome of Russian statehood, Eastern/Greek Orthodoxy (pravoslavie). He had appeased European Jews by convening the Grand Sanhedrin and thus secured for himself all European support of hundreds of Jewish spies and scouts.33 Napoleon himself was identified as a Jew, and moreover, was comparable only to Shabbatai Tsvi (1626−76), a “genuine” false messiah, associated in the Russian press with Satan and abomination.34 Russian public opinion in the early 1800s established a direct link between Judaism (which it dubbed “Satan’s synagogue”), the upheavals of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, and the Sanhedrin.35 Russian conservative historiography retained this metaphor for over a century as a convenient anti-western and anti-liberal myth.36 Against the backdrop of Russian anti-Jewish and anti-revolutionary motifs dating from 1806, there was a less noisy yet welldiscerned anti-Masonic campaign which resulted in the rout and closure of a number of Russian Masonry lodges and orders.37 Perhaps under the impact of this drive, state officials attempted to shut down the A.F. Labzin Masonic journal, remarkably entitled Sionskii vestnik (Zion herald).38 Furthermore, in 1807 the authorities approved the establishment of a special Committee on the Maintenance of General Security. It institutionalized the notion that all foreigners in Russia were enemies and spies. Although this was done to dissuade Russian families that employed French tutors and governors from exercising excessive benevolence, this state security organ became one of the most stable and long-lasting nation-making institutions in Russian politics. The Appeal shaped the image of a despotic tyrant of Jewish origin: born on the cusp of the French Revolution, he became an Antichrist ruling the world with the help of a council of Jewish wise men and relying on the assistance of ubiquitous spies, also of Jewish origin. This portrayal was a necessary but insufficient prerequisite for the appearance of the archetype of the Protocols. After the Tilsit peace agreement (1807), the Russian authorities sought to shelve their previous accusations and restore a noble image of Bonaparte. They ordered parish priests and local authorities to avoid public readings of the Appeal. Anti-Napoleonic tirades disappeared from the Russian press, too. The considerable financial contributions of wealthy east European Jews to the anti-Napoleonic campaign were regularly reported in the newspapers. These donations and Jewish economic support of Russian troops should have erased the myth of the malevolent Sanhedrin and Russian Jews as spies of Bonaparte. Also, the myth of a Napoleonic−Judaic conspiracy against Russia should have dissipated once it became public that French troops had treated the Russian Orthodox clergy with reverence and that the French military administration had proclaimed tolerance toward all religious confessions in its manifesto of September 19, 1812. However, although the myth of Napoleon as a Jewish

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pseudo-messiah and Jews as representatives of French revolutionary tyranny disappeared almost completely from official Russian rhetoric and, moreover, from the colloquial speech of Muscovites in the 1812 Napoleonic campaign against Russia,39 it was doomed to immortality.

The ontogenesis of the Protocols Once the 1806 Appeal is considered among the sources of the Protocols, it is possible to create a more nuanced, verisimilar reconstruction of the cultural genealogy of this tract. The Appeal allows us to reconcile the most recent scholarly conceptualizations of the Protocols’ origins proffered by the Italian De Michelis, the Ukrainian Vadim Skuratovskii, and the Israeli Savelii Dudakov. Unlike De Michelis, Skuratovskii places the Protocols against the backdrop of the “idiosyncratic right-liberal-radical [Russian] image of the Second Empire and its monarch, and the negative image of France and its path from the revolution and the institutionalization of liberalism to the demise of liberalism and the triumph of the darkest despotism.”40 In the most well-researched and convincing part of his monograph, Dudakov discusses the genesis of the Protocols in the context of Polish−Russian–Jewish relations. He argues that these ties began deteriorating during and immediately after the Napoleonic War against Russia. As of 1812, Polish bureaucrats, from Mikhail Magnitskii to Faddei Bulgarin (1789−1859) (if not until Father Pranaitis, a false expert in the Beilis blood libel case), took pains to prove their subservience, disassociate themselves from Polish patriots, buttress their own bureaucratic ascension in the Russian Table of Ranks and, finally, convince the Russian authorities that a Russian Pole is better than a Russian Jew (whom they identified as a staunch enemy of the Russian people).41 The Appeal allows a non-contradictory juxtaposition of both contexts, Russian/ Jewish/French and Russian/Jewish/Polish, with one and the same urtext, as well as with its various interpretations. Anti-Jewish and anti-Napoleonic imagery in the Appeal permeated Russian literary endeavors in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, making the portrayal of the Jew in Russian romanticism strikingly different from the European one. Without directly referring to its impact, Mikhail Vaiskopf, an eminent scholar of Gogol, depicts Russian romantic images of the Jew in terms of the Appeal, although this historical document does not figure among his sources. According to Vaiskopf: “Already in the 1820s it becomes visible in Russian prose … the idea of a ‘secret Jewish government’, which, together with other evil powers, is participating in a plot against all of humanity.” Vaiskopf erroneously connects this theme (which is quite ahistorical) with what he dubs the “Polish interpretation of Purim,” yet he rightly points out that it was “borrowed by the nihilistic novel and brought to completion in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”42 Once we take the Appeal as the starting point, the idiosyncratic features of the Jew in Russian romanticism immediately make sense − and conversely, the imagery in the Appeal can be seen

The enemy of humanity 59 as a paradigm that casts literary and ideological themes in the 1806 mold. Polish influence, however, was not absent here. First and foremost, the Appeal’s ideologically charged vocabulary remained in the memories of Poles who had cut themselves off from their Polish national roots, abandoned their earlier pro-Bonaparte illusions, and even their liberal-Masonic past, and thrown themselves at the feet of the Russian tsar and the Russian authorities, offering them a servile oath of allegiance. Bulgarin was one of the most visible representatives of this group, while Magnitskii and Osip Przeclawski (1799−1879) were the most typical. In his short novel Esterka, Bulgarin brings together the Sanhedrin, Vatican messengers, and wealthy Jews in a gang that seeks to capture power in Old Poland and transform it into a Jewish state (New Jerusalem). In his imperialist, misogynist, anti-Ukrainian novel Mazepa, he combines Catholics, Jews, women, and international capital − to show how they can unite and rule the world. His depictions of the Jews fit well with the imagery and metaphors of the document: for example, as if replicating the Appeal’s satanic, chthonic epithets, Bulgarin brands the Jews “reptiles who crawl out of their holes.”43 Ultimately, in his notoriously xenophobic Ivan Vyzhigin, considered the first popular Russian novel, Bulgarin “judaizes” all the metaphors with which the Appeal portrays Napoleon. Jews of the Pale of Settlement emerge as the enemies of the Russian people, and as secret invaders who conquered the western provinces of the Russian Empire through dirty tricks. They operate clandestinely as spies. The author’s aversion toward them reaches a peak when an apostate Jew from Hamburg begins praising Islam (like the Appeal’s portrayal of Napoleon as being tolerant of Islam).44 Despite the attractiveness of Bulgarin’s xenophobic images for Russian readers among the military, gentry, and mid-rank administration, they could not improve the quality of his mediocre epigonic narratives, which appeared to be doomed to the archive of Russian literature. Yet developments in French history redeemed them. The scattered interpretations of the Appeal were unexpectedly revived in Russian collective memory when in May 1860, in the epoch of Napoleon III, French Jews announced the establishment of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. The Alliance Program repeated the emancipation slogans of 1789. Further, its purpose was to overcome anti-Jewish prejudice in France and improve social conditions outside the country, particularly in the Ottoman and Russian empires.45 Russian xenophobes found this coincidence telling and tempting. Before the 1880s anti-Napoleonic and anti-Jewish themes (combined in the Appeal) had followed parallel paths. Nikolai Karamzin, the founding father of Russian historiography, associated Napoleon with the thirteenth-century Mongol invaders. Maria Volkova, writing in 1812, borrowed satanic metaphors to depict Napoleon straight from the Appeal. Conservative and Slavophile Russian scholars in the second half of the nineteenth century identified Russian schismatic sects (often associated with Judaizers and always seen as a major internal threat to Russian Orthodoxy) with the Napoleonic cult and pseudo-messianism.46

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But with the establishment of the Alliance, Russian conservative thinkers and journalists discovered a juxtaposition similar to that captured in the 1806 Appeal. They obtained a new despotic Napoleon and a new Sanhedrin, one with pronounced universalistic pretensions. Yakov Brafman (1825−79), the inventor of the remarkably enduring myth of the mortal threat of the kahal to the Russian people, ascribed an exaggerated, almost metaphysical power to this umbrella organization of Polish and Russian Jewry, abolished in 1844. Tracing a close parallel between the kahal and the Sanhedrin, he found in the former the Russian version of the latter. The east European kahal was as harmful to Russia as the Alliance was to the world. This image deeply mythologized Brafman’s conceptualization of the kahal and its aristocracy − along with minor autonomous Jewish voluntary societies (havurot) and the Society for the Enlightenment of Jews in Russia − rendering them as detrimental to the Russian people as the French Jewish institution was. According to Brafman, they were all controlled and manipulated by the Paris Alliance, which he labeled the kahal of kahals of the Second Empire, and which he argued stemmed from the Napoleonic Sanhedrin, which functioned as an international Jewish umbrella organization. All these bodies shared poorly concealed aspirations to world power and the principle of complete submission to the Alliance, the central headquarters of world Jewry. According to Brafman, despite vociferous calls for assimilation and limited scope for operation, at the historical rear of any Jewish self-governing institution was Napoleon, the number one enemy of the Russian people, secret tyrant and false liberal of French origins, and his obscure puppet organization the Sanhedrin.47 Brafman had a number of enthusiastic followers. One of them, Przeclawski, served as a private chancellor in the cabinet of the minister of internal affairs. Previously he had been an ardent admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte, and was tutored by the emperor’s senior physician. Inspired by Brafman, the elderly Przeclawski crafted a murderous portrayal of the Jews of the Pale of Settlement in his Brief Essays. He depicted them as the bearers of a formidable ideological program, which he ascribes to Napoleon and which he reproduces by resorting to the 1806 Appeal. Jews, according to Przeclawski, rejected all faith, all religion, all order, and all state regulation. They epitomized the abomination that had originated from the French Revolution and which had evolved into communism, internationalism, social democracy, and nihilism. They, and nothing else, were the major threat to pristine Russian Christianity and the noble Russian people. Przeclawski’s anti-Jewish fanaticism is inseparably connected to his francophobia; thus, in the small Belorussian shtetl Slonim, he finds secret catacombs “such as the Paris ones,” where Jews hide from justice.48 The Jews and Bonaparte had exchanged places: now Jews, and especially the ultraOrthodox Hasidim, were the staunch enemies of the Russian Orthodox people. They drank the blood of Christian babies, who had to be tortured and killed in the Judaic tradition.49 He had many sources at his disposal to

The enemy of humanity 61 illuminate his xenophobic ideas; however, he preferred quotes from the Talmudic tractate Sanhedrin rather than from Avodah zarah (lit.: alien worship; with its rejection of idol worshippers, identified in the Church’s anti-Judaic propaganda as the gentiles), thus betraying the outdated origins of his vision of the Jews.50 Yet another admirer (and reviewer) of Brafman was the Russian conservative writer Vsevolod Krestovskii (1840−95), the author of a notoriously popular trilogy The Darkness of Egypt, Tamara Bendavid, and The Triumph of Baal. In his novels, Krestovskii had the kahal of kahals serve Franco−British militarism, which used a network of Jewish spies and Jewish military purveyors to steal the victory in the Balkan campaign of 1877−78 from the Russian army. Although Krestovskii directed his anti-Jewish invective first and foremost at politicians such as Lord Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraeli), his motif is recognizable: yet another tyrant who fakes concern over the conditions of the Greek Orthodox people, and schemes to humiliate Russia and trample the honor of Russian troops with the help of the kahal, which he identifies with the Paris-based Alliance Israélite Universelle. In his short novel Among Jews written in 1896, Savelii Efron-Litvin (1849−1925) placed his version of Brafman’s kahal at the center of what would today be called a cheap suspense novel.51 A female Christian storyteller employed in the house of millionaire Borukh Berdichevskii enters the study of her master. There she discovers that Berdichevskii, an immoral and sleazy creature, hates the world and is scheming to overthrow its order and subject it to the great people of Israel. Moreover, Berdichevskii is one of the leaders of the underground kahal and holds all the threads of European politics, his letters “convey[ing] the secrets of various governments … spell[ing] out in detail projects and laws of extraordinary importance in preparation,” and providing meticulous instructions to the Jews on how to treat the authorities. She realizes that the Jews concentrate in their hands “a frightening power” that is harmful to “all mankind.” Efron-Litvin has his protagonist repeat one of the major myth-making calumnies against the Jews: that they “tightly ensnare all states in their net, and like a spider suck all the healthy juices from their victims until the last drop.” They, a small illiterate people, were holding in their hands “all the threads of European politics,” knew “all the secrets of European governments,” and exemplified “the most powerful world organization entitled the international kahal!” The protagonist’s attempt to locate the secret correspondence of the kahal and make it known to the Russian authorities informs the 1900s’ legend of stolen Jewish documents explaining the publication of the Protocols.52 Finally, just before the appearance of Georgii Butmi, Sergii Nilus, and Georgii Zamyslovskii, the most ardent propagators and publishers of the Protocols, mention should be made of Matvei Golovinskii (?−1920), a thirdrank journalist and writer, rediscovered and analyzed in Vadim Skuratvskii’s book on the Protocols. Golovinskii is the author of a number of frightening reflections on western civilization. On one of his visits to Paris he accepted a

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job offer from Petr Rachkovskii, the head of the Paris branch of the Russian secret police, who commissioned him to draft the Protocols. Golovinskii gathered and revived the entire gamut of anti-Napoleonic, anti-western, and antisemitic tropes of the conservative trend in Russian literature. The Protocols were the final stroke in the portrait of an Antichrist of French revolutionary origin who devised a secret organization of world Jewry. Here the Sanhedrin is entirely russified, becoming the assembly of the “wise elders of Zion” (Russian euphemism for the Sanhedrin) while its proceedings develop into the fearful Protocols which have gripped the Russian national imagination up to the present.

Conclusion The Grand Sanhedrin was of no help to Napoleon during his Egyptian campaign. However, in the Russian version, “the Elders of Zion,” whom Russian far right radicals falsified, institutionalized, and identified as the enemies of humanity (Butmi), significantly helped ultra-conservative European forces come to power, served to formulate a new vision of the Absolute Enemy through propaganda, and ideologically set the stage for the Holocaust. As in the 1806 Appeal, the definition of “the enemy,” their ideology, their modes of operation, their accomplices, and their aims turned out to be false. Ten years before the anti-German campaign during World War I and one year before the war against Japan, Russian far rightists listed neither Germany nor Japan but Jews and France at the top of the list of Russia’s immediate enemies. Blinded by antisemitism, terrified Russian conservative thought once again pointed to the perfidious secret Jewish Sanhedrin concealed in the labyrinth of the Paris catacombs as the foremost enemy of the Russian people and of Russian statehood. Russian conservatives failed entirely to evaluate and analyze the empirical reality and construe large-scale geopolitics rationally. As a result, they were unable to create in Russia a powerful and intellectually attractive force capable of balancing leftist tendencies. Early in the twentieth century, Russian conservative thinkers used similar means and repeated the same mistakes. One hundred years later, through tireless effort, they have inculcated into Russian public opinion the same Protocolsbased myths about enemy Jews.53 Historian of imperial Russia Hans Rogger prophetically observed that judeophobia had “robbed Russian conservatism of vitality, dynamism, and appeal.”54

Notes 1 This essay is a significantly revised and improved version of a Russian-language article that appeared as the chapter “The Enemy of Humanity: On the Protocols as a Paradigm in Russian Public Discourse,” in The Image of an Enemy Alien [in Russian], ed. Lev Gudkov (Moscow: OGI, 2005). 2 See, for example, Karl Bergmeister, The Jewish World Conspiracy: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion before the Court in Berne (Erfurt, U. Bodung-Verlag, 1937); Herman

The enemy of humanity 63

3

4 5 6 7

8

9 10

11 12 13 14

Bernstein, The Truth about “The Protocols of Zion”: A Complete Exposure (New York: Covici, Friede, 1935), and idem, The History of a Lie: “The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion” (New York, Ogilvie, 1921); Emil Raas, Destroying the Falsehood, the Trial of the Invention of the “Elders of Zion” [in German] (Zurich: Die Gestaltung Verlag, 1938); Henry Rollin, The Apocalypses of Our Times [in French] (Paris: Gallimard, 1939); Benjamin Wolf Segel, A Critical Examination of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” [in German] (Berlin: Philo Verlag, 1924); Lucien Wolf, The Jewish Bogey and the Forged Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (Nendeln: Kraus Reprint, 1974; 1st ed. London, 1920); Phillip Graves, The Truth about the “Protocols of Zion: “Literary Fabrication: “The Times” Newspaper Revelations [in Russian] (Paris: Franko-russkaia pechat, 1922). V.L. Skuratovskii, The Problem of Authorship of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” [in Russian] (Kiev: Dukh i litera, 2001). See my review of this monograph in the context of the most recent publications on the Protocols: “Contextualizing the Mystery: Three Approaches to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” KRITIKA: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, no. 2 (2003), pp. 395−409. Cesare G. De Michelis, The Non-existent Manuscript: “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”— An Apocrypha of the 20th century [in Italian] (Venezia: Marsilio, 1998), esp. pp. 53−57. The number of well-intended books on the issue is growing, but in most cases they manifest more the superb polemical skills of their authors than their historical (or at least scholarly) sophistication. Jay Berkovitz, Rites and Passages: The Beginning of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650−1860 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pp. 99−100. Mendelssohn’s criticism was directed at enlightened thinkers who publicly and anonymously challenged him with the offer to convert and join “civilized” humankind and its “universalistic” culture. In defending his position as a traditional Jew and enlightened philosopher, Mendelssohn argued that Judaism was better suited to Enlightenment than Christianity, since the former was a revealed legislation (rational system) whereas the latter was a revealed religion (irrational system). For a nuanced and insightful analysis of Mendelssohn’s stance on Christian issues and his subtle polemics against German thinkers such as Lavater, Wilhelm von Dohm, and Johann David Michaelis, see Jonathan Hess, Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2002). Michael Graetz, “Jewry in the Modern Period: The Role of ‘Rising Class’ in the Politicization of Jews in Europe,” in Assimilation and Community: The Jews in the Nineteenth Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 156−76. For Abbé Grégoire’s position on military issues, see Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representation of Jews in France, 1715−1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), p. 92. For an important discussion on this issue, see Jean-Paul Bertaud, “The Revolutionary Role of the Army: To Regenerate Man, to Form a Citizen, a Model for Civil Society?” in Culture and Revolution: Cultural Ramifications of the French Revolution, ed. George Levitine (College Park: Maryland, 1989), pp. 18−39. Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews, pp. 172−73, and documental evidence he assembles in n. 42 (p. 284). Michael Graetz, The Jews in Nineteenth-Century France: From French Revolution to the Alliance Israelite Universelle (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996). Arthur Eisenbach, The Emancipation of the Jews in Poland, 1780−1870, ed. Antony Polonsky (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, in association with the Institute for PolishJewish Studies, 1991), pp. 131−48. In fact, Jerusalem was of no strategic interest to Napoleon and his plans regarding the Jews were more moderate, yet they too did not come to fruition.

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16

17 18 19

20

21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29

Y. Petrovsky-Shtern See Franz Kobler, Napoleon and the Jews (New York: Schocken Books, 1975), pp. 55−83. Students of modern history differ in their approaches to the theme “Napoleon and the Jews,” the discrepancies stemming from their choice of time frame and documentary evidence. Kobler considered that the genuine Napoleonic attitude to the Jews was manifested in the newly discovered 1799 Appeal to the Jews of Eastern Lands, in a sense a distant blueprint for the 1917 Balfour Declaration on the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. More sober historians such as Phyllis Albert, Michael Graetz, and Simon Schwartzfuchs argue that the events of 1806−08, from his visit to Strasbourg through the convocation of the Sanhedrin, reflect Napoleon’s stance on Jewish issues much more accurately than the Appeal, which disappeared into the archives and proved to have less significance. Their point of view is supported by extensive documentary evidence assembled in Richard Ayoun, The Jews of France: From Emancipation to Integration (1787−1812) [in French] (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997), pp. 143−58 (analytical article), 159−241 (selection of documents). This decision reminded French Jews that they were still a “‘nation’, a religious group burdened with collective responsibility, rather then free citizens individually responsible before the state.” Paul Mendez-Flor and Jehuda Reinhartz, The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 112−13. A legal code regulating Jewish life, compiled in the mid-sixteenth century by Sephardic Rabbi Joseph Caro. Simon Schwarzfuchs, Napoleon, the Jews and the Sanhedrin (London/Boston/ Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979). Phyllis Cohen Albert, “Israelite and Jew: How Did Nineteenth-Century French Jews Understand Assimilation?” in Assimilation and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth Century Europe, ed. Jonathan Frankel and Steven J. Zipperstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 88−109. For the facsimile of all documents of the meetings of the Grand Sanhedrin, see European Library of the French Revolution, Archive 1: Napoleon and the Jews; Daniela Callingani, ed., Proceedings of the Israelites’ Assembly in Paris and of the Grande Sanhedrin, with the Letters of Jacopo Carmi, Introduced by Andrea Balletti (1806−1807) [in Italian] (Bologna: Analisi, 1991), pp. 375−508. Joseph Lémann, Napoleon and the Jews [in French] (Paris: Avalon, 1989), pp. 225−47. There were 150 Jewish volunteers in the National Guard in 1808. See Schwarzfuchs, Napoleon, the Jews and the Sanhedrin, p. 130. “An English Israelite,” A Letter to a Parisian Sanhedrin; containing reflections on their recent proceedings, and on the venal apostasy from the Mosaic Institutions with observation on the conduct of Buonaparte, relative to his projected subversion, and final extermination of the religion of Judaism, in France (London, 1808). I am grateful to the staff of Houghton Library at Harvard University for the possibility to work with this pamphlet. Jacob Szatzky, History of Jews in Warsaw [in Yiddish] (New York: YIVO, 1947), p. 184. David E. Fishman, Russia’s First Modern Jews: The Jews of Shklov (New York/London: New York University Press, 1995), p. 82. Szatzky, History of Jews in Warsaw, pp. 175−84. Israel Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772−1881 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), p. 55. Glenn Dynner, Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 100−1. Steven Zipperstein, The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History, 1794−1881 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1986), p. 17.

The enemy of humanity 65 30 Mordekhai Gerlits, The People That Shall Dwell Alone [in Hebrew] (Bnei Brak: Makhon “Mayim hayim,” 2000), pp. 158−60, 172−80, 186−90. 31 Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley: California University Press, 2002), p. 375. 32 Cf. the law based on the Appeal, The Full Collection of the Laws of the Russian Empire. First Collection [in Russian] (St Petersburg: Tipografiia Sobstvennoi Ego Velichestva Kantseliarii, 1830), vol. 29, no. 22, p. 394. 33 Analyzing this document in the context of early nineteenth century attempts to banish Jews from the villages, the patriarch of Russian Jewish historiography Simon Dubnow wrote: “By this device the Government, finding itself at its wit’s end in the face of the great war, shrewdly attempted to immediately frighten the Jewish people by the specter of an anti-Jewish Napoleon and the Orthodox Russians by Napoleon’s leaning toward Judaism. The former were made to believe that the Sanhedrin was directed against the Jewish religion, and the latter were told that it was established by the Jewish ‘pseudo-messiah’ for the overthrow of Christianity.” See Simon Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland: From the Earliest Times until the Present Day (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1916), pp. 348−49. 34 Saul Ginsburg, The Patriotic War of 1812 and Russian Jews [in Russian] (St. Petersburg: Razum, 1912), pp. 32−40. 35 Andrei Zorin, Feeding a Double-Headed Eagle ….: Literature and State Ideology in Russia in the Last Third of the 18th–First Third of the 19th Century [in Russian] (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2001), p. 331. 36 Here is what the Russian conservative historian writes about the events of 1806, on the eve of the publication of the Protocols: “The situation was difficult and many were sure that it was in Napoleon’s interests to exploit them. Indeed, having proclaimed himself the Messiah of the Jews he found in them efficient assistants acting as spies and disseminators of all sorts of rumors, in most cases false yet desirable for the ruler of France. During the preparations for his struggle against Russia Napoleon placed Jews and French emigrants as the avant-garde of his army in order to excite minds and provoke popular protests, and in the second half of 1806 various rumors began circulating.” See N. Dubrovin, “Napoleon in Contemporary Russian Literature” [in Russian], Russian Herald, no. 2 (1895), p. 24. 37 Zorin, Feeding a Two-Headed Eagle, pp. 204−5. 38 A.I. Serkov, History of the Russian Masonry in the 19th Century [in Russian] (St. Petersburg: Novikova, 2000), p. 57. 39 Thus, for example, among the 1812 documents from the voluminous and perhaps the most representative Shchukin collection, I found a single identification of Napoleon with Jews and Judaism. It is worth mentioning that the authors of the terrifying stories about the riots and looting conducted by Napoleon’s troops very rarely demonized the French emperor. For some minor exceptions, see “A Petition of Mrs. Shteidel to Count F. V. Rastopchin,” on p. 1, Shchukin collection, Papers relating to the 1812 Patriotic War, 10 vols (Moscow: A.I. Mamontov, 1897), vol. 1, p. 54; “The Notebook of I.S. Bazhenov, the Priest of Moscow Cathedral,” Papers relating to the 1812 Patriotic War, vol. 4: pp. 49−69; “Selected Papers from Aliabiev’s Archive,” Papers relating to the 1812 Patriotic War, vol. 5, pp. 278−80. Jews, or to be more precise, a Jew [Gordon] is mentioned in Shchukin’s papers as a Russian scout (russkii razvedchik), an indispensable provider of significant military information, Papers relating to the 1812 Patriotic War, vol. 8, pp. 155−9 [all in Russian]. 40 Skuratosvkii, The Problem of Authorship, p. 17. 41 For more details, see Savelii Dudakov, The History of a Myth [in Russian] (Moscow: Nauka, 1993).

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42 Mikhail Vaiskopf, The “Troika Bird” and the “Chariot of Soul:” Writings of 1978−2003 [in Russian] (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2003), p. 309. 43 See excellent discussion of this topic in ibid., pp. 329−30. 44 For the role of Bulgarin’s ideas in the rise of Russian political antisemitism of the second half of the nineteenth century, see Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, “The Jewish Policy of the War Ministry in Late Imperial Russia: The Impact of the Russian Right,” KRITIKA: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, no. 2 (2002), pp. 217−54. 45 Georges Weill, Emancipation and Progress: Alliance Israélite Universelle and Human Rights [in French] (Paris: Nadir, 2000); Aron Rodrigue, From Education to Emancipation: Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Eastern Jews, 1860−1939 [in French] (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1989). 46 For more details on the feedback of Russian literati to the 1806 Appeal, see Molly Westing, Napoleon in Russian Cultural Mythology (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), pp. 9, 14−15, 84−6. 47 Iakov Brafman, The Book of the Kahal: An International Jewish Question [in Russian] (St. Petersburg: Dobrodi, 1888), pp. 92, 161−2, 274, 298. For Brafman’s antisemitism, see John Klier, Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 169−73, 263−88, and my article on Iakov Brafman in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008) 1, pp. 222−3. 48 “It turned out that under the entire city block dotted with Jewish houses and called ‘the schoolyard’ were underground passages masked as basements which, like the Paris catacombs, were interconnected, composing a huge underground network. This explained why many robberies in town remained unsolved. Thus, Slonim’s yids comprised a genuine secret society; one can argue with some certainty that such tunnel systems existed in other towns, where the Jewish population occupied separate quarters.” See “Brief Essays: Memoirs of O.A. Przeclawski” [in Russian], Russkaia starina, no. 10 (1883), p. 490. 49 Ibid., pp. 484−87. 50 See the detailed and thoughtful essay on Przeclawski in the context of Russian− Jewish and Russian−Polish relations in Dudakov, The History of a Myth, pp. 64−95. Mention should be made of the later publication from Przeclawski’s archive, in which the idea of the unity of the atheistic world run by the Jews and the “bloodthirsty beast named Revolution” becomes even more pronounced and polished. See Dudakov, History of a Myth, p. 111. 51 S. Litvin, “Among Jews” [in Russian], Istoricheskii vestnik 66 (1886), pp. 54−90; (1887), pp. 428−61; (1888), pp. 797−837. 52 Ibid., pp. 448−49. 53 For the most recent variations, or maybe plagiarisms, on the theme of the Protocols in Russian, several are worth mentioning: Iu.K. Begunov, Secret Powers in the History of Russia: A Collection of Articles and Documents (Moscow: Patriot, 2000); Iu. A. Diakonov, Fifth Column in Russia (Moscow: Moskvitianin, 1995); S.G. Kara-Murza, Jews, Dissidents, and Eurocomunism (Moscow: Algoritm, 2001); V.I. Korchagin, A Trial of the Academician (Moscow: Vitiaz, 1996); G. Pugachev, Jewish Fascism in Russia (Moscow: Vitiaz, 1998); A.N. Sevastianov, What Jews Want from Us (Moscow: Nationalnaia gazeta, 2000); I.A. Seleznev, The Secrets of Russian 20th Century History (Krasnodar: Sov. Kuban, 1998); R.A. Sibirianin, The Steps of a Beast in Russian History (Moscow: Vitiaz, 1998); V. Shumskii, Russia, an Intimate Pain (Kimry: Tverskie vedomosti, 1997). 54 Hans Rogger, Jewish Policies and Right-Wing Politics in Imperial Russia (Berkeley/ Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1986), p. 107.

Part II

The impact of the Protocols since the 1920s till the end of World War II

4

Why the Jews? The impact of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on Nazi ideology and policy Wolfram Meyer zu Uptrup

Research on the Holocaust of European Jewry since the mid-1990s has focused in general on the issues of who committed what crime, where and when. The question as to why they acted as they did has barely been discussed,1 perhaps because it is assumed that it is irresolvable. This chapter suggests the answer is closely linked to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and to the Nazi perception of this tract. Moreover, it seeks to establish that the Protocols had an impact on Nazi thinking, ideology and political actions. The Nazis were aware of the existence of the Protocols and often referred to them. Even before Hitler joined the NSDAP, leading circles in the party, as well as other antisemitic groups in Germany, discussed the treatise as early as March 1919.2 Assuming that National Socialist antisemitism had a structure and a special message, regardless of some illogicalities,3 several sources that may be a key to understanding the Holocaust will be investigated.4 Examining the content and structure of Nazi antisemitism is crucial for comprehending why − in contrast to antisemitism in other countries such as France or Russia − this ideology led to genocide committed by the organs of a modern state, supported or approved by a large majority of German society.5 Because of the huge difference between the mentality of the German people in the 1920s or 1930s and contemporary thinking, it is not easy to grasp the mindset of the conservative wing of German society after World War I, which tended to explain political events in terms of conspiracy theories. But such theories containing antisemitic elements were interwoven into political ideas that were widespread in those years. Nevertheless, eliminationist antisemitism was not an integral part of the German national character.6 The Nazis had clear political goals and concepts, and their ideology had an operative function: providing guidelines for systematic terror which served as an instrument of power.7 In order to achieve a minimum consensus, the Third Reich exploited the mass media to communicate with the people.

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The function of the Protocols in post-World War I Germany The German revolution of 1918 came as a shock to the vast majority of Germans. They lost not only the kaiser as the epicenter of their political organization and orientation but the entire structure of Wilhelminian society. The failure of the military system of social life thus led to the destruction of their sense of national identity and greatness, and to the defiling of their highly esteemed virtues and values. It was under these circumstances that the Protocols arrived in Germany in spring 1919 as an instrument of Russian anti-Bolshevik propaganda, and were read and understood as a text reflecting the situation in Germany itself. Various copies of the German translation had circulated among antisemitic circles even before the first editions printed in Germany appeared at the end of 1919.8 The most well-known German edition was put out by Gottfried zur Beek, a pseudonym for Ludwig Müller,9 who published under various aliases. For many Germans the message of the text assumed an existential meaning: it seemed to explain the reasons for Germany’s defeat in the war, the political chaos of the revolution, the loss of the kaiser and the Reich political order, and the country’s economic straits. In short, the Protocols provided direction in a situation of political and economic confusion. The majority of Germans felt cheated of victory in the war and nationalist as well as National Socialist propaganda confirmed this. With the aid of Völkisch and antisemitic theories, Hitler and the early NSDAP were able to formulate propagandistic answers tailored to the needs of the people, with which they managed to convince 44 percent of German voters in March 1933.10 However, the message of the Protocols did more than identify scapegoats. It offered a seemingly deeper look into the forces that drive history and policy, analyzing the situation and naming those powers. Leading Nazis regarded the Protocols as authoritative. Some questioned the authenticity of the text but had no doubt about its message: among the Nazi elite it was commonly believed that a Jewish world conspiracy existed. Extracts from the Protocols were frequently quoted in Nazi newspapers, but most importantly, its message influenced the way antisemitic articles and speeches were presented. Even if the tract was not mentioned, its message provided a blueprint for numerous antisemitic articles in the Nazi daily Völkischer Beobachter. According to my estimate, some 70 percent of articles on “the Jew” bore the mark of the Protocols.11 During the NSDAP’s existence, 1919−45, there were only two periods, of a few months each, with less antisemitic propaganda: prior to the 1932 election of Reich president, and before the 1936 Olympic Games. In the first, Hitler sought in his campaign to attract the votes of conservatives, many of whom were deterred by the antisemitic ideology of the Nazis. His attempt to come to power failed, but he succeeded in becoming Reich chancellor one year later. In the second, Naziruled Germany was the center of international attention since the Olympic Games were being held there. The Nazis thus wanted to present an image

Why the Jews? 71

Figure 4.1 The Nazi edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 13th ed., 1933.

of a peaceful “new” Germany. Hitler and his followers knew that anti-Jewish incitement would sully this ideal. Behind the façade, however, discrimination against Jews continued. After the organizational reform of the NSDAP in 1928, many ideas for implementing political measures once power was seized (Machtergreifung)

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were proposed. They were published in periodicals, such as Völkischer Beobachter or Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, and in the 54 volumes of the Nationalsozialistische Bibliothek, which was based on a conspiracy theory concept. Promising to promote circulation of the tract, in 1929 the NSDAP publishing house Eher Verlag bought the rights from Beek, which since 1920 had published the leading edition of the Protocols: “The imminent National Socialist Großdeutschland [Greater Germany] will present a bill to the Jews, no longer payable with gold,” they boasted.12 Additionally, the publishing house and the party bookshop offered a large number of informative books in which the notion of a Jewish world conspiracy was developed in various policy fields. The conspiracy theory was a key element in the informational material provided by party speakers, writers, and propagandists,13 and the Protocols belonged to the canon of the Nazi movement. This was evident in advertisements for Nazi literature in newspapers, periodicals and books, as well as in the promotion of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. No fewer than four editions of the Protocols were offered concurrently from the official Party bookstore.14

The Nazi weltanschauung: racism and antisemitism Racism was the core of Nazi thought. The concept of racial categories led to the classification of people and social groups and was used to explain historical or political events. At the apex of the racist hierarchy were the Aryans. Originally in Nazi propaganda “German” was a synonym for Aryan; later the term “Nordic” was frequently used. Below the Aryans were people considered inferior to them such as Italians or Poles, and at the bottom were the Jews. The racial theory of the völkische Staat, described, for example, in Mein Kampf and in numerous newspaper articles and speeches, led also to the classification of social groups within society. Significantly, neither territory nor culture was the criterion for creating a people and the political organization of a national state. In fact, it was the other way round: cultures and territories became an expression of the racial character of peoples. The racial concept led to the exclusion of the handicapped, so-called a-socials, homosexuals, gypsies and other ethnic minorities, and, of course, the Jews from the Volksgemeinschaft (community of German people). Thus, according to the Völkisch ideology, there were outcasts and enemies both within and outside the Volksgemeinschaft. This weltanschauung distinguished clearly between “them” and “us” and had consequences for domestic as well as for foreign policy. Based on this racist view of life and history, the so-called Jewish race had a special mission in world history: in the eyes of antisemites such as Hitler and other National Socialists, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion revealed a conspiracy of all Jews against all non-Jews with the purpose of attaining world domination. To achieve this goal, the Jews were suspected of using Freemasons and particularly Bolsheviks, along with democracy, as tools to achieve Jewish supremacy in a state. National Socialists saw the epitome of Jewish dominion

Why the Jews? 73 in the Bolshevik Soviet Union. Other countries, such as the United States, were considered to be governed by Freemasons. Thus, the Freemasons and Bolsheviks were regarded as highly dangerous, since according to the Nazi view, they had built a second and third worldwide conspiratorial structure designed to work against the Nazis and “Germany,” under the supreme leadership of the Jews. The conspiracy of the Jews, with their political clout and financial power, lay at the core of the political conception of antisemites, and especially of the Nazis. The SS, in particular, under Heinrich Himmler, developed a sophisticated pyramid of related conspiracies under the Jews, including even the Catholic Church. The archetype of a Jewish conspiracy in Germany and worldwide was drafted by the SS, probably by Eichmann’s unit.15 It was published in 1936 as part of the material for the political education of the SS (see fig. 4.2). At the top were the American Jewish Joint Consultative Council and the American Jewish Committee. The most conspicuous features were the left and right wing. The left comprised the workers’ movement (Arbeiter-Richtung), the Bolsheviks and the trade unions, while the right consisted of the bourgeoiscapitalist wing, including news agencies, Freemasons, and organizations such as the Alliance Israélite Universelle and B’nai B’rith. At the center was the World Jewish Congress which allegedly ruled the League of Nations. The instruments for undermining states and augmenting Jewish influence, according to this concept, were the export of the Bolshevik Revolution and, most importantly, international financial networks. A similar illustration was used to represent the Jewish organizational structure in Germany. The institutions in the diagram existed (see fig. 4.3), but the supposed links between them and the notion that they all cooperated in order to attain world domination or political supremacy is completely fictional. At the core of the diagram is the Reich Deputation of German Jews. All “enemies” were linked to the Jewish world conspiracy; the Jews were behind all hostile peoples outside Germany and behind political enemies within it, explained Hitler, Rosenberg, Goebbels, Ley, and many others in their articles and speeches. The key was the power struggle − the conspiratorial action of all Jews against National Socialist Völkisch Germany. This was the essence of the Nazi perception of historical and political reality and the basis on which they developed their political concepts for German society and foreign policy. The diagrams display the Nazi blueprint for analyzing policy and history. Based on this, they developed their political measures against the Jews in Germany and Europe.

Propaganda technique Hitler’s unique achievement was to revise the antisemitic tradition so that it was based on the Protocols, and to apply this concept in propaganda and politics. He began his career with the old-style Radauantisemitismus (rioting, crude antisemitism), such as that continued by the Stürmer till 1945. But

74 W. Meyer zu Uptrup

Figure 4.2 “The Structure of the Jewish Internationale,” SS-Leitheft, vol. 2, ed. Reichsführer SS, SS-Hauptamp, Berlin, April 1936.

he turned antisemitism into a subtly differentiated instrument of political analysis and projection. His party, the NSDAP, was not only a movement that related to Jews as the old antisemitic parties did, but an antisemitic organization of a new type, which saw itself as an action group fighting for power and struggling against an alleged Jewish conspiracy. In the daily propaganda campaigns conducted in the 1920s, such as the anti-reparations protests, the Nazis often employed the antisemitic concept of

Why the Jews? 75

Figure 4.3 “Political Configuration of the Jews in Germany,” SS-Leitheft, vol. 2, ed. Reichsführer SS, SS-Hauptamp, Berlin, April 1936.

conspiracy. Politicians involved in negotiations on the matter of reparations, such as Rudolf Hilferding, from Germany, and Léon Blum, from France, were frequently portrayed as henchmen of the Jews (see fig. 4.4).16 Conspiracy theories were incorporated in political news items of the party’s papers and campaigns, such as party recruitment drives. In February 1926 an appeal against the ban on Hitler speaking in public referred to the plundering of European high finance, the victory of Jewish world capital, and

76 W. Meyer zu Uptrup the ongoing establishment of a Jewish international economic dictatorship (fig. 4.5).17 Many Nazi articles and speeches, such as the 1928 party appeal An das ganze schaffende Deutschland! (To the production people of Germany! − see fig. 4.6),18 were antithetical in structure, including a political analysis influenced by the Protocols, on the one hand, and recommendations for political measures, on the other. Thus, the party sought to struggle against moral corruption and for a national sense of honor; against the rule of “international finance” and its “Marxist democrat slaves” and for the nationalization of banks and the stock exchange; against the consequences of inflation which meant profits for the Jews and losses for the Germans, shady stock dealing, and profiteering, and

Figure 4.4 “Many People – Same Leaders,” Völkischer Beobachter, August 31, 1925.

Why the Jews? 77

Figure 4.5 “Appeal: Productive people of Germany! Citizens! Farmers! Civil servants! Workers! National Socialists! Antisemites!” Völkischer Beobachter, February 28, 1926.

for taxing bank owners and the death penalty for exploiters of the people; against reparations for international profiteers and for housing construction and work; against the lies of the “international Jewish press” and their continuing treason and for a law to protect the fatherland and the honor of the people.19 A law for protection of the fatherland was indeed adopted by the Nazi government in early 1933 and became the basis for persecution. National Socialist propaganda was characterized by several semantic levels: one was agitation; another, political argumentation or defamation of

Figure 4.6 “To the productive people of Germany!” Völkischer Beobachter (special edition), March 1, 1928.

Why the Jews? 79 current policy; a third, antisemitic propaganda with the Nazi interpretation of policy and history; and lastly, there was a level of religious redemption in Nazi messages, conveying a form of civil religion linked to faith in Hitler’s abilities and the rites of his party.20 Often the antisemitic propaganda was latent, but there was a conspiratorial structure to the arguments. This might be termed antisemitic doublespeak, or if antisemitic keywords were few, cryptic antisemitism. Antisemitic doublespeak uses catchwords, such as “international high-finance,” “the Jewish press,” and “trade unions,” mentioned in the Protocols as tools of a Jewish conspiracy. A news item using such words or mentioning political figures that were allegedly under Jewish influence (especially Stalin or Roosevelt) led to linkage of the event discussed in the piece to a conspiracy theory. In cryptic antisemitism the message was implicit and the description of a new event did not explicitly suggest involvement of the Jews: for example, the enemies in the West and the enemies in the East were coordinating their action. For antisemites the context of conspiracy was well understood, while others read the text literally, without any hidden meaning. Propaganda and debate were intended to attain a minimum consensus among party members and followers. The outlines were given by Hitler himself. But the propagandists and propaganda papers not only amplified Hitler’s message, but also reflected the opinions and convictions of the propagandists themselves and − to a certain degree − of the followers. A crucial aspect in the system of political control via communication is leading by language: political goals are conveyed via propaganda, which followers accept and receive orders to act.21 Bolshevism was a catchword for conspiracy in the Nazi party’s propaganda from its beginnings. During the war the Bolshevist conspiracy theme became central, but was always subordinate to that of the Jewish conspiracy. The Bolshevists were presented as a Jewish force in numerous speeches and articles of the Nazis. Alfred Rosenberg emphasized the linkage between Jews and Bolshevists when he stated at a party rally in September 1935: “Bolshevism is the action of a foreign race.”22

The impact of the Protocols on the NSDAP program and policy Examination of the NSDAP program from 1920 demonstrates that many of its twenty-five points can be understood as direct answers to the imaginary threat of a Jewish conspiracy outlined in the Protocols. Rosenberg’s observations on the Protocols, as well as the party program and the official commentary by Gottfried Feder,23 in addition to many of the anti-Jewish measures adopted after Hitler’s Machtergreifung, substantiate this argument. Numerous media articles and series explained that the party program was being carried out. While Nazi policy undoubtedly had a variety of roots, emphasis in Table 4.1 below is on the antisemitic aspects; namely, the linkage between the ideas

Table 4.1 The roots of Nazi policy Protocols (Beek, 1920)

Program 1920 (Points)

Nazi Policy

Prot. I: The centuries old Jewish plot to seize power

p. 1: Großdeutschland for Germans only

Völkischer Staat without Jews and other enemies; struggle against all “Jewish-ruled” states and organizations

Prot. V: Jews elected by God p. 4: Citizenship for to rule the world, Jews rule Germans only, not for over non-Jews Jews: Völkischer Staat

Sept. 1935 Nuremberg laws

Prot. IX: Dictatorship of Jewish leaders

p. 5: Jews only guests in the state

Expulsion of Jews from all sectors of society

Prot. I, II, III, IV; X, XII, XV, XVIII, XX: Agents of Jewish power: politicians, democrats (IX), lawyers (XVII), journalists (XIII), police (XVIII), Communists (IX), Socialists (IX)

p. 6: No Jewish politicians, elimination of all Jews from public life: lawyers, industrialists, scientists, etc.

April 1933: Aryan paragraph, June 1933: measures against Jews in business; November 1935: dismissal of all Jewish civil servants

Prot. IV: Jews as the enemy of all peoples

p. 8: No immigration Segregation of Jews from of Jews, expulsion of non-Jews non-Germans (Jews) in times of economic crisis

Prot. I, IX: Jews have money p. 11: No income and rule through it without work

Measures to exploit Jews (e.g. Reichsfluchtsteuer − tax on refugees leaving Germany)

Prot. XXIV: Rule of Jews protected by education

p. 20: Education for the Expulsion of Jews from needs of the people universities and schools

Prot. VII: War against disobedient non-Jews, professional armies as Jewish instruments

p. 22: No army of mercenaries, but a people’s army

May 1935: Jews forbidden to become army officers

Prot. VII, XII: The press as an instrument of Jewish rule Prot. V, XII: Jews manipulate the people via the press

p. 23: The press must be German, and owners and journalists must be German, too; only German literature and art

October 1933: Schriftleitergesetz (law on editors) September 1933: Reichskulturkammer (Reich chamber of culture) November 1933: Reichspressekammer (Reich press office) (continued)

Why the Jews? 81 Protocols (Beek, 1920)

Program 1920 (Points)

Nazi Policy

Prot. XXIII: Jews corrupt society

p. 24: Freedom of religion only if the religion does not offend the morals of the Germanic race; struggle against the Jewish materialistic spirit

Attempt to control the Catholic and Protestant churches, as well as the Jews via Reichsvereinigung der deutschen Juden (Reich deputation of German Jews)

Prot. I: Party struggle destroys a society/people

p. 25: Strong central power against the false parliamentary system

June/July 1933: forced dissolution of parties

Prot. I, XV: Jews rule through the Freemasons

Freemasons banned in Völkischer Beobachter August 1934 March−April 1921: “Deutsche Freimaurerei” (German Freemasonry) − provides guidelines for dealing with Freemasons

Prot. III: Jews help the workers

pp. 4, 25: Only Germans May 1933: Deutsche can lead Germans Arbeitsfront (German labor union)

propounded in the Protocols, the Nazi party program, and the political measures carried out under Nazi rule. As noted, not only did the Nazis tailor the antisemitic message of the Protocols to their day-to-day propaganda and communications with sympathizers, but they attained their political goals by presenting an antithesis of the Protocols. Some of Hitler’s contemporaries pointed out that the Führer himself had learned his techniques of rule from the Protocols and employed the instruments of power of the “Elders of Zion.”24 Until 1938 measures against the Jews and other enemies of the Nazis were taken within the German state. From 1938 on, the Nazis began combating enemies outside it, too. During the war they saw themselves as defenders against aggressors sent by Jewish leaders. The policy of destruction and the warfare itself were two sides of the one struggle. Several examples of Nazi propaganda illustrate the linkage between ideology, political goals, and historic events: •

Following the signing of the August 1939 treaty by Hitler and Stalin, the term “Bolshevik” almost disappeared from the propaganda, although the conspiracy rhetoric remained. In June 1941 Hitler attacked his ally Stalin, and propaganda made a sharp turn to convince the German people and German soldiers that the Bolshevik enemy was the greatest threat.25

82 W. Meyer zu Uptrup •



A weekly poster, Parole der Woche (Weekly parole): Führer befiehl, wir folgen! (Führer, command, we obey!) from July 1941 demonstrates the outlines of the argumentation and how the conspiracy theory was expounded by proving that world Jewry stood behind the Bolsheviks, and by the use of antisemitic catchwords − Jews, plutocrats, and Bolsheviks − to justify the German struggle against them (see fig. 4.7). In January 1942, after the beginning of the deportations of Jews and during the Wannsee Conference on the “Final Solution,” an expression from 1918, “back-stabbing,” was revived in the propaganda. The back-stabbing theme was well known from the hate campaigns against Jews initiated after World War I. The Nazi version explains that Jews in Germany posed a threat to the rear of the army. The argument for deportation can be seen clearly in the party’s school paper Der Schulungsbrief, January 1942 (see fig. 4.8). Since the Jews in the German state are proven to be a threat to the struggle for national freedom, they have to be deported, says the message.

Hitler frequently blamed international Jewry for instigating the war against Germany and pointed to Bolshevik and capitalist interests. This claim can be seen in his speech on New Year’s Day 1943,26 as well as in many others, where facts are intermingled with antisemitic fiction. Although Hitler and other orators needed time in order to explain their war policy, the SS paper Das Schwarz Korps (The black corps) portrayed the entire message in a cartoon

Figure 4.7 “Führer, command, we obey!” Parole der Woche, July 2−8, 1941.

Why the Jews? 83 showing the Jew regulating Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin by remote control (fig. 4.9).27 Almost every major event of the war was linked to the struggle against the Jewish conspiracy. Three days after the D-Day invasion, Völkischer Beobachter pronounced that it was the Jews who had sent Allied troops to Normandy.28 The message appeared in civilian newspapers, party material, and SS periodicals, as well as in publications for the troops at the front fighting the “Jewish-ruled” enemies (fig. 4.10).29

Figure 4.8 Original drawing in Schulungsbrief, January 1942.

84 W. Meyer zu Uptrup

Figure 4.9 “The Big Three …,” Das Schwarze Korps, July 8, 1943.

Conclusion The Nazis believed the Jews had real political influence and that they cooperated to achieve their political objectives. The Jews played a key role in the political analyses of the Nazis. The Jew, or the “international Jew,” ruled all the Nazis’ political enemies. Like the mycelium of a fungus, conspiratorial antisemitism penetrated the entire Nazi ideology and poisoned their thinking, albeit subconsciously. The Nazi saw himself as a fighter against enemies perceived as either ruled by the Jews or the Jews themselves (see fig. 4.11).30 Among the Nazi elite the supreme political aim was to make Germany great and powerful through the restructuring of society and rebuilding the most

Why the Jews? 85

Figure 4.10 “Forward, the Jew expects everyone to do his duty,” Der Durchbruch, Soldiers Newspaper at the Eastern Front, September 3, 1944.

important organs of Germany into a Völkisch state. Political enemies who opposed that goal were considered to be ruled by “international Jewry” and their allies. This point is hard to understand for people living more than half a century after the Allied victory against Hitler. It should be recalled, however, that Nazi theory was not the only major political ideology that blamed a particular social group for all of a society’s social and political ills both in the past and in the present. While emotions like hate, cruelty, or greed did not influence Nazi ideology and policy, they played an important role in the acts of persecution. Thus,

86 W. Meyer zu Uptrup the starting point in Nazi political thinking was quite rational. Like paranoid thinking, however, Nazi political theory was constructed very logically from an unreal point − the existence of a “Jewish conspiracy.” Based on a general racist view of history and politics, the Jews were seen as an entity fighting for domination, and for harming and exploiting all non-Jews. The Protocols concept provided the theoretical structure of the Nazi’s weltanschauung, named the reasons and the actors in social and political processes, and defined the enemy. This becomes evident not only in the figures shown here, but in most of the speeches made by leading Nazis, as well as in numerous publications, including daily newspapers, brochures, and books. In accordance with racist

Figure 4.11 NSDAP fighter, “The Attack” (“You won’t defeat us”), in Joseph Goebbels, Knorke (Munich, 1928).

Why the Jews? 87 thinking, the Nazis assumed that the struggle for political rule was in the “blood” of every Jew and led his actions throughout his life. Since the Jews did not fit into the Nazi political concept of society, a political theory led to the rebuilding of an entire society by terror and extermination. The core element of the Nazi concept was the antisemitic conspiracy. If one follows the political analysis of this notion, a peaceful, reliable coexistence with the Jews would have been impossible. Viewing Jews through the conspiratorial prism of the Protocols engendered a hostile attitude, followed by policies of persecution and destruction.

Notes 1 See, for example, Christopher R. Browning, Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Dieter Pohl, “National Socialist Persecution of the Jews in Eastern Galicia, 1941−1944: Organization and Execution of a Governmental Crime” [in German], in Studien zur Zeitgeschichte, vol. 50 (Munich, 1996); Thomas Sandkühler, The Final Solution in Galicia: The Murder of the Jews in Eastern Poland and Berhold Beitz’ Attempts to Rescue Them [in German] (Bonn: Dietz, 1996). 2 Wolfram Meyer zu Uptrup, The Struggle against the “Jewish World Conspiracy”: National Socialist Propaganda and Antisemitism, 1919−1945 [in German] (Berlin: Metropol, 2003), p. 109. On the origins of the Protocols, see, for example, Cesare G. De Michelis, The Non-existent Manuscript. A Study of the Protocols of the Sages of Zion (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press, 2004). 3 See, for example, Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. I: The Years of Persecution, 1933−1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), which portrays Nazi antisemitism as a political religion. 4 See Meyer zu Uptrup, The Struggle, n. 2, where all the sources are given. 5 Peter Longerich, “We didn’t know about this”: The Germans and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933−1945 [in German] (Munich: Siedler, 2006); Bernward Dörner, The Germans and the Holocaust: What Nobody Wanted to Know but Everybody Could Know [in German] (Berlin: Propyläen, 2007) adds little new on the subject and partly follows Meyer zu Uptrup, The Struggle, n. 2. 6 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knopf, 1996). Among numerous critics, see Dieter Pohl, “Research on the Holocaust and the Thesis of Goldhagen” [in German], Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 45 (1997), pp. 1−48. 7 See the brief reflections on terror and totalitarianism based on Hannah Ahrendt by Victor Zaslavsky, Class Cleansing [in Italian] (Bologna, 2006). 8 Wolfram Meyer zu Uptrup, “When Did Hitler Become an Antisemite?” [in German], Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, no. 43 (1995), pp. 687−97. 9 Gottfried zur Beek, The Secrets of the Elders of Zion [in German] (Charlottenburg, 1919; in reality the book appeared in 1920). 10 Franz Janka, The Brown Society: A Regimented People [in German] (Stuttgart: Quell, 1997). 11 See Meyer zu Uptrup, The Struggle. 12 zur Beek, The Secrets of the Elders of Zion, 13th ed. (1933), p. 3. See also Meyer zu Uptrup, The Struggle, p. 98, fig. 1, with the title of Nazi edition and, on the left, a National Socialist Library listing containing titles influenced by the Protocols, for example, nos. 3, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 18, 28, 41, 43 and others; see also p. 149.

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13 For example, Intelligence and Speaker Information of the Reich Propaganda Department of NSDAP and the Propaganda Office of the German Labor Front [in German] (Munich: Eher, 1934−1944). 14 zur Beek, The Secrets of the Elders of Zion, 1st ed.; Alfred Rosenberg, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Jewish World Politics [in German] (Munich: Deutscher Volksverlag, 1923); Theodor Fritsch, The Zionist Protocols: The Program of the International Secret Government, Translated according to the British Library Original (Leipzig: Hammer, 1924); Henry Ford, The International Jewish [trans. into German] 1, 17th ed. (Leipzig: Hammer, 1922); idem, Jewish Activities in the United States (trans. into German), 12th ed. (Leipzig: Hammer, 1922). 15 SS-Leitheft, vol. 2, ed. Reichsführer SS, SS-Hauptamt, SS Main Office Berlin 22, April 1936. 16 “Many People − Same Leaders” [in German], Völkischer Beobachter, no. 129, August 31, 1925, p. 1. 17 Fig. 4.5: Schaffende Deutschlands − appeal against the ban on Hitler speaking in public, February 1926; appeal of NSDAP to mobilize followers for a campaign against the ban, Völkischer Beobachter, no. 49 (February 1926), p. 3. 18 “Appeal to the Party” [in German], Völkischer Beobachter, special issue, no. 8, March 1, 1928, p. 5. 19 Ibid. 20 Claus-Ekkehard Barsch, The Political Religion of National Socialism [in German] (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2002). 21 For details, see Meyer zu Uptrup, The Struggle; also idem, Language instead of Policy? in Manfred Op. de Hipt and Erich Latniak, eds, Political Science Semantics and Rhetoric Research [in German] (Opladen: Westdeutscher, 1991). 22 Speech of Alfred Rosenberg, Völkischer Beobachter, no. 256, September 13, 1935, p. 6. 23 Gottfried Feder, The Program of the NSDAP and Its Ideological Foundations, 40th ed. (Munich: Eher, 1930). 24 Alexander Stein (pseudonym, Alexander Rosenstein), Adolf Hitler, Disciple of the Elders of Zion (Karlsbad: Graphia, 1936). 25 See editions of the Nazi daily newspaper Völkischer Beobachter, June 1941 till the end of its appearance, Meyer zu Uptrup, The Struggle, passim, n. 2. 26 “Appeal on New Years Day to the German People,” Völkischer Beobachter, no. 1, January 1, 1943, p. 1. Antisemitic and ideological passages of many speeches are missing from the standard edition of Hitler’s speeches by Max Domarus, as well as from many other texts translated by Domarus. Domarus misled generations of scholars about Nazi ideology if they did not read the originals. See also Hitler’s last appeals in Völkischer Beobachter, no. 60 (Munich edition), March 12, 1945, p. 1; no. 91 (Berlin edition), April 17, 1945, p. 1. 27 “The Big Three,” Das Schwarze Korps, no. 27, July 8, 1943, p. 1. 28 “For what?” Völkischer Beobachter, no. 161, June 9, 1944, p. 1. 29 “Forward, the Jew expects everyone to do his duty,” Der Durchbruch, Soldatenzeitung aus der Ostfront (The break-through. Paper for soldiers at the eastern front), no. 3 (September 1944), p. 6. 30 “You won’t defeat us,” Illustrierter Beobachter, based on Joseph Goebbels, Knorke (Munich: Eher, 1928), p. 52.

5

Philosemites embracing the Protocols? American fundamentalist Christians and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Yaakov Ariel

In 1933, Arno Gaebelein, a conservative American Christian theologian, published a best-selling book, The Conflict of the Ages, in which he offered an analysis of human history and the world situation. There was nothing unusual in America of that time about the popularity of a book that accused the Jews of a conspiracy to take over the entire world, except that in this case the author considered himself a friend of the Jews. Viewing the Jews as the Chosen People, God’s first nation, destined for a glorious future in the Messianic Kingdom, Gaebelein prophesized doom for the Nazis because of their hostility to the Jews. At the same time, he was certain that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was an authentic document, and that the conspiracy it related was unfolding before his eyes.1 Gaebelein was not the only fundamentalist leader who accepted the authenticity of the Protocols. Other noted spokesmen of the movement of that time, such as William B. Riley, head of the World Christian Fundamentalist Association; James M. Gray, president of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, the foremost fundamentalist theological school in America; Charles E. Fuller, the leading Protestant radio evangelist and founder of the Fuller Theological Seminary; and Gerald B. Winrod, founder of the Defenders of the Christian Faith, also considered the Protocols to be genuine and readily expressed that opinion in journals, books, sermons, and radio broadcasts.2 The fundamentalist leaders’ endorsement of the Protocols and the wide circulation of this document among their followers can be explained by the manner in which they fit into their worldview. These trends point to fundamentalist willingness to adopt theories of global conspiracies as valid analyses of the realities of the era, and reflect their mood of pessimism and suspicion. Likewise, they testify to the fundamentalists’ opinion of Jews, especially secular and liberal Jews, who they claimed were using their talents to cause harm instead of good.

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Fundamentalist Christians and the Jews At the turn of the twentieth century, fundamentalist Christians reorganized in reaction to new cultural trends in American society, including the rise of a liberal modernist movement within American Christianity itself.3 Fundamentalists resented the rise of an open society and a culture that was “generic” in character, ungrounded in Christianity, and with no commitment to the Christian faith.4 Among other things, they lashed out against the movie industry, which symbolized the new attitudes. More than anything, they were upset about scholarly theories that seemed to them to undermine the authenticity and authority of the Bible. Christian liberals engaged in sophisticated research of the Bible were regarded as traitors, willing to sacrifice essential elements of Christianity for the sake of academic advancement.5 As most major Christian colleges, seminaries, missionary agencies, and publications were adopting a liberal line, fundamentalists built their own infrastructure of schools of higher learning, missions, journals, and publishing houses. Fundamentalist leaders and ideologues gathered together in Bible and prophecy conferences to exchange ideas and create common theological ground for a movement of reaction to modernity in general and to the Christian modernist movement in particular. They did not share the optimism of the modernists, who held to a progressive view of history, maintaining that humanity could build the kingdom of God on earth on its own through political and educational reforms and technological advancement. Rather, fundamentalists believed that humanity was going from bad to worse and that Christian civilization was crumbling under the attacks of the forces of evil. In contrast to the liberal idea of humanity working on its own to overcome its backwardness, fundamentalists hoped for divine intervention.6 Most adopted a premillennialist faith in the arrival of the Messiah to redeem humanity and build the kingdom of God on earth.7 Dispensationalist premillennialism, a school of messianic faith, had crystallized in Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and gained hold in America in the latter decades of the nineteenth century among conservative Protestants.8 This belief became part and parcel of the conservative evangelical fundamentalist worldview, meshing well with the negative attitude of conservatives toward the culture of the day. From the late nineteenth century, dispensationalist premillennialism served as a conservative Christian philosophy of history, providing an outline of where history is heading and offering hope and reassurance in the face of uncertainty.9 Further, it provided its fundamentalist adherents with an explanation for the meaning of political, economic, social, and cultural developments, which were perceived as chapters in the war between the Prince of Peace and the Prince of Darkness. The new faith offered an assurance that true Christian believers would survive the turmoil and enter the kingdom of God. A long chain of evangelists has promoted the dispensationalist messianic faith, linking it to a larger conservative worldview, and a more literal

Philosemites embracing the Protocols? 91 reading of the Bible, as well as using it as a rationale for evangelism around the globe.10 The dispensationalist messianic faith has strongly affected fundamentalist attitudes toward the Jews, creating a new interest in them as well as a certain regard for a nation, which its adherents have come to look upon as God’s chosen people.11 Their new belief in the special role of the Jews in God’s plans for humanity, however, was not the only sentiment fundamentalists held toward the Jews. They were also influenced by age-old views within western Christian society and by their fear of social change. Moreover, they believed that the Jews were responsible for the growth of an open, non-Christian culture in American cities. Thus, while fundamentalist Christians came to regard the Jews as heirs to the covenant between God and Israel and the object of biblical prophecies, they also considered them to be morally and spiritually lacking, and hence the bearers of negative cultural stereotypes.12 The Jews, or rather their role in history and the prospect of their return to Zion, became an important issue for fundamentalists. A number of leading early twentieth-century evangelists, among them William E. Blackstone, devised a theory that became a cornerstone of American fundamentalist attitudes toward Zionism and Israel. They saw America as a modern Cyrus, protecting the re-establishment of the Jews in their ancient homeland. This vision of America as an international advocate of righteous causes, and a vehicle for the realization of the kingdom of God on earth, enabled conservative American Protestants to combine their messianic faith and their understanding of the course of human history with their sense of American patriotism.13 Although fundamentalists criticized American culture, they remained loyal citizens of the United States. In this respect, evangelicals are significantly different from other American religious groups holding intensely messianic beliefs, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, who oppose the values and goals of the American polity. In dispensationalist messianic theology, God has different plans for three categories of human beings: the Jews, the Church, and the rest of humanity. Fundamentalists define the Church not as a specific denomination but as the body of true Christian believers, an invisible entity composed of those who have undergone a genuine conversion experience and accepted Jesus as their personal savior. These true Christians will be saved and spared the turmoil and suffering that will precede the arrival of the Messiah. Accordingly, the apocalypse will begin with a watershed event, the rupture of the Church, during which true Christians will be snatched from earth and will meet Jesus in heaven. They will remain there for seven years and be spared the chaos of the “Great Tribulation,” a period that stands between the present era and messianic times. For the Jews, this will be “the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jeremiah 30:7), unprecedentedly traumatic years that will include natural disasters, political turmoil, and human cruelty. The Jews will stand at the center of these stormy developments, with many of the significant political and social events of this apocalyptic era taking place in the Holy Land.14

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According to this belief, the Jewish people are expected to prepare the ground for the return of the Messiah and the building of the Kingdom of God on earth. The Jews as a people will thus become major participants in the events of the Great Tribulation. Antichrist, a Jewish tyrant, will present himself as the true Messiah, rebuild the Temple, and inflict a reign of terror. The arrival of Jesus at the end of the Great Tribulation, accompanied by the true Christian believers, will end the antichrist’s rule, and Jesus will establish the kingdom of God on earth. Those Jews who survive the Great Tribulation will accept Jesus as their savior. There will follow a period of one thousand years of righteous rule of Christ on earth, with Jerusalem as the capital of the entire world. The Jews will again inhabit David’s ancient kingdom, serving as Jesus’ right-hand assistants in administering the earth. This newly acquired messianic faith motivated fundamentalists to take notice of the existing Jews and stirred efforts to bring them to fulfill their role in history. Interestingly, premillennialist Christians anticipated the Jewish national restoration before the rise of political Zionism. They expected the Jews to return to their ancient homeland Palestine, “in unbelief” − without accepting Jesus as their savior. There, they would establish a political commonwealth, which would become a major stepping-stone in the advancement of the messianic timetable.15 By the late nineteenth century, American evangelists came out with protoZionist initiatives, and conservative evangelical writers promoted the idea that a Jewish commonwealth in the Holy Land was a crucial development in progress toward their messianic goal. The new faith also inspired interest in the prospect of Jewish conversion to Christianity.16 It was essential, fundamentalists believed, that Jews be informed of their true role in history and be better prepared to fulfill it. The new understanding of the Jews and their role in God’s plans for humanity brought fundamentalists to warm to the Jews, at least partially, and to modify traditional Christian beliefs. Late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century fundamentalist writers, such as Gaebelein and Blackstone, condemned the blood libels that continued to circulate in eastern Europe, as well as harassment and persecution of Jews.17 Likewise, fundamentalists distanced themselves from maltreatment of Jews throughout history, claiming that such behavior was manifested by false Christians, since true Christians would have treated the Jews with compassion. This is not to say that fundamentalists expressed only appreciation for the Jews. Cultural prejudices and theological anger would continue to characterize fundamentalist attitudes toward them for decades, and fundamentalist texts revealed mixed feelings toward them. Gaebelein, for example, referred to Jews in a manner and tone that differed considerably from those he used in discussing the Protocols. In his autobiography, penned at the same time that he wrote of alleged Jewish international conspiracies, he described the relief work he carried out among poor Jews of the Lower East Side of New York, explaining: “I could do just a little in paying back the debt we owe to the Jews. How could true Christians

Philosemites embracing the Protocols? 93 be heartless toward Jews?”18 Elsewhere he noted: “We should not forget that to this race − the race of Jesus − we owe our spiritual privileges.”19 Fundamentalists such as Blackstone, Gaebelein, and Alfred Thompson differentiated between various groups of Jews. They had reserved respect for Orthodox Jews; traditionalist and Orthodox Jews, after all, regarded the Bible as divinely inscribed, continued to anticipate the arrival of the Messiah, and prayed for the national restoration of Israel.20 Paradoxically, Orthodox Judaism was the only religious expression, aside from evangelical Protestantism, for which fundamentalists found a purpose. Although this approach was essentially erroneous, since Judaism does not recognize Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah and the Son of God, the Jewish religion had a role in God’s plans for humanity. Fundamentalists found no use for other religions except Christianity, and expressed criticism of Christian groups that did not conform to their understanding of what true Christianity meant.21 Yet traditional Judaism, with all its faults, had some merits. At least it had some purpose in God’s plans for human redemption. Liberal and secular Judaism had no merit at all. The Jews whom Gaebelein, Riley, Gray, Fuller, Winrod, and Charles Cook accused of leading the world into chaos and destruction were those that had abandoned traditional Judaism, but had chosen not to convert to Christianity: they were “apostate” or “infidel” Jews, by which they meant liberal or secular Jews, whom they labeled “de-formed.”22 With the exception of secular Zionists, who were rebuilding Palestine, and whom fundamentalists viewed similarly to the Orthodox, they looked upon observant Jews as misguided but fulfilling a positive role. Fundamentalists had no patience for Jews who had turned away from the Jewish tradition, and would neither convert to Christianity nor await the Messiah. Such Jews, they were certain, had chosen a road that led nowhere but to their own destruction and to that of others. “There is nothing so vile on earth as an apostate Jew,” Gaebelein wrote.23 Fundamentalists believed that liberal and secular Jews led movements of social and political reform that undermined Christian civilization. Thus, for fundamentalists, while Jews were God’s chosen people, destined to reassume their lost position as God’s first nation, they also had a particular gift for destructiveness. It was due to them that Jesus’ first coming failed to bring with it the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth, since the Jews’ stubborn blindness prevented it from being realized. However, when Jesus returned to earth, the Jews would accept him as their Savior. Until then, the Jews had not realized their true mission in history, and lacked the right moral compass. Moreover, when they departed from whatever moral guidelines Judaism might offer, Jews were capable of uniting with the enemies of Christian civilization. That many Jews had left the faith of their fathers but had not accepted Christianity annoyed fundamentalists endlessly. Instead of embracing the right faith and finding eternal life and a home for their soul, they had joined destructive, secular movements that undermined Christ and his kingdom. Fundamentalist thinkers were convinced that it was certainly

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within the Jews’ capacity to conspire and attempt to bring ruin on Christian civilization. In an article entitled “The International Jew,” Charles Cook explained why, in his view, the Jews could have written the Protocols: The Jewish race is morally fully capable of doing all that is charged against it. It is at present rejected of God, and in a state of disobedience and rebellion … As a race Jews are gifted far beyond other peoples, and even in their ruin, with the curse of God on them, are in the front rank of achievement; but accompanying traits are pride, overbearing arrogance, inordinate love for material things, trickery, rudeness and an egotism that taxes the superlatives of any language … for the unregenerated Jew usually has a very unattractive personality. There is a reason for his being persona non grata at resorts and in the best society; who can deny it?24 Relating to that very question, Gaebelein stated: That the Jew has been a prominent factor in the revolutionary movements of the day, wherever they may have occurred, cannot truthfully be denied … or that a very large majority (said to be over 80 percent) of the present Bolshevist government in Moscow are Jews.25

Enter the Protocols Fundamentalist Christians were not the first to embrace The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and promote it as an authentic document. The tract had a willing audience in America before the fundamentalists adopted it, and fundamentalist Christians were by no means the only ones to utilize the forgery in order to publicize the alleged conspiracy. Mainstream non-fundamentalist Church leaders such as George S. Simons and Harris A. Houghton were among the first to view the document as genuine. It eventually came to the attention of the political elite in Washington, and during the Red Scare of the early 1920s became a subject of Congressional investigation.26 Henry Ford, Sr., America’s leading manufacturer of automobiles, did more than anyone else to publicize the Protocols and promote the notion of a Jewish conspiracy, sponsoring publication of the tract in the Dearborn Independent, a journal he founded and financed.27 During the early 1920s, when representatives of the old Protestant elite were embracing and legitimizing the Protocols, fundamentalist Christians stayed aloof. For the most part, they did not pay the tract too much attention, although some among them who related to the document thought it might be authentic. In the early 1920s, the battle between fundamentalists and modernists reached a peak. Fundamentalism was by no means a “lost cause,” and fundamentalist polemics concentrated more on opposition to the theory of evolution and the truth of the Christian Bible than on international

Philosemites embracing the Protocols? 95 conspiracies. In 1925, fundamentalism was embarrassed by the trial in Dayton, Tennessee, of John T. Scopes, who was accused of teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in a biology class.28 The nation was divided, with almost all those who were not part of the conservative Protestant camp opposing the fundamentalists. The major newspapers of the day mocked the fundamentalist representatives in the trial, and public opinion in general turned against them. Following the case, their legislative campaign suffered a defeat and the movement in general suffered humiliation.29 Evangelical historian Timothy Weber asserted that dispensationalism, the messianic faith, and the philosophy of history held by fundamentalist Christians, were characterized by conspiracy theories as explanations for the course of history.30 Embattled and embittered, by the 1930s American fundamentalists were turning more than ever before to such theories as an explanation for what was going wrong in the world, and soon incorporated the notion of a Jewish international conspiracy into their larger worldview: their messianic faith, their particular reading of the Bible, and their critique of society and culture. The fundamentalist−dispensationalist understanding of world history as well as of contemporary world affairs was dualistic: God and Satan were competing for the loyalty of human souls, with Satan often having the upper hand, and particularly so in modern times. They viewed the rise of non-Christian or anti-Christian movements, such as socialism and communism, as part of an international plot to destroy Christian civilization and promote lawlessness. In communist revolutions they saw the temporary successes of Satan in strengthening his grip on planet earth. These developments were expected as part of the drama of salvation, for they indicated that the era was coming to an end and apocalyptic events were about to begin. When adopting the Protocols, American fundamentalists did not buy into a new conspiracy theory, but adopted the tract as part of a wider concept that they held: the cosmic battle that they were certain was taking place between good and evil, God and Satan. Who were better qualified to stand at the head of such a global conspiracy than the gifted but misguided apostate Jews? Moreover, the conspiracy detailed in the Protocols was indeed unfolding before their eyes. Fundamentalists believed that Jews, more than others, were leading revolutions and non-Christian regimes, including the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Lenin, they were certain, was a Jew, as were other leaders of the revolution, and Jews were also behind the (failed) Soviet revolutions in Germany and Hungary in the early 1920s. In other words, the Jewish conspiracy outlined in the Protocols was being carried out by communist or socialist political parties and regimes, as well as by groups advocating disruptive social reforms. In 1933, the Defender, a fundamentalist publication edited by Gerald Winrod, which advocated white Christian Anglo-European nativist attitudes, provided alleged evidence for the conspiracy outlined in the Protocols. The Jews controlled the world banking system and were responsible for the economic crisis and depression; they were also the ones in charge of the movie

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industry and were thus to blame for the nation’s decline in morals. Needless to say, they also led the international communist movement.31 Shortly afterward, Gaebelein published The Conflict of the Ages, in which he outlined his understanding of the cosmic battle that was taking place between the dark forces of lawlessness and the faithful remnant of Christ’s followers. He praised Serge Nilus, the Russian who first published the Protocols, as “a believer in the Word of God, in prophecy, and … a true Christian,” and was certain the document was not a “crude forgery.”32 The Protocols fitted so well into the fundamentalist philosophy of history and critique of culture that, to them, the document merely confirmed what they already knew about the Jews. They saw themselves neither as antisemites nor irrational Jew-haters, even when they declared the Jews to be leaders of a world conspiracy to destroy Christian civilization. As far as they were concerned, they were merely stating the facts.

The Protocols abandoned By the late 1930s, fundamentalist Christians began omitting the Protocols from their exegetical and polemical writings. Their infatuation with the document was over. This is not to say that fundamentalists changed their minds about the Jews. Criticism of Jewish characteristics continued to appear in fundamentalist writings, but the idea of an international Jewish conspiracy ceased being utilized to “prove” such claims. In 1939, for example, Riley published his most well-known book, Wanted, a World Leader, in which he explained world events in light of his biblical messianic faith. A relentless promoter and populizer of the Protocols merely a few years earlier, he now lashed out at the Jews without referring to that document. What made fundamentalists abandon their conviction that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was an authentic document when it corresponded so well with their view of the world situation and the Jews? Certainly, it was not due to the protests of Jewish organizations, since these had little effect on fundamentalist thinking, which expected them. Fundamentalists were also not engaged in interfaith dialogue and did not see a need to conform to liberal standards of relating to other religions, and, unlike Henry Ford, they were not trying to sell cars to Jews. Rather, opposition came from within the fundamentalist camp itself. A number of Jewish converts to Christianity, such as Joseph Cohn, director of the American Board of Missions to the Jews, and Elias Newman, a Lutheran pastor and missionary in Minnesota, objected to what they considered unjustified defamation of the Jews. Unacceptable as it may be to some Jews, in their own way many of these converts were proud Jews who had fought even before the 1930s within the conservative Christian community against anti-Jewish prejudices and discrimination.33 They shared the fundamentalist worldview, including the fundamentalist reading of the Bible, fundamentalist morality, and the messianic hope in its dispensationalist version. But, as newcomers to

Philosemites embracing the Protocols? 97 Christian Protestant society, they daily encountered negative stereotypes of Jews and strongly resented the prejudices they represented. Their struggle against the Protocols was part of their endeavor to be treated respectfully by the Protestant community. Cohn used his mission’s journal, The Chosen People, to fight conservative Christian enchantment with the Protocols. He entered into literary vendettas with Winrod and Riley, the latter attacking Cohn as if he were the embodiment of everything that was evil about the Jews.34 While Cohn and Newman could more easily make their voices heard in fundamentalist circles than spokespersons of the organized Jewish community, they, too, failed to persuade Riley, Winrod, or Gaebelein to abandon their position. Nevertheless, other developments made fundamentalists discard their conviction that the Protocols were authentic. An important part of this change was the news from Nazi Germany, including information on the Jewish plight, first in Germany and later in other countries in Nazi-controlled Europe. While at the beginning of the Nazi ascent to power many fundamentalists gave the new regime some benefit of the doubt, by the late 1930s, it became evident that the Nazis were not defenders of the Christian faith. Fundamentalists were taken aback when they discovered the un-Christian aspects of Nazi ideology, such as the aryanization of Jesus, rejection of the Old Testament, and racial laws that made Jewish converts to Christianity and their children undesirable. No less important was the realization that the Jews were not mighty conspirators, but rather a weak, persecuted people who were knocking on the doors of English-speaking countries, begging for asylum. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion did not disappear completely from conservative Christian writings, but rather lost favor with more respectable, mainstream elements within that religious and cultural movement. Nativist and racist fundamentalist groups have persisted in utilizing the tract as a means of explaining an alleged decline of Anglo-Saxon and Nordic elements in American society. Since the 1940s the Protocols have become a litmus test indicating where groups stand in relation not only to Jews, but to the American mainstream as a whole. Fundamentalist preachers such as Gerald L.K. Smith, who persisted in attributing conspiratorial intentions to the Jews found themselves outside the mainstream and were not welcome in polite society.35 During World War II, as well as in the postwar years, religious concord increasingly became the norm.36 The image of Jews and Judaism improved significantly during those years and Judaism became one of the publicly accepted faiths in America.37 American conservative Christianity has not remained static. As a result of reforms within American fundamentalism, the mainstream has become neoevangelical: a more accommodating and open movement whose influence on American society has grown enormously since the 1950s.38 Conservative evangelical opinion of Jews has also developed throughout the years. The birth of the State of Israel in 1948 and the Israeli conquest of old Jerusalem in 1967 filled conservative American Protestants with excitement. Convinced

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that the biblical prophecy was unfolding before their eyes, they did not change their basic view that Jews would only be redeemed as individuals and as a nation when they accepted Jesus as a savior. But they became, in essence, supporters of Jewish and Israeli causes. From the 1960s to 1980s, as Israelis were fighting against Soviet-sponsored armies, and as Jewish organizations were asking American Christians to join their struggle to liberate Soviet Jews, the Protocols and the notion that the Jews stood behind Communist regimes were completely forgotten.39

Conclusion During the 1930s, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion became a popular text in America, promoted by a large number of religious and secular leaders. Fundamentalist Christian writers also accepted the Protocols as an authentic document, pointing to it as proof that there was indeed an international satanic conspiracy to destroy Christian civilization and take over the world. However, while leaders of other American groups or movements that promoted the Protocols held a consistently negative opinion of Jews, the fundamentalist attitude was more complex. In parallel with their suspicion and contempt, they held them in regard in anticipation of a national Jewish revival. As a rule, the fundamentalist image of the Jews was mythological in nature. Most fundamentalists had had no contact with Jews and viewed them through the prism of Christian theological perceptions, both old and new, as well as via cultural stereotypes long rooted in western civilization. The idea that the Jews were conspiring to take over the world was not much different from the claim that the Jews were sabotaging the possibility of creating the kingdom of God on earth by refusing to recognize Jesus as their Messiah. The Protocols fitted well into the fundamentalist worldview because, in essence, they had been part of it even before the tract was forged and circulated. It took an extreme historical development for fundamentalists to abandon their belief that the Protocols were a genuine document. Nevertheless, while mainstream Christian fundamentalist and neo-evangelical writers ceased taking the tract seriously, the Protocols continued to circulate in America, although they never reached in Christian circles the same popularity they enjoyed in the 1930s. Since the 1940s, the tract has served as a litmus test, indicating the position of Christian groups in relation not only to the Jews, but to the general culture as well. The Protocols appear today on the websites of white Christian racists, who see the unfolding of the conspiracy spelled out in them in today’s political and economic situation. Within conservative evangelical circles, they have, for the most part, been forgotten.

Notes 1 Arno C. Gaebelein, The Conflict of the Ages, the Mystery of Lawlessness: Its Origin, Historic Development and Coming Defeat (New York: “Our Hope,” 1933).

Philosemites embracing the Protocols? 99 2 James M. Gray, “The Jewish Protocols,” Moody Bible Institute Monthly 22 (1921), p. 598; William B. Riley, Wanted − A World Leader! (Published by the author, n.d.), pp. 41−51, 71−2. 3 George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism 1870−1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, vol. 1, The Irony of It All 1893−1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 208−50. 4 Yaakov Ariel, “The Growth of American Fundamentalism: 1865−1925” [in Hebrew], Zmanim 10, no. 38 (Summer 1991), pp. 92−3. 5 William J. Bryan, In His Image (Chicago: Fleming H. Revell, 1923). 6 Timothy P. Weber, Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). 7 Ernest Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800−1930 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1978). 8 On the fundamentalist messianic faith, see Weber, Living in the Shadow; Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism. 9 A.G. Mojtabai, Blessed Assurance: At Home with the Bomb in Amarillo, Texas (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986). 10 Cf. William R. Hutchinson, Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 11 Yaakov Ariel, On Behalf of Israel: American Fundamentalist Attitudes toward Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, 1865−1945 (New York: Carlson Publishing, 1991). 12 Ibid., pp. 321−63. 13 Ibid., pp. 92−3. 14 The current most circulated publication that gives expression to that messianic faith and provides details is the novel series Left Behind, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins (1995−2007); for a critique, see, for example, Nicholas D. Kristof, “Jesus and Jihad,” New York Times, July 17, 2004. 15 David Rausch, Zionism within Early American Fundamentalism, 1878−1918 (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1978). 16 Yaakov Ariel, Evangelizing the Chosen People: Missions to the Jews in America 1880s−2000 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 17 Arno C. Gaebelein, “The Same Accusation,” Our Hope 30 (February 1924), p. 556. 18 Arno C. Gaebelein, Half a Century: The Autobiography of a Servant (New York: “Our Hope,” 1930), p. 35 19 Arno C. Gaebelein, “The Middle Wall of Partition,” Our Hope 34 (June 1928), p. 750. 20 Gabelein, The Conflict of the Ages, p. 147. 21 See, for example, Arno C. Gaebelein, Current Events in the Light of the Bible (New York: “Our Hope,” 1914), pp. 58, 67−8, 98. 22 Gaebelein, The Conflict of the Ages. 23 Arno C. Gaebelein, “Aspects of Jewish Power in the United States,” Our Hope 29 (January 1922), p. 103. 24 Charles C. Cook, “The International Jew,” King’s Business 12 (November 1921), p. 1087. 25 Arno C. Gaebelein, “Isaiah Chapter XIX, the Conversion of Egypt,” Our Hope 27 (1921), p. 601. 26 Robert Sugerman, “The American Career of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” American Jewish History 71, no. 1 (September 1981), pp. 48−78. 27 Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate (New York: Public Affairs, 2001). 28 Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, pp. 176−95. 29 Ibid.

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30 Weber, Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming; idem, On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friends (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 2004). 31 “Unmasking the ‘Hidden Hand’—A World Conspiracy,” Defender 7 (February 1933), p. 3; “Protocols Confirmed,” Defender 8 (November 1933), p. 15. 32 Gaebelein, The Conflict of the Ages, pp. 95−100. 33 Elias Newmas, The Fundamentalist Resuscitation of the Antisemitic Protocol Forgery (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1934). 34 William B. Riley, “Cohn vs. Riley,” Pilot 15 (May 1935), p. 218; idem, “Joseph Cohn Again,” Pilot 15 (June 1935), pp. 249−50; Gerald B. Winrod, “Editor Winrod Answers Editor Cohn,” Defender 8 (June 1933), p. 60; cf., also, Joseph Cohn, I Have Fought a Good Fight (New York: American Board of Missions to the Jews, 1953). 35 Glen Jeansonne, Gerald L. K. Smith, Minister of Hate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). 36 Martin G. Marty, Modern American Religion, vol. 3, Under God Indivisible, 1941−1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 37 Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (New York: Anchor Books, 1960). 38 On the reforms and changes within fundamentalism, see George M. Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1987). 39 Cf. Jay and Meridel Rawlings, Gates of Brass (Chichester: New Wine Press, 1985).

6

Hugo Wast and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Argentina Graciela Ben-Dror

A number of extremely antisemitic churchmen and lay writers were prominent in Argentina during the 1930s and 1940s. They included the well-known novelist Hugo Wast and priests such as Julio Meinvielle, Leonardo Castellani, and Virgilio Filippo, who were all bound organically to the Church establishment and were greatly preoccupied with the question of the Jews. Their numerous books and articles on theological, ideological, and political themes were aimed at revealing to the faithful and the Argentinean public in general the “true” face of the Jews and the ways in which their negative, destructive force operated not only in Argentina but throughout the world. The ideas of these Catholics, some of whom exerted considerable influence on Argentinean society, were drawn from many sources: Christianity, political and economic antisemitism, and frequently, contemporary racist antisemitism. Gustavo Martínez Zuviría (1883−1962), whose pen-name was Hugo Wast, played a leading part in the consolidation of radical antisemitism in Argentina. Born into a prominent Catholic family in the province of Cordoba, he was received, at the age of 25, by Pope Pius X in recognition of his work as a renowned novelist and Catholic layman. Martínez Zuviría performed his literary role in parallel to his membership of the Catholic establishment and was known as “the priest without a frock.” From 1931 till 1954 Wast served in an important public position as director of the National Library in Buenos Aires. In 1934 the Church appointed him chairman of the Press and Publicity Committee of the International Eucharistic Congress in Buenos Aires, and from 1937 he also became president of the national Cultural Council. A few years later, in 1941, when Dr. Ramón Castillo was president of Argentina he was named government representative to the province of Catamarca. Following the armed coup of October 1943, Wast was appointed by the new president, General Pedro P. Ramírez, minister of education and justice in the military and nationalist regime. This was the pinnacle of his public career. His major achievement was the publication of a decree, on December 31, 1943, introducing compulsory Catholic education into the public school curriculum.1 He resigned from his ministerial post in February 1944, possibly

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due to the severance of relations between Argentina and the Axis powers the month before. Like other Catholics of his time, Hugo Wast was an integralist (complete) Catholic, who believed Catholicism was not only a religious faith but a weltanschauung, absolutely opposed to modernism, liberalism, socialism, and communism, and which perceived the Protestant denominations as the enemies of Catholicism, the only true religion. For historical reasons dating from the first decades of Christianity and into the Middle Ages, Judaism, too, was an enemy, and this view persisted into the modern era. Since the French Revolution, the contemporary world also became an enemy, an attitude deriving from right-wing Catholicism in France. In the 1930s Argentina was undergoing an economic, political and social crisis; in fact, it began recovering from the Great Depression only in the mid-1930s. Politically, the period of the 1930s and early 1940s was termed the “Infamous Decade” (Década infame), referring to the years of sham democracy, during which the rich upper classes installed their own candidate, Agustin P. Justo, as president. Justo, who ran for the presidency in November 1931 on a conservative coalition ticket, had held the portfolios of war, agriculture, and public works in the revolutionary government of 1930 and ruled from 1932 until 1938. The Catholic Church cooperated closely with the government during this period. The 1930s in Argentina witnessed virulent expressions of antisemitism. The influence of French antisemitism was strongly felt, and the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe, together with liberalism and communism, were widely discussed, especially in Catholic newspapers and among the country’s intellectuals. While most of the clergy claimed they were not antisemitic, in circles close to the Catholic hierarchy, Jews were depicted in extremely negative terms. Since Judaism was seen as closely linked to communism, it became politically correct to speak and write of the Jews’ defects. This attitude was bolstered by traditional Catholic beliefs, the contemporary media, and the antisemitic discourse emanating from right-wing groups in Europe, mostly France and Spain. Although the Catholic Church was not pro-fascist, because of its integralist views fascism and Nazism came to be seen as maladies that were less evil than liberalism and communism. As a Catholic intellectual in Argentina of that time, Hugo Wast was not alone in expressing virulent antisemitism. Several respected Catholic priests, such as the abovementioned Julio Meinvielle, Leonardo Castellani, and Virgilio Filippo, wrote venomously antisemitic books and articles. Castellani claims he was once asked to write a book about the Jews and was tempted because of the money it would make, but he declined because Wast’s works were already so brilliant. It can therefore be concluded that it was a lucrative business to produce antisemitic texts in those times, and that Hugo Wast had the backing of well-known intellectual priests. This chapter focuses on Hugo Wast, the influential writer and politicians, and raises several questions: Did his philosophy represent the norm of the

Hugo Wast and The Protocols 103 times among Argentina’s Catholic hierarchy, or was it a deviation? Was he accepted by Church circles and, if so, was he instrumental in shaping the attitude of the religious public toward the Jews? Or was he, perhaps, part of a small group of intellectuals whose extreme antisemitic stance made them pariahs? This study seeks to demonstrate that Hugo Wast was not an outsider and that rather than being alien to the Church hierarchy in Argentina his thoughts and antisemitic writings represented a mainstream way of thinking and acting.

Kahal (Congregation), Oro (Gold), and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Wast’s many books were characterized by various styles and genres: novels, short stories, poetry and plays, as well as biographies, historical and philosophical studies, and collections of speeches.2 In 1935, already honored with numerous awards and literary acclaim, Wast published a two-part novel, Kahal (Congregation) and Oro (Gold).3 This work, written in metaphorical style, contains many motifs linked to the negative stereotype of the Jew as they appear in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and as propagated by the standardbearers of political antisemitism. Kahal and Oro tell the story of a Jewish father and his daughter, members of the “Congregation” (kahal) − referring to the Jewish establishment; namely, a group of rich, respected figures who rule the Jewish community and dictate its way of life. The Congregation plans to conquer the entire Christian world − the economy, media, culture, and governments. The Jews wish to frustrate the efforts of a Christian, Julius Ram, to eliminate world dependence on the gold reserves concentrated in Jewish hands by synthesizing the metal in his laboratory. At the end of the novel the daughter converts to Christianity, thus admitting the truth of Christianity and the corruption of Judaism, from which she has escaped. As in the Protocols,4 the theme of Kahal and Oro is based on the theory of Jewish world domination, which was allegedly being achieved by means of the French Revolution and its liberal ideals and the march toward communism. In attempting to adapt this universal theory to the reality of Argentina, Wast goes further, exploiting a double advantage. First, the general reader was ignorant of the Protocols and would treat the novel as an original work. Second, the antisemitic message focuses on the Jews of Buenos Aires as a menacing factor threatening Argentinean society; this theme is reinforced by the addition of motifs from modern racist antisemitism. By exaggerating his negative physical and spiritual qualities, the novel presents the Jew as the source of all the world’s evil and corruption, distinguishing him from other members of the human race. Many of the Jews’ features are borrowed from Der Stürmer: the Jew was “a man of slight build, with the smooth skin of a woman, black eyes protruding from his face, seemingly glued onto the lenses of his spectacles, and the long, thin nose of a successful

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merchant.”5 Moreover, his physical characteristics indicate the absence of values and emotion: “This nation has a slippery tongue, cold blood, and pale skin.”6 Wast thus hinted at a connection between racial and psychological traits. He also makes a spiritual differentiation between Jews and Christians. “Jewish women do not recognize jealousy or love, thus you continue to be a Christian,” says one character to the main protagonist, a Jewish woman who converted to Christianity and is considered a true Christian.7 Despite the daughter’s conversion in the epilogue, thereby gaining the theoretical possibility of equality in Christian society in keeping with Church doctrine, the inner logic of the novel leads toward an entirely different conclusion, further validating the portrayal of the Jews as a race threatening to conquer the entire world. The repetitious censure of the Jews is aimed at planting a seed in readers that will ultimately bring them to justify the killing of Jews. Wast even quotes from the Talmud, but out of context: “Jews are those who pass death sentences on non-Jews,” and “Non-believers and traitors must be thrown into the pit and left there.”8 Therefore, once it has been proven, as it were, that the Jews were intent on eliminating the Christians, the same may be done to them.9 Warning of the immediate danger posed by the Jews, Wast makes a patriotic declaration on the right of self-defense as an altruistic definition of the good of the homeland; in so doing he allows the collective conscience of believers in Argentina to cast off their moral bonds as Catholics. “I do not hate them [the Jews] … one thought stays in my mind, namely salvation of the homeland, which has already been badly hurt by the Jewish financiers,” says one of Wast’s characters.10 The right of self-defense is presented as urgent, and carries with it the call to kill the Jews. In the words of Wast, “In all countries the call ‘Death to the Jews!’ was always synonymous with the cry ‘Save the homeland!’”11 These ideas were not new in Argentina, but Wast’s realistic two-part novel gave them validity and significance, which far outweighed its literary and aesthetic value. The period of the 1930s was ripe for the absorption of antisemitic notions about Jewish world conquest and the author exploited his public positions to further this cause with his writing, which won wide popularity. By 1955 Kahal had been reprinted in 22 impressions, totaling 107,000 copies, while Oro had been reprinted 21 times, selling a total of 104,000 copies. The books were also translated into many languages. For Wast this was a new record, surpassing that of his previous works.12 Catholic circles received the book enthusiastically, although they stressed its ideological rather than its literary importance. Moreover, the reservations of some Catholic intellectuals over references to the Protocols did not prevent their deep permeation into the consciousness of many Argentinean Catholics, whose perceptions of Jews and Judaism were already influenced by motifs that were current in modern antisemitism. Wast’s tremendous success proves that in Argentina of 1935 the prevailing atmosphere favored the dissemination of antisemitic literature. In addition, antisemitic writing was good business, as clearly evinced by the enormous sales of Kahal and Oro.13

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The public debate over Wast’s antisemitic novel Publication of the work aroused fear and a public debate among Jewish intellectuals, who began writing articles condemning it in the Jewish press (such as the weekly Mundo Israelita), in both Yiddish and Spanish. About a year later two of them, César Tiempo and Lázaro Schallman, published books defending the Jews (see below). Argentina’s Jews had thought antisemitism had no roots in Argentina. However, Wast’s position as a reputed writer and confidante of the Church (in October 1934, he had been the head of the publicity commission during the visit of Pope Pius XI to Argentina), backed by the leading Catholic weekly Criterio, belied this notion. In early April 1935, Gustavo Franceschi, a leading intellectual cleric and the editor of Criterio, announced the forthcoming publication of Wast’s twopart novel.14 The value of the two books, according to Franceschi, was not only literary. They should also be judged according to criteria of doctrinal debate. In Criterio, as in the novel, Franceschi blamed the victim: the Jews were responsible for the return of the Jewish issue to the headlines because of the ills of the modern world such as liberalism and communism; moreover, “too many Jews did not fit,” into the view of a homogeneous Catholic society, and the author could no longer keep silent about these issues. Franceschi praised Wast’s work, but also noted some exaggerations. Unlike Wast, Franceschi believed that the crises of the modern world were the result of bourgeois tendencies of the Renaissance and within Protestantism. Drawing on the teachings of the French Catholic intellectual Jacques Maritain, Franceschi stressed that the Jews had no significant links with these movements, just as they had no connection to the French Revolution. Of course, the Jews Marx and Trotsky were responsible for the communist evil, but that was insufficient grounds for making the Jews solely responsible for all the woes of the world. Additionally, the editor of Criterio rejected Wast’s link between the cries of “Death to the Jews!” and “Save the homeland!” because it was against the Catholic faith. This was a demand that only extreme antisemites made. He also condemned Wast’s excessive emphasis on the economic causes of international crises and his neglect of moral issues. The world’s problems would not be solved even if Christians discovered how to make gold in the laboratory. Moreover, most of the gold was not in Jewish hands. The chief target of Franceschi’s criticism was Wast’s recourse to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which scientific examination by Catholic experts had proven to be a forgery. Christian sources indicated the correct position to take on the Jewish question, and since the cry “Death to the Jews!” did not come from them it would be advisable to delete it from future editions of the books. Nevertheless, Franceschi’s summary was mainly positive. Hugo Wast, he maintained, was a courageous Catholic intellectual, who consciously molded public opinion. He was “honest, brave and just, and contributed to turning attention to one of the most serious problems of Argentina.”15

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Argentina’s Jews were quick to react. The Jewish press in Buenos Aires protested bitterly against Wast and against the dissemination of his ideas. Jewish critics expressed regret at the apparent disparity between Argentinean Catholics and many European Catholics who, they believed, were ready to support the Jews. Some of the most incisive criticism appeared in the Spanish-language weekly Mundo Israelita.16 In late 1935 the highly respected Argentinean Jewish author César Tiempo defended the Jews in a book, La campaña antisemita y el director de la Biblioteca Nacional (The antisemitic campaign of the director of the national library).17 He accused Wast of utilizing his positions as a government official and director of the National Library to advance sales of his book. Furthermore, because of his connections, the German legation had given a banquet in his honor at which it was decided to publish his novel at a popular price. In a reference to Hitler, Tiempo labeled Wast “the disciple of the basest man to arise in Germany.”18 The Jews continued to protest in the Jewish press and in public lectures.19 The Catholic press in Buenos Aires, such as Criterio and the parochial weeklies distributed in front of churches in Buenos Aires accused the Jews of trying to prevent the distribution of Wast’s novel, and threatening many newspapers with a boycott on advertising if they continued to publicize parts of the novel, thus allegedly providing further proof of Jewish control of the media in Argentina.20 Publication of Tiempo’s response sparked an intensification of defamatory attacks on the Jews. These took place against the background of the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany, and the public debate over the Jewish question there, which had come to the attention of Argentineans. Fiercely defending Wast’s novel, Franceschi accused the Jews of being “unable to take balanced criticism” and being “unwilling to accept equality, but regarding us as inferior to them.” His counter-argument was based on the prohibition of antisemitism by Catholicism: Wast was not an antisemitic writer because there was no such thing as an antisemitic Catholic; Christians were forbidden to hate. The way to treat the Jewish problem and the “supernatural” evil of the Jews, declared Franceschi, was transcendentally, through “prayer” and “mission,” which were the Catholic ways of combating Judaism, and not by violence.21 In another commentary, the editor of Criterio claimed that the attempted intervention by the Jews confirmed the existence of the “Congregation.” Their protest was therefore suspect, as the Jews recognized nothing but “the spirit of wealth and the power of gold.” Franceschi underlined the modern conception of the “money-grubbing Jew,” connected to the ancient religious myth. “It all links up with the ancient history of the Jewish people, with the struggle between the Tablets of the Law and the Golden Calf. The Jews were always a ‘stiff-necked people’.”22 In an open letter Wast published his own reply, claiming that his books attempted to prove that “the Jewish community,” with all their strength and

Hugo Wast and The Protocols 107 power of penetration, were the real rulers of Argentina. They did not hesitate to exploit their economic power in their attempts to stop him, thus proving the theory of the power of gold and its use by the Jews.23 From other Catholic quarters, the editor of the newspaper Crisol asked “Are Argentineans not allowed to criticize the Jews?” The newspaper El Pueblo warned readers that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were being implemented in Argentina. Another journal, Restauración Social, of alumni of the Salesian Order established in Italy in the nineteenth century and which founded an extensive educational system in Argentina, declared they had a reliable document concerning the power of the Jews in Argentina, which prevented freedom of the press in that country but which all “foreigners, criminals and enemies of Argentina” fully enjoyed.24

De-legitimization of the Jewish writer César Tiempo Immediately after publication of Tiempo’s book, José E. Assaf, a respected member of the Criterio staff, stressed that for him Hugo Wast was a symbol of true patriotism and the wish to defend the homeland, and that so-called antisemites such as Wast, were merely trying to prevent social and economic conquest by the Jews. The “Semites,” he claimed, regarded these attempts at self-defense as an expression of persecution of the Jews.25 Since naturalization of the Jews did not automatically transform them into loyal Argentineans, Tiempo’s arguments portraying Wast as “anti-Argentinean” were invalid. Assaf tried to de-legitimize Tiempo and his ideological affiliation. This Jew, Assaf stressed, was an ideologue of the extreme left, an activist and revolutionary, atheist and rationalist, authoritarian and liberal − in a word, a “Bolshevik.” Nothing less Argentinean than this could be imagined. Assaf viewed “Catholicism” and “Argentinism” as one and the same, while all other ideologies symbolized “anti-Argentinism.” He therefore advised Tiempo to adhere to the precept that outsiders should keep their mouths shut. Whoever was not “Catholic” was a foreigner and beyond “the Argentine consensus.”26 The view of Catholic intellectuals in circles close to Criterio, Assaf continued, was that antisemitism did not emanate from Argentina’s intellectual elite, most of whom, in fact, were philosemites. In their opinion antisemitism came from below, from the masses, as a result of the suffering and misery inflicted upon them by Jewish merchants. Moreover, antisemitism was not a racial or religious problem, and Catholic clergymen and authors had not created it. Assaf expressed the position of the Church when he charged that the Jews had gained control of the economy and the press solely for their own ends.27 Neither these statements nor Wast’s book, said Assaf, could be perceived as extremist incitement against the Jews. Assaf even described the book as “a call for moderation and sanity.” Denying that it was antisemitic, he considered that, “whoever repulses an attack is not the aggressor.” The

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growth of antisemitism resulted solely from the behavior of the Jews, who bore responsibility for it.28 At the beginning of 1936 this contention re-emerged, following publication of the book Hugo Wast − Anti-Cristiano by the Jewish intellectual Lázaro Schallman. In an attempt to prove how far the author of Kahal and Oro had deviated from Catholic teachings, Schallman dealt extensively with the precepts of Judaism and Christianity.29 Assaf, who became Criterio’s chief spokesman on the Jewish issue, devoted a lengthy article in the weekly to Schallman’s arguments, repeating Franceschi’s claims in defense of the novels, and joining him in praise of Wast’s books for their value and usefulness.30 This position indicated an antisemitic atmosphere among the Catholic elite. Many Catholics confirm that the mood in 1930s’ Argentina was nationalist and antisemitic.31 The active role of Catholic intellectuals and their contribution to the creation of this environment were evident in the public debate.

Manuel Gálvez and his defense of the Jews In 1936 the well-known Argentinean intellectual Manuel Gálvez, a member of the nationalist right and an admirer of Mussolini, entered the debate on Wast’s books. His articles on the Jewish question had appeared in Criterio as early as 1931. Gálvez had drawn a distinction between observant Jews, whom he regarded as “guardians of the Old Testament,” and Jews who were “Socialists and partners in the horrors of communism.” “A true Catholic,” he held, “cannot be antisemitic. Granted, there are many uncultured and uneducated Catholics, who call the Jews ‘Russians’, and since Russia is ruled by Communists, they believe all Jews to be Communists.”32 Gálvez’s view was that class demarcations influenced the attitude of the Jews. Wealthy, conservative Jews did not support communist revolutions, while Jewish workers did. When Lázaro Schallman’s book was published, Gálvez wrote him a personal letter congratulating him on a serious work, which was free of vagueness and excelled in “concrete and well-documented arguments.” Schallman published Gálvez’s letter, and its appearance undermined the Catholic consensus and the blind adulation of Wast’s antisemitic writings. A crack seemed to have opened in the monolithic Catholic front. Gálvez was forced to retreat and explain that his letter to Schallman was private, the fruit of intellectual ties between them. Gálvez remained true to his anti-communist and anti-liberal ideas, but refused to accept the stereotype of “the Jews − masters of the world.” In the face of the attack on the entire Jewish community, it was his duty as an observant Catholic to state forthrightly that the idea of Jewish political and economic control of the world was a myth. According to his assessment, the Jews were “among the most impoverished people on earth,” therefore “as Catholics, it is our duty to fight those who attack us, Jew or non-Jew, but let us not attack, through antisocial and anti-Christian actions, those who neither harm us nor exploit or oppress us.”33 Describing himself as a pro-fascist nationalist and an anti-Nazi,

Hugo Wast and The Protocols 109 Gálvez roundly denounced antisemitism: “I repeat that antisemitism is a most dangerous error. Whosoever arouses antisemitic feelings encourages the masses to slaughter the Jews.”34 Gálvez’s position seems to have been modeled on Mussolini’s attitude to Judaism in the early 1930s, prior to the promulgation of Italy’s racist laws. Accordingly, at an early stage Gálvez drew a line between his nationalist ideals and antisemitism. Responding to Gálvez in Criterio, Assaf rejected his opinions, which, he noted, did not always accord with his previous statements about the Jews.35 Gálvez’s voice was clear and exceptional amid the Catholic consensus of the 1930s. Nevertheless, he failed to make his stand the basis for radical rethinking on the Jewish issue by Catholic intellectuals of this period. Moreover, he seems to have paid a high personal price: his articles ceased to be published in Criterio, while antisemites such as Wast and Assaf retained their respected standing in the Catholic establishment, evidenced by the continuation of Criterio’s antisemitic line.36

Conclusion In the pervading atmosphere of the 1930s, during which the main concern was maintaining Catholic cultural homogeneity, defense of the Jews was a transient episode even for a writer of Manuel Gálvez’s stature. Wast, on the other hand, enjoyed a far more secure status, articulating Catholic intellectual opinion and leading the attacks on the Jews. Moreover, Wast’s philosophy continued to play a role in Argentina long after the 1930s. In 1983, the centenary of Wast’s birth, at a ceremony marking publication of the book To Hugo Wast, in Appreciation, by his department, education minister Cayetano Liciardo stated: “Hugo Wast always wrote in defense of morality and nobility of heart … He deserves our esteem, for he helped us to feel Argentina, to love our past, and to strengthen our solidarity.”37 To this day, the periodicals section at the National Library of Argentina is named after Gustavo Martínez Zuviría and his views still carry influence. In 1992, when the National Library moved to new premises, Wast’s name was preserved on a plaque, although the Jewish community objected strenuously.38 The impact of personalities such as Hugo Wast on the Catholic and nonCatholic environment was undoubtedly immense, surviving far beyond their own time. Wast himself became a guiding light for many, both within and outside Argentina, as an expert on Jewish matters, especially in Spanishspeaking countries, but also in Italy. In fact, his views on the Kahal were set forth again in 1998 by the Italian neo-Nazi journal Avanguardia, which cited Wast as an authoritative source.39 Moreover, the Argentinean Catholic hierarchy never expressed any reservations about the content of Wast’s books; far from being a deviation from Church norms, his theories reflected the views of highly esteemed members of the Church establishment whose influence extended far beyond Argentina’s borders.

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Notes 1 Juan Carlos Moreno, Genius and the Figure of Hugo Wast (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1969), pp. 72−3, 98−109; idem, “The International Jew,” Criterio, no. 333 (July 1934). All notes in Spanish unless otherwise stated. 2 Moreno, Genius, pp. 104−5; 140−60; 353−56. 3 El Kahal and Oro (Buenos Aires: Editores de Hugo Wast, 1935). 4 For a comparison between Wast’s Oro and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, see Graciela Ben-Dror, “The Catholic Church in Argentina and the Jewish People during the Holocaust Era 1933−1945” [in Hebrew], Ph.D. diss. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993, appendix 9. The thesis was published as Graciela Ben-Dror, The Catholic Church and the Jews: Argentina 1933–1945 (Nebraska University Press/ Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2008). 5 Ben-Dror, “The Catholic Church in Argentina,” p. 142. 6 Ibid., pp. 194; 200. 7 Ibid., p. 20. 8 Ibid., pp. 37−8. 9 Ibid., pp. 20−1; 23; 105−9; 201−2; 219. 10 Ibid., pp. 201−2; 219. 11 On the danger of religion, see ibid., pp. 7, 20−1, 23, 105−9, 201−2, 219. 12 See list of his works from 1905 to 1963, where the total circulation of each book is recorded, ibid., pp, 357−58. 13 See Mabel Susana Agresti, “The Writer and His Context,” Todo es Historia, no. 208 (August 1984), pp. 34−41, and “Hugo Wast, Antisemite,” Todo es Historia, no. 208 (August 1984), p. 40. 14 “Libros Próximos a Aparecer,” Criterio, no. 370 (April 1935), p. 316. 15 Hugo Wast, “What the Eyes Never Saw,” Criterio, no. 373 (April 1935), pp. 393−97; idem, “El Kahal−Oro,” Bibliography, 2 vols, Criterio, no. 382 (June 1935), pp. 203−4. 16 Mundo Israelita (henceforth, MI), June, 8, 15, 1935, July 22, 1935; Di Idishe Zeitung (henceforth, DI; in Yiddish), July 1, 1935, July 16, 1935. 17 César Tiempo, The Antisemitic Campaign and the Director of the National Library (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Mundo Israelita, 1935). 18 Ibid., p. 36; MI, September 28, 1935, October 5, 12, 19, 26, 1935. MI also reprinted an advertisement from the newspaper El Orden in Santa Fe, Argentina, which accused Wast of conducting antisemitic propaganda with the aid of public funds. See MI, September 7, 14, 1935; Teimpo, The Antisemitic Campaign, pp. 37−38; 41−42; 45. 19 See all issues of MI during the time of the debate. 20 See for example, “Jewish Power in Argentina,” Restauracíon Social (September 1935); El Pueblo, August 6, 1935; Enrique Osés, “Argentinean People Can Speak about Jews in Argentina,” Crisol, September 5, 1935; also Ben-Dror, The Catholic Church and the Jews, pp. 41–63. 21 “Los judíos y nosotros,” Criterio, no. 389 (1935), pp. 282−83. 22 “Commentary: The Kahal against Hugo Wast” [in Spanish], Criterio, no. 390 (1935), p. 400. Note that the column “Commentary” was written by Franceschi, editor of the weekly. In addition to the parochial weeklies, Wast’s letter was also published in the Catholic press and journals. 23 Restauracíon Social (September 1935) and in parochial weeklies such as San Roque, September 3, 1935. 24 “The Protocols of Zion – Their Application in Argentina,” El Pueblo, August 6, 1935; “The Power of the Jews in Argentina,” Restauracíon Social (September 1935); “Argentinean People Can Speak about Jews.” 25 José E. Assaf, “The Jewish Question in Its Real Place,” Criterio, no. 409 (January 1936), pp. 14−17.

Hugo Wast and The Protocols 111 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36

37 38 39

Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 17. César Tiempo’s real name was Israel Zeitlin. Ibid. Lázaro Schallman, Hugo Wast, Anti-Christian, Nonsenses and Contradictions of the Fantasy of the Kahal (Rosario: Talleres Gráficos Musumarra Hnos, 1936). José E. Assaf, “A Jewish Polemicist,” Criterio, no. 427 (May 1936), pp. 12−13; 16−17. Juan E. Carulla, Near the Middle of the Century (Buenos Aires: Editorial Huemul, 1964); Juan Carlos Goyeneche, Essays, Articles and Speeches (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Dictio, 1976). Manuel Gálvez, “Commentary to a Letter,” Criterio, no. 429 (May 1936), pp. 60−61. Gálvez, too, supplies evidence of violent antisemitism in Argentinean nationalist circles. Manuel Gálvez, “The Duty of the Ruling Classes,” Criterio, no. 194 (November 1931); idem, “Antisemitism,” Criterio, no. 239 (February 1932). Gálvez, “Commentary to a Letter,” pp. 60−61. Ibid. José E. Assaf, “Before the Jewish Offensive,” Criterio, no. 430 (May 1936), pp. 85−6. In this article he quotes Gálvez’s 1932 article “Antisemitism,” in which the author attacks those who exploit and disseminate antisemitism. Bibliografía, “‘Ship, gold, dreams’, by Hugo Wast,” Criterio, no. 449 (October 1936), pp. 123−24; also Criterio, no. 436 (July 1936), p. 224; no. 438 (1936), p. 272; no. 439 (1936), p. 298; no. 442 (1936), p. 360; no. 458 (1936), pp. 339−40; no. 457 (1936), p. 315. Also personal interviews with Father Carlos Cuchetti, Buenos Aires, April 14, 1986, and with Dr. Manuel Ordoñez, Buenos Aires, April 24, 1986. “To Hugo Wast, in Appreciation. On the centenary of his birthday they commemorated Hugo Wast,” La Razón, October 22, 1983. The sign in the new National Library reads “Newspaper Archive: Gustavo Martínez Zuviría,” Biblioteca Nacional, Buenos Aires. On neo-Nazis in Italy see, “Hugo Wast and the Kahal ” [in Italian], Avanguardia (May 1998), pp. 13−14.

7

Political dissemination of the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory and the outbreak of La Violencia in Colombia, 1920−1946 Thomas J. Williford

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion provides a template for antisemitic conspiracy theorists who believe that Jews are behind the scenes manipulating social, political, and financial institutions in order to dominate the world. In countries with few Jews, antisemites believe that Jewish influence is nevertheless all-pervasive and that some groups and institutions – such as liberal political parties, Masonic lodges, secular schools, leftist labor unions, and the free press − are organized or controlled internationally by the so-called Elders of Zion. This was the case for Colombia in the 1930s and 1940s when there were fewer than 7,000 Jewish residents in a country of nearly 9 million.1 Militant politicians and clerics associated with the Conservative Party (Partido Conservador) seized upon the rhetoric of the Protocols in order to depict the leaders of the ruling Liberal Party (Partido Liberal) as linked insidiously to an international Jewish conspiracy, finding proof in the fact that many prominent Liberal politicians were also Freemasons. Certain Liberal policies, especially those that called for the separation of Church and state, were cited as further evidence of a Judeo-Masonic plot set on destroying the ageless Catholic traditions of the Colombian patria. This inflammatory language had serious consequences: when grafted onto existing political tensions, it helped create a poisonous atmosphere of intense distrust and suspicion, which was exacerbated by the accusations of radical Liberals that an international right-wing conspiracy involving Nazis, Spanish Falangists, and Conservative Party leaders was at work in Colombia. When partisan violence broke out in 1946, militants from each side claimed that their opponents should be eliminated since they were perverting and corrupting the nation. The conspiracy theories touted by both sides provided a pretext for countless assassinations and massacres during the long civil conflict, La Violencia (1946−1964), in which nearly 200,000 perished. The Protocols were first introduced into Colombia in the 1920s by Catholic clergy, who brought the tract from Europe. This chapter will focus mainly on publications of the elite Jesuit order in Colombia, which maintained close ties across the Atlantic: Spanish Jesuits were active in Colombia, while Colombian

The Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory 113 Jesuits studied all over Europe. The Protocols were adopted by certain far right nationalist politicians and intellectuals in the mid-1930s. However, they only captured the imagination of rank-and-file members of the Conservative Party during a lengthy anti-Masonic campaign in 1942, organized by Laureano Gómez, who dominated the party in the 1930s and 1940s.

Introduction of the Protocols into Colombia The widespread appearance of the Protocols in Europe in the early 1920s came at a time when many Europeans were turning to conspiracy theories to explain the new postwar realities.2 Since the claims about Jews and Freemasons essentially followed familiar lines laid out by lay and religious Catholic writers from the late 1860s − particularly in Italy, France, and Austria − the tract was cited by Catholic reactionaries as further evidence of an international anti-Christian cabal.3 The Protocols were instrumental in spreading the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy myth in Spanish-speaking countries. An antisemitic press in Leipzig printed the first Spanish version in 1927.4 However, a translation of the French edition of the Protocols by Ernest Jouin became the most widely disseminated version in the Spanish-speaking world.5 Jouin, an Augustinian friar, established the Revue internationale des sociétés secretes in 1909 with the purpose of investigating secret societies and their actions, especially the Freemasons.6 It is not surprising that the Protocols first arrived in Colombia through Catholic channels. Within the Church, the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory depicted in the Protocols had existed for decades prior to the appearance of this forgery, originating in the frequent papal condemnations of Freemasonry, perceived as advocating free thinking and religious tolerance. In fact, the papacy had declared that Freemasonry was dangerously anti-Christian soon after the emergence of lodges in London in 1717.7 This decree triggered a series of anti-Masonic papal bulls that would end only in the early twentieth century.8 In the second half of the nineteenth century, Pope Pius IX (1846−78) and Pope Leo XIII (1878−1903) issued especially virulent encyclicals against Freemasonry9 in reaction to the introduction of liberal, socialist, and nationalist notions. The popes were convinced that some dark conspiracy organized by the Masons was driving the faithful away from the universal Christian truth in order to bring about the collapse of the Church. The claim of an international Masonic cabal resonated in all Catholic countries, including Spain and its former colonies in Latin America, where Masons were an important presence in politics.10 In Colombia, a string of Liberal Party presidents who implemented anticlerical policies in the mid-nineteenth century were practicing Freemasons.11 Latin American Liberals were specifically condemned in papal encyclicals: in 1863, for example, Pius IX admonished the Liberal government in Colombia.12 The proclamations of the Holy See also encouraged the actions of Latin American Conservatives when they returned to power in various countries. For instance, the “Regeneration”

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government in Colombia, which the “Independent” Liberal Rafael Nuñez organized with Conservatives in 1886, immediately suppressed the lodges; they did not reappear in Colombia for nearly twenty-five years.13 As for the Jews, while they were officially regarded by the popes as “souls to be saved,” the Vatican permitted members of the clergy to promote the myth of Jewish ritual murder.14 By the late nineteenth century − before the first appearance of the Protocols − certain priests and lay Catholics, unhindered by the Holy See, were linking the Jews to the Freemasons as part of a worldwide anti-Christian plot.15 Direct papal influence in the advancement of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory came in a phrase in the anti-Liberal (and anti-Masonic) papal encyclical Etsi Multa (1873), in which Pius IX claimed that the “synagogue of Satan” was drawn from certain “sects, whether called Masonic or any other name.” Pius IX’s choice of words has inspired Catholic antisemites ever since. This is the closest that the pope came to officially involving Jews in the “war against the Catholic Church”; one can speculate how nineteenth-century European antisemitism might have differed had he said “church,” “temple,” or “coven” instead of “synagogue.” Still, the choice of words indicates that Pius IX most probably had the Jews in mind.16 Members of religious orders served as the initial conduit for the propagation of the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory in Colombia. Many of them had first encountered the theory while studying in Europe.17 At this time, Latin America was considered “mission territory” for certain Catholic religious orders; Colombian Jesuits fell under the jurisdiction of Spanish superiors until their own province was established in 1924.18 Orders based in Europe sent priests and nuns to staff schools, parishes, and missions throughout the region.19 Church-run schools introduced ideas from Catholic Europe; for instance, Spanish Jesuits had an overwhelming influence on future Conservative Party leader Laureano Gómez while he was a student at the Colegio San Bartolomé in Bogotá at the turn of the century.20 However, in 1920s’ Colombia, Catholic publications only occasionally contained anti-Masonic and anti-Jewish themes, since few clerics feared that a cabal was at work in the country. Most believed that events in Colombia would unfold in an orderly fashion. The economic situation was generally positive: coffee exports were growing and foreign investment in petroleum and bananas was increasing.21 The political situation was also stable, with the Conservative Party firmly in power and very few Liberals threatening civil war. Still, it was in those years that the Protocols were first introduced to the public, although they had little effect on the political rhetoric of the time. Probably, the first mention of the Protocols in Colombia was in the national Jesuit monthly Mensajero del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús (Sacred Heart Messenger) in July 1922. Mensajero claimed the highest circulation among all Catholic publications in Colombia from the 1920s to at least the 1950s.22 Various local Sacred Heart Messengers can still be found in most countries where the

The Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory 115 Jesuits are active, published for members of the international Apostleship of Prayer.23 Copies of the magazine were received by parish priests and directors of Apostleship prayer groups, who would share the ideas encountered in the magazine with a much wider audience, including Sunday congregations.24 It is important to understand the organization of the Apostleship, since it had a worldwide effect on Catholic discourse in the first decades of the twentieth century. The international moderator of the Apostleship was the General of the world’s Jesuits in Rome, who determined monthly “intentions” requiring the prayers of the faithful; these intentions were then submitted to the pope for final approval. The General Intention for July 1922 was “the conversion of the Jews,” which was an occasion for Jesuits everywhere to introduce the “Jewish question” to readers. The twelve-month cycle of prayer intentions was usually submitted for papal approval in March of the previous year;25 this makes the July 1922 Intention particularly interesting, given that publication of the Protocols was just beginning throughout Europe when the Jesuit General in Rome, Wladimir Ledóchowski, was designing the prayer cycle. Ledóchowski was elected General in 1915, and remained head of the Jesuit order until his death in 1942.26 He was instrumental in first watering-down and then suppressing the proposed papal encyclical on racism and antisemitism in late 1938 and early 1939. Ledóchowski probably chose “the conversion of the Jews” as the General Intention due to the controversy over the Protocols.27 Most prayer intentions were less polemic: for instance, “That men receive communion once a month” (April 1926), “That women exhibit Christian modesty in their manners and dress” (May 1926), and “That nations that have consecrated themselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus receive many blessings” (June 1926). The Jesuit Jesus Maria Ruano, a Spaniard from Salamanca who had arrived in Colombia in 1912,28 wrote about the General Intention in the Mensajero for July 1922. While urging prayers for the conversion of the Jews, Ruano also explained how since the French Revolution the Jews had influenced financial and economic activities in Europe, and controlled the leading newspapers. He added, Years later, when the abominable Protocols of the Wise Men of Israel were known around the world on the occasion of the Zionist Congress of 1897, reflective historians, moralists and patriots have not ceased giving shouts of outrage. They say that the plan of hegemony and universal conquest dreamt by the Jews is already manifest.29 This would be the only time, however, that the Protocols − or the Jews − would be mentioned in the Mensajero for over a decade.30 The theme did not have much appeal in a country with so few Jews; if the General Intention had been different, the Protocols might not have been introduced into Colombia at all.31

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Catholic dissemination of the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory By the early 1930s, however, times had changed: the confluence of new social and labor movements in Colombia, the worldwide economic crisis, and the victory of the Liberal Party in the 1930 presidential election32 came as a shock and a challenge to Jesuit writers at Mensajero. Certain Jesuits, influenced by the ideas and texts they were receiving from abroad, began to reconsider the possibility of a worldwide conspiracy against the Church which was at work in Colombia.33 The Protocols reappeared in Mensajero in October 1932, when the first edition of the forgery published in Spain was reviewed in the magazine. The comments about the tract are typical for the period, echoing Hitler’s own sentiments about it:34 An idea occurs to us that we cannot hide from the reader: separating the question of authenticity, in other words, determining whether or not these are the true minutes of the 1897 Zionist Congress of Basel; no one can deny the frightening veracity of the Protocols due to their prodigious almost prophetic exactitude, which saturates all of its pages [emphasis in original].35 The review also indicates that from 1932 the tract was widely available in Colombia in Spanish. The Jesuits had already been promoting the notion of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy in Mensajero, where a review of a Spanish translation of León de Poncins’ The Secret Powers behind Revolution appeared in August 1932.36 This book seems to have had almost as much influence among Colombian conspiracy theorists as the Protocols. For de Poncins, “the social organism” was infected by the “Judeo-Masonic microbe,” and the Masons needed to be suppressed. Chillingly, he predicted “the [ultimate] extermination of either the Jews or the non-Jews.”37 The ideas expressed in the Protocols, as well as by de Poncins, were synthesized in an article in Mensajero shortly thereafter; the piece, “Plan and Means of Action of the Jews and Masons,” quoted the works of various European antisemites and conspiracy theorists.38 The archbishop of Bogotá (and Archbishop Primate of Colombia), Ismael Perdomo, further encouraged a campaign against the Masons when he issued a condemnation of the lodges in early 1933; his pastoral letter was reprinted in parts in Mensajero from March 1933 through January 1935.39 The Mission Intention for January 1934, “That the Holy Year of Redemption serve in an extraordinary way for the conversion of the Jews,”40 was another opportunity to discuss the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory. Writing about the Intention, the Jesuit Luis R. David detailed extensively how the Jews and the Masons work in collaboration to obtain the triumph of the universal revolution, whose end is the absolute de-Christianization

The Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory 117 of society, the radical suppression of the revealed Religion. The study of modern revolutionary movements leads the critic to Freemasonry and the study of Freemasonry points to Judaism as the prime mover of almost all of these movements. You can assure yourself that Masonry is the most important of many instruments that the Jews use to advance the demolition of Christian civilization.41 David also cited extensively from the Tenth Protocol, which details the usefulness of introducing “in[to] the organism of the state the poison of liberalism.” This quote also served indirectly as a means to condemn the Colombian Liberal Party, which had attained power in 1930 after nearly fifty years of Conservative Party hegemony. Since the Jesuit writers at Mensajero rarely made explicit mention of either the Colombian Liberal or Conservative parties, this general reference to “liberalism” was highly significant. Although new Liberal Party president Enrique Olaya Herrera pointedly included Conservatives in his cabinet,42 between 1931 and 1933 many Liberals in the provinces employed fraud and violence to guarantee an electoral advantage over the Conservatives.43 The regional clergy, especially the Dominicans in the Department of Boyacá, reacted far more forcefully than the Jesuits to the political violence of these years, going so far as to link it to a larger Masonic conspiracy. Among the Dominicans, Francisco Mora Díaz, director of a weekly in Tunja (the capital of the Department of Boyacá), was especially vehement in his description of an international Masonic conspiracy at work in Colombia. Mora Díaz reached a wide national audience through three published collections of his editorials.44 The Jesuits at Mensajero also defended other Latin American antisemites. In June 1936, they published a letter sent by Argentinean writer Hugo Wast (Gustavo Martínez Zubiria) to a newspaper in Asunción, Paraguay, in which he explained how Jews and Freemasons in Argentina were conspiring against publicizing his two antisemitic novels, El Kahal and Oro. Wast quoted the Protocols in order to demonstrate how they corresponded to a pre-conceived Jewish plan to control the press.45 Another publication, the bi-weekly FAS − Faith Action Sociology (in Spanish),46 devoted the entire issue of July 1, 1936, to a long essay by the Irish priest George Clune on the “Masonic sect,” in which he quoted from de Poncins, Jouin, and the Protocols.47 By the mid-1930s, the Jesuits had collected various antisemitic and anti-Masonic publications in their libraries throughout Colombia.48

Laureano Gomez and political exploitation of the JudeoMasonic conspiracy theory As in other parts of Latin America, the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory promulgated by some Catholic clerics soon found its way into the political rhetoric of right-wing politicians and publicists. This was especially evident in the case of Laureano Gómez, who led the Colombian Conservative Party from

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1932 to 1953. Spanish and Colombian Jesuits at the Colegio San Bartolomé in Bogotá helped introduce the conspiratorial aspect of anti-Masonry to the young Gómez. Early in his career, in 1909, Gómez was called upon by a Spanish Jesuit mentor to direct La Unidad, a pro-clerical newspaper in Bogotá, in order to counter a resurgent Liberal Party.49 Liberals and Conservatives had come together in the previous months to end a civilian dictatorship under Rafael Reyes. However, the bloody War of the Thousand Days between the two parties had ended in a Conservative victory only a few years before, in 1902, and many Conservatives were unwilling to continue to share power with Liberal ex-rebels. Gómez and La Unidad sought to form an exclusive “Conservative Union” without Liberal participation.50 He tried to unite his party around the issue of anti-Masonry, calling for the legal suppression of secret societies51 on the grounds that the political opening to the Liberals52 had encouraged the Masons to re-establish their meeting places. However, the Masons had been absent from national politics for too many years to represent a threat to the established order; anti-Masonry did not stir rankand-file Conservatives at the time, and Gómez soon abandoned the tactic, only to return to it some twenty-five years later.53 In 1929, after almost two decades in public life,54 Gómez went abroad with his young family to travel and study in Europe. He was absent from Colombia when the Liberals regained the presidency in 1930, with the election of Enrique Olaya Herrera, but accepted an appointment by the new Liberal government to a diplomatic post in Germany, where he witnessed the rise of Nazism.55 Outraged by reports of Liberal electoral fraud and political violence, Gómez returned to Colombia in 1932 and accepted a seat in the Senate, where through the power of his oratory (along with astute organizational skills) he ousted pro-Olaya Conservatives from the party leadership. Upset over the lack of electoral guarantees for the party, Gómez declared Conservative abstention from all national elections from 1934 to 1939. Lacking a position in Congress to fight the Liberals, however, Gómez returned to journalism, establishing the daily El Siglo on February 1, 1936.56 When the reformist Liberal administration of Alfonso López Pumarejo was elected in 1934, it attempted to diminish Church influence in public instruction. Gómez, inspired by the rhetoric of the Jesuits and other Colombian clerics, returned once again to the political tactic of anti-Masonry. When Gómez discovered that education minister Darío Echandía was a former Grand Master of a Masonic Grand Lodge in Bogotá, his newspaper had a field day. The Conservative leader railed against the diabolical influence of the Freemasons in the Liberal Party, as well as around the world, turning to other lay Colombians to bear out his assertions. In May 1936, El Siglo published a radio address by Simón Pérez y Soto, “Origin and Causes of the Leftist Revolution in Colombia,” which promoted the notion of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory. Pérez y Soto quoted de Poncins and the Protocols to prove his thesis, claiming that the plot described in these works was “sadly adaptable to the actions of the Liberal Republic [in Colombia]: to kill patriotism

The Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory 119 and race pride and establish internationalism as a fundamental principle.” Pérez y Soto expressed support for Mussolini’s suppression of the lodges in the 1920s, as well as for Hitler’s actions, “not only against the lodges, but directly against Judaism.”57 However, once again an anti-Masonic campaign did not seem to appeal to rank-and-file Conservatives, and Gómez eventually abandoned the theme. Conveniently, the Spanish Civil War began shortly thereafter, occupying the front page of El Siglo for the next three years. Gómez, along with the clerical press, unreservedly supported Franco and the Nationalists. As in other parts of the world, the Colombian right was shocked by the wave of anticlerical violence in the Republican zones of southern Spain in the first months of the war, during which 7,000 priests and nuns were killed.58 The Spanish conflict was reported extensively in the Jesuit publications Revista Javeriana, FAS, and Mensajero.59 The Liberals, on the other hand, maintained a pro-Republican stance in their newspapers. Both Liberals and Conservatives tended to espouse an “it-can-happen-here” attitude in their coverage of events in Spain, which contributed to a sense of inevitability about similar partisan conflict breaking out in Colombia. In the midst of the Spanish Civil War, in 1937, the publishing house Libreria Voluntad in Bogotá decided to issue the first Colombian edition of the Protocols. The Jesuit Félix Restrepo had established Libreria Voluntad in 1928; although it was not a strictly Jesuit institution, Restrepo remained on its board of directors until 1961.60 In 1938, Simón Pérez y Soto, perhaps inspired by Hugo Wast, wrote his own antisemitic and anti-Masonic novel, De poetas a conspiradores (From poets to conspirators), in which the characters discuss de Poncins and the Protocols as they organize a quixotic attempt to wrest the corrupt Colombian government from the Liberals. In the appendix, he republished his radio address from early 1936.61 Gómez decided to end Conservative abstention for the February 1939 national and departmental legislative elections, accepting the guarantees offered by moderate Liberal president Eduardo Santos, who was elected unopposed in 1938. Gómez did not need to utilize anti-Masonry as a political tactic in his electoral campaign: a massacre of nine Conservatives by Liberals in the plaza of a rural town during a public rally in January 1939 gave him ample ammunition to use against the Santos administration and the Liberal Party leadership.62 Still, since the Liberals controlled most of the electoral machinery, and the country seemed to be leaning Liberal, the government won by a wide margin. The Liberals were also victorious in the congressional contests of 1941, in which Gómez also avoided anti-Masonry rhetoric.63 However, for a variety of reasons, the Conservative leader returned to the theme of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy in the second half of 1942, backing it up with references to the Protocols.

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Intensification of the anti-Jewish/anti-Masonic campaign By mid-1942, Gómez was in a difficult political position, attacked by moderates, such as Luis Caro Escallón, in his own party after unsuccessfully supporting an opposition Liberal candidate against the re-election of Alfonso López Pumarejo on May 3.64 Gómez received a further blow when it became public in late June that the militant assistant archbishop of Bogotá, Juan Manual González Arbeláez, was named archbishop of the provincial city of Popayán − a demotion, since he was no longer in line to be the prelate of Bogotá (and therefore, of all Colombia).65 The news disappointed the Conservatives, who hoped that a more activist Church would help them electorally against the Liberals; party militants and many churchmen considered that both archbishop of Bogotá Ismael Perdomo and Papal Nuncio Carlos Serena had been too conciliatory with the Liberal administrations in office since 1930.66 At the end of June 1942, Gómez was searching for a way to reunite the party under his leadership. Then, on June 29 at a public ceremony in Bogotá sponsored by the Papal Nuncio to celebrate the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul,67 shouts of “Down with veiled Freemasonry!” greeted a speech by Liberal education minister Germán Arciniegas.68 Despite the embarrassment that the incident caused Archbishop Perdomo (he sent a public letter of apology to the Papal Nuncio69), Laureano Gómez and El Siglo immediately began trumpeting the “reality” expressed in the shouts. The Conservative leader launched his longest and most vehement campaign against the Freemasons, proclaiming the existence of an international Judeo-Masonic conspiracy in Colombia, which was bent on destroying religion and patriotism in a quest to control the world. Gómez’ anti-Masonic campaign repeated the claims made by the far right in Europe for decades: the Masons, along with the Communists, were the vehicles by which the Jews would control the world.70 A day later, an advertisement appeared in Gómez’ paper for the booklet Masonería (Masonry) by “J.B.M. Ex-Caballero Kadosch” (a pseudonym referring to the 30th degree of Scottish Rite Freemasonry71), which could be obtained throughout the country at newspaper agents of El Siglo.72 The booklet, published in Bogotá, was a sensationalist account of Masonic rituals and secrets, and included a long list of their supposed international crimes. It also claimed that Colombian Liberals were part of a worldwide Judeo-Masonic conspiracy, especially in their attempts to control public instruction; a series of government and political documents were cited at length to make this point.73 A long quote from a publication supposedly called Revista Judío Masónico (Masonic Jew magazine), described “diabolic instructions to pervert women” in schools through gymnastic exercises and revealing clothing. It was rather pornographic reading for a pamphlet, which also stated that it should “be like a second Catechism in the home.”74 However, the same quote could be found in other Catholic publications in Colombia after the pamphlet was published, including in the

The Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory 121 November 1942 issue of Mensajero,75 and in a pastoral letter by a well-known polemical bishop in the western Department of Antioquia in February 1943.76 Throughout July 1942, Gómez continued proclaiming vociferously from the pages of El Siglo that an international Judeo-Masonic conspiracy was active in Colombia. Soon, telegrams of support were flooding the newspaper from all over the country.77 This time, Gómez, militant Conservatives and clergymen were all united around the issue, galvanizing the rank and file, which had been prepared for such rhetoric since the Spanish Civil War.78 During this period, Gómez’ El Siglo also avoided publishing the name of the newly elected president, Alfonso López Pumarejo, although he was to be inaugurated on August 7,79 one day after the city of Bogotá traditionally celebrated its foundation by the Spanish in 1538. Therefore, on August 7, while the pro-López paper El Liberal published a special fifty-six page edition to celebrate the presidential inauguration, El Siglo ignored the event, dedicating its front page instead to reporting on a Catholic mass commemorating Bogotá’s foundation the day before. The service was an opportunity for nationalists and other reactionaries to celebrate the Spanish roots of Colombian culture and centuries of supposed positive influence that the “mother country” had had on its former colony; indeed, the Spanish minister, a Falangist, was in attendance. The most important part of the event was a speech by Dominican Francisco Mora Díaz, known for his polemical editorials in the Tunja-based Dominican weekly and anthologies.80 El Siglo reported that, Father Mora Díaz insisted on the necessity of defending this sacred patrimony, threatened today more than ever by attacks from the enemies of God − Masonry and Judaism − whose dark machinations are intent on undermining the sacred treasure of our Catholic traditions … Finally, Father Mora Díaz referred to the tremendous struggle unleashed by the Spanish people against the Masons and the Jewish Bolsheviks.81 Mora Díaz, who normally did not get much attention in El Siglo, was now enlisted in the campaign against Jews and Freemasons. However, on page three of the same edition of Gómez’ paper there appeared a news item, entitled “Pius XII Orders Petain and Laval to Cease Persecution of the Jews,” according to which 18,000 Hebrews were arrested in Paris during the first stage of the German campaign of detaining Jewish refugees for deportation to Upper Silesia. Among the detainees were many children, who were to be sterilized by the Germans.82 Although the editors had no way of knowing at this point that they were reporting on the Holocaust,83 some readers might have noticed the contradiction in the items from the same day: between Mora Díaz’ viciously antisemitic remarks and the Vatican’s reaction to the Nazi expulsion of French Jews;

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however, this did not seem to affect the newspaper’s editor Laureano Gómez. Four days later in the Senate, the Conservative Party leader would give the most antisemitic speech of his career. Gómez had proposed a bill in the new legislative session which would have denied Masonic lodges their existence as corporate entities (a right they had received in 1936 from an all-Liberal Congress). His speech in defense of the bill on August 11 detailed how the Jews manipulated the middle class through Freemasonry, and the working class through communism. He mentioned that he had witnessed the corrupting influence of the Jews on German society and politics when he was serving as Colombian ambassador in Berlin from 1930 to 1932, a detail that was omitted from his rhetoric in the ensuing years.84 He claimed that “the lesson of history is that when the [Jewish] phenomenon presents itself, there are only two solutions: handing the nation over to the Jews or expelling them,” like Isabella of Spain did in 1492. Gómez ended his speech by proclaiming that a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy was actively at work in Colombia, present in the lodges, the Liberal Party, and, of course, the government: “the true, the fearsome, the decisive enemies are here within.”85 The Liberal majority in the Congress quickly voted down Gomez’ bill, but another issue kept the theme of a Judeo-Masonic plot alive through the end of 1942. In April of that year, Colombia’s ambassador to the Vatican Darío Echandía had concluded a concordat with the Holy See after five years of negotiations. As noted above, Echandía had been attacked by Gómez and El Siglo for his connections with Freemasonry when he was serving as education minister in 1936. The debate over the approval of the new treaty in the Colombian Senate was another opportunity to claim that a conspiracy was at work in Colombia. When it was signed initially, the concordat was effusively supported by the Vatican, which saw it as a model for other treaties with Catholic countries; El Siglo had grudgingly reported as much at the time.86 The new concordat dealt with relatively mundane issues: all matrimonies would have to be registered with the government, cemeteries were to be under the jurisdiction of municipalities, and the Vatican would have more control in naming bishops (similar to the arrangements made with Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini). Early in the negotiations, Echandia had decided to abandon what most radical Liberals had wanted most: the excision of Church tutelage from public instruction.87 Church influence would remain in establishing official curricula for all schools in the country. As the concordat proceeded through the legislative process in the Senate, El Siglo insisted on the existence of an evil Judeo-Masonic conspiracy that had duped the Vatican. Gómez claimed that the Liberal press was knee-jerk in its defense of the Masons and the Jews,88 and quoted extensively from the Protocols to prove how such newspapers were manipulated by a worldwide cabal.89 The formal Senate debate over ratification of the concordat began at the end of October and lasted till mid-December. Gómez was again on the attack, this time with Darío Echandia present in the chamber representing

The Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory 123 the government as its chief minister. The Conservative leader was so vehement that Echandía felt he had to lie, claiming he had not been active in the lodges “for at least fifteen years.”90 During the debates, many other prominent Conservative politicians such as Guillermo León Valencia joined Gómez in denouncing the treaty.91 By now Gómez had united his party, while dividing the Church and forcing the opposition to respond to his charges rather than defend the merits of the concordat. Although the Liberal-controlled Senate ultimately approved the concordat, Gómez won the debate: the government never enacted the necessary legal mechanisms to make the treaty functional.92

Conclusion The words and actions of Laureano Gómez in the second half of 1942 legitimized the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory even further in the eyes of Colombian Conservatives and reactionary Catholics. It was one thing for a few priests and nationalists, inspired from abroad, to claim that a vast international anti-Christian conspiracy was at work in Colombia; it was quite another for the leader of one of Colombia’s principal parties − and one of the most powerful opinion-makers in the country − to repeatedly stress the existence of a plot over half a year. Provincial politicians and newspapers were quick to echo Gómez’ rhetoric, especially those furthest from the traditional oligarchic power structure within the party. Small-town shopkeepers, coffee buyers, parish priests, and professionals were the most fanatical laureanistas (supporters of Laureano Gómez), and when La Violencia began in earnest in 1946, it was they who, believing that the Liberals were part of a worldwide anti-Christian plot, would encourage or even take part in the massacres of Liberal civilians throughout the countryside.93 Although La Violencia would quickly take on unforeseen socio-economic aspects, the discursive structure that provided the pretext for militants to commit murder was already in place by 1942. After the Conservatives won the 1946 presidential election against a divided Liberal Party, they sought to guarantee a Conservative majority around the country, as the Liberals had done fifteen years earlier. However, this time partisan militants were armed with a conspiracy theory as well as machetes, and felt that it was their duty to physically eliminate the opposition in order to save the country. Colombia has suffered a continuous civil conflict ever since.

Notes 1 Between 1933 and 1942, 3,595 Jews arrived legally in Colombia; by 1943, there were only 6,625 in a country of nearly nine million. Most of these immigrants were small shopkeepers, active mainly in the cities along the Caribbean coast and in the interior cities of Bogotá and Cali. None were involved in politics, journalism, or banking. Azriel Bibliowicz, “Intermittence, Ambivalence and Discrepancy: History of the Jewish Presence in Colombia” [in Spanish] unpublished paper, 2004, pp. 3−6, 10−14.

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2 Stephen Eric Bronner, A Rumor about the Jews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 100−3, 108−9. 3 The Protocols detailed how Freemasonry indoctrinated its members in liberalism and religious tolerance, thus creating unwitting dupes for the Jews. Specifically, the Fourth, Eleventh, and Fifteenth Protocols discuss the role of secret societies and Freemasonry. John S. Curtiss, An Appraisal of the Protocols of Zion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942), pp. 6, 8, 9. 4 Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (London: Serif, 2001), pp. 138, 304, 305. I purchased a copy of this edition at a flea market in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1998 − The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or the Invisible World Government [in Spanish] (Leipzig: HammerVerlag, 1927). This version contains commentary by the French antisemite Roger Lambelin, who had produced his own version of the Protocols. 5 This translation is grammatically and syntactically different from that originally published in Leipzig. It has been reproduced all over Latin America, such as in Mexico by Editoral Latino America (1952, 1980), and Editorial Época (1967); and in Chile by Editorial Nueva Época (1935). It is still published in Bogotá by Editorial Solar. 6 Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, p. 182; David I. Kertzer, The Popes against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), p. 267. 7 The values of Freemasonry attracted Enlightenment thinkers, including Voltaire, Diderot, and Montesquieu. Eugen Lennhoff, The Masons in History [in Spanish], trans. Federico Climent Terrer (Barcelona: Biblioteca Orientalista, 1931), pp. 87−99; and Ramón Martínez Zaldúa, History of Masonry in Hispano-America [in Spanish] (México: B. Costa Amic Editor, 1978), p. 22. 8 Jean-Pierre Viallet, “Freemasonry,” The Papacy: An Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 601−8. 9 Ibid., pp. 604−5. 10 Major leaders in the struggle for Latin American independence, including Simón Bolívar, the liberator of what would become Colombia, were initiated into Freemasonry while in Europe in the 1790s and early 1800s. Zaldúa, History of Masonry, p. 24. Bolívar was also among the first anti-Masons as well; after being nearly assassinated in Bogotá in 1828, he assumed dictatorial powers and outlawed all secret societies. Ismael Perdomo, Exposition on Masonry [in Spanish] (Bogotá: Librería Nueva-Casa Editorial, 1933), p. 87. Bolívar’s vice president and political rival, Francisco de Paula Santander, was a Freemason; as president of Colombia from 1833 to 1837, Santander attempted to separate Church and state in education. Colombian Liberals claimed Santander as their spiritual founder, while Conservatives considered Bolívar as theirs. David Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), pp. 85−89, 92−93; Frank Safford and Marco Palacios, Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 132−42, 150−56; Américo Carnicelli, The History of Colombian Masonry [in Spanish], vol. 1 (Bogotá: Artes Gráficas, 1975), pp. 397−98, 503−6; vol. II, pp. 90−96. 11 Julio Hoenigsberg, Historical Synthesis of Masons Who Have Been Presidents of Colombia [in Spanish] (Barranquilla: n.p., 1946). 12 In this case he did not single out the influence of secret societies. Pius IX, “Incredibili Afflictamur,” Complete Collection of Pontifical Encyclicals, 1830−1965 [in Spanish], 4th ed., vol. 1 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Guadalupe, 1965), pp. 152−54. 13 Carnicelli, The History, vol. II, pp. 303−5. 14 Kertzer, The Popes against the Jews, pp. 86−105, 126, 158−63, 197−201, 214−18. 15 Among the first to promulgate the Judeo−Masonic conspiracy myth was the lay French Catholic Henri Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux in The Jew: Judaism and

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the Judaization of Christian Peoples, 1869. See Kertzer, The Popes against the Jews, pp. 128, 174, 177−82; Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, pp. 46−49, 56, 171−82. See also Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), pp. 79−80. Although the Catholic press advocated the conversion of the Jews and discouraged violence, it also promoted almost all other central ideas of modern antisemitism, including that of an international Jewish conspiracy. Kertzer, The Popes against the Jews, pp. 205−6. The full citation indicates the extent to which Pius IX had come to believe in a Masonic conspiracy by 1873: “Some of you may perchance wonder that the war against the Catholic Church extends so widely. Indeed each of you knows well the nature, zeal, and intention of sects, whether called Masonic or any other name. When he compares them to the nature, purpose, and amplitude of the conflict waged nearly everywhere against the Church, he cannot doubt but that the present calamity must be attributed to their deceits and machinations for the most part. For from these the synagogue of Satan is formed which draws up its forces, advances its standards, and joins battle against the Church of Christ.” “Etsi Multa,” Pius IX, in The Papal Encyclicals 1740−1878, ed. Claudia Carlen (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Pierian Press, 1990), p. 433; and Kertzer, The Popes against the Jews, pp. 126−27. Numerous Colombian clerics went to Europe for advanced study. For instance, Felix Restrepo, one of the most influential Jesuits in Colombia in the twentieth century, spent nearly sixteen years working and studying in Spain, Holland, and Germany. Antonio Cacua Prada, Felix Restrepo, S.J. (Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 1997), pp. 37, 69, 98−99. Daniel Restrepo, The Company of Jesus in Colombia: Historical Compendium and Gallery of Illustrious Men [in Spanish] (Bogotá: Imprenta del Corazón de Jesús, 1940), p. 330. In Colombia, foreign clergy (especially from Spain) were often the only priests and nuns in the less-populated regions, which covered most of the country. Spain: Geographic, Political, Historical, Scientific, Literary, Artistic and Monumental Study [in Spanish], 4th ed. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1942) p. 773. James D. Henderson, Conservative Thought in Twentieth Century Latin America: The Ideas of Laureano Gómez (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1988), p. 31. Safford and Palacios, Colombia: Fragmented Land, pp. 250−51. Advertisement, FAS − Faith Action Sociology [in Spanish] [Bogotá] (FAS) March 1, 15 (1937), p. 34 (supplement). The Apostleship was established in 1841. “The Apostleship of Prayer,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Encyclopedia P, 1917), September 7, 2004, www.newadvent.org/cathen/01633a.htm. Prayer groups were active throughout Colombia, especially in the populous central Andean region. By 1936, 390 groups existed with nearly 400,000 associates; the population of Colombia was estimated at 8.7 million in 1938 (Bushnell, p. 286). “Our Cover,” Mensajero, December 1936, p. 524. (The Spanish-language Mensajero had continuous pagination for a year’s run). In the 1920s and 1930s, circulation hovered at 5,000−6,000, reaching a high of 12,000 in the late 1940s. Advertisement, Mensajero, June 1929; the economic crisis of the 1930s reduced circulation to 3,000 in the mid-1930s. “Statistics for Rome, 1935,” Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus in Colombia; and “We Are Close to 14,000,” Mensajero, December 1949, p. 679. “Letter from the Most Eminent Cardinal Secretary of State of His Holiness to the Most Rev. Father Director General of the Apostolate of Prayer,” Mensajero, June 1939, p. 169; and “Intentions of the Apostolate for 1943,” Mensajero, October 1942, p. 415.

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26 Ledóchowski, born in 1866, was the son of a minor Polish noble who served in the Austro-Hungarian army. “New Jesuit Head Is Russian Pole,” New York Times, February 12, 1915, p. 11. 27 Before his election, Ledóchowski published and disseminated a speech by the Austrian Jesuit Victor Kolb that supported the idea of a Jewish conspiracy. Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, pp. 164−88; and Kertzer, The Popes against the Jews, pp. 273−74, 280−82. 28 “Obituary: The Rev. Fr. Jesus Maria Ruano, S.J.,” Mensajero, November 1928, pp. 515−18. 29 Jesús María Ruano, “General Intention: Conversion of the Jews,” Mensajero, July 1922, p. 288. Interestingly, there is no mention of the Protocols in the Spanish Mensajero [Bilbao] for the General Intention of July 1922. However, the author (the Jesuit Remigio Vilariño) describes at length how Jews supposedly profited from the recent world war. “The Conversion of Israel” [in Spanish], pp. 481−95. 30 There was no further call for the conversion of the Jews in the General Intentions until January 1934. 31 Another opportunity to mention the Protocols came in February 1926, when the General Intention was “The struggle against Masonry.” Jesús Maria Ruano did not mention the Jews at all on this occasion, although the Protocols explicitly link the Jews with the Freemasons. “General Intention: The Struggle against Masonry according to the Teachings of Leo XIII,” Mensajero, February 1926, pp. 57−69. 32 Social and political agitation in the late 1920s included the formation of a small socialist party, peasant-led agrarian movements, and the first labor unions (which resulted in the infamous massacre of banana workers on Colombia’s Caribbean coast in 1928). In the presidential contest of 1930, the Conservatives fielded two candidates, both of whom had the support of archbishop of Bogotá Ismael Perdomo at one time or another in the months leading up to the election. The Liberals took advantage of the confusion in Conservative ranks, and Enrique Olaya Herrera became the first Liberal president of Colombia since the 1880s. Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia, pp. 170−82; and Safford and Palacios, Colombia: Fragmented Land, pp. 273−76, 281−82, 287−88, 292−96. 33 For the most part, this conspiracy was more “Masonic” than “Judeo”; several articles, including interpretations of certain General Intentions, described alleged Masonic control of the press, education, and democratic politics, both in Colombia and abroad, as part of their relentless campaign against Christianity and its precepts. Between 1930 and 1942, Mensajero condemned the Freemasons more than twenty times. 34 Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, pp. 200−2. 35 Mensajero, October 1932, p. 480. 36 Mensajero, August 1932, pp. 383−84. 37 León de Poncins, The Secret Powers behind Revolutions: Freemasonry and Judaism [in Spanish] (Madrid: Ediciones Fax, 1931), pp. 248, 250. De Poncins’ books seem to have been popular among certain Colombian Jesuits; several are still available in the theological library of the Jesuit-run Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá. 38 Mensajero, November 1932, pp. 491−96. 39 Perdomo and the Jesuits were reacting to a resurgence of the lodges, which came in the wake of the election victory of the Liberals in 1930. Perdomo did not condemn the Freemasons as part of a conspiracy, but rather as a wayward sect. 40 The “Holy Year of Redemption” marked 1900 years since Jesus’ death. Since the Jesuit General Ledóchowski was submitting intentions for 1934 in March 1933, it is easy to imagine that he was thinking of the recent elevation of Adolf Hitler to the chancellorship of Germany.

The Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory 127 41 Mensajero, January 1934, p. 16. 42 Mensajero expressed a somewhat positive attitude toward Olaya Herrera, who had admonished the more radical anti-clerics in his own party. Mensajero, November 1931, p. 538; and “The Reform of the Concordat,” Mensajero, May 1932, pp. 230−33. 43 A near civil war broke out in the contiguous departments of Boyacá, Santander, and Norte de Santander, as Liberal police and civilians massacred or displaced thousands of Conservative peasants, who in turn attacked Liberals in their communities. The violence included the murder of several priests, either intentionally or accidentally, depending on the version of the events. Javier Guerrero Barón, The Forgotten Years: Boyacá and the Origins of La Violencia [in Spanish] (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional, 1985), pp. 110−214. These incidents were also occasionally mentioned in Mensajero, August 1931, p. 385; March 1932, pp. 109−11; and January 1933, pp. 3−13. 44 Francisco Mora Díaz, The Crusade: Apologetic and Polemical Articles [in Spanish] (Bogotá: Tipografía Tony, 1934); idem, Sparks from the Anvil: Polemical Articles and Academic Speeches [in Spanish] (Tunja: Editorial El Cruzado, 1939); idem, The Clarion of Victory [in Spanish] (Tunja: Boyacá, 1942). 45 “General News − Argentina − Actions of the ‘Widow’s Sons’,” Mensajero, June 1936, pp. 279−81. In the first part of El Kahal, Wast details his own ideas about a vast international Jewish plot, quoting from the Protocols. The 1935 edition of El Kahal (the original, which included Oro), is still in the general library of the Universidad Javeriana. Hugo Wast, El Kahal (Buenos Aires: Editores de Hugo Wast, 1935). See also Graciela Ben-Dror, “Hugo Wast and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Argentina,” in this volume. 46 FAS served as an intellectual support for Catholic Action (Acción Católica), which was established internationally by Rome as a non-partisan and non-political way to promote and apply Catholic social teachings through the organization of Church-based welfare associations, labor unions, and cooperatives. 47 George Clune, “The Masonic Sect” [in Spanish] FAS, July 1, 1936, pp. 1−24. The essay seems to be taken from George Clune, Free Masonry: Its Origins, Aims, & Methods (Dublin: Catholic Truth Society, 1931). 48 In addition to de Poncins’ The Secret Powers Behind Revolutions, they also had de Poncins’ The Mysterious Jewish International [in French] (1936) and the Spanish edition of Henry Ford’s The International Jew (1932), as well as a series of antisemitic and anti-Masonic books edited in the mid-1930s by Editorial Baudinière, Paris. Three of these volumes, written jointly by Albert Vigneau and Vivienne Orland, are signed by the authors with a personal message to Félix Restrepo, S.J., director of the Jesuit academic journal Revista Javeriana. 49 Henderson, Conservative Thought, pp. 29−35. This was in late 1909 − doubtless the Jesuit, Luis Jauregui, was thinking of the anti-clerical violence during the Semana Trágica that had occurred in Barcelona only a few months before. As a young seminarian, Jauregui witnessed the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain in 1868 during the “Glorious Revolution.” Restrepo, The Company of Jesus in Colombia, p. 421; Raymond Carr, Spain, 1808−1939 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 483−85. 50 Abel Carbonell, Commentaries for a Regime [in Spanish], prologue by Laureano Gómez, (Bogotá: Editorial Minerva, 1934), pp. vi−vii; Hugo Velasco, Ecce Homo: Biography of a Storm [in Spanish] (Bogotá: Editorial ARGRA, 1950), p. 43. 51 Carnicelli, The History, vol. II, pp. 303−5,323−25, 375−79, 386−91; and Henderson, Conservative Thought, p. 118. 52 In 1910, the new government initiated reforms in the constitution which guaranteed the minority party one-third of the seats in the National Congress and departmental assemblies. The reform also reduced the presidential term of

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55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63

64 65 66

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T. J. Williford office to four years, without the possibility of immediate re-election. Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia, pp. 161−62. José Vicente Concha led the Conservative Union to victory in the 1914 presidential elections. Gómez played an important role in reuniting the Conservatives and defeating the Liberal-Conservative coalition. James D. Henderson, Modernization in Colombia: The Laureano Gómez Years, 1889−1965 (Gainsville: Florida University Press, 2001), pp. 79−80. In those years, Gómez waged campaigns against the machinating politicians of his own party; his oratory in the Colombian Congress led to the resignation of Conservative president Marco Fidel Suárez in 1921, over a small financial impropriety. Gómez also served as an energetic minister of public works for two years (1922−1924) during the administration of Pedro Nel Ospina. Henderson, Modernization, pp. 137−47. Henderson, Conservative Thought, pp. 81−83; idem, Modernization, pp. 191−95. Henderson, Modernization, pp. 226−27, 233−34. For Simón Pérez y Soto’s views, see From Poets to Conspirators (a Nationalist Novel) and A Study of Masonry and Judaism [in Spanish] (Manizales: Editorial Zapata, 1938), pp. 203−23. Francoist sources put the number at 15,000 clerics killed. José M. Sánchez, The Spanish Civil War as a Religious Tragedy (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1987), pp. 1−12. The entire July 1937 issue of Revista Javeriana was dedicated to “España Mártir” (“Martyred Spain”). The Jesuits had dozens of pro-nationalist books in the libraries of the Jesuit seminary in Chapinero, northern Bogotá. The theological library of the Universidad Javeriana has thirty-five books supporting the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, issued before 1941. Half of these were published in Spain, five were published in Colombia, and seven treated the conflict as part of an international Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. Prada, Felix Restrepo, S.J, pp. 93−95. Pérez y Soto, From Poets to Conspirators. See editions of El Siglo (Bogotá), El Tiempo (Bogotá), and El Liberal (Bogotá) from January through March 1939. Leopoldo Villar Borda, Alberto Lleras: The Last Republican [in Spanish] (Bogotá: Grupo Planeta, 1997), 395−98. There is a great deal of truth to the accusations of Liberal electoral fraud in the 1930s and 1940s. Only when free and fair elections began under the bipartisan National Front governments in 1958 was it obvious that the Liberals were the majority party. El Liberal, May 9, 1942, p. 1; May 30, 1942, p. 1; June 5, 1942, p. 1; June 15, 1942; El Tiempo, June 1, 1942, p. 4; June 10, 1942, p. 1; June 15, 1942, pp. 1, 7 June 29, 1942, p. 1; La Razón (Bogotá), June 15, 1942. El Siglo, June 22, 1942, p. 1. The vigorous young González Arbeláez had originally been promoted to assistant archbishop of Bogotá in 1935, and was immediately put in charge of Acción Católica and Juventud Obrera Católica (Catholic worker youth − JOC), the two national Catholic organizations that were most active in trying to apply the Church’s social teachings. Ricardo Arias, The Colombian Episcopate: Intransigence and Laicism (1850−2000) [in Spanish] (Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes, 2003), pp. 125, 152. The Feast of Saints Peter and Paul is an opportunity for the Church to recognize the supreme authority of the papacy, since Saint Peter is considered the first pope. El Tiempo, June 30, 1942, p. 3; and El Siglo, June 30, 1942, pp. 1, 8. Although he never publicly admitted it, Germán Arciniegas was indeed a Freemason (Funeral announcement, El Tiempo, 1 December 1999, p. 14B), as were ex-presidents Enrique Olaya Herrera, Eduardo Santos (Hoenigsberg),

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69 70 71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79

80 81 82 83

84

and future president Alberto Lleras Camargo (1945−46 and 1958−62). Bulletin, Organ of the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree for Colombia [in Spanish] (Bogotá; December 1943), pp. 361−62. However, especially in the twentieth century, the Masons did not represent an organized threat to the Church in Colombia or elsewhere. Thomas J. Williford, Laureano Gómez and the Masons, 1936−1942 [in Spanish] (Bogotá: Editorial Planeta, 2005), pp. 23−71. El Tiempo, July 2, 1942, p. 1. El Siglo, August 12, 1942, p. 1; Henderson, Conservative Thought, pp. 120−24. Masonry is divided between the dominant Scottish Rite and the less common York Rite; as in most of the world, the Scottish Rite is predominant in Colombia. Initiates in the Scottish Rite need to complete the first three of the thirty-three degrees at least to become active Masons in a lodge; the higher degrees are available to those who wish to increase their knowledge of the “craft”; for many, attaining the higher degrees is like taking a course in world history and philosophy, with every step of the way marked by a special Masonic ritual. In addition to the number of the degree, each has a name: the 30th degree is also known as the Knight Kadosh, or the Caballero Kadosch in Spanish. Williford, Laureano Gómez and the Masons, pp. 29−30, 185. El Siglo, October 26, 1942, p. 4; November 23, 1942, p. 4. J.B.M. Ex-Caballero Kadosch, Masonería (Bogotá: Tipografía Verdad, 1942), pp. 62−79. Ibid., pp. 3, 41−42. This kind of near pornography on the issue of Freemasonry has a longer history, dating at least from the late nineteenth century with the works of Frenchman Leo Taxil. Tomás Galvis, “That Catholic Youth Increasingly Revere the Church as Mother and Teacher” Mensajero, November 1942, pp. 349−52. Miguel Angel Builes, “Masonry in Action,” Pastoral Letters, 1940−1948 [in Spanish] (Bogotá: Empresa Nacional de Publicaciones, 1957), p. 89. El Siglo, 9 July 1942, p. 1; “The Whole Country Mobilizes against Atheist Masonry,” El Siglo, July 13, 1942: 1; and “The National Plebiscite for the Campaign against Disguised Masonry,” El Siglo, July 18, 1942, p. 1. By July 16, the daily proclaimed that “all social classes of the capital are unanimously mobilizing against Masonry and Judaism,” with hundreds signing a petition of support. “The Catholic Sentiment of Bogotá and the Campaign of Dr. Laureano Gómez,” El Siglo, July 16, 1942, pp. 1, 5. August 7 is also a national holiday, celebrating the defeat of the Spanish by Bolívar’s armies at the Battle of Boyacá in 1819. It has been the inauguration day of Colombian presidents since the late nineteenth century. Political Constitution of the Republic of Colombia, 1886 [in Spanish], http://www.bibliojuridica.org/ libros/5/2212/13.pdf, p. 40 (accessed August 6, 2008). See note 44. El Siglo, August 7, 1942, pp. 1, 8. El Siglo, August 7, 1942, p. 3. As the paper reported, condemnation of the actions of the Vichy government came from the Papal Nuncio in Paris, Valerio Valeri, and not directly from Pius XII, who tended to stay out of the way of the unfolding genocide in Europe, despite the reports he was receiving from various sources. Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930−1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), p. 52. He had claimed that the Jews lacked “political organization” in his extensive description of Germany and Hitler in his 1935 book, The Quadrilateral. Gómez dedicated fewer than two pages to a discussion of the Jews in Germany. Laureano Gómez, The Quadrilateral [in Spanish] (Bogotá: Editorial Centro, 1935), pp. 115−16.

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85 Gómez’ speech appeared in its entirety on the front page of El Siglo on August 12, 1942 (“‘The largest and truest enemies of the nation are among us’, Says Dr. Gómez; The Judaic Origin of Masonry and Its History”). It does not figure in any of the extensive collections of his writings and speeches, such as the four-volume Complete Works, Laureano Gómez [in Spanish], ed. Ricardo Ruiz Santos (Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 1984−89). 86 El Siglo April 23, 1942, p. 8. 87 Darío Echandía, memo to Secretary of State Luis López de Mesa, Rome [in Spanish], October 21, 1939, Diplomacia y Consular Caja 612, Embajada de Colombia ante la Santa Sede (DCC 612), F129 p. 163, General Archive. 88 El Siglo August 18, 1942, p. 3. 89 El Siglo, August 31, 1942, p. 4; “The Jewish Question,” El Siglo, September 7, 1942. 90 Gómez, Complete Works, pp. 299, 308, 309−10, 363. 91 El Siglo, November 5, 1942, p. 1; November 6, 1942, p. 1; November 7, 1942, p. 1. 92 Maria Dolly Olano García, Monsignor Builes: The Man, the Apostle, the Mystic [in Spanish] (Cali: “Cuadernos de Vida Cristiana,” 1979), pp. 439−40. 93 Mary Roldán, Blood and Fire: La Violencia in Antioquia, Colombia, 1946−1953 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 48−52, 88−92, 75−98, 104−6, 131−32, 175, 235−37; and Carlos Miguel Ortiz Sarmiento, State and Subversion in Colombia. La Violencia in the Quindio in the 1950s [in Spanish] (Bogotá: Fondo Editorial CEREC, 1985), pp. 135−208.

Part III

The appeal of the Protocols after World War II

8

The re-emergence of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Łódź, 1968 Beate Kosmala

The Israeli−Arab war of June 1967, known as the Six Day War, marked a turning point in the policy of the People’s Republic of Poland toward Israel, and in the following year sparked an antisemitic propaganda campaign against Poles of Jewish descent. After March 1968, approximately 15,000 Polish Jews saw no alternative but to leave the country under humiliating circumstances. Since the 1990s, there have been many publications on the “March events,” as the 1968 student protests and the “anti-Zionist campaign” that followed are commonly known in Poland. Mostly, they analyze the events in the context of the political crisis in the People’s Republic of Poland at the time, but focus only on the Polish capital.1 For the first time, therefore, this chapter discusses Łódź, the second largest city in Poland, where the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) committee was especially ironhanded in the course of the anti-Zionist campaign.2 The Łódź party committee also broke a taboo in 1968 by publishing what was probably the first postwar Polish reprint of the anti-Jewish forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.3 Jewish conspiracy notions had always been prevalent in Poland. In the interwar period, for instance, at least nine editions of the Protocols appeared in print. Antisemitic propaganda referred to them repeatedly and most antisemitic authors believed in their authenticity. This chapter will thus also describe the circumstances in which the Protocols re-emerged in 1968. Hostility to Israel in the Soviet bloc in 1967 was not restricted to Poland. After the Kremlin conference set the course for an anti-Israel policy on June 9, 1967, the Communist states, with the exception of Romania, broke off diplomatic relations with Israel.4 Some Third World countries, as well as the radical left in the West, also took a sharp turn toward antisemitism.5 In the Soviet Union, which as the leading Eastern Bloc country provided the Arab side with massive support, the media propagated the canard of a global Jewish conspiracy in the guise of “Zionism,” alleged to be a particularly perfidious form of imperialism. However, unlike in the case of Poland, Jews in the Soviet Union were forbidden to leave the country after the Six Day War broke out.6 On June 7, 1967, the Polish media published a government declaration “in

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the name of the entire population,” condemning Israel as the aggressor and declaring unequivocal support for the “just struggle of the Arab countries.”7 The controlled anti-Israel campaign spread within a few days, although it was not yet directed at Polish Jews.8 On June 19, however, first secretary Władysław Gomułka pronounced at a trade union conference: “We do not want a fifth column arising in our country.”9 This veiled threat was aimed at anyone who sympathized with Israel, and especially at Polish Jews. Evocation of a “fifth column” was not new in the People’s Republic. In February 1953, shortly before Stalin’s death, Nowe Drogi (New paths), the theoretical party periodical, developed a global analysis based on a conspiracy theory, according to which “Zionism,” as a tool of American imperialism was attempting to build a “fifth column” by infiltrating agents into the Soviet Union as well as into the other People’s Democracies.10 When in March 1968, the year of the Prague Spring and student protests at Western universities, students in Warsaw and other Polish cities took to the streets to demand democratic reforms, the party leadership quickly pinpointed the ringleaders.11 The theory of an anti-Polish conspiracy of “Zionists” became the core of a consistent, dichotomous, interpretive pattern.12 Propaganda focused on those who, it was alleged, were treacherously inciting protest from behind the scenes – the “instigators,” a key term that dominated the conspiracy discourse. All actions were now regarded as being “instigated” and punishment was demanded for the troublemakers, who were undermining the realization of national goals.13 The vision emerged of an insidious plot by Zionists against everything that was “good and ours,” meaning socialist and national.14 “Zionism,” demonized as the “ideology of the Jewish bourgeoisie,” became the incarnation of everything that had to be combated. According to the prevailing narrative, a secret organization existed, which only people who had access to additional information could penetrate.15 Polish historian Jerzy Eisler describes the journalism of the March events as resembling its Stalinist counterpart in its usage of elements of National Socialism.16 The propaganda consisted of fairly straightforward adaptations of conspiracy theories of past centuries. Traditional anti-Jewish stereotypes and accusations lifted directly from prewar antisemitic literature were now embellished with anti-Zionism.17 For example, it was claimed that Zionists had taken over the Polish press and had allied themselves with the enemies of “our people’s fatherland.”18 It was characteristic of both the anti-Israel propaganda of 1967 and the antiZionist campaign of 1968 that similar language and interpretive patterns were used across the country.19 Polish literary scholar Michał Głowiński speaks of a stylistic unity of totalitarian discourse that no longer differentiated between texts meant only for an exclusive audience, and propaganda texts aimed at the general public. This uniformity applied to press releases, top secret files, and ordinary denunciations.20 In 1967, similar wording was used in all Polish cities and factories to denounce Israel as an outpost of imperialism in the Middle East. The following statement of support for the Arab nations made

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in Warsaw was interchangeable with that of workers in a Łódź transformer factory and with those of workers in Krakow and Wrocław: We condemn Israel’s criminal aggression against its Arab neighbors. We condemn the Israeli army’s barbaric methods against civilians … The Anglo-American and West German imperialists have turned the Israeli state into a tool for subjugating other nations.21 The campaign launched in March 1968 was aimed at the alleged inciters of the student revolts. The hunt for the “masterminds and ringleaders of the student riots,” who were to be unmasked as “agents of international Zionism and West Germany,” obscured not only the students’ demands but deeprooted societal conflicts and crises. The complex functions of the anti-Zionist campaign within the rotting system – a tactic to distract the population from the country’s declining prestige abroad and the economic crisis at home – as well as the instrumentalization of anti-Jewish resentment in inner-party power struggles within the Peoples’ Republic, have been analyzed at length.22 The following paragraphs deal with the long-term effects.

Postwar Łódź The language may have been stereotypical across the country, but there were local differences in the severity of the witch-hunt.23 The textile metropolis Łódź, the proletarian face of the Peoples’ Republic, was one of the cities in which the party committee acted with particular aggression in 1968. Historian Dariusz Stola points out that “the functionaries in Łódź put so much energy and commitment into settling the score with the ‘Zionists’ that the party leadership had to dampen their enthusiasm.”24 An eyewitness recounts that a general atmosphere of approval for party methods reigned in the city.25 This leads to the question concerning the specific characteristics of Łódź. Łódź, a large European city with a population of over 800,000 at the turn of the twentieth century, was distinguished until World War II by its east European multiethnicity. In 1939, more than 30 percent of approximately 600,000 inhabitants were Jewish and up to 10 percent were Protestants of German descent. Until the 1930s, Łódź had a negative reputation in Poland as an “industrial Moloch” and a city without culture. For the workers’ movement, however, Łódź was the focal point of large-scale strikes under the tsar and in the interwar period, when it carried the mythical aura of a city with a proletarian tradition. Nevertheless, in the course of the political and social tensions of the 1930s,26 in Łódź, too, the public became increasingly nationalistic.27 The German invasion of September 1939 put a brutal end to the city’s complex multiethnic fabric. Łódź was incorporated into the Third Reich’s Warthegau and its name was changed to Litzmannstadt.28 In February 1940, the Jewish inhabitants were herded into a ghetto; in the years that

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followed most were murdered in the extermination camps of Chelmno or Auschwitz−Birkenau. With their evacuation and flight at the end of 1944, the roughly 130-year history of the Łódź Germans also ended. After considerable harassment and persecution, most Germans who remained in Łódź were resettled in Germany as of 1946.29 This immense loss of people and their cultures that had helped form the city left a huge vacuum. The following section discusses the traditions the postwar inhabitants drew on and the role Łódź played in the new Poland.

Jews in Łódź After the last transport to Auschwitz left the city on August 29, 1944, the Łódź ghetto – which in July 1944 still had 72,000 inhabitants – was liquidated. The 830 Jews kept behind to clear the site were to be shot by the Gestapo before the German retreat. However, they were able to hide on the site of the ghetto until the entry of the Red Army on January 19, 1945.30 Shortly after liberation, Jews who had survived the extermination and work camps or who had been able to go underground on the “Aryan” side, returned to the city. In late 1945 and 1946, following the repatriation agreement with the Soviet Union, they were joined by thousands of their brethren who had survived on Soviet territory. In October 1945, between 24,000 and 27,000 Jews were registered,31 and in the summer of 1946 up to 30,000 Jews were reported to have been lodged temporarily in Łódź. On July 1, 1947, there were 13,269 Jewish survivors listed.32 The first Jewish organizations were formed directly after liberation. The Jewish Committee of Łódź, the local section of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (CKŻP), was elected and immediately began assisting survivors who had returned to Poland in February 1945. Unlike the Jews in the DP camps in Germany, who were supported by the American occupation authorities or by UN aid organizations, those returning to Eastern Europe were dependent upon state aid, but the new governments only had small amounts to give.33 The bulk of relief therefore came from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint). This led to the first conflicts with the non-Jewish population, who were also in need. In those early postwar years, before the beginning of the Stalinist era there, the foundations of the workers’ future attitude toward Jews were already being laid. In March 1945 the Jewish congregation was also founded, with a board and a rabbi. The congregation was weakened considerably at the end of the 1940s, primarily due to emigration. The departure of the more religious Jews, combined with the pressure of political and social changes in 1948, reinforced processes of secularization.34 Immediately after the war, Łódź became the seat of leading Jewish cultural institutions in Poland, such as the Society of Artists, Journalists and Writers, the Central Jewish Historical Commission, and later the Social and Cultural

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Society of Jews, as well as a Jewish theater (there was also one in Wrocław), which achieved fame under director Ida Kamińska.35 The Jewish Press Agency was also located in the city. The first postwar Jewish newspaper in Poland, Dos naye leben, was printed in Łódź. More than 20 Jewish newspapers and periodicals appeared between 1945 and 1949, mostly in Yiddish, but also in Polish and Hebrew. The Jewish Committee, which had two delegates in the Łódź City Council, increasingly came to represent the secular segment of the Jewish population. Among its most important tasks was support for Jews returning from the Soviet Union between late 1945 and summer 194636 and the integration of survivors, particularly young people with no vocational training, into working life.37 In light of the dire situation of the Polish economy after six years of war and occupation, the latter task was particularly challenging. While Zionist groups founded kibbutzim that offered training for a future in Eretz Israel, the Jewish Committee established numerous cooperatives in the city with the purpose of offering long-term opportunities for staying in Poland. After the Holocaust, the Communist regime initially presented itself as the only force in the country that was able and willing to categorically reject and combat antisemitic groups from the nationalist camp. This fed the specious hope of many survivors that Jewish life would be possible in the new Poland. The Jewish Committee also saw the creation of job opportunities as an effective means of combating antisemitism, with which Jewish representatives were confronted from the outset.38 When the Polish government legalized emigration to Israel on September 13, 1949, this led, as in other countries, to panic departure from the country, due to the transition to Stalinism in Poland and the deteriorating international situation. At the time, the authorities attempted to stem the mass exodus, at the very least the so-called “productive element” − cooperative workers and the working intelligentsia, especially, doctors. Nevertheless, approximately 5,000 Jews left Łódź. In 1950, 10,000 to 15,000 inhabitants of Jewish descent still lived in the city; however, the numbers that identified with Judaism were dwindling.39

Anti-Jewish resentment In Łódź, Polish identity had been suppressed over the more than five years of German occupation to a much greater extent than in other large Polish cities. In the postwar period, Łódź attained the status of a true metropolis due to its proletarian and socialist tradition and its proximity to Warsaw; here, unlike in the capital – which was completely destroyed after the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 – the Soviets were greeted with genuine enthusiasm on their entry on January 19, 1945.40 Since Warsaw still lay in rubble, government authorities and national newspapers were located in Łódź. As the city’s economic elite had been wiped out by the war and in its aftermath, it seemed appropriate that the government should steer economic

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reconstruction. Prewar experiences – rural exodus, workers’ struggles, unemployment, and poverty – and the suffering under the German occupation, which were deeply entrenched in collective memory, led workers to initially accept the Communists’ nationalization of industrial plants. Memories of the 1930s helped form the image of the ruthless capitalist: “German” and “Jew” were synonymous with industry bosses, the cause of the Polish workers’ misery.41 Soon, however, bitter conflicts arose with the new Communist regime over food distribution, punishment for theft in the factories, the job market, and the salary system. In 1946−47, workers rose up in a wave of mass strikes against government economic and later also political targets. They held the regime directly responsible for supply shortfalls, or blamed speculators.42 Thus, the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) sought to divert attention from the fact that party functionaries now occupied the position of prewar capitalist elites. In the local and national conflicts to come, Łódź was one of the strongest centers of Polish antisemitism. In 1946, older workers, as well as PPR activists, railed against the supposed privileged position of Jews in the city. While distancing themselves from “reactionary antisemites,” they claimed that of the 20,000 Jews in the city, probably none worked in the factories, and if so, only in white-collar positions. Moreover, they alleged, young Jews would rather live off welfare than work, or alternatively, they were taking jobs and thus preventing Poles from having them.43 Following the referendum of June 30, 1946,44 and in the tense situation prior to the parliamentary elections, anti-Jewish resentment grew. After the Kielce pogrom of July 4, 1946, in which 42 Holocaust survivors lost their lives,45 the PPR organized workers’ demonstrations and factory meetings in Łódź at which the violence against Jews was denounced in predetermined resolutions as the “work of reactionary powers.” Although in reality few workers were truly compliant, on the following day the party press was able to report the desired result: the workers had demanded the death sentence for the guilty parties. After this blatant manipulation, strikes broke out in more than ten factories connected to the events in Kielce. Striking women workers, who suffered from catastrophic conditions after the war, made no attempt to conceal their anti-Jewish resentment, combined with material envy: “A pregnant Jew gets 60,000 złoty and what do I get?” or “Why don’t Jews work in factories? Poland is governed by Jews.” While rumors of ritual murders circulated. Łódź Jews warned of a “pogrom atmosphere.”46 Combined with the manipulated results of the referendum and changes in salary policy, the Kielce pogrom became the turning point in the attitude of Łódź workers toward the government and the PPR. The workers created a link between the pogrom and the reduction in textile industry salaries introduced on September 15, 1946. The party, the Jews, and low salaries were intertwined in their minds.47 Antisemitic prejudice and undertones were prevalent in 1946 not only among workers not organized in the Communist Party, but also in local party groups and in the lower echelons of the party

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where Jews were seen as rivals in the fight for positions and functions within its bureaucracy. The conflicts ten years later linked to the crisis of the Communist regime beginning in March 1956 demonstrated even more clearly that antisemitism was not only rampant among the population, but also socially acceptable within the party apparatus. Traditional antisemitic prejudices were adjusted to fit the nationalist Polish reality. Conspiracy theories circulated and the stereotype of żydokomuna (Jewish communism) was firmly entrenched in the Polish people’s consciousness.48 Beginning in 1956, 50,000 Polish Jews left the country in a new wave of emigration; some 30,000 remained in Poland. Two demands of members of the Łódź Committee of the Social and Cultural Society of Jews in Poland (TSKŻP),49 at a meeting held in December 1956, demonstrate the explosiveness of the situation in the city that year. The board was called upon to take a stand against the exacerbation of antisemitism by holding a meeting with the support of Łódź intellectuals and publicizing the “facts” (antisemitic manifestations) at a press conference. The second was to appoint a delegation from the Jewish congregation to ask the bishop of Łódź to deliver a sermon condemning antisemitism.50 The atmosphere at Łódź’s higher education institutions was so oppressive that some academics of Jewish descent left the country in 1967.51 Before Łódź students even thought of gathering in March 1968, or taking to the streets like their fellow students in the capital, Hieronim Rejnik, secretary of the propaganda center of the Łódź party committee, threatened: “There will be no Warsaw under my reign!”52 The provincial authorities mobilized all forces under their command in readiness.53 On March 11, when students in Łódź demonstrated for the first time, the headline of the daily Głos Robotniczy (Worker’s voice) read: “No Chance for the Politically Bankrupt.” The main gist of the article was that the student protests were instigated by a “group of Zionist youth,” sons and daughters of the “politically bankrupt” who were in ideological cahoots with their “blood relatives in Warsaw.” Their aim was to weaken the power of the “People’s Poland” and undermine Gomułka’s authority. According to the article, the “international Zionist movement” was unable to forgive the first secretary his “correct” assessment of “Israeli aggression” in the Israeli−Arab war of June 1967. The “instigators’” rhetoric had been coordinated with the international anti-Zionist campaign to “revile the Polish nation” and whitewash “Hitler’s hangman’s assistants,” who had been executed by the Polish nation.54 Among non-Jewish inhabitants of the city, resentment and envy were fueled by the Jews’ genuinely or supposedly better economic situation. In the fall of 1967, the Ministry of Health decided to re-impose a ban on the Joint’s work. The Joint – after being expelled from Poland and most countries of Eastern Europe with the onset of the Cold War – had been able to resume its work in Poland in 1957. The renewed ban was justified in Głos Robotniczy in April 1968 with a conspiratorial accusation: The Joint had been engaged in political espionage under cover of aiding Jews.55 Almost two million złoty

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had been pumped into the city in 1966, the paper claimed, not only from the Joint but also from the Israeli consulate in Warsaw. The bulk of this aid had reached Łódź in the form of large quantities of raw materials and machines from Western Europe, the United States, Canada, and Israel for the benefit of the two Jewish cooperatives still in existence. The state had permitted their tariff-free import, believing that it was selflessly allowing essential aid for needy citizens of Jewish descent. The stereotype of rich, influential Jews or Zionists who allied themselves with Poland’s enemies and enjoyed impunity was evoked by the mention of active contact between Jewish circles in Łódź and the Israeli consulate in Warsaw. Supposed worker resolutions containing the usual resentment were also published in the party paper and disseminated as the voice of the people: When the Poles are accused of antisemitism, they demand an explanation: How many Jews have jobs such as steelworker, miner, or weaver and how many have top-ranking functions in the party and state apparatus?56 The issue of Polish assistance to Jews under the German occupation touched on a very sensitive area of Polish−Jewish relations and was also used for propaganda purposes: Why don’t Polish citizens of Jewish descent, Communists in high positions, refute the enemy’s anti-Polish propaganda disseminated by Zionist groups? Why don’t they take a stand in the press and show how Polish families risked their lives to hide many of them, how they helped the Jews in the ghettos and the camps and during the uprising, in order to counter the Zionists’ mendacious slander?57 This claim echoes a simple, oft-repeated theme: almost all Poles came to the Jews’ aid but the latter are ungrateful. The impending 25th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising served to augment the agitation: Poles had shed their blood in the ghetto for the fighting Jews. The complainant cited was an officer of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) who had led training courses for the ghetto fighters in 1942.58 The campaign was not merely restricted to employing slander to rouse public sentiment but was aimed at the stigmatization, exclusion, and expulsion of Polish Jews. This goal was unparalleled in postwar Eastern Europe: racist antisemitism was being practiced, directed at anyone who had Jewish ancestors. In 1968, only 4,000 Jews, Polish or other, still lived in Łódź,59 but the Łódź party committee led by Józef Spychalski, persisted in making the city judenrein, an objective achieved within two months. Numerous academics at Łódź’s institutions of higher education were victims of the campaign; those who worked in the press, the film industry and the applied sciences were forced to leave their positions and lost their livelihoods. The Jewish dean of Łódź University’s philosophy department, Stefan Amsterdamski, was expelled

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from the party on May 10 after the secretary of the Propaganda Division of the Łódź party committee, Hieronim Rejnik, claimed, among other things, that the main leaders of the Łódź revolts were recruited from the ranks of students from his department; moreover, students from the department had been selected “with absolutely no regard for ideological−political or class criteria.”60 The party exclusion proceedings against Paweł Korzec, Holocaust survivor, historian, lecturer in the historical philosophy department of Łódź University, and member of the Polish United Workers’ Party, clearly demonstrate the complicity of his closest associates, members of the thirty-person committee of the faculty party cell in the decision. In April 1968, Korzec was accused of openly broadcasting Zionist opinions since 1956, condoning Israeli aggression against Arab countries, condemning the party and government of the People’s Republic of Poland for breaking off diplomatic relations with Israel, and expressing his contempt for Arabs. Moreover, Korzec had called the Israelis “bringers of culture [kulturtreger]” to the Middle East. This expression, used to convey German hubris in relation to its neighbors to the East and anathema to Łódź citizens, in particular, suggested that Israel’s role in the Middle East was similar to that of chauvinist Germany in Poland and Eastern Europe. Amenable colleagues added their own “evidence” to further incriminate Korzec. The vote on exclusion from the party ended with 29 in favor and one abstention. The historian was forced to emigrate and later settled in Paris.61 People in lower-level jobs were also victims of absurd accusations. In July 1968, Ryszard Hercberg, a technician who was not a party member, turned to Józef Spychalski, first secretary of the party in Łódź, after being suddenly fired from a national film company. Hercberg, whose Jewish father had been incarcerated in the Łódź ghetto and murdered in Auschwitz, survived the war on the “Aryan side” together with his non-Jewish mother under her name. After March 1968, Hercberg, who had no connection to Judaism, suddenly became a “citizen of Jewish descent.” Desperate, he told Spychalski that the Łódź party committee had confused his father with a Jewish “bandit” of the same name in the ghetto, and thus the accusation against him was unequivocally false. His letter ended with a polite appeal for the return of his work permit as a loyal citizen of the People’s Republic of Poland. It was refused.62 For many, particularly young people, for whom a “Jewish” Łódź had existed until 1968, the force of the 1968 campaign was a traumatic experience. The actress Gołda Tencer, born in Łódź after the war, mapped her former turf thirty years later: My Judaism was moored in Prochnik Street between Wschodnia, Zachodnia, and Więckowski Streets. I had a fantastic life. My parents ran a typical Jewish home. My father was a leather worker, my mother took care of the children. We observed the Jewish holidays … I went to the Jewish Peretz School, visited the Jewish Social and Cultural Society youth club, attended Jewish summer camp. I lived as if in a bell jar.63

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In 1968, the Łódź PZPR propaganda center published the infamous pamphlet “The Policy of the Party and Government and Its Opponents,” in which the main blame for Stalinist terror was placed on “Polish citizens of Jewish descent” who held responsible positions in the secret service, the army, and the party apparatus.64 Furthermore, in 1968 the center distributed a brochure by Władysław Kmitowski, entitled “Zionism, Its Genesis, Its Political Character and Anti-Polish Faces,” describing in detail the supposed Jewish quest for world power. The author drew on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which he referred to as a trustworthy source. The “Zionists,” he claimed, not only wanted to control Poland, where they already held many key positions but sought capitalist world dominion.65 Party headquarters in Warsaw reacted by suspending the author and collaborators of the antisemitic brochure from editorial duties for two years.66 In contrast to influential members of Warsaw party circles, who, it seems, had more scruples about disseminating hostile pamphlets of the traditionally antisemitic right wing, the ruthlessness of the Łódź party committee is clearly illustrated by the fact that in the course of the 1968 anti-Zionist campaign they even published a reprint of the Protocols, although it was intended for circulation only within party circles.67 Stola notes that twenty years earlier, this would have been grounds for the death sentence.68

Re-emergence of the Protocols As historian Rudolf Jaworski has observed, conspiracy theorists and propagandists should not simply be dismissed as psychopaths, since this ignores their rational, tactical−strategic use of such theories.69 The 1968 anti-Zionist campaign in Poland was aimed at an imagined anti-Polish plot concocted by “Zionism,” seen as a demonic organization with connections around the globe. The masterminds were the modern “Elders of Zion” and their “fifth column” in Poland. This campaign was executed with particular aggression and unscrupulousness in Łódź, partly because of the party committee’s fear that they would have to abandon the fiction of a model proletarian city and renounce control. Thus, ambitious Łódź party committee functionaries wanted to prove to party headquarters that they had reined in “Łódź’s Red workers.” The situation was aggravated by anti-Jewish aggression that had been building up since the initial postwar years and exploited intermittently long before 1967−68.70 After Łódź party activists arranged for publication of what was probably the first reissue of the Protocols in Poland since World War II, further Polish versions followed. Some were reprints, such as the 1983 Krakow edition, a reissue of a 1934 one; in others contemporary references were added. In 1984, a reprint of a 1938 edition of the Protocols appeared, with an excerpt from Feliks Koneczny’s work Jewish Civilization (Cywilizacja żydowska), published posthumously in 1974 in London. The political authority of Poles in exile was used to underpin the supposed authenticity of the tract.71

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Appearing in the appendix to the volume, Koneczny maintains that the Jews sought, on the one hand, to gain control over Poland and de-nationalize its inhabitants – that is, to create a “Judeopolonia” – and on the other, to demarcate a part of Polish territory in order to create a state within a state that had a purely Jewish character.72 The fantasy of the “jewification” of Poland was both a central element of national right-wing ideology in the interwar period and a chimera of the Catholic Church, which proclaimed Judeo−Polska as the threatened alternative to Polska Chrystusowa.73 Koneczny’s particularly antisemitic chapter “Judeopolonia” was reprinted in 1981 in Warsaw, and the entire book was reissued in 1997.74 In contemporary right-wing, not necessarily politically marginal, Polish newspapers, the 1968 March events are represented as an opportunity for flight that the Jews greedily grabbed in order to escape being made accountable for Stalinist crimes. Conspiracy theories continue to circulate among these circles; the version current since the turn of the millennium is that Jews are now returning to the country under aliases in order to lead Poland into bankruptcy.75

Notes 1 See, for example, Jerzy Eisler, March 1968: Genesis, Course, Consequences [in Polish] (Warsaw: PAN, 1991); M. Fik, The Culture of March: Around the “Ancestors” (Dziady), Writers and the Authorities, and the March Campaign [in Polish] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Wodnika, 1995); M. Kula, P. Osęka and M. Zaremba, eds, March 1968: Thirty Years Later, vol. 1; M. Zaremba, ed., Lectures; vol. 2. Documentary Appendix: Daily reports of the Security Service and the Organizational Department of PZPR Headquarters [in Polish] (Warsaw: PWN, 1998); Dariusz Stola, The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland 1967−1968 [in Polish] (Warsaw: PAN, 2000); Beate Kosmala, ed., The Expulsion of the Jews from Poland 1968: Antisemitism and Political Calculations [in German] (Berlin: Metropol, 2000); Ingo Loose, “1968: Antisemitic Enemy and Crisis Awareness in Poland” [in German], in Our Enemies: Construction of the Other in Socialism, ed. Silke Satjukow and Rainer Gries (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2001), pp. 481−502. 2 Stola, The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland, p. 188. 3 Janusz Tazbir, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Authentic or Forged [in Polish] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Iskry, 2004), particularly the section “In Postwar Poland,” pp. 146−51. 4 Stola, The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland, p. 32. 5 Werner Bergmann, The History of Antisemitism [in German] (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2002), p. 127ff. Thomas Haury, “The New Antisemitism of the German Left” [in German], in The New Antisemitism: A Global Debate, eds. Doron Rabinovici, Ulrich Speck and Natan Sznaider (Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp, 2004), p. 144. As part of its “anti-imperialist” beliefs, the New Left in West Germany condemned Israel after the Six Day War as a “beachhead for the suppression of the Arab people’s struggle for freedom.” 6 Antje Kuchenbecker, “The Antisemitic Campaign in the Soviet Union, 1967−1971” [in German], in Kosmala, The Expulsion of the Jews, p. 20. 7 Stola, The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland, p. 29. 8 Ibid., p. 30.

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9 Excerpt from a speech of the first secretary of the PZPR at the VI trade union congress on June 19, 1967, in History of the Jews in Poland: Sources [in Polish], ed. Alina Cała and Helena Datner−Spiewak (Warsaw: Jewish Historical Institute, 1997), p. 154. Following the intervention of the chairman of the State Council, Edward Ochab, this sentence was deleted from the printed version of the speech. 10 Michał Mirski, “Zionism – Tool of American Imperialism” [in Polish], Nowe Drogi (February 1953), cited in Cała and Datner-Spiewak, History of the Jews in Poland: Sources, p. 139. Mirski, who belonged to the Jewish faction of the PZPR, became a victim of the anti-Zionist campaign in 1968. 11 On the historical background of the student revolts, see also Kosmala, “The Jewish Question as a Political Instrument in the People’s Republic of Poland” [in German], in idem, The Expulsion of the Jews, pp. 49−64. 12 Dieter Groh, “Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?” [in German], in idem, Anthropological Dimensions of the Narrative (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992), p. 285. 13 Michał Głowiński, “‘Instigators’: The 1968 Antisemitic Campaign in Poland and the Conspiracy Theorists’ Categorization of the World” [in German], in Conspiracy Theories: Anthropological Constants − Historical Versions, ed. Ute Caumanns and Mathias Niendorf (Osnabrück: fibre, 2001), p. 147. 14 Ibid., p. 148f. 15 Głowiński, “‘Instigators’,” p. 149. 16 Eisler, March 1968, p. 351. 17 Stola, The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland, p. 153. 18 Ibid., p. 161. Stola provides numerous examples from the press. 19 Ibid., p. 139. 20 Ibid., p. 137. 21 Trybuna Ludu, June 17, 1967; similar statements were made on June 14, 15, and 16. 22 Loose, “Antisemitic Enemy and Crisis Awareness,” p. 490f. 23 Compare the conference papers of the Institute for National Remembrance (IPN): Konrad Rokicki and Sławomir Stępnia, eds, The Face of March 1968 [in Polish] (Warsaw: IPN, 2004). Part two includes regional studies. 24 Stola, The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland, p. 188. 25 Alina Grabowska, “March in Łódź” [in Polish], Midrasz (Jewish magazine) 11, no. 3 (March 1998), p. 11. 26 After Marshal Józef Piłsudski’s death in May 1935 the atmosphere prevailing in the last years of the Second Polish Republic was characterized by a radicalization of antisemitism within Polish society and within the country’s ruling circles. See, for example, Emanuel Melzer, “Antisemitism in the Last Years,” in The Jews of Poland between Two World Wars, ed. Yisrael Gutman, Ezra Mendelsohn, Jehuda Reinharz and Chone Shmeruk (Hanover/London: University Press of New England, 1989), pp. 126−40. 27 Andreas R. Hofmann, “Image Problems of an Anti-metropolis” [in German], in City and the Public in Central Europe, 1900−1939: Contributions to the Emergence of Modern Urbanism between Berlin, Charkiv, Tallinn and Trieste, ed. Andreas R. Hofmann and Anna Veronika Wendland (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002), pp. 235−57. 28 After General Karl Litzmann, who won a decisive World War I battle near Łódź. 29 Marek Budziarek, Łódź, Lodsch, Litzmannstadt: Fragments of the Inhabitants’ Life in the Occupied City [in Polish] (Łódź: Literatura, 2003), pp. 151−52. 30 Julian Baranowski, “On the Prehistory and History of the Lodz Ghetto,” in Oskar Singer, Walking Through the Ghetto … Reportage and Essays from the Lodz Ghetto, ed. Sascha Feuchert et al. (Berlin: Philo Verlagsgesellschaft, 2002), p. 265.

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31 Leszek Olejnik, “Jewish Society in Łódź in the Years 1945−1950” [in Polish], Acta Universitatis Lodziensis, Folia Historica, 60 (1997), pp. 125−47. 32 Ibid., p. 127. 33 Michael M. Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 301. 34 After the forced liquidation of Zionist organizations and the Socialist Jewish Party Bund, in 1948 the Communist authorities re-structured the CKZP and in 1950 created the Social and Cultural Society of Jews in Poland (TSKZP) under Communist control. 35 Later relocated to Warsaw. 36 Olejnik. “Jewish Society in Łódź,” p. 130. 37 There was a “bank for the ‘productivity’ of the Jewish population” in Łódź – one of five branches in Poland. It provided the necessary loans.The Joint was the main shareholder. 38 AZIH (Jewish Historical Institute Archives in Warsaw), CKZP, Productivity Department, file 13: December 1945−March 1946. 39 Olejnik. “Jewish Society in Łódź,” p. 132. 40 Budziarek, Łódź, Lodsch, Litzmannstadt, p. 133. 41 See Padraic Kenney, Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945−1950 (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1997). This study compares the two cities Łódź and Wrocław. 42 Ibid. p. 90. 43 Ibid., p. 110. 44 The referendum was on the questions of the dissolution of the Senate, the economic reforms and the Oder−Neisse line. 45 Bożena Szaynok, The Pogrom against Jews in Kielce on 4th of July 1946 [in Polish] (Wrocław: Bellona, 1992). 46 Kenney, Rebuilding Poland, p. 115. 47 Ibid., p. 115f. 48 Józef Niewiadomski, “Anti-Jewish Hostility without Jews: Antisemitism in Poland” [in German], in Antisemitism: Manifestations of Anti-Jewish Hostility Yesterday and Today, ed. Günter B. Ginzel (Bielefeld: Wissenschaft und Politik, 1991), p. 223. On the situation in Poland in 1956 see also Paweł Machcewicz, “Antisemitism in Poland in 1956” [in Polish], Polin 9 (1996), pp. 171−83; Beate Kosmala, “The Image of the Jews after the Shoah: ‘Mobile Prejudice’ in the Polish Discourse” [in German], in “Mobile” Prejudice: Aspects of International Antisemitism, ed. Christina von Braun and Eva−Maria Ziege (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2004), p. 158−74. 49 See note 34. 50 AZIH, TSKZ/Wydz. Org/102 [Jewish cultural society/organization dept.], Bl. 75−79. It is still unclear whether an appeal was actually made to the bishop and, if so, how he reacted. 51 Jakób and Olga Goldberg (Jerusalem), conversation at a conference in Berlin, June, 1998. 52 Jerzy Eisler, “Academic Youth in Łódź in the Year 1968” [in Polish], in Opposition and Resistance in Łódź 1956−1981: Proceedings of IPN Conference, ed. Krzysztof Lesiakowski (Warsaw: IPN, 2003), pp. 64−72. 53 At the ready were 3,000 members of the civilian militia and the secret service, 210 soldiers from the Łódź internal security battalion, 900 OMRO men (civilian militia volunteer reserve), and a further 3000 activists from various neighborhood party committees. See Eisler, “Academic Youth,” p. 65. 54 Głos Robotniczy, March 13, 1968. 55 Ibid., April 18, 1968.

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56 APŁ (Łódź state archives) KL PZPR (Łódź Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party), file 1377, Bl. 111, info no. 23/68, March 20, 1968. 57 Głos Robotniczy, April 4, 1968. 58 Ibid. 59 Olejnik, “Jewish Society in Łódź,” p. 147. 60 Eisler, “Academic Youth,” p. 70. 61 Paweł Korzec, The Jewish Question in the Interwar Period (Paris: Presses de la Foundation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1980). 62 APŁ, KL PZPR, Sign. 3526, Bl. 1−6. 63 Gołda Tencer, “‘Childhood Days’ − March 98” [in Polish], Midrasz (March 1998), p. 15. 64 Tazbir, The Protocols, p. 146. 65 Ibid. 66 APŁ, KL PZPR, “Assessment of the Course of the Inquiry” [in Polish], sheet 6. cited in Lesiakowski, Opposition and Resistance in Łódź, p. 184. 67 Ibid. p. 147; Eisler, March 1968, p. 402f. 68 Stola, The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland, p. 161. 69 Rudolf Jaworski, “Conspiracy Theories from a Psychological and Historical Perspective” [in German], in Caumanns and Niendorf, Conspiracy Theories, p. 20. 70 Eisler, “Academic Youth,” p. 72. 71 Publication of this book triggered protest from the Polish press in exile because of its clearly antisemitic nature. Tazbir, The Protocols, p. 148. 72 Ibid. 73 Viktoria Pollmann, Sub-tenant in a Christian House: The Church and the Jewish Question in Poland, according to the Diocese Press, City of Krakow, 1926−1939 [in German] (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2001), in particular, pp. 159−69. 74 Tazbir, The Protocols, p. 148. 75 Sergiusz Kowalski and Magdalena Tulli, Instead of Trial: A Report on the Language of Hatred [in Polish] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo W.A.B, 2003), p. 494.

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The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on the internet How radical political groups are networked via antisemitic conspiracy theories Juliane Wetzel

The internet is the leading communication and information medium in the world today, particularly among the younger generation. Young adults, but also children, use the World Wide Web as a kind of playground, as an aid in their schoolwork, and as a platform for communicating with one another. The internet, however, is employed for disseminating information not only by reputable agencies but also by illegal, subversive groups.1 The façade and scope of an internet platform say nothing about the importance or influence of the host group. With the help of a visually eye-catching and state-of-the-art homepage, a small, insignificant political splinter group can generate the impression that they possess considerable authority. According to the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Task Force against Hate and Terrorism, Mark Weitzman, who has observed the rise of hate crimes in cyberspace for a number of years: Initially, the overwhelming number of those sites came from what could be described as western extremists. These included skinheads, neo-Nazi, white power, ethnic and religious extremists, homophobic and conspiratorial sites, and the number showed steady growth, as did the technical capabilities of the sites. They were used to recruit, to raise money, to propagandize, to incite, and to provide a virtual community to hitherto far-flung fellow believers. By doing so, the internet came to be viewed as empowering a whole new generation of extremists.2 Since there are no mechanisms available that can completely filter the interchange of data worldwide, a field of agitation and propaganda is exposed where illegal activities rarely end in prosecution. The operators of such websites adroitly sidestep government controls by utilizing providers in countries that lack sanctions on demagogic, racist content. Radical groups exploit this free zone on an international basis to disseminate their antisemitic, fanatically religious or nationalist views, or express them in chat rooms and discussion

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forums. The possibility of exchanging hate propaganda anonymously further enhances the attractiveness of this medium. Since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in fall 2000, a new development, played out primarily on the internet, has been observable: the networking of extreme right and radical Islamist groups. Moreover, their attention is no longer restricted to Jews living in Europe but has become sharply focused on the State of Israel. Criticism of Israel’s actions and policies in the Palestinian territories furnishes a common meeting ground for engaging in openly antisemitic agitation that goes relatively unchallenged. Via links, groups from the extreme right network with radical Islamist organizations, and even anti-globalization or extreme left ones, among them anti-Zionist and anti-American elements that frequently exploit traditional antisemitic stereotypes. There are also connections with sectarian Christian groups. Since racist and religious forms of antisemitism have waned to the point where they play a role only in the ideology of marginalized groups, antisemitic conspiracy theories are enjoying a boom, not least because their proponents have found the ideal medium for their dissemination. Weitzman has identified this phenomenon as posing a major threat to the Jews: The presence of the conspiracy site is significant, since so much of what passes as fact online is actually based on some form of conspiracy. These are often built around the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which allege Jewish control of the world or around presenting the United States government as being engaged in various conspiracies or cover-ups, or ultimately having the entire western world engaged in a vast, multilayered conspiracy against the Islamic world.3 For over one hundred years, reference to the antisemitic fabrication The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, has proven an effective way of underpinning prototypical conspiracy theories with allegedly factual evidence. Accordingly, the Jews are held accountable for every calamity befalling the world, whether adverse economic developments, political upheavals, or even natural disasters. Since the Protocols utilize classical theories of a “Jewish world conspiracy,” it is no coincidence that they can be found in ideological and political contexts on the internet. Myths of this kind are used, for instance, to allege that the foreign policy pursued by the US and by European states in the Middle East conflict is biased in favor of Israel, and that this partiality stems from the pressure exerted by a supposed Jewish world power. The imagined Jew appearing in such antisemitic conspiracy theories suddenly becomes “concrete.” Translated into various languages, the Protocols have become available for downloading by extreme right-wing groups, proPalestinian Arab and radical Islamist websites, and a countless array of esoteric sites, including even some of the pages of UFO enthusiasts. Anti-globalization activists also use this antisemitic forgery in their effort to justify their resistance against internationally networked financial markets and “mondialism”

The Protocols on the internet 149 (globalization). The Italian racial theorist Julius Evola,4 the ideological guide of almost the entire extreme right spectrum worldwide, sharply criticized the “modern world” and ascribed to Islam a more important role in the struggle against “mondialism” than to the other monotheistic religions.5 An “unofficial” Italian internet site devoted to commemorating this theoretician of antisemitism from the fascist epoch − Juliusevola − has been set up. Under the category “Documents,” one can download not only the correspondence between Evola and the extreme right Italian terrorist Franco Freda, but also the Protocolli dei Savi anziani di Zion.6 Among the website’s contributing authors are Frenchman Alain de Benoist and Russian Aleksandr Dughin, theoreticians of the “New Right” who, in their struggle against globalization, welcome allies from any political camp.7 Here there are undoubted points of contact with radical Islamist views. The decisive role accredited to Islam by the proponents of anti-mondialism ideas would result in the annihilation of Israel.8 As this ideological struggle against mondialism unfolds and gathers apace, antisemitism is increasingly focused on the State of Israel.9 After September 11, 2001, it became clear not only that the antisemitic stereotypes propagated by fanatic Islamists and right-wing extremists strongly resembled one another, but that they also shared a number of other ideological positions: for instance, both reject modernity and globalization, which are equated with “Jewish heteronomy,” symbolized in their imagination by the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York.10 It thus comes as no surprise that antisemitic conspiracy theories burgeoned immediately after the attack on this symbol of an imagined Jewish powerbase, with the internet as the preferred disseminating medium. What follows is based mainly on the monitoring of extremist internet pages in the years up to 2005; it should thus be pointed out that some sites have been closed in the meantime either because their providers shut them down or because the operators were convicted of incitement. Nevertheless, such sites continue to proliferate on the World Wide Web today. Moreover, the Protocols also feature in video platforms used widely by youth.

Access via search engines Upon entering the keyword “Protocols” in the German-language search engine google.de, a site of clearly rightist background was listed in fourteenth place. The preceding thirteen results provided links to sites explaining the history and background of the Protocols and their proven status as a forgery. This was due to initiatives such as haGalil.com, which attempt to counter extreme right, neo-Nazi homepages with dozens of authoritative sites that would outflank them in the Google rankings. Google deletes from its rankings sites containing content that contravenes German and French national laws. However, this applies only to sites that violate hate crimes laws; sites that are within the law but with problematic content appear lower in the list of entries. Some initiatives and NGOs are using the possibilities offered by the internet

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to counteract hate crimes by having their serious sites placed as far as possible toward the top. At google.fr, access to the Protocols became available on the second page of listings, while for Dutch users they appeared third, on the site of the far right American organization Stormfront. The Italian version of the search engine provided interested surfers looking for “Protocolli” with a hit on the second entry11: the homepage Comedonchisciotte, offering a conglomeration of articles in Italian and English on themes of current interest written from a conspiracy viewpoint, as well as the text of the Protocols. The operator had also inserted a link to the internet platform of Radio Islam, owned by the Sweden-based Moroccan Holocaust denier Ahmed Rami. In another section, the question whether MI5, the CIA, or the Israeli secret service Mossad was behind the London bombings of July 2005, was discussed.12

Religious fundamentalists A search for the Protocols in google.it in 2006 listed a fundamentalist Christian organization seventh. The protocols of the twenty-four sessions where the “Elders of Zion” allegedly hatched their plot to seize world power can still be downloaded from the Holywar/La Tradizione Cattolica site of the Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Pii X (Society of Saint Pius X), a radical Catholic group founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.13 After being closed in 2007,14 the homepage of one of the fraternity’s members, Alfred Olsen, again became available in several languages, including English and Italian. Stridently advocating a “Christian alternative” based on “resistance by the people,” Olsen’s homepage called for a struggle against “Jewish terrorism,” in particular, the “Jewish mafia running America,” and the only “Nazi state, the satanic Israel.”15 Italy’s constitutional authorities have classified this fundamentalist society, based in Metzingen in Switzerland and numbering some 150,000 to 200,000 followers, as a sect.16 In early 2009, Pope Benedict XVI aroused an international furor when he rehabilitated several members of the group although one of them − Bishop Richard Williamson − had denied the Holocaust a few days before in an interview on Swedish TV.17 Olsen’s site provides links to misleading presentations of the history of the Palestinians, to Radio Islam, to ZOG (Zionist Occupied Government), and to revisionist sites such as the Committee for Open Debate of the Holocaust (CODOH − USA) and the Adelaide Institute (Australia), as well as to the page of British Holocaust denier David Irving. The array of Stürmer-style caricatures presented in the English version was expanded repeatedly, most notably with examples from the 1920s and 1930s, such as the image of a corpulent man with a stereotypical Jewish physiognomy sitting atop an enormous money bag in front of the stock exchange.18 The German version of Holywar/Tradizione Cattolica is limited almost exclusively to the Protocols.19 While Biblebelievers.com, a website run by Baptists in the United States, clearly states its opposition to antisemitism, the Protocols can be found on the Australian version of their portal. Also available on the site is a 175-page

The Protocols on the internet 151 book by Elisabeth Dilling, The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today. Written in 1983, it employs the usual stereotypes associated with “Judeo-Bolshevism.”20 The Protocols were also available at news providers, such as World Internet News Distributary Source – The Winds. Advocating a “Bible perspective,” the Winds provided the entire text under its “Library” listings. Responding to inquiries as to why the homepage gave access to the Protocols, the editor said: The WINDS staff have sometimes quoted from this document not as a proof of Jewish intrigue or national conspiracy. We quote from it because there is nothing written today which more clearly explains current events. One who has digested the Protocols cannot look out into the world without seeing the fulfillment of that much maligned document. Our point of view in this office is that the question of who wrote it is not all that important. What is important is that it is clearly seen as having transpired. A person would have to be well-nigh brain-dead not to realize the awesome success of some brilliantly organized purpose in bringing all men to the state they are in today. The document itself is amazing in its theoretical design. If it were simply created for show, it was created by genius since in it there is seen clear understanding of how human beings are manipulated. This is our purpose for quoting from it. My own personal view is that the Protocols clearly reveal satanic planning. I charge him with the writing of the document. If I say, “the devil did it,” then how can that be offensive?21

Tsunami, Illuminati and secret politics Conspiracy theories are utilized to explain incomprehensible or strange phenomena. The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, for example, was perceived as a Jewish plot. According to right-wing proponents of this theory, the natural disaster was caused either by the detonation of an American−Jewish nuclear bomb in the Sumatra Trench or by oil drilling. The Bund für echte Demokratie e.V. – Arbeitsloseninitiative Deutschland, an organization that agitates against Jews on its homepage in a confused and obsessive fashion, takes up the tsunami theory of a nuclear bomb detonated by Jews. This is no isolated case. In January 2005 believers of this theory met in Berlin, and the event was reported by Panorama, the current affairs program of the German TV station ARD: Berlin last weekend, a meeting of radical right-wing conspiracy theorists. Outwardly they seem like everyday ordinary people: young and old, men and women, some simpleminded, others intelligent. But there is one thing that brings them together: antisemitism. Even if they try to avoid the word “Jew” – they all know the ropes. Their theory: 40,000 Israelis left Asia shortly before the tidal wave struck, one of them a famous pop

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Schmidt linked contemporary occurrences to events from the Nazi era, explaining, for example, the September 11 attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon in terms of astrological constellations that purportedly correlated with those for the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942−43. Schmidt’s abstruse ideas were propagated on the website Unglaublichkeiten, operated by Bernhard Becker.23 The site, which exploited antisemitic stereotypes, featured revisionist articles, provided links to Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel, Radio Islam and pilt.de, and presented ludicrous theories about the September 11 attacks, the death of Princess Diana, and the secret “illuminati” societies; it also complained that its domain was being blocked by a “dictatorship called the Federal ‘Republic’ of Germany.”24 Among the articles were texts by the Briton David Icke, whose combination of New Age philosophy and apocalyptic conspiracy theories has a pronounced antisemitic slant. In his opinion, the world is ruled by secret societies, dubbed by him the “reptile connection,” headed by the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. The secret world government they have supposedly formed, he claimed, was responsible for the Holocaust, the 1995 bomb attack in Oklahoma City, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and the London bombings of 2005.25 Icke referred repeatedly to the Protocols, which he dubbed “Illuminati protocols” and disseminated via his own website; however, he added a disclaimer stating that there was proof the tract had not been written by Jews themselves but was probably compiled under Jewish influence, and that for his part, he distanced himself from any racist elements.26 For Thyl Steinemann, the operator of the Heptagon Forum, which networked extremist right-wing and esoteric groups, Icke was an “author of books worth reading.” Steinemann, from whose site the Protocols could easily be downloaded, boasted: Since the inhuman events of September 11, 2001 I have … worked very hard to find explanations and to educate, openly, with clarity, and undaunted by obstacles … With a selection of reports, by the start of 2005 I have contributed to some one million people gaining an orientation in the Heptagon Forum, enabling them to form their opinions about the lies which the illuminati – the world-war players – try to spread through the media they dominate across the globe.27 Steinemann’s forum provided a link to the Swiss revisionist magazine Recht und Freiheit of Holocaust denier Jürgen Graf. This publication specializes in spreading the notorious myth of the “Jews’ declaration of war” on Nazi Germany, which began circulating following a misinterpreted report published by the British Daily Express in March 1933.28 Until his death in 2008 Graf

The Protocols on the internet 153 was on friendly terms with the Swiss Holocaust denier and was a conduit for the radical Islamist scene Ahmed Huber, who contributes to Ahmed Rami’s Radio Islam site, and together with the Italian revisionist Carlo Mattogno, wrote the book Treblinka: Extermination or Transit Camp?29 which claims that not a single person was murdered there.30 Via a link, users of Steinemann’s site could access the “private homepage” of Klaus Krusche, Die Oppositionelle, where further “new revelations” about September 11 were presented, and Geheimpolitik. Der Fahrplan zur Weltmacht (Secret politics: The roadmap to world power) and its follow-up volume Logen und Politik (Lodges and politics) by antisemite and Holocaust denier Dieter Rüggeberg were warmly recommended.31 A further link led to an article about the US NESARA (National Economic Security and Reformation Act) from October 19, 2003: The explosiveness of this act [NESARA] arises from its clear and unambiguous frontline position against the secret power of the illuminati although they are not mentioned anywhere in the act. The illuminati compose a rather tight, organized, sinister secret organization in whose “world council” the richest and most powerful families of this world are represented. This “world council” composes the true “black secret organization” whose influence is effective in all states of the world, without exception.32 Argumentation of this kind almost inevitably replicates the Protocols; the Heptagon Forum therefore offered the full text of this tract for downloading under the rubric “The powerbrokers and their plans,” with the following comment: The staggering plan of the oligarchs to subjugate the whole of humanity, a plan in the course of being executed since the 19th century and already extensively implemented: the Satanic plan of dark powers: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But Steinemann warned readers in Germany and Austria against spreading the Protocols, because: … this is subject to severe penalties. It is however permissible in these countries to print and keep a copy for private use, but nothing more … And do not forget: the fiends and energies of the dark side find themselves at a dead end. Even if they are close to gaining total world domination – we on the side of the light have all the good spirits behind us, the Vandals do not!33 Steinemann also expressly recommended Swiss author Armin Risi and his website, which featured delusional, esoteric, and UFO theories, as well

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as conspiratorial machinations combined with an imagined world of evil. Lectures and articles were clearly antisemitic since they revolved around the number “666,”34 which stands for Satan the Antichrist, understood by the community of followers as a synonym for the Jews. Along with publications by David Icke and conspiracy theorist Jan van Helsing, Risi’s contributions were praised on the German website pilt.de. Pilt, which primarily addressed UFO enthusiasts, published in German translation an article by the Australian journalist and conspiracy theorist Joe Vialls, who operated his own website. The translator was none other than Gerhoch Reisegger, author of books dedicated to conspiracy theories and a frequent speaker at meetings of the extreme right-wing NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany). Reisegger, who also claims that the September 11 attacks were a Jewish plot, spreads his abstruse theories by giving interviews to the extreme right-wing press, such as National-Zeitung.35 The aforementioned Australian offshoot of Biblebelievers also provided a link to Vialls’ website, which offered a mirror version via a British server.36 Besides the tsunami “legend,” Vialls discussed other classic themes attracting conspiracy theorists, such as the death of Lady Diana and the September 11 attacks. Until his death in 2005 Vialls’s reports were linked via the website to New World Order – the Seventh Fire. Besides the Protocols, Seventh Fire, the homepage of a member of the Anishinabek tribe indigenous to the Ontario region of Canada, presented conspiracy theories on 9/11 and the illuminati, as well as pieces on the “Holocaust Hoax.”37

Radical Islamist links and their ties to right-wing extremists Until May 2005 it was possible to access the Protocols from the Arab version of the Nakba website,38 run by the information service of the Palestinian Authority. While included as part of the documentation in the category “Historical sources on Zionism” in Arabic, the Protocols were not available on the site’s more moderate English-language version. Following intervention by the American Anti-Defamation League in May 2005, the Palestinian authorities appeared to have blocked access to the site.39 The Dutch website marokko.nl posted excerpts from the Protocols on the internet under the title “Werkelijkheid Achter Het Joods Zionisme” (The reality behind Jewish Zionism), claiming that the text is based on the “Jewish holy scripture, the Talmud.” For further information on the Talmud, the site recommended the link to Ahmed Rami’s Radio Islam. The complete text of the Protocols and “proof of their authenticity” were downloadable from this internet portal.40 Ahmed Rami, a former member of the Moroccan armed forces who fled to Sweden, and a key figure in networking between radical Islamists and the international extreme right, claims that “antisemitism and anti-Jewish action … will continue to be the strongest tools in the hands of governments in the Muslim world.”41 Via his website Radio Islam, he propagates anti-

The Protocols on the internet 155 Jewish agitation, including traditional antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and the anti-Zionism of radical Islamist groups.42 The Swedish authorities have convicted Rami of racial incitement and revoked his radio license on several occasions.43 Rami’s homepage provides a wide array of links to exponents of revisionism and a bibliography of Holocaust denial literature comprising several hundred titles, primarily obtainable from publishing houses with Swedish addresses.44 Rami’s article, “Israel’s Politics Confirms the Authenticity of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” appeared on the Swiss internet portal Wilhelm Tell, which long functioned as a virtual forum for a circle of Holocaust deniers around Jürgen Graf. The site had links to Radio Islam, to Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, to the revisionist National Journal, to Ernst Zündel, to the Flemish Vrij Historiek Onderzoek, and to a host of other revisionist pages and publications. Via the heading “Current Affairs/Politics,” the user was directed to a link providing the text of the Protocols. Swiss author Traugott A. Zimmerli introduced the topic: For those who believe in their authenticity, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are a plan for the gradual enslavement of the world by Judaism. Others contend that the text is a forgery fabricated by the tsarist secret police Ochrana [sic], which aimed to incite hatred of the Jews. I cannot answer the question as to the formal authenticity of these ominous Protocols, but even if they are a fake, the fabricators must have been blessed with prophetic vision. Zimmerli then discussed the issue of authenticity, challenging proof of its falsification. In conclusion, he annotated a few passages from the Protocols.45 While a complete version was not available on Wilhelm Tell itself, links to relevant websites made the text easily accessible. Although, like many others on the Holocaust denial scene, this site lost some of its appeal following the trials of various Holocaust deniers, such as David Irving and Ernst Zündel, pages of this ilk remain in cyberspace, forming a part of the information refuse accessible at any time. Rami’s internet portal is considered to be the interface between extreme right-wingers and radical Islamists. In terms of content, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion functions as a link between the two camps. It is no coincidence that it is downloadable in a wide array of languages from Rami’s site. Up until October 2000, Rami provided links to Hizballah and Hamas, whose charter from 1998 referred to the Protocols. In January 2000 a text denying the Holocaust appeared for the first time on the Hamas site, deepening their ideological affinity to Rami. These revisionist ideas, however, appeared only in Arabic, and were unavailable on the English version of the site, Hamasonline. In summer 2004 Hamasonline posted the Protocols under the category “Special Documents,”46 but the site became only partially accessible and the tract was removed.

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Networking between Radio Islam and Jew Watch, on the one hand, and Radio Islam and the Hizbollah-linked Moqawama, on the other, reveals the broad ideological spectrum of Rami’s portal. Jew Watch disseminates classical antisemitic propaganda − from defamation of Jews as Communists to ZOG conspiracies − as well as articles with titles such as “Jewish Genocide Today” and “Jewish Control of the Media.” Moreover, the Protocols appeared in their entirety under the listing “Jewish References & Documents.” The site operator added a “Compendium of Arguments,” aimed at proving the authenticity of the Protocols, originating from the archive of neo-Nazi Willie Martin. This resource, which contains a long list of antisemitic articles, appeared as a link on various Christian internet portals, such as Christianparty and Christianbiblestudy.47 The Protocols were also available via the websites Palestine-mail and Resistance – Palestine Is Free from the River to the Sea. The links offered by the Lebanese Islamic Resistance, via Moqawama, offered access to numerous revisionist, Islamist, and pro-Palestinian sites, most of which featured the Protocols: from Ahmed Rami, through the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, Jew Watch, and Hoffman’s Radical Truth, to the Islamic Association for Palestine and the Shi‘i site al-Shiah of the Iranian Aalulbayt Global Information, founded in 1998.48 Although disabled since 2004 due to pressure exerted by Meldpunt Discriminatie Internet/Magenta, the Dutch organization against discrimination on the internet, and the combined efforts of the Dutch complaints bureau, the German government bureau Jugendschutz.net, and the ADL, the Jihad site Sluitjeaan (Join us) posted Holocaust denial material, as well as the Protocols.49 Nationalist Turkish sites also utilize antisemitic propaganda, by which they seek to indoctrinate immigrant communities in Europe. For instance, the site Ötüken provides the complete text of the Protocols under the heading “Syýonýzm.”50

UFO enthusiasts, esoterics, and occultists The Italian homepage X-Files (Phoenix/Fenice), which features everything “that the official mass media tries to keep secret,” offered the entire range of conspiracy theories spawned by the September 11 attacks, as well as detailed debates on the theme of the “Antichrist” and the number 666, visually reinforced by a caricature of an ibex (traditionally associated with Judaism in astrology) adorned with a Star of David. The complete text of the Protocols was available from September 2002, under the heading “New World Order.”51 The wealth of themes presented attracted the interest of seemingly divergent groups, such as anti-globalization activists, UFO enthusiasts, esoterics, and vegetarians. Several texts by Maurizio Blondet, an Italian antisemitic conspiracy theorist with strongly fundamentalist Christian leanings who also publishes in the Islamist press and on Radio Islam, appeared on the site.

The Protocols on the internet 157 The section, “The Americans Are the Agents of the Rothschilds in Iraq,”52 posted by the Dutch ufology site Niburu, had the following update: “Anguish in Spain. The terrorist attack on the train in Madrid [in March 2004] was manipulated by the Rothschilds to punish Spain for taking sides with the Windsors.”53 There followed an elaboration of the Protocols, supposedly proof that the Jewish world dictatorship is a Rothschild plot. “The devilish bankers and their admirers are trying to convince you that the Protocols are a fake – they aren’t!” The final sentence had a link to savethemales.ca and an article by Henry Makow, an American anti-globalization activist who dabbles in conspiracy theories and operates a site called Protocols Forgery Argument Is Flawed. Niburu provided a translation of the text, taken from rense.com. There it becomes clear that the author was Markow.54 For his part, Jeff Rense spreads conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks and the London bombings of July 2005, and lobbies for support of Canadian− German Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel. He also offers links to Jew Watch, to UFO sites, and to a Zionism database.55 The Dutch anti-globalization site Indymedia contained a poster template from Niburu/SOPN (Netherlands Sovereign Independent Press Bureau), which implied that the people were being deceived by the powers that be. One user of the Indymedia site pointed out the sectarian background of Niburu and demanded that the link and template be deleted, while another described it as an interesting site with a wealth of new information.56 This example shows how various extremist groups become networked through specific internet sites, thus gaining quick easy access to “sources” such as the Protocols, which confirm their conspiracy theories. This antisemitic forgery lends itself to exploitation as a counter-text against globalization or the “New World Order,” an issue that worries both right- and left-wing extremists as well as radical Islamists. Moreover, the Protocols offer simple “explanations” for the complex structures of world politics, or even for natural disasters, and are thus attractive to anyone susceptible to such ideas. Right-wing extremists use the Protocols as a tool in their argument that the Jews exploit the Holocaust or invented it as a means to exert financial and political pressure on Europe and the US. Even if anti-globalization activists and the extreme left generally distance themselves from such claims, at least some of them are inclined toward notions that consider Jews to be the driving force behind a “world power,” or that capitalism and globalization are “dominated by Jews.” In this context they see the Protocols as furnishing tangible proof of a Jewish bid for world control. Cyberspace provides a platform where all this obscure content and abstruse ideas can be placed, exchanged, and discussed. Since ufologists are conspiracy theorists par excellence and many esoterics and sectarian Christians are open to such ideas, they too use the internet as a propaganda and communication tool.

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Conclusion The Protocols find a receptive audience among youth from Muslim immigrant communities in Europe, whose opinions are decisively pre-shaped by Arab popular entertainment, such as the Egyptian TV series Knight without a Horse.57 Broadcast via satellite at prime evening viewing time during the Ramadan of 2002, this soap opera of forty-one episodes presented the Protocols as authentic. The following year, the Syrian television series Diaspora, which adopted a similar theme, was also viewable in Europe via Arab stations. The medium of television, which is still as much a source of fascination for youth as cyberspace, transmits content which can be viewed in parallel to that readily available on the internet, or may trigger an interest in searching for confirmation of ideas appearing there. Since radical Islamists are networked via links to right-wing extremists and vice versa, with the Protocols exploited by both ideological camps for their respective political goals, young people become entangled in a web-like environment characterized by a selfperpetuating, enclosed view of the world. Educators and social counselors, often inadequately trained to deal with such content, find it extremely difficult to break through these stereotypes. This is often exacerbated by the way in which some of these antisemitic thought patterns connect almost seamlessly into seemingly reasonable positions taken by the radical left or opponents of globalization, a trend particularly observable on the internet.

Notes 1 For antisemitism on the internet in various European countries, see also Werner Bergman and Juliane Wetzel, “Manifestations of Antisemitism in the European Union,” first semester 2002, Synthesis Report (draft) February 20, 2003 (Vienna, 2003; published unofficially). 2 Mark Weitzman, “Using the Web as a Weapon: The Internet as a Tool for Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism,” Testimony before the US House of Representatives, November 6, 2007, available at http://homeland.house.gov/ SiteDocuments/20071106144414–90408.pdf. 3 Ibid. 4 For an analysis of Evola’s theories, his blood, race, and misogynist notions, and his influence on the Italian extreme right, see Franco Ferraresi, “From Evola to Freda: Radical Right Doctrine up to 1977,” in idem, The Extreme Right [in Italian] (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1984), pp. 19−30. 5 Blick nach rechts (View to the right), October 8, 1990. 6 Accessed August 16, 2005. 7 Juliane Wetzel, “The International Extreme Right and Arab Anti-Zionism on the World Wide Web” [in German], Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 12 (2003), pp. 121−44. 8 Francesco Germinario, “The Right between Leagists and Anti-leagists” [in German], Il calendario del populo (January 1994), p. 48. 9 “Italy,” in: Antisemitism World Report 1994, Institute of Jewish Affairs; Report on the situation of antisemitism in Italy by Adriana Goldstaub (Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea, Milan), presented at the congress of the Unione delle Comunità Ebraiche Italiane, June 20–23, 2002 (manuscript).

The Protocols on the internet 159 10 Written under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald (William Pierce), the deceased leader of the US neo-Nazi organization National Alliance, The Turner Diaries, which were available on the National Alliance website, apparently not only inspired the Oklahoma City bomber but also displayed parallels to the events of September 11, 2001. The main protagonist in Pierce’s novel undertakes a suicide bombing by crashing into the Pentagon. On The Turner Diaries and the National Alliance, see Thomas Grumke, Right-Wing Extremism in the US [in German] (Opladen, 2001), pp. 112−19. 11 Diverse Google sites accessed August 18, 2005. 12 Accessed August 16, 2005. 13 In 1976, Pope Paul VI dismissed Lefebvre from his post as bishop and excommunicated him from the priesthood; Lefebvre supported the preservation of the traditional “holy” mass, while his fraternity developed into a fundamentalist Catholic sect. Despite his defrocking, Lefebvre continued to attract believers and in the 1980s he publicly supported Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National; see entry on Lefebvre in the Munzinger-Archiv. 14 The site was closed by Olsen for nearly a year in 2007; the reason remains unclear. 15 Holywar site accessed May 5, 2003 and August 18, 2005. 16 Details from the International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism in the Internet, accessed September 2, 2000; see also Alexander Kissler “Insane Lesson: Today the Pope Meets the Excommunicated Successors of Lefebvre” [in German], Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 29, 2005. 17 “Dismay as Pope Welcomes Back Holocaust Denier Bishop Richard Williamson,” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5585738.ece, January 26, 2009. 18 The original appeared in the inflammatory antisemitic children’s book by Ernst Hiemer, The Poisonous Mushroom (Nuremberg: Stürmerverlag, 1938). Site accessed March 20, 2003. 19 Accessed August 11, 2005. 20 Biblebelievers site accessed June 16, 2005. 21 Accessed June 16, 2005. 22 Panorama, January 27, 2005, http://www.ndrtv.de/panorama/archiv/2005/0127/ tsunami_verschwoerung.html. 23 Becker has been tried for incitement on various occasions since 2003. In 2004 he was penalized for using anti-constitutional symbols. He began using overseas providers after a number of his domains were closed down. 24 Accessed August 18, 2005. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Accessed June 16, 2005. 28 Recht und Freiheit 2 (2005), site accessed June 16, 2005. 29 Castle Hill (a radical right publishing house, based in Hastings, UK), 2004. 30 Informationsdienst gegen Rechtsextremismus, Jürgen Graf: www.idgr.de. 31 Heptagon Forum, link to Klaus Krusche, accessed June 16, 2005. 32 Accessed February 7, 2008. 33 Accessed June 16, 2005. 34 Risi’s site accessed August 18, 2005. 35 National-Zeitung, accessed November 19, 2004. 36 Accessed August 16, 2005. 37 Last accessed March 24, 2009. 38 Nakba, meaning “catastrophe” is an Arab term used to describe the Palestinian tragedy in the wake of the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. 39 Accessed August 11, 2005.

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40 Accessed August 23, 2005. 41 Radio Islam site accessed June 21, 2000; Rami continued to reproduce these and similar statements in pseudo-intellectual, long-winded texts on Radio Islam; accessed March 21, 2003 and August 18, 2005. 42 Michael Whine, “Cyberspace. A New Medium for Communication, Command and Control by Extremists,” April 8, 1999, at www.ict.org.il/articles/cyberspace. htm. 43 Blick nach Rechts, April 18, 1995. 44 Ibid.; see also Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 24, 1997. 45 Accessed August 23, 2004. 46 Accessed August 26, 2004. 47 Accessed August 18, 2005. 48 Ibid. 49 Report published by the INACH (International Network against Cyber Hate) on the occasion of a conference on antisemitism held in Berlin, April 28−29, 2004, available at http://www.inach.net/content/INACH%20–20Antisemitism%20 on%20the%20Internet.pdf (Amsterdam), accessed April 22, 2004. 50 Accessed August 23, 2005. I would like to thank Claudia Dantschke from Zentrum Demokratische Kulturen in Berlin for drawing my attention to this site. 51 Accessed August 26, 2004 and August 23, 2005. 52 “Amerikanen zijn Rothschild gevolmachtigden in Iraq “update”; site accessed August 26, 2004 and August 24, 2005. 53 Ibid. 54 Rense site accessed August 24, 2005. 55 Ibid. 56 Indymedia site accessed August 24, 2005. 57 Antisemitism Worldwide 2000 and 2003 (Tel Aviv University), http://www.tau. ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2000–1/arab.htm; http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/ asw2003–4/arab.htm.

10 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Japan David G. Goodman

Although its claim to document a nefarious Jewish conspiracy to rule the world has long since been disproved and the tract itself has been shown to be a malicious forgery cobbled together from plagiarized sources, it is sobering to realize that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion continues to circulate and influence large numbers of people around the globe.1 Japan has not been exempt from this trend. Ever since the New York Times reported in 1987 that books claiming to reveal a global Jewish conspiracy had become bestsellers in Japan, there has been concern, dismay, and disbelief about the popularity of the Protocols in that country.2 Particularly disturbing has been the spread of suspicions about and animosity toward Jews − and, by extension, toward the State of Israel − to a non-western country with virtually no Jewish population or historical contact with Jews. How might this phenomenon be understood, and what are its implications? This chapter reviews briefly the history of the Protocols in Japan, introduces several authors who have exploited this tract, and offers an analysis of its popularity there.

The Protocols in Japan Well before the Protocols were introduced into Japan, the Japanese had their own indigenous conspiracy theory which held that a band of alien coreligionists was plotting to destroy them and take over their country. As the historian Miyazawa Masanori3 has shown, the anti-Christian polemics of the early and mid-nineteenth century in Japan bear a strong resemblance and served as precursors to the anti-Jewish theories of the Protocols. Anti-Christian writings were built on a long tradition of both Chinese and indigenous polemics dating back to the sixteenth century. Over the years, numerous theorists of various ideological stripes had argued − not without some justification, it should be added − that Christian missionaries were the advance guard of western imperialism, who sought with their charitable works to weaken the resistance and resolve of a society so that it could be taken over by the West. The Japanese were aware that Indonesia, the Philippines, and even parts of China had been subjugated in this way, and they were understandably determined to prevent this from happening to them. Thus, when The Protocols of

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the Elders of Zion arrived in Japan, the idea of a global plot to subjugate Japan was already familiar to the Japanese, who easily substituted Jews for Christians as the perpetrators of the plot.4 The tract itself was first introduced to Japan at the time it was disseminated in the English-speaking world, around 1920, when Japan was engaged in the Siberian Intervention of 1918−1922 − an attempt by American, Japanese, French, British, Canadian, and Czech forces to reverse the Russian Revolution. Eventually, more than 72,000 Japanese troops were dispatched to Siberia, where they remained longer than any other foreign force. While in Siberia, the Japanese came into close contact with White Russian troops, who had been issued copies of the Protocols as required reading. Introduced to Japan by veterans of this Siberian campaign, as in Russia, the tract was used initially to explain the Russian Revolution and the failure of anti-Communist forces to reverse it. Higuchi Tsuyanosuke (1870−1931) was the first of the Siberian veterans to publicize the Protocols in Japan. Under the pseudonym Kitagami Baiseki, he published a series of lectures under the title The Jewish Peril (Yudayaka) in 1921. Higuchi had trained at the Russian Orthodox Nikolai Seminary in Tokyo, received a divinity degree from the Theological Seminary in St. Petersburg, and served with the Japanese army in Siberia for thirty-nine months as a teacher of Russian. The first complete Japanese translation of the Protocols appeared three years later, in 1924. The tract was translated by Yasue Norihiro (1888−1950) under the pseudonym Hō Kōshi, and titled Behind the World Revolution (Sekai kakumei no rimen). Yasue, like Higuchi, had studied Russian and served with the Japanese army in Siberia from 1918 to 1920. In 1921, he traveled to Palestine to research the situation there at the behest of the General Staff Office; and he went on to become one of Japan’s leading “Jewish experts” during the Asia−Pacific War. Several other translations subsequently appeared, including Kubota Eikichi’s 1938 version, The Great Plot to Overthrow the World: The Jewish Protocols (Sekai tenpuku no dai-inbō − Yudaya purotokōru), and Shiōden Nobutaka’s one, which was included in his 1941 tome, The Thought and Movement of the Jews (Yudaya shisō oyobi undō), reissued in 1987.5 During the 1920s and early 1930s, the Protocols and its theory of a global Jewish conspiracy spread in Japan. As a political tract, it was popular among right-wing ideologues, who used it to defend the failure of the Japanese military in Siberia and to promote their emperor-centered nationalism. They were challenged by Japanese liberals such as Yoshino Sakuzō (1878−1933), a professor in the law department of Tokyo Imperial University and an early advocate of democracy in Japan. In June 1921, Yoshino wrote, “When I saw that today influential people are attempting to resist new ideas with this sort of ludicrous gimmick, I began to worry about the potential retarding effect on our culture, and I realized that I could not remain silent.” Yoshino accurately described the Protocols as “a forgery based on traditional western prejudices against Freemasons and Jews created to incite a hatred of bolshevism”; as

The Protocols in Japan 163 a reactionary work intended to galvanize the right wing against the forces of liberalism, progress, and peace; and he argued that it was inconceivable that Jews would write anything so patently contrary to their own interests.6 Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933 and concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany in 1936. In September 1940, it signed the Tripartite Pact, formally joining Italy and Germany in the Axis. As Japan became more isolated internationally, its German ally exercised increasing influence, and Japanese voices extolling Hitler and Nazism became more prevalent. As part of this trend, the Protocols became widely known and accepted in Japan. The highly respected liberal historian Irokawa Daikichi recalled years later in his autobiography having made the following entry in his diary when he was a high school student: Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek, Roosevelt, and Churchill are all puppets of International Jewry; the roots of their strategy lie in secret Jewish organizations of Jewish military industrialists, international businessmen, finance capitalists, members of secret societies, speculators, and the like; Hitler and the Nazis are the saviors of mankind for combating them … Japan has also been victimized by the Jews, who initiated the present war. Any Japanese with an ounce of sense knows that we are not imperialists.7 Similarly, the historian Saito Takashi recalled, During the war, all the knowledge we had about Europe and America was what we could glean from our western history and world geography textbooks. Books describing “the Jewish global conspiracy” and “the Masonic threat” were available, and our knowledge was so poor that we readily believed the theories they presented.8 Paradoxically, in the postwar period, some of the prewar proponents of the Protocols used their promotion of its theories to prove their credentials as “friends of the Jews.” Foremost among these was Inuzuka Koreshige, a navy captain during the war who, between 1940 and 1942, was in charge of the more than 20,000 Jewish refugees living in Shanghai. Inuzuka was selected for this position because he had authored numerous tracts based on the Protocols, arguing the extraordinary power of the Jews, and as a consequence was regarded as an expert on Jewish affairs. Rather than exterminate them as the Germans advocated, however, Inuzuka argued that Japan should befriend the Jews and exploit their supposed awesome power for the benefit of the Japanese empire. Among other things, Inuzuka co-authored a memorandum, coined the “Fugu Plan,”9 which proposed that Japan create a Jewish homeland for the Jews in East Asia in order to avail itself of Jewish capital and expertise. The memorandum never became government policy, but it was indicative of efforts by some Japanese to mobilize “Jewish power” for the good of Japan.10

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After the war, Inuzuka presented himself as a “friend of the Jews” and played a prominent role in Japanese−Jewish organizations. Eventually, his prewar writings became known, but he continued to serve as president of the Japan−Israel Association until his death in 1965. In the minds of Inuzuka and his wife Kiyoko, who later wrote a book defending him,11 there was no contradiction in his attitude toward Jews: he had been wholly consistent in his awed respect for Jews and his desire to foster a relationship with them that would benefit Japan. The Protocols lost their allure after the war as Japan strove to recover and re-establish itself as a democracy. Japan’s Nazi connections, and indeed the legacy of the war, were systematically obscured in the context of the Cold War as Japan reinvented itself as an ally of the United States in the struggle against communism. It was not until the 1980s, in the course of renewed friction over what the US claimed were Japan’s unfair trading practices (a claim many Japanese rejected as baseless “Japan-bashing”), that the Protocols once again became fashionable there. Commentators exploited the Protocols in order to argue that the United States was a “Jewish nation” and that US policies toward Japan were designed to destroy it as part of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. The Protocols appealed to a broad spectrum of Japanese in the 1980s and 1990s. Consideration of the motives of some of the individuals who promoted the tract reveals that its popularity did not result from the advocacy of any particular group but because it was useful to a variety of people with diverse psychological needs and political agendas. Furthermore, there was a cumulative effect, culminating in the formation of a political party and terrorist violence in the 1990s.

Four portraits The Christian fundamentalist xenophobe Uno Masami The first author to spectacularly resurrect the Protocols in the mid-1980s was Uno Masami (1941− ), a fundamentalist minister in the Osaka Bible Christian Church (Ōsaka seisho kirisuto kyōkai) and self-styled “expert” on Middle Eastern affairs. In two bestsellers published in 1986, which sold a combined total of more than a million copies, Uno reactivated and exploited latent Japanese images of Jews and showed that a savvy author could make a lot of money doing so. His theories were accorded a high degree of credibility in mainstream journalistic, business, and political circles, worrying foreign and some Japanese observers.12 Uno revived and refurbished Japan’s xenophobic ethnic nationalism, arguing that the country faced a mortal threat from the adherents of an alien occult religion, which he identified with the Jews. He explained US−Japanese friction over trade by asserting that the United States was controlled by a secret, all-powerful Jewish “shadow government.” Japanese−US relations

The Protocols in Japan 165 were, in fact, Japanese−Jewish relations, according to Uno, as he trumpeted in the title of one of his bestsellers, If You Understand the Jews, You Will Understand the World (Yudaya ga wakaru to sekai ga miete kuru).13 Furthermore, because they had been mandated by the American-drafted postwar constitution, all of Japan’s democratic institutions were merely agencies of a Jewish plot to destroy Japan.14 Democracy and internationalism were simply the “judaization of Japan.” In response to this Jewish threat, Uno urged his countrymen to emulate Adolf Hitler and devise policies that would protect the interests of the Japanese ethnic nation (minzoku no rieki).15 Christian theology played an essential role in Uno’s thought. Uno had previously published explicit works of Christian prophecy, including Great Prophecies of the Old Testament: The Jews and Armageddon (Kyūyaku seisho no dai-yogen: sekai saishū sensō to Yudayajin) which appeared in 1982.16 In these, Uno preached that the ultimate aim of the Jews was to precipitate World War III in order to bring about the Messianic Age.17 As foretold by the prophet Ezekiel,18 a Soviet invasion of Israel would precipitate the war, which the Jews would win.19 A Jewish autocrat would be anointed and benevolently rule the world from the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem, but the Jewish dictatorship would last only three and a half years, after which the real Messiah, the resurrected Jesus Christ, would appear on the Mount of Olives to usher in the true Millennium.20 Based on the Book of Revelation (13:5−8), Uno’s argument closely resembles the apocalyptic theology of the American premillennialist preacher Hal Lindsey, of which he was apparently aware, and the immensely popular The Late Great Planet Earth was first published in 1970 and reportedly sold eighteen million copies in the US by the mid-1980s. The cataclysm Uno predicts is identical to the one Lindsey describes, and he uses the same exegetical evidence.21 Uno Masami’s achievement is to have synthesized Japan’s indigenous xenophobia and ethnic nationalism with trends that were current in Christian fundamentalism in a conspiracy theory that derived from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In so doing, he achieved both financial success and respectability. His books were advertised prominently in all Japan’s major newspapers; he was quoted in news articles about the Japanese economy;22 and he was invited by a conservative faction of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party to speak at a Constitution Day rally in May 1987.23 Not only did Uno’s success embolden others to follow his example, but his notoriety made The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and its theory of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy Japan and rule the world common knowledge in Japan. The frustrated academic Yajima Kinji It is often argued, especially in the post-9/11 world, that feelings of humiliation go far to explain the ideology of terrorism. In the Japanese case, a sense of frustration and humiliation serves as justification for the turning of

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some Japanese intellectuals to the theories of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Yajima Kinji (1919−94) is an example. A prominent professor of politics and economics, Yajima taught at a number of prestigious institutions over the course of his career and was a well-respected scholar.24 Yajima’s academic credentials notwithstanding, in 1986 he published The Expert Way to Read the Jewish Protocols (Yudaya purotokōru chō-urayomi-jutsu), which purports to analyze Japan’s current position in the world and predict its future over the next ten years on the basis of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.25 By 1987, The Expert Way was already in its fifty-fifth printing; and continues to be available at amazon.com in Japan. In the introduction to The Expert Way, Yajima traces his fascination with the Protocols to his experience in October 1972, when he visited California during the Nixon−McGovern presidential campaign. He writes that he was invited to participate in a panel to discuss trade friction between Japan and the United States; but when he read the coverage of the event in the Sacramento Chronicle the next day, he was deeply offended by the condescending and racist way he felt the paper described him. From Sacramento, he traveled to San Francisco, where he visited the exclusive men’s only Bohemian Club. There he became convinced that the world was not run by institutions, as the uninitiated might think, but by secret societies of the rich and powerful that operated behind the scenes. In the clandestine reaches of secret groups like the Bohemian Club, individuals, business enterprises, and supposedly opposing political parties were in fact working in concert. For Yajima, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was the manual that detailed the consensus strategy of those powerful forces that controlled the world. Aware that the Protocols were universally regarded by responsible people as a forgery, Yajima defended his decision to accept its theories in the following terms: So the question then becomes, who is carrying out this strategy? According to the Protocols, it is the Jews. In fact, there are more than a few people who say, “The Protocols are the secret strategy document for the realization of the Jews’ ambition to control the world.” On the other hand, majority opinion asserts, “The Protocols are the greatest and most sophisticated forgery in history, written with the purpose of ensnaring the Jews.” In the final analysis, it is not clear which is true. Here is my view: I think the Protocols are a forgery. But the Jews are the only ones capable of the particular, concrete expressions in the Protocols regarding ideology, politics, economics, and religion. Consequently, the Protocols were either written by someone more familiar with the Jews than the Jews themselves, or, if that is not the case, then it was put together from the results of all the research ever done on the Jews. In either case, there is no doubt that the contents consist of the wisdom of the Jews.26

The Protocols in Japan 167 Just as Uno Masami seems to have been influenced by the fundamentalist Hal Lindsey, Yajima was inspired by Gary Allen, a prominent right-wing ideologue of the John Birch Society and speechwriter for former Alabama governor George Wallace.27 Yajima explicitly names the Jews as Allen’s “insiders” and “power elite,” and identifies the Council on Foreign Relations, Britain’s Royal Institute for International Affairs, and other favorite targets of conspiracy theorists as the loci of Jewish power.28 Ultimately, however, the purpose of Yajima’s Expert Way to Read the Jewish Protocols is to respond to the inferiority complex engendered by a prominent Japanese academic’s encounter with the United States. Despite his scholarly achievements, the world remained opaque to Yajima until he encountered the Protocols, which explained to him what was really going on beneath the surface. The Protocols helped salve his bruised ego by revealing that he was a victim of the racist conspiracy at the root of world politics. The new left ideologue Ohta Ryū The German Socialist August Bebel coined the phrase “the socialism of fools” to describe the activities of those who blamed the Jews for the world’s ills instead of the real culprit, capitalism. Bebel would have applied the phrase to Ohta (or, Ōta) Ryu, whose career reflects the steady degeneration of the Japanese left in the years since World War II. Ohta was born Kurihara Ryūichi on the island of Sakhalin in 1930 and died in 2009. He joined the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) in 1947 but left it ten years later in the wake of Khrushchev’s 1956 revelations of Stalin’s crimes. Ohta then formed the Trotskyist League of Japan (Nihon Torotsukisuto renmei), which was the immediate forerunner of the League of Revolutionary Communists (Kakkyōdō, short for Kakumei-teki kyōsanshugisha dōmei), which Ohta established in December 1957 with Kuroda Kan’ichi and others. Kakkyōdō spawned the two most important sects of the Japanese New Left: the Revolutionary Marxist Faction (Kakumaru, short for Kakumei-teki Marukusushugi ha) and the Nucleus Faction (Chūkaku). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the two engaged in internecine urban warfare, known in Japanese as uchi-geba, which resulted annually in hundreds of violent clashes and caused numerous deaths and injuries. This sectarian warfare disgusted the Japanese public and contributed significantly to the general loss of sympathy for the left in Japan in the 1970s and beyond. Calling himself a “pure Trotskyist” (jun-Toro), Ohta left Kakkyōdō in July 1958, but he remained a seminal thinker of the Japanese New Left movement. He was involved in the establishment and dissolution of numerous left-wing sects and movements, and attempted, among other things, to infiltrate and hijack the Japan Socialist Party. As the New Left degenerated and it became clear that it would never achieve its goals, Ohta turned his attention to other radical causes. He called, for example, for a revolution among Japan’s indigenous Ainu minority and

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for an ecological revolution to protect the environment. He promoted what he termed Tenju no gaku, which demands the repentance of the human race, the enemies of the earth, and the peaceful coexistence of all species throughout the universe. He also had parliamentary ambitions, and in 1990 ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Lower House of the Japanese Diet. Ohta is a prolific author. A search on the Kinokuniya Book Web, an amazon.com-like website, produces eighty titles with Ohta as author or translator.29 Ohta wrote Religion and Revolution (Shūkyō to kakumei) in 1980, but turned his attention fully to religion and the occult only in 1991, when he published The Principle of UFOs and Celestial Civilization (UFO genri to uchū bunmei). His first book about Jews appeared in 1991, The Global Strategy of the Seven Great Jewish Cartels (Yudaya shichi-dai-zaibutsu no sekai senryaku), which he followed with a similarly titled sequel the following year. Since 1991, Ohta has published at least sixteen books with the word Yudaya (Jew) in the title and many more volumes of conspiracy theories that deal with the “Jewish threat.” In addition to his original writings, Ohta has produced numerous translations, including Martin Luther’s The Jews and Their Lies (2003) and works by American conspiracy theorists Eustace Mullins and John Coleman. Ohta has also experimented with electoral politics, having founded the Global Restoration Society (Chikyū ishin kai), which appears to be identical to the Global Restoration Party (Chikyū ishin tō); the latter fielded candidates in the 1992 Upper House Diet election on a platform opposing “the ambitions of the Jews (Pharisees) to conquer the world and turn it into a global pasture for the human race.”30 Although the Global Restoration Party polled only 11,883 votes, or 0.03 percent of the electorate,31 it was the first time since 1942 that a candidate for public office in Japan had run on an overtly anti-Jewish platform. Ohta Ryū is not the only Japanese leftist to be seduced by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In Sapio, a twice-monthly news magazine with a circulation (in 1989) of 230,000, for example, left-wing commentator Hirose Takashi asserted that a Jewish conspiracy headed by the Rothschilds controlled the world’s media, military, and governments; and produced a chart to prove it.32 However, Ohta Ryū’s career offers the clearest example of the descent of a Japanese leftist from orthodox communism to a quixotic struggle with imaginary demons. Ohta demonstrates how a left-wing activist was seduced by the Protocols and converted, in August Bebel’s famous phrase, to “the socialism of fools.” The megalomaniacal Guru Asahara Shōkō By the mid-1980s, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion had been popularized in Japan and the notion that the Jews were threatening to destroy Japan and control the entire world was appearing in best-selling books, widely read periodicals, and in large, gaudy advertorials in daily newspapers. As noted

The Protocols in Japan 169 above, the Global Restoration Party had been formed and ran candidates for public office on a platform drawn from this tract. The Protocols’ conflation of the Jews and Freemasons,33 the calumny that Jews control the media and manipulate world governments, including those of the US and Japan, and the image of the United States as a “Jewish nation,” were widely disseminated and, to some extent, believed. Into this milieu appeared Asahara Shōkō. Born Matsumoto Chizuo in Kumamoto in 1955, Asahara was legally blind from birth. Having partial sight in one eye, he nonetheless had an advantage over the completely unsighted pupils at the schools for the blind to which he was sent, and he had high intellectual aspirations. After failing once, he moved to Tokyo in 1977 to try a second time (also unsuccessfully) to pass the entrance examination for Tokyo University. Always interested in the occult, he joined Agonshū, a neo-Buddhist sect, in 1981. In 1982, he was convicted of selling herbal medicines without a permit; and in 1984, he founded Aum Shinsen no Kai (Aum mountain hermit society), the forerunner of Aum Shinrikyō, the Aum Supreme Truth cult. The turning point in Asahara’s transformation from simple charlatan to a megalomaniacal guru came in 1985, when he claimed to have received the vision that defined his mission. In January 1986, he made a short trip to India and announced on his return that while in India he had achieved enlightenment. In 1987, he changed the name of his sect to Aum Shinrikyō, and in 1989 it was recognized as a tax-exempt religious corporation by the Japanese government. Asahara immediately began his quest to achieve salvation through a world-encompassing apocalypse. In 1989 he published From Annihilation to Emptiness (Metsubō kara kokū e), which journalist Tachibana Takashi suggested, was “an almost verbatim regurgitation” of the apocalyptic, neo-Nazi theories of a deranged psychologist named Kawajiri Tōru. Kawajiri’s 1985 work, Scenario for Annihilation (Metsubō no shinario), combined the prophecies of Nostradamus, Armageddon theology, Holocaust denial, and Hitler worship, and claimed that Hitler was alive and well and living on Alexander I Island off the coast of Antarctica, where he was plotting World War III, which would ultimately bring peace and prosperity to the world.34 In February 1990, Asahara stood for election to the Lower House of the Diet, but like Ohta Ryū, who ran in the same election, he was disastrously defeated, polling only 1,783 votes, even less than Joyū Fumihiro, his photogenic lieutenant.35 Stymied at the polls, Asahara hosted an “Armageddon seminar” on Ishigaki Island in the Ryukyu chain in April to plan the implementation of his apocalyptic vision by other means. Aum began experimenting with weapons of mass destruction that same month, when it launched an unsuccessful botulism attack in Tokyo. Two years later, Asahara and members of Aum leadership visited Zaire, in an attempt to acquire the Ebola virus. In 1993, Aum began the large-scale production of sarin nerve gas and acquired an army surplus helicopter in Russia, presumably

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to use as a delivery vehicle. On June 27, 1994, Aum released poison sarin gas from a truck in Matsumoto, a city west of Tokyo. This, as Robert Lifton has pointed out, was “the first large-scale nonmilitary use of nerve gas anywhere on earth.”36 Seven people were killed and hundreds injured, including judges, the probable targets of the attack, who were about to rule against Aum in court. Then, on March 20, 1995, Aum members released sarin on the Tokyo subway system, killing twelve people and injuring more than 5,000 others. In Asahara’s paranoid view, Aum was merely responding in kind to the diabolical threat posed by a global conspiracy out to destroy the sect. The “overarching theme coloring [Asahara’s] entire view of the world,” the religious studies scholar Ian Reader explains, was “the notion that … a vast conspiracy bent on world domination was seeking to destroy Aum as part of its fiendish plans … Aum was the only force left standing between the conspirators (who included the US and Japanese governments, the Freemasons, the Jews, and numerous others) and their evil intentions.”37 This concatenation of Jews, Freemasons, and world governments in a global conspiracy had no other source in Japan but The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Three months prior to its attack on the Tokyo subway, Aum made its indebtedness to the Protocols even more explicit. The January 1995 issue of its mouthpiece Vajrayāna Sacca featured a ninety-five-page “Manual of Fear” (Kyōfu no manyuaru) which quoted liberally from the Protocols and declared war officially on the Jewish “world shadow government”; the latter, it asserted, was plotting to “murder untold numbers of people and … brainwash and control the rest.”38 Despite its rhetoric, Aum was not concerned with Jews per se. Rather the cult targeted the Japanese elite, whom they labeled Freemasons (and therefore Jews).39 Aum’s gassing of the subway in the internationalized center of “Jewish power” in Tokyo in March 1995 thus made a kind of mad sense. Observers of Aum have been strangely reticent to acknowledge the influence of the Protocols and its many derivative books and articles in Japan in shaping Asahara Shōkō’s thought and the sect’s violence. But two who do highlight it are Okuda Hirotaka in his book (cleverly titled to parody the bestsellers by Uno Masami), Read Too Many Jewish Conspiracy Books and Aum Is What You Get (Yudaya o yomu to Aum ga umarete kuru), and the writer Nakajima Wataru, who stated: “it all began with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”40 Aum’s gassing of the Tokyo subway in March 1995 was the logical culmination of the career of the Protocols in Japan.

Since 1995 Popular outrage at Aum’s terrorism and revulsion at the sect’s outlandish doomsday ideology helped stanch the popularity of the Protocols in Japan; and after March 1995 the tract and its derivatives appeared less frequently in bookstores. Aum was not the only reason, however. In January 1995, a major scandal erupted over a Holocaust-denying article, entitled “There

The Protocols in Japan 171 Were No Nazi Gas Chambers,” which appeared in the glossy men’s monthly Marco Polo.41 The article raised the hackles of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, which called for an advertising boycott of Marco Polo until the publisher agreed to take remedial action. As it turned out, the publisher, Bungei Shunjū (which is also the Japanese publisher of Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl) was looking for an excuse to drop the magazine, which was not selling well, and it used the threat of a boycott to terminate publication. The “Marco Polo incident,” as it became known, became a cause célèbre because of its supposed challenge to freedom of expression; but it also spotlighted the history of defamatory literature about Jews in Japan and the irresponsibility of Japanese popular journalism. Together with the earthquake that struck Kobe, also in January, and the Aum attack, the Marco Polo incident was one of the most widely reported news stories of 1995 in Japan. Today, although conspiracy theories derived from the Protocols are less common in Japan than they were at the peak of their popularity, books that tout the Jews’ exceptional, almost superhuman power and financial acumen continue to appear. In May 2004, works with titles such as The Jews’ Wisdom about Making Money, The Great Jewish Billionaires, and Rich Jews were displayed prominently in Tokyo bookstores.42 Ohta Ryū’s new book, The True Identity of the Neo-Cons (Neokon no shotai), which predictably identifies America’s neo-conservatives with the worldwide Jewish conspiracy described in the Protocols, was also exhibited, as was his 2003 translation of Martin Luther’s The Jews and Their Lies and I.B. Pranitis’s The Talmud Unmasked, published together in one volume.43 In short, although the Protocols and its attendant attitudes are less popular than they once were, they are still very much present in Japanese popular culture today.

Conclusion It would be a mistake to exaggerate the significance of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Japan. Jews were among the earliest foreign settlers in Japan after it was opened to the West in the mid-nineteenth century, and there are Jewish graves in the Nagasaki cemetery dating back to the 1860s. During the Asia–Pacific War, a small number of Jews, mostly musicians, continued to work in Japan; while in Japanese-controlled Shanghai, more than 20,000 Jewish refugees lived out the war in relative comfort, fashioning a rich cultural life for themselves and their community, despite Nazi pressure on the Japanese to harm them. In the postwar period, diplomatic relations with the State of Israel, established as soon as Japanese sovereignty was restored in 1952, have remained unbroken. To date, there have been no incidents of violence against Jews or Jewish institutions in Japan remotely comparable to those that have occurred in Europe since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in fall 2000. While Jews may experience some discrimination in Japan because they are foreigners, they almost never suffer because they are Jews.

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Notwithstanding this amicable history, the Protocols is an important and influential book in Japan. As we have seen, it has been circulating in Japan as long as it has in the English-speaking world, and has played a role in Japanese intellectual life since the 1920s. In recent years, figures from Uno Masami and Yajima Kinji to Ohta Ryū and Asahara Shōkō have found the Protocols useful in promoting their diverse agendas; and in the 1990s the Protocols inspired political action and contributed to serious acts of urban terrorism. The Japanese example is also instructive in a larger sense. It suggests that actual experience with Jews or involvement with real political controversies such as the Arab−Israeli conflict are not required for a people to be seduced by the Protocols, or to discover in them a motive and means to commit violence. Like the Communist Manifesto or the Bible, the Protocols are available, and people, regardless of their knowledge or experience of real Jews, will make of them what they choose.

Notes 1 A slightly different version of this chapter was published previously as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Aum, and Antisemitism in Japan, Posen Papers in Contemporary Antisemitism no. 2, (Jerusalem: Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, 2005). 2 “Japanese Writers Are Critical of Jews,” New York Times, March 12, 1987. 3 Japanese names in this chapter appear in the Japanese order, with the surname first. 4 Miyazawa Masanori, “Anti-Christianity and Anti-Semitism: Modern Japanese Xenophobia” [in Japanese], Shakai kagaku kenkyu (Waseda University), no. 84 (February 1984), pp. 311−34. 5 Extended excerpts from Kubota’s translation appear, printed on pink paper with red ink, as an appendix to the Japanese translation of Cohn’s Warrant for Genocide (Tokyo: Dynamic Sellers, 1986), pp. 353−464. 6 Yoshino Sakuzō, “The Truth about the So-Called Global Secret Societies [in Japanese] Chūō kōron (June 1921), pp. 2−42. See also idem, “Concerning the Theory of a Jewish Conspiracy to Overthrow the World” [in Japanese], Chūō kōron (May 1921), pp. 65−72. 7 Irokawa Daikichi, One Man’s History of the Shōwa Era: An Attempt at a Self-History [in Japanese] (Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 1975), pp. 91−92, 115. See also Kimura Hiroshi, “Taken Captive by the Jewish Fever” [in Japanese], Shokun (January 1971); and Mizuta Hiroshi, “One Book” [in Japanese], Asahi shimbun, October 13, 1963. 8 Saitō Takashi, “Encounter with History” [in Japanese], UP (Tokyo University) (September 1975). The Japanese were not unique. As Frank Dikötter notes, “Contempt for the Jews [among Chinese intellectuals] and even a feeling of hatred towards them, remained vivid for decades. Wu Zelin, an outstanding anthropologist active in the 1930s, recently recalled that he and his colleagues used to find the Jews ‘laughable, despicable, pitiable, admirable, enviable, and hateful’.” Frank Dikötter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 114. 9 Marvin Tokayer and Mary Swartz, The Fugu Plan: The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews during World War II (New York: Paddington Press, 1979); see also,

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10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26

27 28 29

David Kranzler, Japanese, Nazis, and Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1938−1945 (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1976), pp. 237−47. Details of these overtures are contained in Kranzler, Japanese, Nazis, and Jews, and Tokayer and Swartz, The Fugu Plan. Inuzuka Kiyoko, Records of the Japanese Imperial Navy’s Inuzuka Agency: Japan’s Operations Regarding the Jewish Problem [in Japanese] (Tokyo: Nihon kōgyō shimbunsha, 1982). For a more detailed discussion, see David G. Goodman and Masanori Miyazawa, Jews in the Japanese Mind, expanded ed. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000), pp. 1−2; 225−32. Uno Masami, If You Understand the Jews, You Will Understand the World [in Japanese] (Tokyo: Tokuma shoten, 1986), p. 147. Uno, You Will Understand the World, pp. 149−50; and idem, If You Understand the Jews, You Will Understand Japan (Tokyo: Tokuma shoten, 1986), p. 161. Uno, You Will Understand Japan, pp. 127, 135, 193−6. Uno, Great Prophecies of the Old Testament: The Jews and Armageddon [in Japanese] (Tokyo: Tokuma shoten, 1982). See also Great Prophecies of the Old Testament, Continued: Armageddon and the Qualifications of the Leader [in Japanese] (Tokyo: Tokuma shoten, 1982). Uno, You Will Understand the World, pp. 241−2; You Will Understand Japan, pp. 237−52. Uno, You Will Understand the World, pp. 7, 234−36. Uno, You Will Understand Japan, p. 244. Uno, You Will Understand the World, pp. 249−52; idem, You Will Understand Japan, pp. 225−26. See Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth (New York: Bantam Books, 1973), especially pp. 135−68. “The Yen: Last Ditch Defense” [in Japanese] Yomiuri shimbun, January 17, 1987. “Backers, Protesters Mark Constitution’s 40th Year,” Japan Times, May 4, 1987. He taught at Tokyo Gakugei University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Aoyama Gakuin University, and at Beijing University, where he was an instructor. He also translated the works of the conservative Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek (1899−1992) and, with Nishiyama Chiaki, edited Hayek’s collected works. In 1979, Yajima translated the liberal philosopher John Rawls’ highly influential A Theory of Justice into Japanese. As a reliable expert on economic affairs, Yajima was twice quoted by Time magazine in 1987, on April 6 and November 9. Yajima Kinji, The Expert Way of Reading the Jewish Protocols: The Next Ten Years [in Japanese] (Tokyo: Seishun shuppansha, 1986). Ibid., pp. 57−58. This is essentially the same argument that Hitler made in Mein Kampf (Book I, ch. ix): “What many Jews may do unconsciously is here consciously made clear. And that is what counts.” Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), p. 358n. Allen’s most popular books, None Dare Call It Conspiracy and The Rockefeller File, were published in Japanese translation in 1986 and 1987, respectively. For more details, see Goodman and Miyazawa, Jews in the Japanese Mind, pp. 229−30n. Before 1991, Ohta’s books focused on Marxist theory, with titles such as The Road to World Revolution (Sekai kakumei e no michi, 1978) and, with Saeki Yosuke, The Revolution in Revolutionary Theory (Kakumei riron no kakumei, 1979). In works such as Introduction to Japan’s Indigenous People (Nihon genjūmin josetsu, 1981) and Japan’s Indigenous People and the Emperor System (Nihon genjūmin to tennōsei, 1982), Ohta concerned himself with Japan’s dwindling Ainu minority; and he also wrote about environmental and animal rights movements in books such as

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30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42

43

D. G. Goodman Manifesto of a Japanese ecologist (Nihon ekorojisuto sengen, 1986) and Toward the Elimination of Animal Domestication (Kachiku seido zenpai-ron josetsu, 1985). This slogan appeared on a campaign poster. Asahi shimbun, July 27, 1992. Sapio, October 28, 1993, pp. 20−21. Akama Gō has been writing about the Jewish−Freemason conspiracy and its designs on Japan since the 1980s. See Japan = A Construct of the Jewish Conspiracy: How Japan’s Leaders Have Responded to the Freemason Threat [in Japanese] (Tokyo: Tokuma, 1986); and The Final Apocalypse of the Jewish−Freemasons [in Japanese] (Tokyo: Raiin shuppan, 2001). Tachibana Takashi, “What is Aum’s ‘Esoteric Buddhism’?” [in Japanese] Shūkan Bunshun, July 27, 1995, p. 165. Ian Reader, Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyō (Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 2000), pp. 154−55. Robert Jay Lifton, Destroying the World to Save It (New York: Henry Holt, 1999), pp. 39−40. Reader, Religious Violence, p. 11. Vajrayāna Sacca 6, January 25, 1995, p. 3. This issue was actually published in December 1994. Ibid., pp. 16−18. Okuda Hirotaka, Read Too Many Jewish Conspiracy Books and Aum Is What You Get: Understanding the Aum Incident [in Japanese] (Tokyo: Kindai bungeisha, 1996); Nakajima Wataru, “Bizarre Writing in the Virtual Age” [in Japanese], Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 223, pp. 37−48. See especially, pp. 42−44. Nishioka Masanori, “There Were No Nazi Gas Chambers” [in Japanese] Marco Polo (January 1995), pp. 170−79. Ugaya Masahiro, The Jews’ Wisdom about Making Money [in Japanese] (Tokyo: Diamond-sha, 2004); Satō Tadayuki, The Great Jewish Billionaires in America [in Japanese] (Tokyo: PHP Kenkyūjo, 2004); and Honda Ken, Rich Jews [in Japanese] (Tokyo: Daiwa shobō, 2003). The last of these carries on its cover the English title The Millionaires’ Philosophy for a Happy Life, and as of July 2003 claimed to have sold 300,000 copies. Ohta Ryū, The True Identity of the Neo-Cons [in Japanese] (Tokyo: Raiin, 2004); idem, trans., The Jews and Their Lies; The Talmud Unmasked [in Japanese] (Tokyo: Raiin, 2003).

11 Adoption of the Protocols in the Arab discourse on the Arab−Israeli conflict, Zionism, and the Jews Esther Webman

As of the early years of the twenty-first century, the myth of the Protocols appeared to be gaining ground in the Arab world, not only as part of intensified psychological warfare against the Jewish state but as part of a way of thinking which reflects on the condition of Arab societies. “Conspiracism provides a key to understanding the political culture of the Middle East. It spawns its own discourse, complete in itself and is virtually immune to rational argument,” claimed historian Daniel Pipes.1 A growing number of Arab intellectuals agree with this assertion, criticizing what they term conspiratorial thinking (fikr ta’amuri) of “the Arab mind,” as an acute and dangerous phenomenon. The late Egyptian expert on Judaic studies ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri2 referred in several books and articles to “the reductionist mind” (al-‘aql al-ikhtizali) in Arab societies, which tends to diminish reality and attribute all changes and events to a hidden hand. These are seen not as the result of interaction between complex circumstances, interests, expectations, and human will, but of an oppressive scheming power that shapes reality according to its whims.3 Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies even embarked in 2006 on a research project which sought to establish the dimensions and characteristics of conspiratorial thinking in the Arab region, and in summer 2008 the online journal Arab Insight dedicated most of its issue to a discussion of Arab conspiracy theories.4 This chapter focuses on the Arab perception of the Protocols and their utilization in the discourse on the Arab–Israeli conflict, Zionism, and the Jews since the 1920s. Perceived as an integral part of Jewish heritage, they were translated into Arabic a few years after their publication and, as in other countries, continuously assumed new life, meaning, and relevance. Their adoption demonstrates that there were no barriers in the process of their reception, despite the political, cultural, and religious differences between the environment in which the Protocols emerged and the recipient society. Moreover, traditional historical perceptions of Muslim−Jewish relations were reconstructed and re-molded to conform with the spirit of the newly acquired text, presenting the Jewish people as a threat not only to Arabs and Muslims but to all humanity.

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Infiltration of the Protocols into the Middle East After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Protocols and Canon Rohling’s Talmud Jew − as leading scholar of Islam and Middle Eastern history Bernard Lewis observed − became the most frequently cited authorities on Jewish matters in the Arab and Islamic worlds, not only on Israel and Zionism, but on Jews and Judaism in general; and not only contemporarily or since the beginning of Zionist settlement, but throughout Jewish history. Nor are these publications confined to the lunatic fringe. They are published by major publishing houses and endorsed by prominent political and religious and intellectual figures, representing all ideological trends.5 The Protocols first appeared in Arabic translation in Palestine and Syria in the mid-1920s, shortly after they made their appearance in western Europe, marking a further penetration of antisemitic literature into the Middle East. The earliest Arab translations were done by Arab Christians. Motivated by his resentment toward the Jews for their role in the Crucifixion, the priest al-Khuri Anton Yamin translated them from French in Cairo in the mid1920s, and published them in book format under the title The Plot of Jewry against the Nations (Mu’marat al-yahudiyya ‘ala al-shu‘ub). At about the same time (1926−27) another translation was published in Raqib Sahyun, a periodical of the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem. Soon afterward, the Protocols were incorporated into an argument against the Jewish settlers in Palestine, instigating fears that a Jewish state there would serve as a springboard for a Jewish conspiracy against the world. Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husayni used them on the eve of the 1929 disturbances in Jerusalem to claim that the Jews were intending to conquer al-Aqsa Mosque, and there were even attempts to disseminate them among British soldiers posted in Palestine.6 Political developments in Palestine after the end of World War II and the ensuing Arab−Israeli conflict led to expansion of the use of the Protocols, which were retranslated and republished in full or in part in various books. They were also serialized in periodicals and dailies in some Arab countries.7 Egyptian thinker and staunch critic of Nazism ‘Abbas Mahmud al-‘Aqqad introduced the Protocols in his early articles in 1948 while covering the war in Palestine, and in his book International Zionism (al-sahyuniyya al-‘alamiyya), published in 1956 in the governmental indoctrination series We Chose for You (Ikhtarna laka), in order to prove the power of Zionism and to point to the ideological similarities between Nazism and Zionism. In 1951 a complete version of the Protocols appeared in Egypt, for the first time translated by a Muslim academic Muhammad Khalifa al-Tunisi. Ahmad ‘Abd al-Ghafur ‘Attar, who published his own translation in Mecca in 1976, claimed that a plagiarized version of Yamin’s book, Zionism Unmasked – The Jews’ Resolutions (al-sahyuniyya safira – muqarrarat al-yahud), was also issued in Cairo by publisher Ahmad Hamid al-Faqi.8 Two years later another translation by Fridrik Zurayq was published in Damascus, entitled The Zionist Goals (Ahdaf al-sahyuniyya). In his introduction, Tunisi described the Jews’ fundamentally

Adoption of the Protocols in the Arab discourse 177 evil traits, explaining the importance of the Protocols for understanding Jewish conduct and events in the Middle East.9 The same reasoning guided later translators and publishers, who continued to believe that the Protocols were the most important book ever to have been published in the world.10 By the 1967 Six Day War, at least nine Arabic translations had been printed, and between 1965 and 1967 fifty political books based on the Protocols were issued in Egypt alone.11 They were adopted by revolutionary and reactionary regimes alike, and incorporated into the texts of nationalist Arab writers12 as well as into those of leftists13 and Islamists,14 in their discussions on Zionism, Judaism, and the Arab−Israeli conflict. They were used in a court of law against Jews accused of Zionism in a trial in Baghdad in 1951, to prove the malignancy of Zionism15; they were introduced into the Egyptian army’s curriculum as the most prominent of Zionist writings;16 and were reportedly found in Egyptian soldiers’ pouches during the Six Day War.17 Egyptian President Jamal ‘Abd al-Nasir handed out a copy of the Protocols to Indian journalist Rustum Karanjia in 1958, to prove there was a network of 300 Zionists who allegedly controlled the fate of the European continent. They were also distributed to official visitors of the Saudi government and to embassies, and in March 1970 even headed the bestseller list in Lebanon.18 Arab and Muslim reliance on the Protocols intensified after 1967, and a specific connection was made between them and the Arab defeat, leading to a spate of antisemitic expressions, conspicuously in religious circles.19 Palestinian pan-Arab activist and former Israeli Knesset member ‘Azmi Bishara confirmed that there was a “rise of a metaphysical attitude that sought to explain the overwhelming Arab defeat of that year in terms of confrontation with an absolute evil bent on a global conspiracy of the nature of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which coincided with the rise of antisemitism in the Arab world after 1967.20 The notion of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy was echoed time and again in the interpretation of regional events and global developments. Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian movement which emerged out of the Muslim Brothers in the Gaza Strip at the end of 1988, cited the Protocols in its covenant, and the Lebanese Shi‘i Islamist organization Hizballah alluded to them repeatedly.21 In the Department of Religion at Cairo University, a master’s thesis claiming their alleged threat to the “Islamic Call” (da‘wa) became a teaching aid in 1990.22 Several events at the turn of the millennium converged to enhance Arab public interest in the Protocols and in conspiracy theories in general: the rapid expansion of globalization; the outbreak of the Second Intifada at the end of September 2000 in the territories of the Palestinian Authority (PA); and the September 11, 2001, events and their aftermath – the war against terrorism in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq.23 The Protocols, Mein Kampf and other books defaming Jews, Israel, and Zionism were seized in April by Israeli forces in the PA offices in Bethlehem and Ramallah, and in May 2002 aboard an Egyptian cargo ship.24 In July 2002, a new translation of the Protocols was published in Egypt in the Book of the Day series put out by the

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respected publishing house Akhbar al-Yawm.25 Another edition was printed to satisfy the high demand, especially during Egypt’s annual International Book Fair held in February 2003.26 A new version by Ahmad Hijjazi al-Saqa, a professor of comparative study of religions at al-Azhar University, and Qatari journalist Hashim Khadr, and a reprint of Muhammad Khalifa al-Tunisi’s translation were also published in Egypt in 2003. In Syria, too, a new edition was issued and displayed at Egypt’s International Book Fair in 2005.27 Simultaneously, they were serialized in newspapers, such as the Saudi weekly akhbar al-‘Alam al-Islami,28 the Egyptian opposition weekly al-‘Arabi,29 and the Jordanian leftist bi-weekly al-Majd.30 This proliferation of the Protocols did not satisfy Saudi writer ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Suwayd, who urged Arab publishers to print them in inexpensive popular editions without consideration of profit due to their importance for the presentation of past and present misdeeds of the Jews, even if reliance on them and the belief in conspiracism seemed to some critics “stupid, reactionary, and uncivilized.”31 However, the most significant trend discerned during this period was the popularization of the Protocols through artistic means, bringing their main themes closer to home and disseminating their message among larger audiences. Young Arab artists “volunteered their services to sharpen and stylize” the negative message concerning Israelis and Jews.32 The Protocols inspired two television series: Knight without a Horse (faris bila jawad) – a forty-one-part Egyptian production by Muhammad Subhi, aired during six weeks in 2002 in the prime-time holiday month of Ramadan; and The Diaspora (al-Shatat) – a twenty-nine-part Syrian production by Nazir ‘Awad, screened during the same period a year later (October−November 2003) by Hizballah’s al-Manar channel.33 Drawing sharp criticism from Jewish organizations and western officials, both series triggered an extensive debate in Egyptian as well as in Syrian and Lebanese papers. Another controversial episode associated with the Protocols occurred in Egypt in November 2003, when the first complete Arabic version translated by Tunisi was displayed alongside the Torah in a showcase of old manuscripts at the newly erected Bibliotheca Alexandria. Although the Protocols were not a monotheistic holy book, explained Yusuf Zaydan, director of the museum’s library in an interview to the weekly al-Usbu‘, they had become sacred and “even more important than the Torah for Zionist Jews in the world,” who conducted their life in accordance with their precepts. It was only natural, he added, to put this book alongside other rare volumes.34

Rationalizing the dissemination of the Protocols – motifs, relevance, and authenticity The discourse on the Jews that developed in the Middle East, particularly after the establishment of the State of Israel, revealed many classic antisemitic motifs and provided fertile ground for reception of the Protocols by all political currents. Once the conspiracy theory ascribed to them acquired

Adoption of the Protocols in the Arab discourse 179 an Islamic cloak, they were accepted as a historical truth, “a bona fide record of Jewish plotting,”35 rooted in the early period of Judaism. The inherent contradictions in this discourse between negation of the links of contemporary Jews to their ancestors the Children of Israel and to Palestine, and attributing traits to the Jews ingrained since antiquity, was no barrier to their proliferation. This essentialist approach, which emanates from a perception of the literal transcendence of the text, “renders their meanings relevant to all contexts, and involves the reader in ‘an interaction among past, present and future, having a bearing on both understanding and action’.”36 Thus, the integration of quotes from past and contemporary sources in this chapter is not the result of negligence or lack of awareness of the potential a-historicity of the argument, but is intended to illustrate how usage of the same texts, language, and content in changing circumstances and historical contexts amplifies their cultural, political, and social significance. “The world knows no other book that has aroused a greater outcry than that caused by this book,” wrote Husayn ‘Abd al-Wahid in his introduction to the 2002 edition. These Protocols, he asserted, reflect “the hysterical religious thoughts of the Jews,” and are considered the secret resolutions of the Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897.37 Egyptian writer Majdi Salim compared them to The Prince of Machiavelli, claiming that the two books had the most destructive influence on the history of mankind.38 The Protocols, stated Egyptian professor of political science at Hilwan University Ahmad ‘Abbas ‘Abd alBadi‘ included all the dimensions of the Zionist plan and provide “a quick look” at “the hatred and rancor” that international Zionism concealed.39 This perception of the Protocols has been shared by many other writers and thinkers since the beginning of their entrenchment in Arab thought in the late 1940s. The fact that they were a forgery did not dissuade the belief that they embodied both Jewish philosophy and the teachings of the Talmud40 on the one hand, and the spirit of modern Zionism, on the other hand. As in other parts of the world, the issue of the authenticity of the Protocols came up repeatedly in the debates revolving around them.41 In 1948, adopting the ostensibly neutral stand of a fact-finding writer, al-‘Aqqad, claimed that whether the Protocols were authentic or not, they raised two intriguing phenomena. One was the disappearance of every version of the book immediately after its publication. “A hidden hand” has striven to prevent its printing in Britain, a country known for its freedom of speech, he claimed. The second was that, surprisingly, all the decisions taken by the Elders of Zion, in accordance with the Protocols, were being realized to the letter in the twentieth century. To boost his argument, he referred to Douglas Reed’s book From Smoke to Smother, published in 1948 in London, which utilizes the Protocols to accuse Zionism of manipulating British policy.42 Muhammad Khalifa al-Tunisi warned readers in the preface of his translation to safeguard their copies because “the Jews were fighting this book whenever it appeared, everywhere and in every language, and offered any price to collect copies and burn them, in order to prevent the world from learning about their

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satanic scheming described in the book.”43 A colonel in the Egyptian army, Muhammad Fa’iz al-Qusari, claimed in the early 1960s that following the major outcry in the European Christian world after the publication of the Protocols, the Jews immediately concealed them.44 Similarly, after the Six Day War, former Jordanian Prime Minister Sa‘d Jum‘a pointed to deliberate Jewish attempts to hide the tract and prevent its dissemination, particularly in the Middle East. He also accused the British authorities of preventing their infiltration into the region during the Mandate in Palestine, as well as the Arabs for not paying attention to them until the establishment of the State of Israel.45 The authenticity of the Protocols was a central issue in the debate that erupted with the screening of the TV series Knight without a Horse, yet it was irrelevant in view of the prevailing belief in them.46 Indeed, Subhi, the producer and hero of the series, maintained that his research proved that nineteen of the twenty-four protocols had been put into practice.47 “The point is not whether they are true,” but rather “whether the antisemite believes them to be true.”48 The fact that most prominent scholars claim they are a forgery does not negate the idea of “the international Jew,” explained Mahmud ‘Abd al-Shakur in his discussion of Henry Ford’s book of the same name.49 Editor of the Egyptian daily al-Akhbar Wajih Abu Zikra, who persistently pursued an anti-Zionist line verging on antisemitism, stressed in his article “The Truth of the Protocols of Zion,” that some of the guidelines of the Protocols were actually being implemented.50 Similarly, Egyptian general (res.) and strategic expert Husam Suwaylam purported to examine the connection between them and “the reality in which we live,” to prove how they “were being applied to the letter” to promote the interests of Israel and “international Zionism.”51 The book, asserted Faruq Hasan in his introduction to the publication of the Protocols in the Saudi paper Akhbar al-‘Alam al-Islami in 1989, “is a meticulous operative plan” designed for execution generation after generation through destruction and malice.52 Moreover, they were said to be written and disseminated by the Jews. Abu Zikra claimed in an article discussing Tunisi’s translation of the Protocols and Ford’s book, that the Jews had created the Protocols. If Ford returned to life, he wrote, he would have seen the Jewish government called AIPAC with its secret and public meetings.53 In the article “The Complete Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” Egyptian journalist Hala Fu’ad also resorted to early Arabic versions to prove her assertion that they were composed by Jews. She quoted ‘Ajjaj Nuwayhid, an activist of the Palestinian national movement, who wrote an introduction to the 1976 translation, as well as Mahmud al-‘Aqqad’s introduction to the 1951 version. The fact that Palestine and the intention to establish a Jewish state were not mentioned in the Protocols, she argued, does not weaken this conclusion, which was refuted by some writers.54 Husayn ‘Abd al-Wahid also contended that “the Zionists and the Jews themselves are responsible for validating the Protocols’ authenticity, especially in

Adoption of the Protocols in the Arab discourse 181 light of the criminal acts of the State of Israel against the Palestinian people.”55 Whether this view is correct or false, asserted Masiri, dissemination of the Protocols serves the Zionists’ interests. He even expressed “his deep sense” of suspicion that Israeli intelligence was involved in their propagation in the Arab world.56 Moreover, the accusation of antisemitism on which the Jewish attack on the Protocols is based, he claimed, was being used by the Jews as a shield behind which they achieved most of their goals.57 The tactics dealing with the issue of authenticity are reminiscent of the revisionists’ approach to writing on the Holocaust. The mere debate in an ostensibly objective manner of the origins, authorship, and authenticity of the Protocols, lent it legitimacy. Similarly, the accusation that the Jews were responsible for their dissemination derived from the same logic of blaming the Jews for the Holocaust, and from the belief in their immense power.58 Comparing the document with actual events was commonly practiced by believers in the Protocols everywhere, says Israeli judge Hadassa Ben-Itto, as well as others. When the truth emerged that the Protocols were forged, the editor of Ford’s Dearborn Independent, for example, “took care not to vouch explicitly for their authenticity.” Instead, the subsequently coined “Ford tactic,” was devised to lead the public to draw the desired conclusion regarding this question.59 Hitler, too, was quoted as being indifferent to the issue of whether the tract was historically true: If it was not, he said, “its intrinsic truth” was all the more convincing to him.60 It would be redundant to dwell on the characteristics of the Jews as they appear in the Protocols and are presented to the Arab public.61 It is, however, instructive to show how major motifs have been perpetuated since the appearance of early references to the Protocols, especially in Egyptian publications. As in other parts of the world, the discourse on the Protocols centers on the Jews’ drive to corrupt all nations and to control the world, their treacherous nature, material lust, and exploitation of the societies they live in. The Jews, hated by all nations throughout history, draw their ambition to lead the world and subject all non-Jews to their will from their belief that they are God’s chosen people. Writers tied the Protocols to the Talmud, stressing that they both reflect the same mentality and dictate Jewish behavior. Qusari contended that “one may assume that all that was in the Talmud appears in the Protocols.”62 A Christian, Nicola Haddad, contended in 1947 that the Jews were striving to corrupt other nations and destroy their advantages in order to exploit them and dominate the world’s resources.63 The Jews, he wrote in another article, control the Egyptian press, using it to promote their interests.64 ‘Aqqad also spoke of Jewish control over media agencies in the US.65 Accusations of Jews’ alleged dual loyalties were also common. In 1948, for instance, writer ‘Adanan al-Kiyali explained that the Jews’ foremost loyalty was to international Jewish organizations and to their own interests and not to the country from which they had benefited and which protected them. Likewise, Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat, an Egyptian intellectual and editor of the leading cultural weekly in the 1940s al-Risala, described the relationship

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between Hasan, a Muslim, Murcus, a Christian, and Cohen, a Jew. Hasan needed money and asked Murcus to mediate between him and Cohen the money lender. Cohen was ready to provide the money until he learnt that it was meant for a contribution to the Palestinian cause. Upset by Cohen’s refusal, Hasan asked whether Cohen was not an Egyptian like Murcus and himself. Cohen replied that his country was the Promised Land, the Jews were his fellow countrymen, and the Zionists his brothers.66 Egyptian writer Muhammad Mahmud Shakir also claimed that every Jew was a Zionist zealot, and accused Egyptian Jews of being a fifth column.67 The Protocols were reflected in the writings of many others even if they were not mentioned by name. “The American people are pawns in the hands of Zionism,” wrote Shakir, who presented the establishment of the State of Israel as a Jewish conspiracy – a motif readily adopted in the Arab discourse on the Arab−Israeli conflict. By establishing their Jewish state, he contended, the Jews want to control the heart of the world – the Middle East − while maintaining their domination of other countries. They believe they were chosen by God to be the masters of the world and to subjugate non-Jews. All countries controlled by the Jews know that they are “the most oppressive creatures, hostile, evil, and hateful toward all humanity.”68 The Protocols also figured in the writing of another Egyptian intellectual, Muhammad ‘Abdallah ‘Inan. In an article from June 1948, he argued that “the Jewish peril” was an old phenomenon from the medieval period, and all western countries were exposed to it. This threat, which explained the emergence of antisemitism at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, he said, was “a hidden, organized attempt to control the world politically and economically, destroy all existing regimes and sow disaster everywhere.” The Jews had become “a strange race” over the years. They had organized themselves in small groups, and despite their limited numbers had amassed wealth and held significant positions in the finance, economic, and literary worlds; moreover, the great revolutionaries had come from among them. But the real danger, he warned, did not emanate from their overt goals but from their secret one – the destruction of the extant social and religious world order by spreading revolutionary and communist ideas. This was also the intrinsic threat of the Jewish state to the Arab and Muslim nations.69 Fifty years later journalist Salama Ahmad Salama used similar phraseology in a two-part editorial on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the State of Israel. “What is this hidden force that planted Israel, nurtured it, protected it, provided it with nuclear weapons and turned it into a state?” asked Salama. Many Arab scholars, he said, were intrigued by this question and attributed to the Jews an extraordinary, omnipotent force, especially in the decision-making centers; they believed there was a Jewish conspiracy aimed at controlling the world and executing the Zionist−Jewish scheme.70 Stemming from this perception, Arab writers accused the Jews of being behind all the disasters and crises that befell Arabs and Muslims around the world, and of

Adoption of the Protocols in the Arab discourse 183 collaborating with all the forces seeking to harm Muslims.71 Moreover, this allegation was reinforced by its connection with the alleged traditional Jewish hatred of Islam and Muslims.72 These ideas and claims were echoed in the Egyptian and Syrian television productions. The main theme of the series Knight without a Horse purports to tell the story of the family of Hafiz Najib, a real journalist and activist in the Arab national movement. Through his eyes, the history of the Middle East, Arab nationalism and Arab resistance to Ottoman and British rule from the mid-nineteenth century till the establishment of the State of Israel unfolds. Only the subplot, which occupies several segments, alludes to the Protocols, exposing the prevailing image of the Jew: a group of stereotypical Orthodox Jews discusses the establishment of a Jewish state with British help, and connives to prevent publication of the Protocols, a copy of which was smuggled into Egypt. Hafiz insists on finding it and establishing the truth about them. Despite Jewish attempts to thwart his efforts, he eventually finds the copy and orders its translation into Arabic. During these episodes the gist of the contents of the Protocols is introduced, presenting Jews as the enemy of mankind who seek to take over the world through money, murder, sex, and other despicable means; Zionism is presented as part of the conspiracy of the “Elders of Zion.” The question of authenticity remains unresolved, leaving viewers to make up their own mind.73 The Syrian-produced series al-Shatat, written by Fathallah ‘Umar, a lecturer at the University of Aleppo, and revised by Syrian historian Suhayl Zakar for accuracy, used similar arguments and motifs. Focusing on the history of the Jews and the emergence of Zionism, it unveils alleged Jewish attempts to dominate the world for centuries through their secret global government and the catastrophes they wreaked on humanity and on themselves − the two world wars, the Russian Revolution, the toppling of the Ottoman ruler, and the invention of chemical weapons. It depicts the supposed Jewish ritual of using the blood of a Christian child in Passover matzos, the Dreyfus affair to demonstrate the Jews’ treacherous character, and the so-called Rothschild legacy.74 In addition to weaving all these aspects together, the Syrian series blatantly links the Protocols to Holocaust denial. One of the episodes (no. 22) showed “the global Jewish government” convening to celebrate the death of one million Jews in World War II. “The higher the number of Jews killed in the war, the more we will be able to convince the world that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is merely a lie invented by the Christian world to increase people’s hatred of the Jews,” explained the head of the government. After persuading world public opinion, he continued, “we would launch a secret and quiet offensive” to defeat the world without a war.75 Other themes typical of Arab Holocaust discourse also appeared in the series, among them the claim of Zionist−Nazi cooperation in the annihilation of European Jews; alleged Zionist indifference to the suffering of persecuted Jews; and the Zionist obstruction of rescue efforts not geared to immigration to Palestine,

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demonstrated by the sinking of a boatload of Jewish refugees on their way to the United States.76

The functional role of the Protocols and conspiracy theories Dwelling on the Protocols in Arab and Muslim societies served two major purposes: it contributed to an ostensibly better understanding of the Jewish/ Zionist/Israeli enemy; and provided an explanation for disturbing events. Tunisi offered the tract to “the Arab fighter” in order to warn him of “the Jewish satanic peril” and encourage his resistance.77 The introduction in another version of the Protocols urged citizens to read the book repeatedly in order “to know the truth about your enemy, and his satanic plans.”78 Likewise, Ahmad ‘Abd al-Ghafur ‘Attar, who complained in 1976 that Arab leaders and scholars neglected them and forgot that “repeated talk on the Protocols is one of the weapons of war,” perceived them as a driving force for Arabs, Muslims and others for confronting the danger of “international Judaism.”79 This reasoning, which attaches such importance to the Protocols for consolidating Arab awareness of the Jewish enemy, continues to prevail in discussion of the Protocols and has even intensified as a result of international and Jewish criticism of their exploitation. Subhi, the producer of the Egyptian TV series, accused the “Israel lobby” of provoking mayhem by misrepresenting the extent to which the program dealt with the Protocols, but expressed his satisfaction that he was capable of revealing “the great conspiracy aimed at swallowing our beloved nation,” and boasted that if the production “terrified Zionists, we will produce more series.”80 Supporters of the series praised it for grasping the importance of art as an effective weapon that “does not spill blood but enlightens minds.” However, several writers accused the Egyptian government of encouraging exploitation of the Protocols to advance national causes. ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri even argued that ruling Arab regimes utilized them as a tool to justify Arab weakness and incompetence, present failures as predictable and understandable, and transfer the battleground from Palestine to the corridors of the American Congress or the streets of Paris. The reason for dissemination of the Protocols and for the myth of Jewish/Zionist power in the Arab world, he maintained, went back to the need “to interpret the expansion of colonialism and the defeats inflicted upon the Arabs by Jewish groups depicted as foreigners.” He considered that the Arab man had been mentally shaken by western occupation, especially due to his ignorance about western civilization.81 Daniel Pipes, too, attempted to trace the roots of the Arab and Muslim belief in conspiracy theories. Claiming that Muslims had not indulged in conspiracism before 1800, he claimed that “conspiracy theories proliferated due to the impact of European thought, the incidence of real intrigue, and the region’s political structures.” The sense that history had gone wrong led many Muslims to see their fall from grace resulting not from the West’s

Adoption of the Protocols in the Arab discourse 185 achievements but from its treachery and scheming. Conspiracy theories serve as a powerful mechanism for reducing dissonance between information and beliefs, and for constructing a meaningful world after profound disturbance, he asserted.82 World domination was “never part of the Muslim array of accusations until exposed to western propaganda,” agrees William Brinner, another scholar of Middle Eastern history.83 Arab society was broken in back and spirit, hence the proliferation of conspiracy theories, explained a Saudi columnist in an interview. “It is comforting to say, ‘It is not our fault’.” The Arab reflex to blame Jews is rooted in military humiliations, economic stagnation, and repressive rule.84 Bernard Lewis made a similar observation. In his discussion of Arab antisemitism, he conceded that consecutive Israeli victories over the Arabs since 1948 presented a “terrible problem of explanation,” especially in light of traditional perceptions and the Arab media description of the Jews as a cowardly people. They required accounts “beyond the normal processes of rational thought,” found in European antisemitic literature, and specifically in the notion of the “malevolent but timorous Jew of the local tradition plots and schemes.” The struggle against such an adversary, he concluded, gave “cosmic stature to those who engage in it, and lends some dignity even to those who suffer defeat, which, they firmly believe, can only be temporary.85 The main factors behind conspiracy theories, then, are historical in nature. They provide a logical explanation for ongoing events that could not be prevented or changed. Muhammad ‘Abd al-Salam, research head of the Regional Security and Arms Control Program of al-Ahram’s Political and Strategic Center, contended during the presentation of the abovementioned project86 that conspiracism was not only “a broad general framework based on the premise that there are large powerful hidden schemes that manage the world, as if it were a theater stage,” but it derived from three prevalent motifs. The most widespread one was “the pattern of the beneficiary,” which sought to establish “who benefits from an action, a development, an incident or a crime,” perceiving him as the actor behind the scenes. The second was “the intrusion paradigm,” generally typifying the discourse of leftist parties which tended to assess political and economic developments as being shaped by man, a group or a state. The third was “the delusion pattern,” based entirely on illogical assumptions and lack of basic knowledge of “the other.” In his findings published in summer 2008, ‘Abd al-Salam identified six types of conspiratorial thinking which defied scientific thought.87 Hani Nasira, director of al-Mesbar Center for Studies and Research in the UAE, adds that skepticism, the most prevalent form of conspiracy-centered thinking in the Arab world, was “often based on a logic and culture of suspicion and trepidation toward the ‘other’, who is different in ideology and civilization,” and on “a black-and-white worldview recognizing only two opposing sets of values, and controlled by a unifying, integrationist mentality.”88

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Arab criticism of exploitation of the Protocols The frequent Arab resort to conspiracy theories, including the Jewish/Zionist conspiracy, to explain social and global phenomena has led to criticism by a host of Arab intellectuals. Muhammad Fu’ad Shukri, an Egyptian historian who wrote a book on Nazi Germany in 1947, was a rare voice at that time when he declared that the Protocols were “a forged story disseminated by the enemies of the Jews,” which had served Hitler and his propagandists as an alibi to justify their deeds against them.89 A clear warning of the possible consequences of the antisemitic, conspiratorial discourse, based on historical precedents of the Jewish experience in Europe, was made shortly after the Six Day War by Syrian leftist philosopher Sadiq Jalal al-‘Azm. If the essence of the Jewish people “is always and everywhere evil, aberrational, degenerate,” he wrote, then “the hope of rectifying this disgraceful state disappears. There is no avenue of influence open to us other than to uproot this abominable nature, that is to say, its elimination and eradication.”90 At the same time, a public debate over the Protocols erupted in Egyptian papers following the publication of an article by Philip Glubb (probably the adopted Palestinian son of the British commander of the Arab Legion in Jordan until 1956), in the weekly Akhir Sa‘a. Claiming that their dissemination contradicted “our political thinking,” he explained that they were a forged racist document, used as an alibi for the persecution of the Jews in Europe. Glubb urged Arabs to design their anti-Zionist propaganda without resorting to the Protocols in order to avoid anti-Jewish connotations and confusion between Zionists and Jews or Judaism.91 Thirty years later, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a professor of political sociology at the American University in Cairo, argued that the conspiracy theories widely publicized in the Arab press defied logic and were blatantly contradictory.92 Arab ignorance, narrow-mindedness, and the denial of science and facts, led to misconceptions and the belief in myths, such as the Protocols, asserted journalist and assistant editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, Saqr Abu Fakhr.93 Also refuting the notion of a conspiracy, intellectual ‘Aziz al-‘Azma dismissed it as a mythical view of reality which threatened to undermine the bases of society and politics.94 Similarly, Palestinian intellectual Edward Said stressed that history was the result of human deeds, not of a hidden force,95 whereas Damascus-based Palestinian writer and researcher Hisham al-Dajani deplored the confusion between Judaism and Zionism stemming from such myths.96 Muhammad Sid Ahmad, a veteran Egyptian leftist, who attacked the publication of the Protocols in 2002, warned that since the confusion led to the ascription of anti-Jewish connotations to anti-Zionism, it was dangerous and harmful to Jews and Arabs alike.97 International and Jewish protests and condemnations before and during the screening of the Egyptian TV series sparked a lively debate in the Arab, particularly Egyptian, media on the Protocols, Arab attitudes toward Jews, and Arab antisemitism. As in previous cases, such as the Garaudy affair in

Adoption of the Protocols in the Arab discourse 187 1996−9898 and cancellation of the revisionist conference in Beirut in 2001,99 the debate gave rise to nationalist sentiments, including rejection of outside interference in Arab affairs and defense of freedom of expression. Yet, it also revealed a growing sense of unease with the dissemination of the Protocols among Egyptian and other Arab intellectuals, scholars, and writers. Some appealed to reason, others contended that it was counter-productive, and a few pointed to the threat they posed to society itself. Egyptian intellectual Salah ‘Isa described the TV series as “another commercial attempt to greedily invest in our national issues … in order to provoke the audience into a frenzy of exaggerated applause.” He even accused the government of manipulating the debate, claiming that “by allegedly refusing to succumb to American−Israeli pressure, the government looks better and we are left to believe that we have achieved a victory of sorts.”100 Masiri, who considered the Protocols “unethical and racist” and their usage as contravening Islamic tenets, continued to challenge the notion of the enormous power of the Jews, stressing that since 586 bc they had lived as meek religious minorities. He conceded that the Protocols were indeed a Russian forgery, reflecting “the sense of crisis of the European man at the end of the 19th century,” as a result of secularization and modernization. Even if they were authentic, those who exploited them lost their credibility in western public opinion, which believed they were a fake, he argued.101 Masiri, who deconstructed the Arab belief in conspiracy theories and in the notion of Zionist/ Jewish omnipotence, attempted to prove that the Talmud and the Kabbalah contained much more evidence of the conspiratorial and racist character of Jewish thought than the Protocols. They were rife with hatred of “the other” and with dreams and illusions, he asserted, whereas Zionism derived its veneration of violence from the racist imperialist civilization of the West.102 ‘Azzam Tamimi, an Islamist scholar living in the United Kingdom, also claimed that adoption of the idea of a Jewish global conspiracy by Arab and Muslim thinkers and the interpretation of the Qur’anic narrative vis-à-vis the Israelites and the Jews in light of the Protocols was an aberration of the traditional Islamic approach. He blamed, however, “the Zionist project” for this shift, since it managed to embroil Judaism in its “intrigues in order to bestow religious legitimacy on itself and to gain the support of world Jewry.”103 In the same vein, although from a different vantage point, Egyptian liberal US-based intellectual Ma’mun Fendy criticized Arab writers who argued that Arabs were Semites and spoke of freedom of expression to rebut the accusation of antisemitism. He even accused Subhi the producer of being an antisemite for exploiting the Protocols for the purpose of material gain. The Semitism in the term “antisemitism” concerns the Jews and is associated with the Holocaust, he explained. The Arabs were not victims of Nazism; therefore when they resorted to this argument they revealed their stupidity and “an attempt to push themselves into another history.” Asserting that the Arabs were as aware as anyone else that this issue pertained to Jewish history in Nazi Germany and Europe, he wondered why they insisted on using an

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academic anthropological term that had nothing to do with the gas chambers, and why they preferred to declare war against “dead Jews, ‘the so-called Jews of the Protocols’, when they have to manage a war with a live Israeli.” Arabs should not necessarily accept the claims of the Jews, but they should understand their context in order to deal with them, he concluded.104 In response to the attacks on the screening of the TV series, harsh criticism of usage of the Protocols was voiced for the first time by a state official, senior advisor to president Husni Mubarak, Usama al-Baz who, in an apologetic three-part article, analyzed the history of antisemitism, debunking the myths of the Protocols and the blood libel, as well as Holocaust denial. The frequent resort to outmoded inhuman racist accusations by the Arabs, he maintained, only harmed their interests. Criticism of Israel and Zionism should not be confused with attacks on Jews and Judaism. As for the Protocols, he explained that most of the evidence confirmed that they were fabricated, and that Hitler used them to incite the German people against the Jews and justify their destruction. He also suggested that Arabs should differentiate between Zionists and Jews, cease attributing to Jews conspiratorial traits, stop expressing sympathy for Hitler and Nazism, and avoid the pitfalls of antisemitic slurs when criticizing Israel.105 Similar arguments were raised during the debate on the screening of the Syrian TV series.106 Arab critics of the continued exploitation of the Protocols and antisemitism claimed that it indicated the deterioration of Arab thought and benefited only Israel. Referring to “the Protocols of anaesthetizing the Arab mind,” Batir Muhammad ‘Ali Wardam wrote in al-Dustur that Holocaust denial and belief in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were symptomatic of Arab self-deceit. Instead of numbing the Arab mind with the myth of the Protocols, he asserted, the Arab world should concentrate on treating and solving its problems, without which it would not be able to confront Israel. Hussein Haqqani, director of Boston University’s Center for International Relations, also criticized contemporary Muslim fascination with conspiracy theories and the propensity to accept rumors. This tendency, he explained, reflected “pervasive insecurity coupled with widespread ignorance,” and it was “time for discussion of the Ummah’s decline in the context of failure to produce and consume knowledge and absorb verifiable facts.”107

Conclusion The Protocols found receptive ground in the Middle East without undergoing changes that distorted their meaning. Reinvented and adapted to accord with developments in the conflict, their usage and dissemination intensified after the establishment of the State of Israel. Is this indicative of their absorption in Arab societies? Although some scholars such as Gudrun Krämer claim that “the reception of antisemitic materials among Middle Eastern audiences remains controversial,”108 it seems that the editions repeatedly published throughout the Arab world and their dissemination through

Adoption of the Protocols in the Arab discourse 189 teaching, preaching, and the media109 testify to their widespread utilization. Moreover, beginning as a notion inculcated from above by Arab regimes, the belief in conspiracy theories involving the West, and particularly the Jews, has become widely accepted. The question of the authenticity of the book has no bearing on this trend. Actual Israeli behavior in Palestine, wrote Ahmad ‘Abbas Salih, is worse than any antisemitic book has ever alleged.110 The Arab and Muslim worlds have become contemporary bearers of the banner of conspiracy theories and the Protocols. While they are not organic to the Arab and Islamic historical and cultural context, they have ceased to be a purely European product and have become a part of mainstream Arab thought. “Encapsulat[ing] the historical legacy of antisemitism and reflect[ing] its transformation from a religious and social concept into a new political phenomenon,”111 the Protocols underwent a reverse process in the Arab world. Adopted out of a political need, they assumed a broader religious and social meaning.112 Their appeal there became even greater, as Robert Wistrich observed, since “for many Muslims and Arabs the notion of Jews as embodying an omnipotent, occult force has become more palpable and concretized through viewing the Protocols as a ‘Zionist manifesto for world conquest’.”113 The Arab antisemitic discourse, in general, developed a uniqueness and authenticity by combining classical Christian antisemitic motifs with classical Islamic anti-Jewish ones and incorporated western tropes with Islamic references. Yet, the explosion of stereotypical allusions to the Jews, including local Jewish communities in Arab countries, in the writings and utterances of Arab scholars, journalists, and leaders in response to the events unfolding in Palestine in the mid-1940s, probably reflected existing popular beliefs and conventional wisdom. Adopted by nationalists and leftists as well as Islamists, the Protocols became a “support-text,” assuming a functional role in “the new Muslim constructions of Jewish nature, intentions, and conduct.”114 Informed by essentialist assumptions, they have become a-historical, defying time. Resorting to the Protocols not only undermines any possible Arab−Israeli settlement but exacerbates the conflict due to the attempt to de-legitimize the Jewish state and simultaneously de-humanize the Jewish people as a national ethnic group. Political scientist Yehoshafat Harkabi claimed that Arab culture has a vengeful type of antisemitism since Arabs do not hesitate to use it despite the moral, human, and public destruction it wreaked in Europe.115 However, despite the potential for antisemitism and the Protocols to function as a warrant for mass murder, they are not the major motivation for action against Israel and the Jews in the Arab world. They reveal more about the state of crisis of Arab societies than about the actual behavior of others, and reflect Arab xenophobia, as well as deep feelings of frustration, humiliation, and impotence due to successive defeats at the hands of Israel and the West. Simultaneously, they indicate an unwillingness to resume responsibility for these failures,116 and “renunciation of competence, self-delusion, and disdain for the truth.”117

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Notes 1 Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996), pp. 1−2. 2 For an analysis of his views, see Goetz Nordbruch, “Rationalizing the Hidden Hand: ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri’s Theory of the ‘Judaization of Society’,” in this volume. 3 ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri, The Hidden Hand: A Study of the Destructive Furtive Jewish Movements [in Arabic] (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2006), p. 11. His book The Protocols, Judaism and Zionism (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2003) deals with the same issue. A chapter on the Protocols also appeared in his book Zionism and the Spider Web [in Arabic] (Damascus: Dar al-Fikr, 2006). See also al-Ahram January, 22, 1974, January 9, 2003; al-Jazeera, 23 November 2003, www.aljazeera.net. 4 Muhammad ‘Abd al-Salam, “The Conspiracy Theory: Conspiratorial Ways of Thinking in the Arab Region,” January 30, 2006, www.acpss.ahram.org.eg; Arab Insight 2, no. 2 (Summer 2008), www.arabinsight.org. 5 Bernard Lewis, “The Arab World Discovers Anti-Semitism,” Commentary 81, no. 5 (May 1986), p. 30; idem, Semites and Anti-Semites (London: Norton, 1997), p. 199. 6 On the early dissemination of the Protocols in the Middle East, see Sylvia Haim, “Arabic Antisemitic Literature: Some Preliminary Notes,” Jewish Social Studies 17, no. 4 (1955), p. 308; Yehoshafat Harkabi, Arab Attitudes to Israel (New York: Halsted, 1971), pp. 229−37; Elyakim Rubinstein, “‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ in the Arab-Jewish Conflict in Palestine in the Twenties” [in Hebrew], Ha-Mizrah ha-Hadash 26, 1−2 (1976), pp. 37−42; see also Stephan Wild, “Arab Reception of the ‘Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion’,” in Islamstudien ohne Ende, ed. Rainer Brunner, Monika Gronke, Jens Peter Laut and Ulrich Rebstock, Festschrift für Werner Ende zum 65. Geburstag, (Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag, 2002), pp. 516−28; and Israel Gershoni, Light in the Shadow: Egypt and Fascism, 1922–1937 [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1999), p. 309. 7 See for instance ‘Abd al-Rahman Sami ‘Ismat, Zionism and Free Masonry (Cairo, 1949), pp. 41−48, which incorporates parts of the Protocols; Ruz al-Yusuf, September 11− October 16, 1951; al-’Arab al-Yawm, January 16, 20, 1998. 8 Ahmad ‘Abd al-Ghafur ‘Attar, The Zionist Conspiracy against the World [in Arabic] (Mecca, 1976), p. 152. 9 Muhammad Khalifa al-Tunisi, The Jewish Peril: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion [in Arabic] (Cairo: Maktabat dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1951, 1976). According to ‘Attar, Tunisi did not know of and did not use Yamin’s translation, ‘Attar, The Zionist Conspiracy, p. 150. Tunisi’s book was reviewed by ‘Aqqad in the weekly al-Asas, November 23, 1951; see also ‘Abbas Mahmud al-‘Aqqad, “Zionism and the Palestine Question,” and ‘Izz al-Din Isma’il in al-Azhar’s monthly Majallat al-Azhar, no. 23 (1951), pp. 338−41 and 341−44, respectively. ‘Aqqad’s article was republished in the Jordanian leftist weekly al-Majd on January 6, 2003, in the second part of a series introducing the Protocols. See below. 10 Shawqi ‘Abd al-Nasir, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion [in Arabic] (Cairo: Dar al-ta‘awun, n.d.), p. 9; M. Zakariya, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or the Jewish Peril [in Arabic] (Beirut: Al-Maktaba al-Adabiya, n.d.), p. 5; ‘Ajjaj Nuwayhid, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion [in Arabic], 2 volumes (Lebanon: n.p., 1976), Introduction to first volume. 11 Husayn ‘Abd al-Wahid, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: The Conspiracy [in Arabic; serial no. 455] (Cairo, July 2002), p. 12. See lists in Harkabi, Arab Attitudes, Appendices 2–4, pp. 487−90; ‘Attar, The Zionist Conspiracy, pp. 150−4. 12 See, for instance ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Shamis, The International Zionist [in Arabic] (Cairo, 1958), pp. 24−55; Muhammad ‘Ali al-Zu‘bi, Israel Britain’s Eldest Daughter [in Arabic] (Cairo: Al-Maktaba al-Sharqiyya, n.d.), pp. 116−26.

Adoption of the Protocols in the Arab discourse 191 13 See, for example Fathi al-Ramli, Zionism the Highest Phase of Capitalism [in Arabic] (Cairo: Wikalat al-Sahafa al-Afriqiyya, 1956), p. 97. 14 See, for example ‘Ismat, Zionism and Free Masonry, pp. 40−8; ‘Afif ‘Abd al-Fattah Tabbara, The Jews in the Qur’an [in Arabic] (Beirut, 1966); Sayyid Qutb, Our Struggle with the Jews [in Arabic] (Cairo, 1989), pp. 20−38. For an analysis of Qutb’s tract, see Ronald L. Nettler, Past Trials Present Tribulations: A Fundamentalist View of the Jews (Oxford: Pergammon Press, 1987). 15 Antiochus George, “Europe and the Middle East,” The Cambridge Journal VI (December 1952), p. 156, as quoted in Haim, “Arabic Antisemitic Literature,” p. 309, n. 6. 16 Al-Quwwat al-Musallaha, Zionism [in Arabic] (Cairo, 1960), pp. 7–13, quoting sections of Tunisi’s translation without acknowledging it. 17 Yehoshafat Harkabi, “On Arab Antisemitism Once More,” in Antisemitism through the Ages, ed. Shmuel Almog (Oxford: Pergammon Press, 1989), p. 229. 18 Harkabi, Arab Attitudes, pp. 217–8, 235; Lewis, Semites, pp. 208–211; Pipes, The Hidden Hand, p. 311. R. K. Karanjia, The Arab Dawn (India: Blitz, 1958), p. 330. 19 See, for example, Sa‘d Jum‘a, The Conspiracy and the Battle of Fate [in Arabic] (Cairo, 1968); Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, The Children of Israel in the Qur’an and Sunna [in Arabic] (Cairo: Al-Zahra’ lil-I‘lam al-‘Arabi, 1968), pp. 622−33; Sabri Jirjis, The Jewish-Zionist Legacy and the Freudian Thought [in Arabic] (Cairo: ‘Alam al-Kutub, 1970). During the deliberations of the Fourth Congress of the Muslim Academy convened in Cairo in September 1968, several references were made to the Protocols. See: D. F. Green, Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel (Geneva: Editions de l’Avenir, 1971), pp. 14, 52. 20 Azmi Bishara, “Ways of Denial,” al-Ahram Weekly, December 21, 2006. 21 Reuven Paz, The Islamic Covenant and Its Meaning: Initial Review and Translation (Tel Aviv: Dayan Center for Middle Eastern & African Studies, 1988), p. 51; www.islamonline.net/Arabic/doc/2004/03/article11.shtml; Esther Webman, Anti-Semitic Motifs in the Ideology of Hizballah and Hamas (Tel Aviv: Project for the Study of Antisemitism, 1994), pp. 10, 20. 22 Rivka Yadlin, “Anti-Jewish Imagery in the Contemporary Arab-Muslim World,” in Demonizing the Other. Antisemitism, Racism, and Xenophobia, ed. Robert S. Wistrich (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1999), p. 313. 23 For a discussion of the impact of these events on manifestations of antisemitism in the Arab world, see Esther Webman, “Al-Aqsa Intifada and 11 September: Fertile Ground for Arab Antisemitism,” in Antisemitism Worldwide (ASW) 2001/2, ed. Dina Porat and Roni Stauber (Tel Aviv, 2004), pp. 37−59; ASW 2002/3, 2003/4, 2004 − http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/annual-report.htm. 24 Ha’aretz, May 9, 2002. 25 See note 11. 26 Ha’aretz, January 4, 2004. 27 Ahmad Hijjazi al-Saqa and Hashim Khadr, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Their Biblical and Talmudic Origins [in Arabic] (Cairo, 2003); Muhammad Khalifa al-Tunisi, The Jewish Peril: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion [in Arabic] (Cairo, 2003; 10th edition), with an introduction by ‘Abbas Mahmud al-‘Aqqad; Raja ‘Abd al-Hamid ‘Urabi, Insights into the Protocols of the Elders of Zion [in Arabic] (Damascus, 2005). For a detailed review of these publications, see Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center reports from January 26 and March 1, 2005. In Iraq, too, the book was reportedly available in every book market. Nir Rosen, “Babylonian Hostility: In Iraq, the Jews – and anti-Semitism – are everywhere,” reasononline, March 2004, http://reason.com/0403/fe.nr.babylonian.shtml. 28 Akhbar al-‘Alam al-Islami, January 2, 9, 1989. 29 Al-‘Arabi, November 24, December 1, 2002. 30 Al-Majd, December 23, 2002, January 6, 20, February 3, 17, March 3, 2003.

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31 Al-Riyadh, November 5, 2002. Indeed, according to a report from Saudi Arabia, the Protocols were still taught in 2006 to 10th graders as an authentic document revealing what Jews genuinely believe. Washington Post, May 21, 2006. 32 New York Daily News, December 8; Jerusalem Report, December 16, 2002. 33 Al-Shatat was aired on Iranian TV in December 2004. See Palestinian Media Watch, Multi-Media Bulletin, December 14, 2004. A year later during Ramadan 2005, screening of the series by a new private Jordanian-based satellite station was stopped by the Jordanian authorities in response to Israeli and Jewish protests. Jerusalem Post, October 26, 31, 2005. 34 In early December, following translation of the article by the non-profit Jewish− Israeli organization Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and protests by Jewish as well as international bodies such as UNESCO, which contributed the money for the new library, the book was removed from the showcase. “A tide of anger” swept the Egyptian public: questions were raised in Parliament, letters sent to newspapers, and articles published. The library’s compliance was presented as submission to western and Jewish pressure and a violation of the right of free expression. It was even seen as the “Americanization of the Egyptian mind.” Al-Usbu‘, November 17, December 15; Ma‘ariv, November 27; MEMRI, Dispatch no. 619, December 3; al-Jazeera, December 7, www.aljazeera.net; alBayan, December 9, 12; al-Ahram, December 25, 29, 2003; www.zeidan.com/ English/Zion; al-Ahram Weekly, February 19, 2004. 35 William M. Brinner, “An Egyptian Anti-Orientalist,” in Islam, Nationalism, and Radicalism in Egypt and the Sudan, ed. Gabriel R. Warburg and Uri M. Kupferschmidt (New York: Praeger, 1983), p. 233. 36 Dominick LaCapra and Steven Kaplan (eds), Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 81, as quoted by Suha Taji-Farouki, “Thinking on the Jews,” in Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki and Basheer M. Nafi (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), p. 353–54, n. 27. 37 ‘Abd al-Wahid, The Protocols, p. 5. 38 ‘Aqidati, November 5, 2002. On the plagiarism of the Protocols from Machiavelli’s Dialogue, see Stephen Eric Bronner, A Rumor about the Jews: Reflections on Antisemitism and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 85−88. 39 Al-Ahram, December 11, 2002. 40 A compendium of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history, compiled circa 500 ce. 41 See discussion on authenticity in Bronner, A Rumor about the Jews, pp. 117−23. 42 ‘Abbas Mahmud al-‘Aqqad, “mu’amara `alamiyya,” al-Asas, August 20, 1948, in idem, Zionism and the Palestinian Problem [in Arabic] (Beirut: al-Maktaba al‘Asriyya, n.d.), pp. 174−5. 43 Tunisi, The Jewish Peril. For similar claims see, for example, ‘Attar, The Zionist Conspiracy, p. 159; ‘Abd al-Nasir, The Protocols, p. 9; Zakariya, The Protocols, p. 6. 44 Muhammad Fa’iz al-Qusari, The Political Conflict between Zionism and the Arabs [in Arabic] (Cairo, 1961), p. 34. 45 Jum‘a, The Conspiracy, p. 154. 46 Al-Usbu‘ al-Adabi, November 2; al-Musawwar, November 8; al-Sharq al-Awsat, November 11 (Mideast Mirror); Akhir Sa‘a, November 13, 2002. 47 For further references to the accusation that the Jews followed the Protocols’ teachings in all spheres of life, see al-Qusari, The Political Conflict, p. 34; ‘Ismat, Zionism and Free Masonry, pp. 32−42; Shamis, The International Jew; Sabri Abu al-Majd, The End of Israel [in Arabic] (Cairo, 1960), pp. 12−16; Iliya Abu al-Rus, International Judaism and its Continuing War against Christianity [in Arabic] (Beirut, 1964), pp. 139−61.

Adoption of the Protocols in the Arab discourse 193 48 Bronner, A Rumor about the Jews, p. 122; emphasis in original. 49 October, January 25, 2004. See also Rakan al-Majali’s article in al-Riyadh, November 6, 2004. 50 Al-Akhbar, December 24, 2002. 51 Al-Hayat, December 11; al-Majd, December 23, 2002. Saudi columnist Najah bint Ahmad al-Thahar wrote in a similar vein in her series “The Viper around Our Necks,” al-Madina, July 26, August 9, 16, 23, 30, September 27, October 4, 18, 2005. 52 Akhbar al-‘Alam al-Islami, January 2, 1989. 53 Al-Akhbar, February 28, 2003. In another article, he considered “Israel’s efforts to get uranium” as part of the Protocols’ scheme reflecting the inherent traits of “stealing and betraying.” al-Akhbar, January 24, 2003. On ascribing the Protocols to the Jews, see also al-Majd, January 20, February 17, 2003. 54 Akhir Sa‘a, November 13, 2002. 55 ‘Abd al-Wahid, The Protocols, pp. 5−15. 56 Masiri, The Hidden Hand, pp. 20, 297. 57 Al-Riyadh, November 5, 2002. 58 On the convergence of the Protocols and Holocaust denial, see Dina Porat, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: New Uses of an Old Myth,” in Wistrich, Demonizing the Other, pp. 325−27. 59 Hadassa Ben-Itto, “The Lie That Wouldn’t Die,” Justice, no. 34 (Winter 2002), p. 32. 60 Pipes, The Hidden Hand, p. 241; Norman Cohn, Warrant For Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981), p. 183. 61 Masiri provides a comprehensive analysis of the evils attributed to the Jews in Arab societies. See The Hidden Hand, pp. 75−247. 62 Qusari, The Political Conflict, p. 34. See also Nuwayhid, The Protocols, Introduction. 63 Nicola Haddad, al-Risala, December 22, 1947, pp. 1395−96. 64 Ibid., November 24, 1947, p. 1287. 65 ‘Abbas Mahmud al-‘Aqqad, al-Risala, December 22, 1947, p. 1. 66 Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat, al-Risala, December 29, 1947, pp. 1−2. 67 Muhammad Mahmud Shakir, al-Risala, December 29, 1947, pp. 1423−24. 68 Ibid., December 1, 1947, pp. 1313−15; for earlier references to the Jewish desire to control the world, see: al-Ahram, May 23, 1951, February 2, 1956; al-Misri, March 20, 1948; Muhib al-Din al-Khatib, Majallat al-Azhar, November 19, 1952, pp. 268−73. 69 Muhammad ‘Abdallah ‘Inan, al-Thaqafa, June 22, 1948, pp. 4−6. 70 Al-Ahram, May 3, 4, 1998. 71 Recent examples are the accusation in the late 1990s that the Jews were the driving force behind globalization; that they were helping the Russians against the Muslim rebels in Chechnya and Dagestan, and the Serbs in Kosovo against the Albanians in order to erase the Muslim presence in Europe; that they were fueling conflicts between Christians and Muslims in Southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Palestine; and that they perpetrated the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 and drove it into the ensuing war against terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. See ASW 1999/2000, pp. 48−49; Webman, “al-Aqsa Intifada,” pp. 51−3; ASW 2003/4, 2004/5, http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/ CR.htm. 72 See for instance: al-Wafd, May 30, 2004. 73 Ma‘ariv, October 31, November 4; New York Times, November 1; Washington Post, November 5, 9, 15, 26; Palestinian Media Watch, November 6, 12, 14, 15, 17, 21, 24, 26; MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis, no. 113, November 20; ABC News, November 21, 2002.

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74 Ma‘ariv, October 30; MEMRI, Special Dispatch nos. 610, 623, November 18, December 8; Yedi‘ot Aharonot, December 12; The Observer, December 14, 2003. 75 MEMRI, Special Dispatch no. 627, December 12, 2003. See also: Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, “Iranian TV Now Airing al-Shatat, Horrific Syrian AntiSemitic Series,” Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin, December 14, 2004. 76 The idea of a secret meeting of Jewish rabbis convening in Budapest in 1952 to devise ways to dominate the world appeared in other Arab sources, among them Egyptian scholar ‘Aysha ‘Abd al-Rahman, The Israelite Falsehoods in the Ideational Invasion [in Arabic] (Cairo, 1975). Her argument was taken from the book by Admiral William Guy Carr, Pieces on the Chessboard, published in 1958, and translated into Arabic in 1970. See Brinner, “An Egyptian Anti-Orientalist,” pp. 231−36. 77 Tunisi, The Jewish Peril, p. 13. 78 ‘Abd al-Nasir, The Protocols, p. 10. 79 ‘Attar, The Zionist Conspiracy, p. 158. 80 New York Times, October 23, November 20, 27; al-Sharq al-Awsat, November 1; al-Jumhuriyya, November 2; Middle East Online, November 2, www.middleeastonline.com; al-Usbu‘, November 4; Yedi‘ot Aharonot, November 27. See also, MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis series, no. 109, November 8, 2002. 81 Masiri, The Hidden Hand, pp. 279, 314; Ibrahim Ghurayba, “The Protocols, Judaism and Zionism,” Al-Jazeera, November 12, 2003, www.aljazeera.net. 82 Pipes, The Hidden Hand, pp. 298−305. 83 Brinner, “An Egyptian Anti-Orientalist,” p. 236. 84 Time, June 17, 2002. 85 Lewis, Semites, p. 191. See also Taji-Farouki, “Thinking on the Jews,” in Taji-Farouki and Nafi, Islamic Thought, p. 337. 86 Muhammad ‘Abd al-Salam, “The Conspiracy Theory: Conspiratorial Ways of Thinking in the Arab Region,” January 30, 2006, www.acpss.ahram.org.eg; Arab Insight 2, no. 2 (Summer 2008), www.arabinsight.org. 87 Muhammad ‘Abd al-Salam, “The Conspiracy Theory: Conspiratorial Ways of Thinking in the Arab Region” [in Arabic], January 30, 2006, www.acpss.ahram. org.eg. See also Mohamed Abdel Salam, “The Modes of Arab Conspiracy Theories,” Arab Insight, 2, no. 2 (Summer 2008), pp. 89−101. 88 Hani Nasira, “Skepticism in the Arab World: The Base of Conspiracies,” Arab Insight 2, no. 2 (Summer 2008), p. 103. 89 Muhammad Fu’ad Shukri, Nazi Germany: A Study of Modern European History [in Arabic] (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-‘Arabi, 1948), pp. 159−60. 90 Harkabi, “On Arab Antisemitism Once More,” in Almog, Antisemitism, p. 235. 91 Akhir Sa‘a, August 9, 1967. For the responses see Akhir Sa‘a, August 16, 30, 1967. A similar view was expressed by Ahmad ‘Abd al-Mu‘ti Hijjazi in Ruz al-Yusuf, August 28, 1967, in response to an article by proliferate journalist Anis Mansur in Akhbar al-Yawm, August 5, 1967. 92 “Intelligence: Time to Give Up the Ghost,” Civil Society, May 1998, pp. 3−4. 93 Al-Hayat, November 12, 13, 14, 1997. 94 Al-Sabil, January 13, 1998. 95 Al-Ayyam, February 18, 1998. 96 Al-Safir, February 3, 1998. 97 Al-Ahram, al-Ahram Weekly, December 12, 2002. 98 On the Garaudy affair, see ASW 1996/7, pp. 193−204; Esther Webman, “Rethinking the Holocaust: An Open Debate in the Arab World, 1998,” ASW 1998/9 − http:// www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw98–9/webman.htm. See also Goetz Nordbruch, The Socio-Historical Background of Holocaust Denial in Arab Countries, acta no. 17 (Jerusalem, 2001).

Adoption of the Protocols in the Arab discourse 195 99 On the controversy over the conference, see Webman, “Al-Aqsa Intifada,” pp. 45−48; also Goetz Nordbruch, “An Attempt to Internationalize the Denial of the Holocaust,” SICSA Annual Report 2001 (Jerusalem, 2001), pp. 9–11. 100 Interview, Al-Ahram Weekly, November 7, 2002. For additional criticism, see alSharq al-Awsat, November 19, 2002; al-Musawwar, November 15, 2002; al-Ahram, November 29, 2002. 101 Al-‘Arabi, November 24, 2002; al-Ahram, January 2, 9, 2003; Masiri, The Hidden Hand, pp. 20–21. 102 Masiri, The Hidden Hand, pp. 256, 281–98; al-‘Arabi, November 24, 2002; al-Ahram, January 2, 9, 2003. 103 msanews.mynet.net/Scholars/Tamimi/, June 27, 1999. 104 Al-Sharq al-Awsat, November 11, 2002; CounterPunch, November 13, 2002, www. counterpunch.org. 105 Al-Ahram, December 23–25; Ha’aretz, December 27; Yedi‘ot Aharonot, December 28, 29; Washington Post, December 30, 2002. 106 Al-Mustaqbal, September 24; al-Hayat, October 30, 31, November 12; al-Khalij, October 21, 30, 31, November 1, 6, 12; al-Quds al-‘Arabi, October 31; Daily Star, November 4, 2003. 107 Al-Dustur, February 2, 2007; Hussein Haqqani, “The Real Reason for Muslim Decline,” Gulf News, April 25, 2007; MEMRI, Special Dispatch – Qatar/Reform Project, no. 1679, August 15, 2007. See also al-Ahram, January 9, 2003; al-Hayat, November 11, 16, 19, 2003, April 30, 2006; ‘Abd al-Salam, “The Conspiracy Theory.” 108 Gudrun Krämer, “Antisemitism in the Muslim World: A Critical Review,” Die Welt des Islams 46, no. 3 (November 2006), p. 258. 109 See the following articles in Arab Insight 2, no. 2 (Summer 2008): Hamdy Hassan Abdul Ainen, “Inventing Fiction? Conspiracy Theories in Arab Media,” pp. 115−26; Hoda al-Bakr, “Teaching Fiction? Conspiracy Theories in Arab Public Schools,” pp. 127–37; Nezar Elthahawy, “Preaching Fiction? Conspiracy Theories in Religious Institutions,” pp. 139−55. 110 Al-Sharq al-Awsat, November 12, 2002 (Mideast Mirror). 111 Bronner, A Rumor about the Jews, p. 3. 112 On the role of the Protocols and conspiracy theories in the reaction to modernizing reforms in Egypt, see Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (New York: Penguin, 2004), pp. 116−22; Goetz Nordbruch, “The Conspiracy against Community: Tracing the Popularity of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Contemporary Egypt,” Jewish Culture and History 9, no. 1 (Summer 2007). 113 Robert Wistrich, Muslim Anti-Semitism (Jerusalem/NY: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2002), p. 3. 114 Taji-Farouki, “Thinking on the Jews,” in Taji-Farouki and Nafi, Islamic Thought, p. 336. 115 Harkabi, Arab Attitudes, p. 275. 116 Al-Ghadd, March 7, 2006. 117 Al-Hayat, April 30, 2006.

12 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Iranian political and cultural discourse Orly R. Rahimiyan

It is unclear when the Protocols were first translated into Persian, possibly by a certain Mustafa Farhang toward the end of the 1930s/beginning of the 1940s, when Nazi propaganda abounded in Iran.1 Secular European antisemitic motifs had already begun infiltrating Iranian society at the end of the nineteenth century as a result of developing relations between Iran and western countries.2 Some fifty years later, at the end of the 1940s/early 1950s, chapters of the Protocols were rendered into Persian by the well-known translator of religious books Sayyed Gholām Rezā Sa`īdī and published in ’Ā yīn-e Islam (The Islamic religion), probably the most influential Islamist weekly in Iran in the 1940s, and in Nedā-ye Haqq (The voice of truth), another important Islamic weekly. In 1957, during the reign of Muhammad Rezā Shah (1941−79), Sa`īdī published the Protocols in their entirety in his book The Danger of Jews for the Islamic World and Iran (Khatar-e Juhūd barāye Jahān-e Islam va-Iran).3 The work was banned after its first publication, and re-issued in its original form only after the Islamic Revolution (1979),4 following which the popularity of the Protocols grew and their distribution became more widespread. This chapter will explore the historical context of various publications of the Protocols in Iran and their reception, especially in the media. It will also attempt to explain why Iranians have embraced the Protocols as conclusive evidence of a Jewish/Zionist plot to conquer the world and establish a global Jewish government. Post-revolutionary editions of the Protocols link the Jews, Israel, the Freemasons, and the Baha’is as part of a global conspiracy aimed at taking control of Iran. Similarities can be discerned between the Protocols and antiBaha’i polemical works, which create an alternative history. Jews and Baha’is are the natural subjects of such histories, which accuse them of membership in anti-Iranian conspiracies. In Iran the Baha’is are a small minority which developed good relations with Israel and Judaism, and in the past with the Pahlavī monarchy.

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Contextualization of publications of the Protocols The various editions of the Protocols are firmly rooted in the political and cultural history of twentieth-century Iran. Their distribution in Iran will be discussed in three periods: the 1930s−1950s, the 1960s, and in the Islamic revolutionary period. All of these eras witnessed tremendous change in Iranian society. 1930s−1950s In the 1930s and beginning of the 1940s, German−Iranian relations experienced a political, economic, and cultural boom. German agents were active in Iran, facilitating the penetration of antisemitic Nazi ideology into the country. The rise of Nazi racist trends in Iran also contributed to a heightened interest in antisemitic texts. Furthermore, the deposal of the first Pahlavī monarch Rezā Shah in 1941 allowed for the re-emergence of formerly persecuted elements. These factors, along with the unstable war years, paved the way for the rise of radical movements, some of which followed a distinctly racist, and, in some cases, antisemitic ideology. There can be no doubt that Iran’s relations with Germany − which peaked during the Nazi period − influenced the development of a new attitude toward the Jews, based on racial rather than religious perceptions.5At the root of this trend lay the so-called Aryan Hypothesis,6 developed at the turn of the twentieth century and which emphasized the supposed Aryan origins of the Iranians and the superiority of the Aryan race over that of the Semites − both Arabs and Jews. The Aryan Hypothesis that evolved in Iran paralleled the growth of Iranian nationalism, and was accompanied not only by antisemitism but by anti-Arabism, anti-communism, and anti-Baha’ism.7 Reception of the Protocols reflected this nationalist mood, and tales of global cabals and intrigues found a ready audience, among whom conspiracism could be considered a significant aspect of the national psyche. Iranian studies scholar and managing editor of Encyclopaedia Iranica Ahmad Ashraf, who examined this phenomenon, as well as the appeal of conspiracy theories to Iranians, claims that “although the conspiracy theory paradigm as part of a belief system aimed at structuring the world is universal, it has been seemingly more prevalent in Middle Eastern societies and is more widespread among Persians than in other societies.” He concluded that “conspiracy theories [are effective] as a collective defense mechanism, particularly during periods of powerlessness, defeat and political turmoil.”8 One such period followed the 1953 coup d’état that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq. Mosaddeq’s term in office, 1951−53, constituted the pinnacle of the anti-imperialist and oil nationalization movement.9 Journalist Stephen Kinzer convincingly demonstrates that the coup was set up and funded by the British and US governments, bearing out the

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commonly held belief in behind-the-scenes British control of Iran (known as the British policy myth − Sīyāsat Engelīs).10 Israel was also accused of being a member of this anti-Iranian Anglo-American conspiracy. As the late Iranian studies scholar Sorour Soroudi noted: Iran was then involved in a national struggle with the West over its oil resources. In the eyes of the National Front, the party of Premier Mosaddeq, as in the eyes of most other parties, Israel was considered the creation of Western imperialism and therefore its accomplice.11 Apparently, it was this factor that motivated Sayyed Gholām Rezā Sa`īdī to publish the Protocols in his book The Danger of Jews for the Islamic World and Iran only three years after the coup. The book was also a response to the trend of intellectuals traveling to Israel, to “reveal their wicked and ugly behavior.”12 In the second half of the 1950s and well into the 1960s, Iranian intellectuals and journalists began visiting Israel,13 including Jalāl ’Āl-e Ahmad, a prominent socio-political critic, and Dāryūsh Ashūrī, a reputed intellectual. The earliest travel log by such a visitor appears to have been written by ‘Abbās Shāhandeh, director of the newspaper Farmān and commentator on international relations, who visited Israel in September 1956.14 Shāhandeh praised Israel as a modern progressive country, and considered it “a substantial equalizing force in the heart of the Arab Middle East.”15 Publication of the Protocols, however, was not only a response to the wave of Iranian “israelophilia” but was viewed as an explanation for Iran’s sensitive position vis-à-vis the Arab world. Iran’s approach toward the Arab world was dualistic. In addition to strained relations as a result of conflicts over territory and regional supremacy, intra-Arab struggles also played a part in Iran’s decision to distance itself from the Arab sphere and establish an independent regional policy. Iranians, furthermore, felt alienated from the “inferior” Arab world ethnically, culturally, linguistically, and ideologically.16 On the other hand, some in Iran saw the solution to Iran’s troubled relations with the Arab world in rehabilitating Muslim unity through the promotion of understanding between Sunnis and Shi‘ites. Known as Taqrīb, this doctrine of rapprochement between Sunna and Shi‘a17 stresses what these two streams of Islam have in common rather than what separates them. The process of Taqrīb gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s, attracting the support of members of the Sunni and Shi‘ite clergy in both Iran and the Arab world. The path for achieving a unified vision was to be forged through a struggle against the infidel Jews who had usurped a patch of land belonging to the Islamic ’umma (community of believers). Gholām Rezā Sa`īdī’s stance was thus contrary to that of Shāhandeh: Islamic unity in the face of the Jewish threat. From his perspective, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion constituted unequivocal proof of the danger that Jews posed and, at the same time, could serve as a tool for taunting the cabalistic Jewish enemy.

Iranian political and cultural discourse 199 The Protocols were thus a benchmark for examining the policy adopted by Muhammad Rezā Shah vis-à-vis Israel and the Jews. To pacify the Arab states and opposition elements within Iran, the Shah conducted his relations with the State of Israel and the native Jewish community cautiously and clandestinely. Nevertheless, Iranian−Israeli relations and the bond between the Shah and the Jewish community grew stronger on many levels, and Sa‘īdī’s book was banned after its first printing and became difficult to obtain. Further, publications that painted Israel in a negative light were censored, a policy enforced by the SAVAK (Iran’s domestic security and intelligence service from 1957 to 1979). Thus, whenever the Protocols were distributed, the authorities quickly stepped in.18 The 1960s The early 1960s witnessed a second wave of interest in the Protocols against the backdrop of the highly publicized 1961 Eichmann trial in Israel, which received considerable attention in Iran. Two books were published on Eichmann, to the best of my knowledge: Adolf Eichmann: Tomorrow I Will Go to Hell (Adolf Ayshman: Fardā Be-Jahanam khawaham Raft)19 and The Adolf Eichmann Affair (Sargodhasht-e Adolf Ayshman).20 Eichmann was one of the more notorious disciples of Nazi ideology during the Holocaust, and his trial − and subsequent execution − triggered an interest in stories of the Nazi party and World War II, with special emphasis on the place of the Jews and Israel in the world. There was a wave of translations into Persian of works about the Holocaust and the Nazis.21 Concurrently, criticism of Nazi actions reflected the attitude toward Nazism and the Holocaust, and pro-Israel feeling among some sectors of Iranian society, mainly leftists and nationalist liberals, for whom the emergence of Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel constituted positive developments, even worthy, perhaps, of imitation: Here was Israel, a non-Arab country in a sea of Arab states, successfully garnering support in the West. For those Iranians, Israel served as a role model. A Persian edition of the Protocols with what appears to be an image of Eichmann on the cover22 notes: This book [the Protocols exposes] the bewildering secrets and activities of the secret Jewish organization that began operating in 1881, and which has been able to establish an independent state. It was due to the activities of this organization that Eichmann fell into a trap and received punishment in accordance with his diabolic [iblīsī] actions.23 At first glance the text is perplexing, since it is clearly a description of a Jewish cabal seeking world domination while framing this organization in a somewhat positive light. Moreover, it includes criticism of Eichmann and Nazi actions. The explanation lies in the fact that a work “documenting” Jewish

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efforts to control the world was perceived as portraying an enviable situation. The Protocols were published as a warning of a Jewish/Zionist conspiracy against Iran, but at the same time as a program worthy of emulation and even adoption, since it supposedly reflected the way Israel functioned; in short, it was a surefire recipe for success.24 Even Muhammad Rezā Shah’s goodwill toward the Iranian Jewish community might have derived, in part, from an over-appreciation of the influence of international, and specifically, American, Jewry, in media, finance,25 and politics, which he saw as instrumental to building his “empire.”26 Iran expert David Menashri shows that the shah’s support for the Jews and Israel “stemmed in part from certain concepts of European antisemitism. He [the shah] overestimated the power of world Jewry and believed in the existence of a ‘Jewish conspiracy’ and in Jewish control of the world media. He held that American Jewry was capable of imposing its will on the President.”27 The 1979 Islamic Revolution The Islamic Revolution was accompanied by a continuous wave of Protocols editions, alongside other anti-Israel and anti-Jewish texts. Publication of the Protocols in the late 1970s may be viewed as an indirect attack on the Pahlavī shah, who was occasionally portrayed as a Jew − disparagingly referred to as “Papa Levi.”28 The Pahlavī dynasty was depicted as a tool not only of the British and, later the Americans, but also of the Jews who supposedly manipulated the monarchy so as to control Iran and carry out their power-hungry schemes. In one typical example from June 1979, the popular daily Keyhān reported that Israeli commandos had aided the shah’s forces in the suppression of protests on September 8, 1978, in Tehran, known as “Black Friday.” According to Keyhān, Israel had also recruited a group of local Jews dressed in Iranian army uniforms to fight the demonstrators.29 Referring to these rumors, Ahmad Ashraf writes that “some people have argued that Israel supported the Islamic Revolution in order to weaken its only potential rival for domination in the region by replacing the shah with a ‘vulnerable and dependent Islamic regime’.”30 Thus, the revolution was also seen as part of a Zionist conspiracy aimed at Israeli self-aggrandizement in the region. Editions of the Protocols distributed at this time were viewed as proof of Zionist ambitions. While the shah had believed that Jewish power might be useful in constructing an empire, by the time of the revolution this perceived advantage had become a weakness. Thus, at the beginning of the revolution, some of Iran’s wealthiest Jews were executed by the revolutionary tribunals, accused of “Zionist activity, collaboration with the shah, and conspiracy with Israel.”31 Anti-Israel sentiment swept Iran in the early days of Khomeini’s revolution, adversely affecting the local Jewish community. Khomeini’s declaration regarding Jews in September 1977, during the revolutionary uprisings and in the wake of “Black Friday,” revealed that the Shi‘ite cleric viewed Jewry much as did the authors of the Protocols: “The Jews have grasped the world

Iranian political and cultural discourse 201 with both hands and are devouring it with an insatiable appetite, they are devouring America and have now turned their attention to Iran and still are not satisfied.”32 The collapse of the Pahlavī monarchy heralded the severing of Iran’s ties with Israel, both because of Israel’s close identification with the shah and his repressive policies and Iran’s Islamist commitment to worldwide anticolonial struggles, with the Palestinian cause soon emerging as foremost among them. The Islamic Republic of Iran has refused to recognize Israel as a legitimate state, often declaring it to be imperialism’s “illegitimate child,” an “implanted” entity established by Britain and the United States to perpetuate their “hegemonic designs.”33 Accordingly, Iranians believe that Zionists were recruited by European colonialists to conquer the Islamic Middle East. Furthermore, Iranians point to the Protocols as proof that the United States, the “Great Satan,” is in fact controlled by Jews who thirst for world domination. The tract thus provides an explanation for the conflict with the United States during and after the Islamic Revolution, as it did in the wake of the 1953 coup.

The distinction between Zionists and Jews After the revolution, the separation between Jews, Zionists, and Israel was more abstruse. The new leaders of the Islamic Republic referred to Israel as the state of the Jews and sometimes considered American Jewry to be “Zionists.”34 The new editions of the Protocols mirror this obfuscation, reflecting the transition in Iran from traditional anti-Judaism to modern antisemitism. The introduction to one of the editions of the Protocols published in the 1980s, makes an equation between “Judaism” − used in the original Protocols − and “Zionism” − which is not mentioned in the text. Hamīd Rezā Shaykhī, editor and translator of The Protocols of the Learned of Zion: A Program of Action of World Zionism, states that the Protocols are one of the most important documents for understanding Zionism and world Jewry, and posits a direct connection between Israel and the international Jewish community: Israel and, in fact, world Jewry, seeks to profit from Christianity, which controls America, and to follow in its footsteps; America sees Israel as a Damocles’ sword hanging over the Arabs and the states of the region.35 The book also contains three parts dealing with “Jewish history, its nature, and the roots of the ideas found in the Protocols.” Pseudo-academic sources are intended to lend the text a scholastic facade. This is an example of conflation, in which two or more concepts sharing several characteristics are interchanged so that they appear to constitute a single identity. Such manipulation extends to the past as well, such as frequent

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references to “the Zionists in the time of the Prophet Muhammad” and the attempt to portray Judaism as racist from its very beginnings.36 Throughout history, Zionism has been Islam’s perpetual enemy. According to the Holy Qurān, the religion of man is to be Islam, therefore, as Imam Khomeini says, Zionism is the enemy of humanity.37 This propensity for historical distortion is most conspicuous, however, in Shaykhī’s expanded version, which also reconstitutes claims from older Shi‘ite religious polemics on Jews. One of his chapters bears the title “The Defiled Origins of the Protocols Programs” (Jarthūmeh-hā-ye Palīd dar Barnāmeh-ye Protocol-hā), which refers disparagingly to the Talmud: Following the exile, the Jews embraced myths, epic poems, and postTorah prophets, so that alongside this book [the Torah], in the first centuries of the Christian era, they forged the Talmud.38 The tactic of dismissing the Talmud as a ramshackle collection of oral traditions is well attested in both Sunni and Shi‘ite literature.39 These texts from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries signified the continuation of a tradition of Muslim polemics directed at Jews and Christians and dating back to the Middle Ages. The use of the Protocols in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries thus constitutes a modern version of this Muslim genre of an earlier era. Anti-Jewish polemics have a long history in Islam, and are aimed at defining the borders of Islam and its character vis-à-vis other religions. The argumentation of nineteenth-century Iran had several other objectives as well: to prove the supremacy and uniqueness of Islam; to contrast Iranian Shi‘ite Islam with other Muslim communities while emphasizing Shi‘ite superiority to Sunni Islam; and to fulfill a psychological need to justify these perceptions to Iranians and others. It has been demonstrated that the polemical genre was reborn in the nineteenth century in the wake of certain historical events, among them the western penetration of Iran in the form of Christian missionaries who attempted to convert the local population. These missionaries were perceived as a serious threat to Islam and as representatives of the expanding western powers.40 The Protocols would therefore appear to serve as a modern answer to the threat America and modernity represent to Islam and the Islamic world − including Iran. They present an image of an evil, Zionist, Ashkenazi Jew, with white skin and blue eyes, betraying his Russian origins. Furthermore, interpreters of the Protocols claim that they contain the plans and policies of elders of this sect to conquer the world and establish a global Jewish government, as allegedly discussed at the 1897 Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland.41

Iranian political and cultural discourse 203 The Jew portrayed in Iranian versions of the Protocols rarely resembles Jews in the Middle East, and never Iranian Jews, who are regarded as indigenous Iranians.42 This distinction between Iranian Jews and the rest of world Jewry is well marked in the film Lead (Sorb, Iran, 1988, directed by Mas‘ūd Kīmyā’ī)43 and in the television series produced by Iranian state TV, Zero Degree Orbit (Madār-e Sefr Darageh),44 both discussed below. The difference between Ashkenazi and Oriental Jewry was clearly underlined during the May 1979 trial of Hāj Elqānayān and five other prominent Iranians in Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court. Accused of cooperation with international Zionism and providing substantial material support to Israel for the suppression of Palestinian militants, Elqānayān addressed the Ashkenazi-Sephardi divide in his defense: In Israel there are two groups of Jews [Kalīmī], one of them is the Sephardic [Safārānī] and the other is the Ashkenazi [Ashkenāzī]. Eightyfive percent of Israelis are Ashkenazi, most of them Europeans and Americans. So, between 5 to 8 percent [of Israelis] are Sephardic, and I am Sephardi. The majority group doesn’t accept us. So, [as] I am considered part of the minority in Israel, why would I help the majority?45 Perceiving Israel as the purview of European Jewry was commonplace particularly after the revolution, as new voices emerged linking Iranian Jewry with Zionism. In the 2008 pseudo-scientific series The Secret of Armageddon, which looks at the Protocols and its historical context (discussed below), rather than associating Iranian Jews with the Zionist enterprise, Iranian historian Mohammad-Taqī Taqipūr focuses on leading Iranian Zionist activist ‘Azīzullāh Na‘īm: The Zionists and their organizations in Iran devised a plan, which was signed in 1931 by Rabbi ‘Azīzullāh Na‘īm,46 chairman of the Iranian Zionist Organization. This plan included eight clauses. In brief, according to this plan, Rezā Shah’s regime must permit Jews from all over the world to enter Iran and settle wherever they wish, in accordance with the plan that they themselves devised. In addition, these Jewish immigrants would be granted liberties by law, and no one could deny them these liberties. There would be equality between Jews and non-Jews in Iran − most of whom are Muslims. Fertile lands throughout Iran would be allocated to these Jewish immigrants free of charge. After two years, they would be granted citizenship and a visa from the government, also free of charge.47 A scheme to draft Iranian Jews to aid Zionism also appears in the series Zero Degree Orbit, which was broadcast a short time before The Secret of Armageddon. The message these two programs attempted to convey to Iranian viewers was that the presence and influence of Zionism is ubiquitous even in Iran: the

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Zionists, who cooperated with the despised Pahlavī dynasty, will not shrink from employing any means – including planting a fifth column among Iranians – in order to achieve their goals.

Characteristics of the Protocols since the Revolution An examination of the various editions of the Protocols reveals that, apart from reissues from the Pahlavī period, those published after the Islamic Revolution were based on the Arabic translation. Pahlavī Iran’s westward reorientation was symbolized most clearly in the Shah’s “White Revolution” reforms, aimed at transforming Iran into a capitalist, westernizing society. Iran thus imported from the Christian West not only advanced technologies but also ideas borrowed from European antisemitism. After the Islamic Revolution, Iran’s motivation to become a regional power in the Middle East was manifested in an explosion of literature translated from Arabic into Persian, including the Protocols. While introductions to various editions of the Protocols in the prerevolutionary period consisted of direct translations from European languages, those published after the revolution included a preface by the Iranian translator in addition to the original. These introductory notes inject a local Iranian, Islamic hue. According to Iran expert Meir Litvak, “the arguments, however, are borrowed from western sources, producing a symbiosis between European and Middle Eastern antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and between traditional and modern motifs.”48 The impression one receives from reading the pre-revolutionary translations of the Protocols is that they were geared toward an intellectual audience, employing advanced language and without annotations. Translations published since the revolution, however, are clearly intended for a much more popular readership, with a multitude of notes interpreting the contents of the work. This trend corresponds to the expanding audience for the written word in the wake of the Islamic Revolution − Republican Iran boasts a higher literacy rate than its monarchic predecessor.49 During the Pahlavī period, the Protocols were published by private companies, but since the revolution, they have been issued by government publishing houses such as that of the Revolutionary Guards, the Department of Translation and Publication, the Islamic Culture and Relations Organization, and the Propaganda Department. This fact again highlights the Islamic regime’s interest in distributing anti-Zionist views as part and parcel of its anti-Israel policy. Islamic hues The Protocols, mainly in their English editions, served as a tool for the propagation of revolutionary Islamic values beyond Iran’s borders, in addition to highlighting Iran’s role as the vanguard of opposition to Israel and its

Iranian political and cultural discourse 205 American ally. In an English edition published in 1985, the editors accused the Zionists of crimes against humanity, aggression against Islam, and the murder of Muslims, and quoted a Qur’anic verse to buttress their claim that the Jews and the polytheists were “the most violent of people in enmity for those who believe” (fig. 12.1).50 This apparently “fickle logic,” which appears in translations of the Protocols from French to Persian in the 1960s, refers to the European concept of the Jews as a snake encircling and controlling Europe.51 By 1985, the snake was seeking to dominate the area from the Nile to the Euphrates.52 Interestingly, Iran is located outside the boundaries of “Greater Israel,” but the snake borders the country, thus setting its sights on Iran as the next target of Jewish−Zionist usurpation. It should be noted that on the cover of Farhang’s Persian edition, as on that of Victor Emile Marsden’s English edition, the snake embraces the entire world (fig. 12.2).53

Figure 12.1 From the English translation of the Persian version of the Protocols, published by the Islamic Propagation Organization (1985), p. 7.

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Figure 12.2 Cover of re-edition of “R.Sh.,” The Secrets of the Concealed Jewish Organization (Tehran, 2002−3).

Another example can be found in the call for jihad against the Jewish “menace,” in the 1996 edition. “The birth of a great Islamic Iranian revolution in the region has been and will invariably be the greatest danger to Israel.”54 The Protocols thus confer legitimacy on Iran in the struggle against Israel, perceived as Iran’s enemy, due, among other reasons, to Israel’s past contacts with the Pahlavī regime, its enduring relationship with the United States, and the perception of Israel as a satanic stronghold of the western

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Figure 12.3 Cover of Mudaresī, The World Plaything of Judaism (Tehran, 2002).

powers in their battle against Islamic unity. In this context, one edition quotes Syrian poet Nizār Qabbānī on the importance of Jerusalem and the Muslims’ obligation to liberate it from the Jews.55 This message is also conveyed on the cover of another version, The World Plaything of Judaism, by Ayatollāh ‘Uzma Sayyed Mohammad Hussaynī Shīrāzī,56 which cites segments of the Protocols (fig. 12.3).57

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On the cover the link between Jerusalem, symbolized by the Dome of the Rock, and the Jewish intention to take over the world is clear. A connection between the Protocols and the Jews’ aspiration to control Jerusalem is also made in The History of Two Religious Minorities – Jews and Christians, where the author concludes that “assigning Jerusalem as the holy center of the Jews constitutes part of the Zionist leaders’ plans, which have now been carried out.”58 Conspiratorial ideas: Judaism and Freemasons In Jewish Conspiracy, the translator explains that the Star of David in the Protocols consists of two triangles representing the materialism and spirituality of Judaism. A triangle is a Jewish sign: it is called an EYE. If it is like this , it signifies materialism; when it is reversed, i.e., it denotes spiritualism − but “spiritualism” of their own crude thinking. When the two Eyes are combined like this , it becomes a Jewish Star − note the six cones; the Islamic star has only five.59 In addition to distinguishing between the Star of David and the Muslim star and the unique interpretation of the former in the spirit of the work, the editor makes a visual connection between the Freemasons, “another global power,” who are also depicted as a snake strangling the Middle East, but with triangular scales. According to the description inside the cover, these scales are in fact “Freemason’s eyes”60 which are surrounded by triangles. There is thus an attempt to demonstrate a similarity between the Jewish Star of David with its two triangles and the Freemasons’ symbol to prove their alleged desire to dominate the world.

Iranian cultural roots in the Protocols The intertextuality of the Protocols and their implantation in the unique Iranian context may be found in the embodiment of Jews as Ahrīman, a deity responsible for all evil in the Zoroastrian worldview: International Judaism is Ahrīman’s force in the form of an organization simultaneously clandestine and public. [International Judaism] compared itself to an “adder” which possesses a nine-stage plan for achieving his goals. This scheme was devised in the Babylonian exile − 24−25 centuries ago − and its last stage is in twentieth-century Palestine. The Jews believe in this!61 The comparison of Jews to Ahrīman has a far older precedent. Abū al-Qāsem Fīrdowsī, widely regarded as the national poet of Iran, makes the same

Iranian political and cultural discourse 209 analogy when referring to Jews and Christians in his “Shāhnāmeh,” an epic poem composed in the tenth century: The Jews and the Christians are your enemies They are two-faced [hypocritical] and are of the religion of Ahrīman.62 In 1986, both Jomhūrī-ye Eslāmī and Kayhān published a lecture delivered in 1971 by Tehran University professor Amīr Tavakkol Kambūzīyah, entitled “The Art of Zionists,” in which he touched upon Jewish history. Defining Jews as dirty and the enemies of humanity, Kambūzīyah compared them to the Zoroastrian symbol of ultimate evil: “If we really want to visualize all that has been said about Ahrīman we must envision the Jews.”63 While, as noted, precedents for this metaphor exist, there can be no doubt that viewing Jewry as a powerful force seeking to alter history and destroy humanity is based largely on the narrative of the Protocols. We thus see images from different times, spaces, and contexts all blended into a single representation of the Jew, replete with characteristics from stereotypes that are old and new, secular and religious, and local and foreign in origin. It was only in the 1980s, after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, that the Protocols became more widely read in Iran. By the mid-1990s the tract had been popularized, along with the central message that the Zionist plan for global domination only began in Palestine.64 No longer confined to the Protocols, the canard of “Zionist domination” appeared frequently in daily newspapers, books, films, documentary “exposés,” and television series: world Jewry was planning to destroy the culture, civilization, and religion of non-Jews by taking control over the media, the economy, and governments of the world.65 The view of Jews as conspirators scheming to conquer the entire world appears in the official declarations of Iranian leaders, too. According to representatives of the establishment, the Jews control the world media – including the American movie industry − and influence decision makers in the United States and Europe. Furthermore, the Jews are plotting to prevent the spread of Islam and thereby constitute a danger to the entire world. The Jewish hand can be seen in every international crisis,66 including the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.67 The Protocols serve as one of the crucial pieces of “evidence” upon which these claims are based. In a speech reported by the official news agency IRNA on June 18, 1994, Ayatollah Khamene’i declared: “Most of the world’s propaganda is in the hands of Zionists. The Zionists behave like mad dogs of arrogance in this region.”68 Based on the Protocols’ depiction of Jews, Iranian writer and researcher ‘Alī Bāqerī revealed in an interview, entitled “Studying the Role of the Jews in the World from Another Perspective,” to the Iranian monthly Sobh, that the Jewish plan for world domination constituted but one stage of a much

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more grandiose scheme. The ultimate goal of the Jews,” he said, “after conquering the globe … is to wrest [control] from the Lord [of as] many stars and galaxies [as possible].”69 At the end of 2000, the English-language Tehran Times asserted that Jews “have a hand in every sensitive government post” in the United States. Not only politics, but all the major publishing houses, newspapers, and the entertainment industry in the United States “are headed by Jews.”70 Shortly afterward, this theme was expanded by Jomhūrī-ye Eslāmī, which claimed that most of the real power in the United States was concentrated in the hands of a minority of influential Zionists and that US presidents were “only executives of the Zionists’ wishes.”71 In April 2004, the Iranian television station Al-‘Ālam broadcast Tales and Magic (Al-Sāmerī wa-al-Sāher), a documentary-style series that reported as fact material from the Protocols, which it linked to conspiracy theories on the Holocaust and Jewish control of Hollywood.72 The Eichmann trial continued to occupy Iranians even after the revolution, but the evolution of its treatment reflects the transformation that took place in the perception of the Protocols in Iranian society. Whereas in the 1960s Eichmann’s capture was seen by Iranians as a symbol of Israeli triumph, in the first years of the twenty-first century his arrest and execution were presented as the polar opposite – a sign of fear and a way to bury all evidence of Zionist−Nazi collaboration.73 The following commentary from the narrator of the above-mentioned documentary series provides a quintessential example: The most important film produced under Zionist guidance in the 60s was called Operation Eichmann. This film completed the false myth about the murder of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis … But the film producers did not mention his provocative trial on December 17, 1961. This is because of what Eichmann said about the German Jews’ expulsion and killing: “I was only carrying out the orders of the Zionists. They asked me to gather the Jews in a specific place in the world, using expulsion or murder. First, their target was Poland, then Madagascar, but in the end they chose the Middle East. If I am guilty of the so-called killing of 6 million Jews then the Zionist leaders are much guiltier than I am. This is because they wanted to silence the world under the pretext that if they had stayed in Germany they would have been killed. Because they don’t have a country they are forced to occupy other people’s land. And that is what they did.” The Zionist authorities finished the trial quickly to avoid further commotion. They hanged Adolf Eichmann in 1962 so the secrets of the collaboration between the Zionists and the Nazis would remain hidden.74 The Islamic Republican government has remained active in propagating antisemitic literature throughout the world. The English edition of the

Iranian political and cultural discourse 211 Protocols published in 1985 by the Islamic Propaganda Organization in Iran was displayed at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2005, along with other antisemitic tracts from the twentieth century, such as Henry Ford’s The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem and Mohammad Taqī Taqīpūr’s Tale of the “Chosen People” and the Legend of “Historical Right,” some of which had been translated from Persian to English.75 The Protocols myth was also linked to Hollywood cartoons. On February 19, 2006, Iran’s Channel 4 covered a seminar for young Iranian film makers that included a lecture by Professor Hassan Bolkhārī. In addition to being a member of the Film Council of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), Bolkhārī was a cultural advisor to the Iranian Education Ministry, and was active in interfaith dialogue. In his lecture, he related the series Tom and Jerry to a Jewish conspiracy to improve the image of mice. This objective, he claimed, was intended to combat the European perception of Jews as “dirty mice,” adding: “No ethnic group or people operates in such a clandestine manner as the Jews.”76 On January 5, 2006, Iran’s Channel 2 broadcast a discussion panel on the “Myth of the Gas Chambers, the Holocaust and the Truth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” in which political analyst Majīd Gūdarzī reiterated the allegation that the Zionists sought to control the world.77 A documentary program on Holocaust denial broadcast on Iranian’s Channel 4 on October 20, 2006, accused the Jews of cultivating a fraudulent Holocaust myth, designed by the Jewish-controlled media and cinema industry.78 Iranian Middle East expert Mohammad Mehdī Amīr Kamālī told viewers of a program on the IRINN network broadcast on June 7, 2007, that the State of Israel was founded upon the principles of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and that Zionist inspiration originated in notions of racial superiority and a desire to control the world’s resources. The Protocols, he continued, contain once top-secret documents written by the founders of the Zionist movement to cement Jewish global domination.79 In the early summer of 2008 IRINN aired yet another documentary series based on the Protocols. Entitled The Secret of Armageddon, the series posited a “Jewish plan for the genocide of humanity,” including a conspiracy by Iranian Jews and Baha’is to take over Iran.80 An Iranian researcher of the Protocols in Iran, Shams al-Dīn Rahmānī, who participated in the program, reiterated the charge that Zionists sought the “complete destruction of Islam” and were therefore attempting to “americanize” their rival religion.81 The theme of Zionists intimidating the local Jewish population as part of a scheme appears in the film Sorb, as well. Set in Tehran in 1948 on the eve of Israeli independence, the film revolves around the story of a young Jew, Daniel, and his wife Mūnes, who want to immigrate to the Promised Land (’Ard-e Mū‘ūd). The couple is confronted by the Hagana organization, which disqualifies them. The “international” Zionist Jew is presented in an extremely negative light throughout the film. The Hagana members have wide-ranging influence and coerce the Jews of Iran into accepting the Israeli

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national project; they control the Iranian economy and press, and have access to information on all developments in Iran. The influence of the Protocols in the film is evident: the Jew is involved in an ongoing international conspiracy, infiltrating the non-Jewish world, corrupting it, and eventually conquering it through subterfuge. Hagana headquarters in the film bear a striking resemblance to the Jewish council described in the Protocols.82 Another film based on the ideas expressed in the Protocols was the 2003 The Cinema – the Promised Land, produced by the Center for Culture and Thought, which operates under Supreme Leader Khamene’i’s office at Tehran University. The film delivers a lengthy analysis of Jewish control of the Hollywood movie industry, the behind-the-scenes role of Jews in instances of corruption in cinema and music in the United States, and their attraction to studying economics as part of their ambition for world domination.83 The drama series Zero Degree Orbit, produced by Iranian state TV,84 deals with the Zionist movement’s role in intimidating Iranian Jews into immigrating to Palestine. On a global scale, moreover, it demonstrates that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis in order to bring Jews to Palestine against their will. For the series’ producers, Israel is a Zionist device for spreading the seeds of conflict and hatred in the Middle East, constituting a regional version of the program of world Jewry. Zionists invented antisemitism in order to drive a wedge between the Jews and local populations everywhere, Iran being no exception. Furthermore, they claim, all Jewish organizations that operated in Iran, among them the Jewish Agency and the Alliance Israélite Universelle, acted under Zionist auspices and promoted immigration to Israel. One Iranian news site would later claim that Zero Degree Orbit was in fact Zionist propaganda. ‘Abbās Salīmī Namīn made a similar assertion during a December 2007 discussion of the series on the Iranian TV program “The First Edition” (Naqd-e Avāl). Namīn accused the series of presenting a false image of the Jewish people as being oppressed, citing an interview series director Hassan Fathī gave to a foreign newspaper, in which Fathī showed sympathy for the suffering of both Muslims and Jews. Namīn demanded a more pro-Palestinian stance from Fathī and further attacked the series for assuming that the Holocaust really happened.85

The appeal of the Protocols to Iranians Why, then, have the Protocols been accepted in Iran despite a complete lack of historical veracity? Just as a study of official reaction to the Protocols offers a glimpse of the Iranian regime and its worldview, the continuous publication of the Protocols can provide some insight into the Iranian public: •

Iran’s Shi‘ite population is by and large economically deprived, and prefers to blame others for its poverty. In seeking a scapegoat, they turn to the Protocols to rationalize their sense of humiliation, as well as their belief that Iran does not receive the respect and position it deserves in

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the regional and international arena. The Jews thus serve to explain the failings of the Iranian state, and faith in the Protocols can as such be laid alongside other deep-rooted conspiracy theories so popular in Iran. Jews and the Protocols have provided Iranian society with an archetype of a successful group that is attempting to control the world. Thus, the Protocols provide a model for emulation in a country that has sought to achieve global and regional esteem in both the Pahlavī and Republican periods. The Iranian government seeks to present itself as the flag bearer in the struggle for Palestinian rights. Thus, an anti-Zionist and anti-Israel policy serves as an effective tool for advancing Iran’s quest toward regional hegemony and strengthening its position in the Arab−Muslim world, and is a useful weapon for achieving mass support within and beyond Iran’s borders. This approach is not new: various groups in the 1950s and 1960s attempted to utilize it in order to position Iran in the Arab−Muslim camp in the ongoing regional struggle. Possibly, the Protocols offer the ordinary Iranian a new way of reading the past of Judaism, Zionism, and world politics86 in a more interesting, dramatic, and far-reaching manner than accounts closer to the historical truth; they appear to be a link between the past and the present, explaining the inherent characteristics of the Jews.

Only a few Iranian intellectuals have challenged the authenticity of the Protocols. Surprisingly, the historian Abdollāh Shāhbāzī,87 who was the consultant for Zero Degree Orbit, referred on his website to several international investigations proving them to be a forgery.88 However, Shāhbāzī argues that the Jews have an interest in the text’s distribution: The Protocols played an important part [in history] as they aided in the creation and spread of an anti-Jewish mentality among Russians and thus explained the immigration of Jews [from Russia] for Westerners. The text was also a total fabrication, a most prominent example of a baseless document [purporting to be fact] … a writing which was published to reveal the machinations of Jewish plutocrats, [a document that was] exploited and altered the theoretical and scientific criteria for this kind of work.89

Conclusion The chronicle of the Protocols corresponds in some sense to the series of dilemmas and traumas Iran has experienced over the past eighty years, especially in the transition to the twenty-first century. The history of Iranian interest in the Protocols is therefore a reflection of Iranian socio-political history in the twentieth century. Interest in them has surged each time there has been a nationalist awakening or Iran has been forced to reconstruct

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its national identity, such as during the apogee of Iranian fascism in the 1920s and 1930s and after the victory of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Protocols also reflected the identity crisis that Iran experienced during its turn against the West after the revolution. A conspiratorial image of the “other” was created in order to sharpen Iranian identity in extraordinary circumstances. In times of crisis the Jew has been the object to which the Iranians have turned to vent their loathing and against which they crystallize their own identity. The reception of the Protocols in Iran demonstrates the transition from traditional anti-Judaism to modern antisemitism, which is not based solely on opposition to Judaism as a religion. Introduced in the early years of the twentieth century, modern antisemitism would eventually lead the way to the strongly anti-Israel views of the late twentieth/early twenty-first century, creating a new historiographic paradigm and alternate reality for Iranians and others exposed to the ideas of the tract. Nevertheless, foreign journalists visiting Iran in recent years have reported few signs of public antisemitism, and unlike in Cairo, Beirut, Istanbul, and Doha, store display windows are not filled with antisemitic and anti-Zionist literature.90

Notes 1 Michael Zand, “The Image of the Jews in the Eyes of the Iranians after World War II (1945−1979)” [in Hebrew], Pe‘amim, no. 29 (1986), p. 112. See also Shams al-Dīn Rahmānī, The Secret Program of the Zionists, http://www.e-resaneh.com/ ArticleFiles/barnameh%20seri%20sehunistha.htm, who surveys publications of the Protocols in Iran. He claims that the full version of the Protocols in Persian, based on a translation of Roger Lambelin’s Protocoles des Sages de Sion, was published for the first time by Mustafa Farhang in the years preceding the anti-Mosaddeq coup (August 19, 1953). Re-published in 1963/4, also based on Lambelin, by “R.Sh,” The Secrets of the Concealed Jewish Organization (n.p.), and again in Tehran (Donyā-ye Ketāb) in 2002−3 under the same name. 2 Regarding the influence of European intellectuals on Iranian intellectuals at the turn of the twentieth century, see Sorour Soroudi, “Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani and the Jewish Question,” in Muslim−Jewish Encounters: Intellectual Traditions and Modern Politics, ed. Ronald L. Nettler and Suha Taji-Farouki (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1998), pp. 149−70; Mangol Bayat Philipp, “Mirza Aga Khan Kirmani: A Nineteenth Century Persian Nationalist,” in Towards a Modern Iran: Studies in Thought, Politics and Society, ed. Eli Kadourie and Sylvia Haim (London: Frank Cass, 1980); Maryam B. Sanjabi, “Rereading the Enlightenment: Akhundzada and His Voltaire,” Iranian Studies 28, nos. 1−2 (Winter/Spring 1995), pp. 37−60; Ferydun Adamiyat, Mirza Malkum Khan: A Study in the History of Iranian Modernism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973). 3 Published in Tehran by Inteshārāt Ketābfurūshī Muhammadī (January 1957), pp. 116−20. Juhūd is a derogatory Persian expression for Jews, similar to the east European Yid. The word is indeed rooted in a dialect of Persian, but in the last few centuries assumed a pejorative connotation, in addition to its other, more positive meanings. 4 Rahmānī, The Secret Program of the Zionists. 5 Amnon Netzer, “Antisemitism in Iran: 1925−1950” [in Hebrew], Pe‘amim, no. 29 (1986), pp. 4−31.

Iranian political and cultural discourse 215 6 On the origins of the Aryan Hypothesis, see Maurice Olender, The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion, and Philology in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Other Press, 1992); Léon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe, trans. Edmund Howard (New York: Basic Books, 1974). 7 On imagining the Iranian nation, see Vaziri Mostafa, Iran as Imagined Nation: The Construction of National Identity (New York: Paragon House, 1989); Adamiyat Fereydun, The Reflections of Mīrzā Fath ‘Alī ’Ākhūndzādah [in Persian] (Tehran, 1970), pp. 113−14; Haggai Ram, “Neither East, nor West, Neither Redemption nor Destruction: Zionism and Iran’s Jews” [in Hebrew], Teorya o-Bikoret, 26 (2005), pp. 149−74, especially 159−61. 8 Ahmad Ashraf, “The Appeal of Conspiracy Theories to Persians,” Princeton Papers (Winter 1997), pp. 57−88, especially p. 57; idem, “Conspiracy Theories,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. IV (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 1993), pp. 138−47; idem, “Suspicion and Conspiracy” [in Persian], Goftegou (Summer 1995), pp. 7−45. See also Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fear of Conspiracy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996). Pipes calls Iran “the world’s most conspiracy-minded country” (p. 76). 9 On the coup d’état, see Stephen Kinzer, All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Chichester, NY: John Wiley, 2003); Bryne Gasiorowski, Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2004). 10 For more information on the myth, see Ashraf, “Conspiracy Theories,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, pp. 139−42. 11 Sorour Soroudi, “Jews in Islamic Iran,” Jewish Quarterly, no. 21 (Fall 1981), p. 109. 12 Rahmānī, The Secret Program of the Zionists. 13 Michael Zand and Eldad Pardo have researched this subject. See Zand, “The Image of the Jews,” pp. 109−39; Eldad Pardo, “Iran and Israel: Israel as a Role Model for Iranian Leftists during the 1960s” [in Hebrew], ‘Iyunim be-Tkumat Yisrael, no. 14 (2004), pp. 1−29. 14 ‘Abbās Shāhandeh, One Journey to Israel [in Persian] (Tehran: Chāpkhāneh-ye Melī, 1956); Khalīl Malekī, “Visit to the Promised Land” [in Persian], ‘Elm vaZendegī, no. 6 (January−February 1962), pp. 17−30; Dāryūsh Ashūrī, “Israel Travel Log” [in Persian], Ketāb-e Māh 1 (May−June 1962), pp. 122−33; Jalāl ’Āl-e Ahmad, “The State of Israel” [in Persian], Andīshe va-Honar (September−October 1964), pp. 380−86. 15 Shāhandeh, One Journey to Israel, pp. 7−8. 16 Regarding Israeli−Iranian relations, see Sorhab Sobhani, The Pragmatic Entente (Washington, DC: Georgetown University, 1989); Trita Parsi, “Israeli−Iranian Relations 1979−2005,” Encyclopedia Iranica, fascicle 6, vol. XIII; idem, Treacherous Alliance − Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 17 About the Taqrīb doctrine, see Ahmad Kazemi Moussavi, Sunnī-Shī’ ī Rapprochement (Taqrīb), Shi‘ite Heritage: Essays on Classical and Modern Traditions, ed. and trans. Lynda Clarke (Binghamton, NY: Global Publications, 2001), pp. 301−16; Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1986), p. 190. 18 See, for example, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem, to Meir Ezri, Tehran, July 12, 1968, report “Antisemitism and Anti-Israelism” [in Hebrew] relating to the negative portrayals of Jews and Israel in the aftermath of a soccer match held between Israel and Iran in May 1969, Israel State Archives (ISA), HZ4174/19. On the ramifications of the soccer match between Israel and Iran, see Houshang-Esfandiar Chehabi, “Jews and Sport in Modern Iran,” in The History of Contemporary Iranian Jews, ed. Homa Sarshar (Los Angeles: Center for Iranian

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O. R. Rahimiyan Jewish Oral History), vol. IV (Winter 2000), pp. 3−24; Orly R. Rahimiyan, “‘In Tehran’s hell we were beaten 2:1’: The Soccer Game between Iran and Israel (1968)” [in Hebrew], HaKivun Mizrach, no. 13 (2007), pp. 22−28. Adolf Eichmann: Tomorrow I Will Go to Hell [in Persian], 2nd ed., trans. Ahmad Mar‘shī (Tehran: Inteshārāt Golchīn, 1963). The book bears the subtitle: “The Memoir of Adolf Eichmann: The Murderer of Six Million Jews Who Was Mysteriously Smuggled out of His Israeli Prison Cell and Sent Abroad.” “The Adolf Eichmann Affair,” trans. from Life magazine (Tehran, n.d.). See, for example the following books which were translated into Persian: The Hana Senesh Affair: A Young Jewish Woman Parachutist [in Persian], comp. and trans. Zion ‘Anav (Tehran, 1966); William Lawrence Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (Tehran, 1964); and the book published by the Zionist Halutz movement in Iran by Shimon Hanasab, The Revival of the Ghettos: The Bitter and Unfortunate Faith of European Jews during World War II [in Persian] (Tehran, 1956). R. Sh., The Secrets of the Concealed Jewish Organization. Ibid., p. 1. A similar paradox has been pointed out in Japan. David G. Goodman, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; Aum and Antisemitism in Japan, Posen Papers in Contemporary Antisemitism, Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, no. 2 (March 2005). See also his article in this volume. Soroudi, “Jews in Islamic Iran,” p. 110. David Menashri, “The Pahlavī Monarchy and the Islamic Revolution,” in Esther’s Children: A Portrait of Iranian Jews, ed. Houman Sarshar (Beverly Hills, CA: Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2002), pp. 379−402. David Menashri, “The Jews of Iran: Between the Shah and Khomeini,” Antisemitism in Times of Crisis, ed. Sander L. Gilman and Steven T. Katz (New York: New York University Press, 1991), p. 357. Menashri claims, for example, that in 1971, when the western media criticized the extravagance of the celebration marking the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian monarchy, the shah blamed Israel for “allowing” them to take such a stand. David Menashri, “The Pahlavī Monarchy and the Islamic Revolution” [in Hebrew], in Jewish Communities in the East in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Iran, ed. Haim Saadoun (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2005), pp. 55−68, especially p. 62. Amnon Netzer, “Iran and the Jews of Iran” [in Hebrew], in Jewish Communities in the East, pp. 9−26, especially p. 24; Menashri, “The Pahlavī Monarchy”, p. 63; Ashraf, “Conspiracy Theories,” p. 145. Ashraf, “Conspiracy Theories,” p. 145, referring to Shojā‘ al-Dīn Shafā, Crime and Retaliation [in Persian], vol. III (Paris, 1985), pp. 1697−744. Formerly a deputy court minister for cultural affairs, in the 1980s Shojā‘ al-Dīn Shafā developed a conspiracy theory based on ideas in the deposed shah’s last book, Answer to History (New York: Stein and Day, 1980). Netzer, Iran and the Jews of Iran, p. 25. Kauthar – An Anthology of the Speeches of Imam Khomeini (s.a.) 1962−1978, vol. 1 (Tehran: Institute for the Compilation and Publication of the Works of Imam Khomeini, 1995), p. 370, as cited in Matthias Küntzel, Unholy Hatreds: Holocaust Denial and Antisemitism in Iran, Vidal Sasson International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, no. 8, p. 9. Haggai Ram, “Iran and the Israeli−Palestinian Conflict,” in Encyclopedia of the Israeli−Palestinian Conflict, ed. Cheryl A. Rubenberg (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2010). Menashri, “The Pahlavī Monarchy,” p. 65. Hamīd Rezā Shaykhī, The Protocols of the Learned of Zion; A Program of Action of World Zionism [in Persian], 2nd ed. (Mashhad: Mu’aseseh-ye Chāp-e ’Ustān-e

Iranian political and cultural discourse 217

36 37

38 39

40 41

42 43 44

45 46

47 48 49

Qods-e Razawī, 2002−3), pp. 21−22; Meir Litvak, “Iran and Israel: Ideological Hatred and Its Roots” [in Hebrew], ‘Iyunim be-Tkumat Yisrael, no. 14 (2004), p. 374. Menashri, “The Pahlavī Monarchy,” p. 65. Menasheh Amir, “The Image of Jews in Contemporary Iranian Media,” in The History of Contemporary Iranian Jews, ed. Homam Sarshar and Homa Sarshar [in Persian] (California: Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History, 1999), vol. 3, pp. 27−39, especially p. 37. Shaykhī, The Protocols of the Learned of Zion, p. 379 [emphasis added]. Regarding the perception of the Talmud in Sunni Islam, see Hava LazarusYafeh, Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); for Shi‘íte Islam, see Daniel Tsadik, “Religious Disputations of Imami Shi`is against Judaism in the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Studia Iranica, no. 34 (2005), pp. 95−134, especially 108−10. Tsadik, “Religious Disputations.” For the Iranian claim that the origins of the Protocols lay in the first Zionist congress, see Memri Special Dispatch Series, no. 1975, July 2, 2008. In The History of Two Religious Minorities − Jews and Christians (Tehran: Bāzār beyn alHarāmyn, 1965) − according to historian Michael Zand, the most objective book on Jews and Judaism written during the Pahalvī era − Muhammad Alī Tājpūr, confirms that the first Zionist Congress approved certain resolutions “they called protocol[s].” Tājpūr follows this reference with a short summary of the Protocols and an introduction to the French-language translation, as published in The Secrets of the Concealed Jewish Organization. Orly R. Rahimiyan, “My Homeland, My Diaspora: Iranian Jewish identity in Modern Times,” Journal of Hate Studies 8, no. 1 (2010), pp. 53–86. Regarding the film, see Orly Rahimiyan, “The Image of the Jew and the Zionist in the Iranian film Sorb (Lead)” [in Hebrew], Ruach Mizrachit, no. 6 (2008), pp. 20−24. Regarding the series Zero Degree Orbit, see MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series, no. 1715, September 19, 2007; Rachel Kantz and Miriam Nissimov, “‘A Zero Degree Turn’ in Policy: Iranian State-Run TV Production on the Holocaust,” Iran−Pulse, no. 18, January 10, 2008; Orly R. Rahimiyan, “Zero Degree Orbit − Holocaust, Jews and Zionists in the Eyes of the Iranians,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (forthcoming). Etelā’at, May 9, 1979. About Habīb Elqānīān, see more in Orly R. Rahimiyan, “Habibollah Elghanayan,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. Ehsan Yarshater (forthcoming). ‘Azizullāh ben Yūnā Na‘īm (1889−1946), early twentieth-century Iranian Jewish leader, merchant and one of the founders of the first Zionist committee, HaHistadrut ha-Tzionit, in Iran in 1919, later becoming its second president. During the decline of the Zionist movement in Iran in the mid-1920s, he moved to Paris where he engaged in commerce. Na‘īm, also known as Rāb [rabbi] Na‘īm, was a leading spiritual leader for the first generation of young Zionists in Iran. Orly R. Rahimiyan, “‘Azizullāh ben Yūnā Na‘īm,” in Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World (EJIW), vol. 3, ed. Norman A. Stillman (Leiden: Brill, 2009), p. 551. MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series, no. 1975, July 2, 2008. Meir Litvak, “What Is behind Iran’s Advocacy of Holocaust Denial?” Iran−Pulse, no. 3, September 11, 2006, p. 2. On the growth of the literacy rate in Iran under the Islamic Republic of Iran, see Statistical Center of Iran (Markaz-e ’Āmār-e Irān) data, http://www.sci.org. ir/portal/faces/ public/sci_en/sci_en.selecteddata/sci_en.yearbookdata, and Unicefdata, http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/iran_statistics.html.

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50 Jewish Conspiracy: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (Tehran: Islamic Propagation Organization, 1985), p. 7; republished in 1996 by Islamic Culture and Relations Organization. See also MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series, no. 98, June 7, 2000. 51 R.Sh., The Secrets of the Concealed Jewish Organization. The phrase used is “the winding snake and the Jew snake,” pp. 7−8; The Jewish snake encircling Europe, as portrayed in the European versions of the Protocols, appears at http://ddickerson.igc.org/antisemitic_snake.jpg, as published in Norman Rufus Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World conspiracy and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (London: Eyre & Spottiswood, 1967). 52 Jewish Conspiracy, pp. 4–5. 53 R.Sh., The Secrets of the Concealed Jewish Organization (2002−3 ed.). 54 Jewish Conspiracy (1996), p. 8. 55 Shaykhī, The Protocols of the Learned of Zion, p. 22. 56 Ayatollāh ‘Uzma Sayyed Mohammad Hussaynī Shīrāzī, The World Plaything of Judaism [in Persian], trans. Sayyed Hādī Mudaresī (Tehran: Bīnesh-e ‘Azādegān, September−October 2002,), pp. 137−63. 57 The cover of Mudaresī’s book The World Plaything of Judaism. 58 Muhammad ‘Alī Tājpūr, The History of Two Religious Minorities – Jews and Christians [in Persian] (Tehran: Bāzār beyn al-Harāmyn, 1965), pp. 98, 100. 59 Jewish Conspiracy (1996), p. 6. 60 The Eye of Providence, or the all-seeing eye, also appears as part of the iconography of the Freemasons. It shows an eye surrounded by rays of light representing glory, and is usually enclosed in a triangle. It is sometimes interpreted as representing the eye of God keeping watch on humankind. 61 Shaykhī, The Protocols of the Learned of Zion, p. 31. 62 “The Story of Kasra with Būzar Jūmhūr,” Shāhnāmeh (Tehran: Mu’aseshe-ye Intishārāt-e Surah, 1998), vol. 8, p. 1582, line 3778, http://shahnameh.recent. ir/default.aspx?item=558&page=11#7. 63 Menashri, “The Jews of Iran,” pp. 367−68, citing Jomhūrī-ye Eslāmī (literary supplement, Sahifeh, no. 31); reprinted in Kayhān (Kayhān Havā’ ī), March 12, 1986. 64 Michael Zand shows that the Protocols had some influence on the writings of intellectuals in the 1960s. Zand, “The Image of the Jews,” pp. 117, 129−30. 65 See, for example, the MEMRI review of antisemitism and Holocaust denial in the Iranian media, 2004−2005, Memri, Special Dispatch Series, no. 855, January 28, 2005. 66 “Contemporary Arab−Muslim Antisemitism, Its Meaning and Ramifications” (Update to March 2008) [in Hebrew] (Herzliya: Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, March−September 2008), pp. 19−33, especially pp. 18−19, www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/Hebrew/heb_n/pdf/a_s_170408. pdf. 67 For theories of Jewish involvement in 9/11, see Memri Special Report, no. 33, September 9, 2004; no. 735, June 29, 2004; no. 38, September 9, 2005; no. 997, September 30, 2005; “9/11 Conspiracy Discussed on Iranian TV,” Memri TV, September 13, 2005, http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/868.htm. 68 IRNA, June 18, 1994, as cited in Menashe Amir, “Iran” in Antisemitism World Report (London: Institute of Jewish Affairs and American Jewish Committee, 1994), p. 173. 69 Sobh, no. 93, April 1999. 70 Tehran Times, September 28, 2000, as cited in David Menashri, “Iran,” in Antisemitism Worldwide 2000/1 (Tel Aviv: Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, Tel Aviv University, 2001), p. 252. 71 Jomhūrī-ye Eslāmī, November 7, 2000, as cited in Menashri, “Iran.” 72 Memri Special Dispatch Series, 705, April 30, 2004.

Iranian political and cultural discourse 219 73 On Zionist−Nazi collaboration see Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, From Empathy to Denial: Arab Response to the Holocaust (NY: Columbia University Press, 2009). 74 Memri Special Dispatch Series, no. 705, April 30, 2004. 75 On the international book fair in Frankfurt, see Matthias Küntzel, “The ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ at the Frankfurt Book Fair,” October 24, 2005, http://www. trans-int.com/news/archives/60-the-protocols-of-zion-at-the.html; idem, “The Booksellers of Tehran,” Wall Street Journal Online, October 28, 2005, http://www. matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/the-booksellers-of-tehran. 76 MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series, no. 1101, February 24, 2006. 77 Ibid., no. 1072, January 18, 2006. 78 “Contemporary Arab−Muslim Anti-Semitism,” pp. 19−33, especially p. 31. 79 Ibid. p. 30. 80 MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series, no. 1975, July 2, 2008. For the clip, see MEMRI TV, clip no. 1802, May−June, 2008, http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1802.htm. 81 “The Hate Industry: a blatantly antisemitic series which incorporates The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has recently been shown on an Iranian TV channel,” Herzliya: Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, July 21, 2008, p. 4, http://www. terrorism-info.org.il/malam_ multimedia/English/eng_n/html/iran_e001.htm. 82 Regarding the film, see “The Image of the Jew … in the Iranian Film Sorb,” pp. 20−24. 83 Reuven Erlich, ed., “Hate Industry”: Antisemitic, Anti-Zionist and Anti-Jewish Literature in the Arab and Muslim World [in Hebrew], Intelligence and Terrorism Information Bulletin no. 8 (Herzliya: Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, May 2003), p. 52, cited ISNA, April 29, 2003. 84 MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series, no. 1715, September 19, 2007; Kantz and Nissimov, “‘A Zero Degree Turn’”; Rahimiyan, “Zero Degree Orbit.” 85 “Zero Degree Orbit, Part of Zionist Propaganda Program” [in Persian], http:// www.asriran.com/view.php?id=31920, accessed December 23, 2007. 86 Shaykhī, The Protocols of the Learned of Zion, p. 26. 87 Abdollāh Shāhbāzī published a five-volume set under the title Jewish and Persian Gold Leaders: The Colonialism of Britain and Iran [in Persian] (Tehran: Mu’aseseh-ye Mutāle‘āt va-Pazūhesh-hā-ye Sīyāsī, 1998). 88 From the article “Why the Protocols of the Elders of Jews Are a Forgery” [in Persian], http://www.shahbazi.org/Articles/Protocols.pdf, based on a speech delivered on February 26, 2000, at Tehran University’s Faculty of Law and Political Science. 89 http://www.shahbazi.org/Articles/Protocols.pdf, p. 12. 90 See, for example, Eldad Beck in Yedi‘ot Aharonot, Seven Days supplement [in Hebrew], April 18, 2008, pp. 25−26.

13 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Turkey Rifat N. Bali

The objectives present in the Secret Protocols of Zion have been mostly achieved. The Jews have aims written in their secret Protocols for putting other nations under their domination. Going into the details of the Protocols would lead us far from our main subject. However, explaining only one of the Protocols can give us an idea about the contents of the others. Among the Protocols of Zion is the principle of engaging the minds of the people with useless entertainment or useless matters so as to distance them from any concern with serious affairs. Today the popularity of football is a perfect example which shows that this principle of the Protocols of Zion has been realized.1

Introduction Süleyman Arif Emre (1923− ), the writer of these lines, is no ordinary politician. A graduate of the prestigious Law School of Ankara University, he served five times as a member of parliament and as general secretary of the National Order Party. Emre was the founding president of the party, established in 1970 by Necmettin Erbakan, a notorious antisemitic leader and chief ideologist of Turkish political Islam, or the National View (Milli Görüş). The creation of the National Order Party (January 26, 1970–May 20, 1971) marked the beginning of Turkey’s venture into political Islam and was the first in a succession of political parties which, after being closed by the courts for anti-secularism, were re-constituted under different names, including the National Salvation Party (October 11, 1972−September 12, 1980), Welfare Party (July 19, 1983−January 16, 1998), Virtue Party (December 17, 1997− June 22, 2001), and Felicity Party (July 10, 2001−). Emre was involved in the founding of each of these parties. In 1974 when Bülent Ecevit (1925−2006), a leftist Kemalist2 president of the Republican People’s Party, formed a coalition government with Erbakan, Emre was granted the portfolio of state minister in charge of religious foundations and the Council of State, and the presidency of religious affairs. As of 2007 he served as a member of the board of the founders of the Felicity Party and as a columnist for Millî Gazete, the semi-official newspaper of the National View. It should be noted that the

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Justice and Development Party, which won the November 2002 elections, has roots in the National View ideology; party leader Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan, however, has dissociated the party from this creed, defining it as a conservative Muslim party. The history of antisemitism in Republican Turkey has several facets. In the formative years of the republic (1923−46), antisemitism was manifested mainly in economic stereotypes. As in Europe of that time, Jews were portrayed in caricatures as greedy, dirty usurers, who were disloyal to the fatherland.3 After the end of World War II, these images were displaced by myths promoted in radical Islamist circles, such as the blood libel and Jewish world domination, and conspiracy theories such as those found in the Protocols. Süleyman Arif Emre’s belief in the Protocols is not an isolated case. In fact, he is highly representative, demonstrating how the Protocols have been accepted as an authentic document among Islamists and among ultranationalist groups in Turkey.

Publishing cycles of the Protocols in Turkey The history of democracy in the Republic of Turkey can be divided into two lengthy periods. The first began with the establishment of the republic in 1923 until the end of World War II when Turkey was governed solely by the Republican People’s Party, established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. The second was the multi-party period, which began in 1946. Between 1923 and 1945 the Protocols were published only three times, by sympathizers of the Nazis.4 The tract was not widely circulated in those years because Atatürk and his colleagues were trying to secularize society and the state. He therefore severely repressed the Islamic movement and refused to compromise with those who sought a return of the old regime. The Protocols became more widespread after World War II when, in an effort to implement full democracy, Turkish leaders permitted the establishment of political parties. Multi-party democracy became a springboard for the infusion of populism into politics. This was due to the sociological composition of the electoral base, the overwhelming majority of which held conservative, religious, and nationalist values. In an attempt to garner electoral support, politicians from mainstream parties which traditionally embraced secularism, began to demonstrate flexibility with Atatürk’s reforms and with the republican principle of secularism. They thus closed their eyes to the growth of the Islamic movement, which eventually gained power in 2002. The popularity of the Protocols in Turkey, then, closely parallels the development of Islamism and extreme right politics. Over 58 years − from 1946 until 2008 − the tract was published 102 times, in accordance with the breakdown in Table 13.1. Generally, the tract has been published in full text or in lengthy summarized form, in books dealing with Zionism, Judaism, the Torah, and the State of Israel, or quoted in articles published in Islamist and ultra-nationalist journals and newspapers. According to the ideological profile of the publishers of

4 4

3

Total

6

6 17

12 28

14

6

10

8



25

22



9

8

102

74

8

20



2

1

Islamists



3



2



8

Ultra-nationalists/ Islamists

3



3

Ultra-nationalists



1923−1945 1946−1950 1951−1960 1961−1970 1971−1980 1981−1990 1991−2000 2001−2008 Total

Years/published by

Table 13.1 Publication of the Protocols in Turkey, 1923–2008

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the newspapers, journals and books where the Protocols appeared, 72 percent were Islamist, 20 percent ultra-nationalist and 8 percent ultra-nationalist/ Islamist.5

Analysis of publishing cycles The publishing cycles of the Protocols are closely related to internal political developments in Turkey, on the one hand, and to the situation in the Middle East, on the other. As can be seen from the table, there is a big leap in publication in the 1960s compared to earlier periods. This was due to the deep disappointment felt by Islamists after the Six Day War; in fact, in the years 1967−68 alone the tract was published seven times. Islamists had been hoping that Israel would lose the war and disappear from the Middle East. In the 1970s the increase to 28 times was due not only to the Yom Kippur War but also to the armed struggle between Turkish revolutionary leftists and ultra-nationalist militants, as well as to the beginning of political Islam, with the establishment of the National Order Party in 1970. Ultra-nationalists and Islamists believed that the struggle between extremists of the left and the right was a Zionist ploy to trigger a civil war and create chaos in order to achieve their goal of dominating Turkey. This notion was based on Genesis 15:18, in which God made the promise to Abraham: “Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.” The source of the Euphrates is in southeast Turkey, and Islamists believe that Greater Israel includes part of that region. The fall in publication in the 1980s was due to the military takeover of Turkey on September 12, 1980, after which the press was censored, all political parties were disbanded, and their leaders were held in custody for three years. The 1990s witnessed another increase in publication, for two reasons: the strengthening of the Islamist movement, and the Turkish Jewish community’s celebration of the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Sephardi Jews in Ottoman lands after their expulsion from Spain in 1492. The Turkish media covered the anniversary extensively and the Islamists reacted strongly, as evidenced by the publication of the Protocols eight times in 1992 alone. The Islamists objected mainly to president Chaim Herzog’s visit to Turkey and to his participation in the gala dinner held in Dolmabahçe Palace in July 1992. They also argued that the “hidden” objective of the festivities was to enhance Israel’s image in Turkish public opinion.6

The popularity of the Protocols The cases where the Protocols have been quoted as an authentic document are too numerous to mention. A few examples from three areas: the press, politics, and academia, serve to illustrate this phenomenon.

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The press Columnists who cited or referred to the Protocols to reinforce their arguments were obsessed with the idea that the Jews/Zionists (the two terms tended to be used alternatively or synonymously) had only one objective in mind: to dominate Turkey, thereby manipulating the economy and the media and making the Republic of Turkey subservient to Israel and “decadent western civilization.” The following examples are representative of this mindset. Expressing his dissatisfaction with the military cooperation agreement signed between Israel and Turkey in 1996, Yaşar Kaplan, a columnist with the radical Islamist newspaper Vakit, used the pejorative term “Salamon” for Jew, employed in the popular humoristic press to denigrate Turkish politicans: “Not one objective forecast in the Protocols has not been realized,” he stated. “If we continue sleeping as we have been doing and elect as governors Salamons who are slaves of the Jews, the Jews will easily achieve all their desires.”7 In April 2002, during Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin, the entire Turkish media took a very strong anti-Israel line, accusing Israel of committing genocide against innocent Palestinians.8 Serdar Arseven, columnist for Vakit, noted that although those over the age of forty would be bored by the Protocols because of frequent past references to them, he had changed his mind after Mehmet Doğan,9 “the Master,” advised him that it was worthwhile publishing them and other documents, “which Vakit could distribute as a gift to readers.”10 Responding, in July 1996, to a reader who asked, “What is Zionism?” Ali Güler, a columnist with the newspaper Türkiye (published by the Ihlas [industrial] Holding owned by conservative Islamist businessman Enver Ören11), asserted that Zionism was a kind of Jewish ideal. Quoting the fifteenth protocol of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he stated that until the World Jewish Kingdom was established, all leading figures throughout the world were in the service of Zionism, and that the Protocols had been compiled by Zionists as a means to achieve their goals. Güler then went on to list ten protocols.12 A year later he gave a similar answer to the question, “Does Zionism have any connection to the [political] left?”13 Mustafa Necati Özfatura, from the same newspaper, claimed in May 1996 that the western world, all of whose institutions were at the mercy of the Zionists, was seeking to destroy the strong Turkish family structure by screening pornographic movies and sitcoms on television. The Jew, he wrote, owned much of the TV, movie, and press industry and, based on the Protocols, sought “world domination by trying to weaken the traditional values of nations and enslave them to money and lust.” In fact, he said, the Jew was very close to achieving his goal.14 Mustafa Özcan, a foreign affairs analyst for the Islamist paper Zaman, also made several references to the Protocols. On a visit to Cairo and Amman in 1979 at the age of seventeen, Özcan had brought back a copy of the tract

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for his own edification.15 During the Bosnian war (1992−95) he published an article entitled “The Protocols of the Leaders of Serbia,” clearly alluding to the Protocols, which he claimed was an authentic document.16 Politics The Protocols have also been used by politicians belonging to the National View movement. Since the ideology of this movement is virulently antisemitic, believing in Jewish hegemony of the media, it is no surprise that a high-level official of the disbanded National Salvation Party, Yasin Hatipoğlu, referred to them. Hatipoğlu is a lawyer, a graduate of the prestigious Law School of Ankara University, a four-time member of parliament and in the past a vice president of the Turkish Parliament. In July 20, 2001, he became a member of the board of governors of the Felicity Party and an advisor to Erbakan. In 1982, when he was banned from politics following the September 12, 1980, military coup, he published two articles in Millî Gazete, the semi-official organ of Erbakan’s Islamic movement. In the first he defined Judaism “as the headache of the world” or “the international intrigue plotter,” as described in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Such a disciplined organization and binding mechanism could not be found in any other society or even in any state, he concluded.17 Continuing the Protocols theme in the second article, he pointed out that “at first glance these devilishly-prepared protocols give the impression that they were not produced by Jews” but this, in fact, was the intention. To prove the authenticity of the Protocols, Hatipoğlu refers to several regional and international developments that have occurred since the Six Day War, including the occupation of Arab lands, intra-Muslim conflicts, the rise of economic pressure groups, and the emergence of lobbies dominating intellectuals in various countries, in addition to chaos not only in the Middle East but throughout the entire world. All these phenomena were unfolding “according to the instructions of the Protocols” and were to the benefit of Israel. “Therefore, we can only say that, from the point of view of Jews, ‘they have achieved their goal’,” he concluded.18 Süleyman Arif Emre has also repeatedly written in Millî Gazete that the Jews seek to dominate the world and cited the Protocols as the source for this allegation. He stated that “the Middle East has not seen one day of peace since the establishment of the State of Israel” and, referring to the conspiracy theories that circulate in Turkey concerning Israel’s aid to the Kurds in their endeavors to establish a free Kurdistan in northern Iraq, he added: “We have to fight against a ‘second Israel’ calamity in northern Iraq.” Emre concluded: “As can be seen, the 22 protocols still apply to us. The material and moral structure of our society, of our state, is continuously being attacked.”19 The sentiments expressed in these articles, among several that have been published, reflect a widespread belief in the party, and among its grassroots.

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Academia The Protocols have not often been used by academics, with the exception of two scholars. One is Hikmet Tanyu whose two-volume, 1350-page Jews and Turks throughout History is considered a classic.20 Tanyu (1918−92) was a Turkish nationalist and the first scholar with a Ph.D. in the history of religions. He held the chair of History of Religions in the Faculty of Theology of Ankara University from 1962 to 1982 and his opus continues to be used widely by theology students. Tanyu included in his book the complete text of the Protocols, with the following introductory comment: “Without reading and learning The Protocols of the Elders of Zion it is impossible to understand the motives of the Zionist and Jewish movements.”21 The other scholar is Süleyman Sayar (1956− ), an associate professor in the History of Religions Department at Uludağ University’s Faculty of Theology in Bursa. Sayar published an extremely antisemitic article in 2000 in the faculty journal, entitled “The Jewish Character: A Historical and Socio−Psychological Approach,” in which he analyzed the Jewish character according to the Old Testament and the Qu’ran. His conclusion was that the Jew had an inherently negative character. He also linked the Protocols to the Talmud and the Bible, claiming that the Jewish mentality was reflected in all of them. “The Protocols are a program that the Jews will follow on the road that will lead them to world domination,” he declared, adding that they had been compiled “by Jewish leaders” and “should be counted among the sources of the Jewish mentality.”22

Conclusion The Protocols have appealed mostly to Islamist and ultra-nationalist circles, which utilize them in their writings. The level of debate relating to Zionism and Israel among Islamic intellectuals in Turkey is so low that in 2000 Islamist thinker Dücane Cündioğlu hailed the publication of the third edition of the Turkish translation of sections of Theodor Herzl’s diaries dealing with his stay at Constantinople23 as a step toward elevating the debate on Zionism to a higher intellectual level.24 The Protocols influenced an entire generation of Turkish ultra-nationalists and Islamists and their impact continues to be felt. Therefore, it is not surprising that publications available in Turkish on the subject of Zionism, Judaism, and Israel are mostly popular antisemitic works and translations of antisemitic Egyptian, Iranian, and Arabic ones, and that the ultra-nationalists’ handbook is the Turkish translation of Mein Kampf, which became a bestseller in the country in 2005.25 Moreover, Islamists tend to explain events by resorting to conspiracy theories involving Jews, Zionists, Freemasons, and Dönmes (crypto-Jewish followers of the false messiah Shabtai Tzvi). The most widely accepted one is that the establishment of the secular Turkish Republic was the result of a Jewish conspiracy.26 Therefore, Islamists believe that the only

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obstacles to transforming the Republic of Turkey into an Islamic Republic of Turkey are the Dönmes and Jews, who are fierce secularists. A review of an edition of the Protocols was published in April 2004 in an ultra-nationalist Kemalist journal. The article describes the tract as offering hints of a world vision of Zionism and concludes by characterizing the Protocols as “too true to be an illusion, too perfect to be fiction.”27 The legacy of the Protocols is very much alive in Turkey, evidenced in their reprinting and in conspiracy theories, which became especially prevalent after 9/11 in the Islamist and part of the ultra-nationalist Kemalist media. These theories all boil down to a common theme: the spirit of the Protocols, namely the Jews, seeks to dominate the world by all the means at their disposal.

Notes 1 Süleyman Arif Emre, 35 Years in Politics [in Turkish], vol. 1 (Ankara: Keşif Yayınları, 2002), pp. 209−10. 2 Term used to designate those who support the ideology of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding father of modern Turkey. Atatürk’s ideology was based on the concept of a secular republic. 3 See, for example, Hatice Bayraktar, Salamon and Rebeka, Jewish Stereotypes in the Caricatures of Turkish Journals: Akbaba, Karikatür and Milli İnkılap (1933−1945) [in German] (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2006); Laurent Olivier Mallet, “Satirical Drawings and Representations of the ‘Jew’ in Turkey between the Two Wars: From One Prejudice to the Other?” [in French], in The Multiplication of Images in Islamic Countries: From Print to Television (17th−21st Centuries), ed. Bernard Heyberger and Sylvia Naef, March 25−27, 1999 (Würzburg: Orient Institute, 2003), pp. 247−66. 4 It was first serialized from May to July 1934 in the nationalist journal Millî İnkılap, published by a notorious antisemite Cevat Rıfat Atilhan. Another edition was published as a book based on the version of French antisemite Roger Lambelin (1857−1929). The Turkish translation, published in 1943, was entitled The Jewish History and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Turkish translation of Henry Ford’s The International Jew was published in Turkish that same year. 5 For a detailed breakdown of publications of the Protocols, see Rıfat N. Bali, Relations between Turks and Jews in Modern Turkey [in French] (Istanbul: Les Editions Isis, 2001), pp. 61−68. 6 M. Ahmet Varol, “500 Years of the Jews in Turkey,” Milli Gazete, August 9, 1992. 7 Yaşar Kaplan, “Israeli Planes in Our Skies” [in Turkish], Vakit, April 18, 1996. 8 Serdar Arseven, “Let’s Drink More!” [in Turkish], Vakit, April 8, 2002. 9 Doğan (1947− ) was once a columnist for the Islamist Zaman and Vakit newspapers and long-time president of the right-wing Turkish Writers Union. He was a member of the Higher Council of Radio and Television, the supervisory board of radio and television broadcasting in Turkey, in the years 1996−2005. 10 Serdar Arseven, “You Jew!” [in Turkish], Vakit, April 12, 2002. 11 For more information on this group, see www.ihlas.com.tr. 12 Ali Güler, “The Politics of the Jews” [in Turkish], Türkiye, July 9, 1996. 13 Güler, “The Sons of the Israelis” [in Turkish], Türkiye, July 20, 1997. 14 M. Necati Özfatura, “The West Wants to Destroy the Strong Bonds of the Turkish Family” [in Turkish], Türkiye, May 14, 1996. 15 Mustafa Özcan, “The Protocols of the Leaders of Serbia” [in Turkish], İslâm, no. 112 (December 1992), p. 25. 16 Özcan, “The Protocols” [in Turkish], Zaman, June 26, 1993.

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17 Yasin Hatiboğlu, “To Know the Jew …” [in Turkish], Millî Gazete, January 28, 1982. 18 Hatiboğlu, “The Protocols and the Scenes on TV …” [in Turkish], Millî Gazete, April 24, 1982. 19 Süleyman Arif Emre, “The Protocols of Zion that Abdülhamid Hân Took Seriously” [In Turkish], Millî Gazete, January 17, 2008. 20 Hikmet Tanyu, Jews and Turks throughout history [in Turkish], vols. 1−2 (Istanbul: Yağmur Yayınları, 1976−77); 2nd ed. (Ankara: Elips Yayınları, 2005). 21 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 476. 22 Süleyman Sayar, “The Jewish Character (A Historical and Socio−Psychological Approach)” [in Turkish], Uludağ Üniversitesi İlâhiyat Fakültesi 9, no. 9 (2000), pp. 307−25. 23 Yaşar Kutluay, Zionism and Turkey [in Turkish] (Istanbul: Koloni Yayıncılık, 2000). 24 Dücane Cündioğlu, The History of the Back Streets [in Turkish] (İstanbul: Gelenek Yayıncılık, 2004), pp. 261−63. First published as “A Man, a Book and a Death …,” Yenişafak, September 12, 2000. 25 For a bibliography of translations of Mein Kampf, see Bali, Relations between Turks and Jews, pp. 70−1. 26 Rıfat N. Bali, A Scapegoat For All Seasons: The Dönmes or Crypto-Jews of Turkey (İstanbul: Isis Press, 2008). 27 A. Fatih Yılmaz, “A Look” [in Turkish], 2023, no. 40 (August 15, 2004), p. 48.

14 Rationalizing the Hidden Hand ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri’s theory of the “Judaization of Society” Goetz Nordbruch

It is one of the tragic ironies of contemporary debates within the Arab public that even critics of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion tend to justify their stance with a sharp critique of Israel and Israeli politics. The late Egyptian intellectual and professor of English literature ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri (1938−2008) is an outstanding representative of the latter school. In the introduction to his book The Protocols, Judaism and Zionism, Masiri wrote: “This study rejects the belief in the Protocols not despite, but because of my rejection of Zionism and American hegemony.”1 Masiri has attracted considerable attention among the Arab public. After serving as an advisor both to the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo and the delegation of the Arab League to the United Nations in New York during the 1970s, he succeeded in establishing himself as a respected expert on Jewish and Zionist history, frequently contributing to various newspapers and TV programs. From January 2007 to his death in July 2008, Masiri held the position of general coordinator of the oppositional Kefaya movement, which had been formed in 2004 to campaign for reforms in Egyptian society. He published over 50 works on western literature, Islamic philosophy, Judaism, and the Arab−Israeli conflict, as well as children’s books and educational stories.2 His reputation among Islamist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, but also among the liberal and left-leaning public, as a leading intellectual and political activist reflects the persuasiveness of his appeal for a “new Islamic discourse.”3 This combines calls for the preservation of the Islamic community and domestic reforms with an anti-modern critique and anti-Zionist agitation. In the weeks following his death in July 2008, obituaries were published by representatives of most political and religious currents in the Arab world. Since the late 1990s, various contributors to the Arab media have raised concerns about the impact of the belief in a hidden Jewish hand.4 The headline of one article − “Enough, Egypt, It Is Enough!” − relating to the infamous Egyptian TV series Knight without a Horse,5 which portrayed the Protocols as a historical document − was a telling example of the outcry raised among

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intellectuals by this kind of deliberate betrayal of reason.6 Some, such as renowned Iraqi intellectual Kamaran Karadaghi, former Palestinian−Israeli Knesset member ‘Azmi Bishara, and senior political advisor to the Egyptian president Usama al-Baz, vehemently rejected these myths of Jewish conspiracies as expressions of antisemitic thought and as “an insult to Arab and Islamic rationality and intelligence.”7 Lebanese journalist Hazim Saghiya went even further, openly depicting conspiracy theories as an indication of a serious crisis of political culture. Writing for the London-based Arab newspaper alHayat he stated: “Whoever follows the news from Egypt – and the positions of most Egyptian intellectuals, journalists, and politicians – begins to think that the world wakes up every morning, rubs its eyes, and exclaims: ‘Oh my Goodness, it’s seven, I’m late, I must immediately start conspiring against Egypt’.” He continued: “Egypt was once the signpost to progress and enlightenment in the Arab world. [Today] it has itself become one of the reasons for Egypt’s cultural deterioration. Now we look like the Weimar Republic with its confusions and disruptions, only without its joy, its freedom, and creativity.”8 Among those concerned about the spread of conspiracy theories in the Arab world, Masiri is conspicuous because he published several books and numerous articles dealing with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the historical truth about the tract. For Masiri there is no doubt that it is a forgery, that there is neither a group of Jews scheming to take over the world nor a secret plan by which this rule should be achieved. More importantly, he tries to demystify the Protocols and rationalize the ideas implied in them. This chapter will focus on Masiri’s analysis of the Protocols and their function within his perception of contemporary society. While accepting that the tract is a forgery, he argues that developments such as social disintegration and moral degeneration described in it are characteristic of modern western society. In his writings, Masiri thus integrates his refutation of the Protocols into a critique of western society and globalization, and their influence on the Islamic world.

A critique of conspiratorial thought (al-Tafkir al-Ta’amuri) Masiri was by far the most productive Arab writer on the Protocols. What makes his theory particularly persuasive is that his analysis is articulated as part of a moderate Islamist worldview that has gained increasing support. His critique of the Protocols is not intended to acquit Jews of being a source of evil; it is aimed at rationalizing public perceptions of society and re-directing their resistance and anger toward globalization and a generalized “West.” Zionism is depicted as a mere variation of the forces of westernization attempting to undermine values, traditions, and belief systems that form the essence of a supposedly authentic Arab−Islamic community. While reproducing many antisemitic stereotypes, Masiri’s approach switches the focus of the Protocols, warning not against the Jews but against the “judaization of society.”9 A discussion of the Protocols hence allows for an elucidation of

Rationalizing the Hidden Hand 231 the merits of a community based on Islamic values and traditions and the requisites for its defense. Masiri provides a summary of his conclusions on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his eight-volume Encyclopedia of the Jews, Judaism and Zionism.10 This work, first published in 1999, includes an entry about the content and history of the Protocols. The Protocols, Masiri writes, have been proven scientifically to be a forgery; for a variety of reasons it is questionable that this text was authored by Jews. The absence of Hebrew words and of any reference to Jewish religious sources, according to Masiri, is one reason to doubt the supposed Jewish origins of the tract. He goes so far as to declare that no believing Muslim should use it, as it has been utilized both in the past and the present, to falsely level accusations against Jews for deeds for which they are not responsible. The Protocols ultimately reflect a racist approach to Jews.11 Masiri stresses, however, that the notion of the Jew as being distinct is used not only by antisemites but by Zionists, too. Accordingly, the very idea of a Jewish conspiracy is consistent with both antisemitic and Zionist views about the Jews. While the antisemite believes in the overwhelming influence of Jews, the Zionist perceives them to be “chosen” and empowered to rule others. According to Masiri, the popularity, not only of the Protocols but of conspiratorial thought in general not only reflects the Zionist self-image but is a political exigency of Zionism. There are good reasons to believe, he implies, that Zionists are actually propagating and encouraging these views, spreading fear and insecurity among gentiles.12 In many regards, this critique of Zionism is no more than a concretization of his more general analysis of western modernity.13 A statement in Masiri’s entry on the Protocols explicitly identifies the tract as echoing a crisis of modern western society: It is obvious that the Protocols were meant less as a critique of the Jews than they were an expression of the sensitivity of European man toward his own state of crisis at the end of the 19th century. The Protocols were an expression of his unreflected and superficial realization of [this] crisis … The society which − according to the Protocols − the Jews are trying to impose on the world, is not an evil world in the metaphysical sense; it is in reality the western industrialized world itself which is ruled by the principles of secularism and profitability.14 According to this view, most of the social changes depicted in the Protocols as part of a Jewish conspiracy are reflections of the grave challenges posed by modern western society. Hence, Masiri argues that what is problematic about the Protocols is not so much the description of the challenges as the identification of the forces behind them.

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Secularization and “functional groups” Masiri’s theory is based on the assumption that western society has undergone a process of comprehensive secularization. While in traditional societies interpersonal relations were characterized by close, immediate contacts governed by shared values and visions, contemporary western society has become a complex network of value-free, contractual relations. Rationalization, instrumentalization, and utility are key elements that are both results and catalysts of this process of destructive modernization.15 However, even in traditional societies contractual relations were not unknown. To characterize the transformation from traditional to modern societies, Masiri introduces the concept of “functional groups” (al-jama‘at al-wazifiyya). In his view, traditional societies were divided essentially into social cores and functional groups. While the majority of society pursued an organic life based on kinship, shared values, and mutual dependence, functional groups, which were socially and even physically isolated, adopted specific roles and functions, regarded as incompatible with the modes of organic reproduction within the core. Examples included money lending, protection of the ruler, priestly duties, medicine, translation, espionage, and prostitution.16 Masiri introduces the distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft to illustrate this social structure. While the social core can be described as Gemeinschaft, a collective based on primordial bonds and close interpersonal linkages, its relations to the various functional groups are those of Gesellschaft, based on interest and contractual exchange. Unlike members of the Gemeinschaft, the “other” in these relations is de-humanized. Being instrumentalized and secularized, functional groups form “a contractual pocket or ghetto (Gesellschaft) within the traditional primordial society (Gemeinschaft).”17 For the social majority, these people are matter, part of a rational calculation. Historically, Masiri argues, functional groups were Jews, Armenians, Gypsies, Chinese and Mameluks, which to a large extent were interchangeable. He stresses that their adoption of specific functions can hardly be explained by their ethnic or religious origins. He takes great pains to emphasize that it was more the material needs of traditional societies than any kind of mental, cultural, or ethnic predisposition that linked these groups to their respective roles. Nevertheless, their very adoption and the related isolation and stigmatization effectively shaped the self-perception and worldview of these functionalized “others.” They “internalize their isolation and even promote it. They insist on preserving their special dress, ghetto, or dialect and resist any attempt at de-ghettoization, seeing it as a threat to their identity (which indeed it is).”18 Taking refuge in the ghetto, both ideologically and physically, is a consequent reaction and a central aspect of the identity developed by these groups. Not surprisingly, Masiri takes the Jews as a “prime example”19 of functional groups. While he lists a few other groups, his interest in what he calls “Jewish

Rationalizing the Hidden Hand 233 functional groups” led him to an almost obsessive production of books dealing with this phenomenon. His Encyclopedia of the Jews, Judaism and Zionism can be read as a compendium of Jewish functional groups and their origins. Entries about Jewish prostitutes, Jewish spies, Jewish money lenders, Jewish Satanists, and Jewish revolutionaries cover almost all stereotypical professions and traits historically attributed to the Jews.20 Jews hardly exist as the norm, as the ordinary person; they exist only as a pariah, fulfilling a function outsourced from the community. Masiri does not ask whether the Jews were money-lenders, Satanists, or prostitutes but why they were. Assuming a disproportionately large number of Jewish revolutionaries and prostitutes, he argues that the functions adopted by Jewish outsiders can be explained by the social conditions in which they lived. Over the course of history these functions were internalized and finally adopted as reflecting the self-image of the excluded groups. Functional groups, Masiri asserts, perceived themselves “as chosen communities with exceptional burdens.”21 This argument is problematic for obvious reasons. Not only is the identification of Jews − or of any other group − with specific social functions questionable; even more so is the contention that functionality has marked not only Judaism as a religion and philosophy, but psychologically shaped the collective and individual minds of Jews and their relation to non-Jews. Despite his seemingly materialistic argumentation – explaining social behavior as an outcome of social conditions rather than assuming racial, ethnic, or religious roots – Masiri’s theory on the development of a pariah mentality among functional groups ends up rationalizing most antisemitic stereotypes as necessary consequences of the processes of social modernization. The focus on “Jewish behavior,” however, is not central to Masiri’s writings. Rather, his analysis focuses on a historical description of the comprehensive secularization process that the western world underwent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This process, Masiri claims, was characterized essentially by a structural generalization of functional groups: namely, the dissolution of these groups and their permeation into society. Traditional society, whose core was the Gemeinschaft, was transformed entirely into a Gesellschaft. According to Masiri: One could … argue that, with the increased rationalization of human relationships and the dominance of contractual relationships in lieu of traditional and moral loyalties, human individuals are instrumentalized and functionalized. We all become modern men, we all become disenchanted rational calculators of pleasure and utility, seeing mother nature and fellow man as useful matter and nothing more. This is the total elimination of the sacred, and the real death of God … Marx, in his own flamboyant way, called this “the judaization of society.”22

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In a different context, Masiri adds that the “judaization of society” is no more than the dissolution of functional groups as separate collectives. In the end, they are generalized; in modern society every man becomes a “‘Jew’ in its functional sense.”23 While the Jew in traditional societies was the “seed of Gesellschaft … within the Gemeinschaft,”24 society itself has been transformed into a “structural Jew.”

Anti-modern critique and “new Islamic discourse” Masiri quotes Karl Marx, Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, and Zygmunt Bauman in various contexts to illustrate his arguments. The extensive references to modern western philosophers who adopted critical approaches to western modernity are one of the most striking characteristics of Masiri’s writings.25 The relation of the Holocaust to modern western thought, addressed in particular by Arendt and Bauman, is interpreted by Masiri as confirmation of his theory. In his reading of these authors, nihilism, and ultimately the destruction of man, is an implicit tendency linked to the rationalization and secularization of modern society. The reduction of man to matter, identified as a characteristic of modern societies and exemplified in Nazism and the Holocaust, has been recognized even by western philosophers as an existential threat to contemporary society.26 In the past, western society articulated these continuing destructive tendencies through imperialist subordination of colonies; from this perspective the Holocaust may be explained as one of the first examples of the elimination of “useless matter” within society itself. However, during the twentieth century increasing resistance by Third World populations and economic and ecological crises forced the West to reconsider its strategy to implement its materialistic vision. The new outlook, just like the old, Masiri says, views the world (man and nature) as matter to be utilized, and deems it necessary that the whole world be transformed into a large space governed only by the laws of supply, demand, and the maximization of profit and sexual pleasure. It thus tries to “rationalize” the entire world so as to turn it into a factory, a market, a night club, or a travel agency … To achieve this, the West resorted to seduction rather than coercion … Deconstruction and subtle maneuvering, the West discovered, are more effective and far cheaper than destruction and confrontation. The West can thus abandon its aggressive centrality and open hegemony, utilizing a more subtle latent structural hegemony instead.27 Masiri identifies westernized elites in the Third World, the media, modern art, international NGOs, and, even more importantly, ideological currents such as feminism and postmodernism, as agents of this seductive strategy of destruction.28 In the postmodern age, the process of leveling is threatening the subjectivity and the very existence of man. The denial of specificity and

Rationalizing the Hidden Hand 235 the assumption of an end to history are thus enforced by a massive attack on the individual mind. The globalized one-dimensional man is the ultimate outcome of this deconstruction of ultimate points of reference of any kind. The importance of culture is thus a basic topic in this context. Masiri explores extensively the destructive impact of commodities such as “instant coffee,” “take-away food,” and “T-shirts.” For him, the arbitrariness of these products is not limited to the act of consumption itself: the very commodity is a reflection of a worldview aimed at annihilating the particularity of human life. This is the final solution in the age of leveling, just as genocide and enslavement were the final solutions in the age of racial inequality. Instead of annihilation from without, there is deconstruction and destruction from within.29 This scenario of global dissolution of the basic characteristics and preconditions of human life reflects central elements of various currents of western Kulturkritik. Nevertheless, Masiri insists that the new Islamic discourse designed to overcome the shortcomings and failures of modern western thought is fundamentally different from both romantic and Marxist critiques of modernity: For one thing, it recognizes and emphasizes the inextricable ties between western modernity and western imperialism … Unlike the western critique of modernity, which is nihilistic and pessimistic, the Islamique [sic] critique is optimistic by virtue of the fact that it proposes a project of reform.30 Accordingly, Masiri calls for an Islamic reform that would aim at engagement and interaction with the West. Yet, while “assimilating its achievements,”31 the “new Islamic discourse” should reject the West’s value system, offering an explicit alternative to western thought that addresses itself not only to Muslims but to “all humanity.”32 This discourse, introduced as a new universalism, places Islamic values as the ultimate reference for a comprehensive vision of society. Subtly, western universalism is replaced by Islam as the guiding moral framework.

Conclusion The depiction of the threat implied in modern western thought and its related way of life echoes central concerns that shaped Arab intellectual history in the twentieth century. The fear of westernization as an attempt to undermine the cultural and material basis of the Arab−Islamic world also lies at the core of an Islamist worldview articulated by various currents of Islamic revivalist movements. It is striking, then, to note the shift in the image of

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the Jew, frequently referred to within Islamist thinking as the driving force behind the western threat. While many supporters of Islamist thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb continue to espouse an essentialist perception of the “Jewish threat,” the arguments promulgated by Masiri pretend to offer a materialist alternative to this image of the Jew. It is not the timeless Jew who is behind the social changes and challenges but western modernity, which has come to universalize the historical traits of the Jews. The characteristics attributed to the Jews of the past have now become the universal features of modern social relations. Masiri’s transformation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into a critique of modern western thought thus allows formulation of a political program in which central messages of the Protocols are reproduced. The refutation of classic antisemitic myths of Jewish conspiracies and plots is converted into an argument for the defense of an assumed Arab−Islamic cultural authenticity. Current challenges to the community, he asserts, require a broad alliance with all forces that yearn for the preservation of the umma. Supporters of the new Islamic discourse thus accept a cultural plurality within the framework of Islamic values, and realize the importance of forging an alliance with nationalist elements in a common confrontation with the forces of hegemony and globalization that are trying to eradicate autonomy, specificity, and the very idea of absolute values and transcendence.33 The similarities between the mechanisms of destruction identified by Masiri and those addressed in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are striking. His transformation of the Protocols into a pseudo-materialist critique of western thought, however, is not only interesting because of its originality compared to most other Arab writings on this tract; it is an example of a conspiratorial notion that attempts to avoid any racial or culturalist imagery of “the Jew,” while at the same time structurally reproducing the anti-modern and antipluralist core of classic antisemitic claims.

Notes 1 ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri, The Protocols, Judaism and Zionism [in Arabic] (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2003), p. 7; emphasis added. The first edition was published in January 2003, followed by a second in April, and a third in May the same year. 2 For his biography and a comprehensive bibliography, see his personal website, www.elmessiri.com. 3 See Masiri, “Towards a new Islamic discourse,” Islam-Online.net, July 17, 2003. 4 For the history of Arab perceptions of the Protocols, see Stefan Wild, “The Arab Reception of the ‘The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion” [in German],” in Islamstudien ohne Ende. Festschrift für Werner Ende zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Rainer Brunner, Monika Gronke, Jens P. Laut and Ulrich Rebstock (Würzburg: ErgonVerlag, 2002). Recently, the journal Arab Insight dedicated several articles to

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6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25

26

conspiracy theories in the Arab world, among them, Hani Nasira, “Skepticism in the Arab World: The Base of Conspiracies,” Arab Insight 2, no. 2 (2008), pp. 103−13. The series was scheduled to be shown in forty-one episodes during the month of Ramadan in November 2002. The debate triggered by this series and discussions about their historical appropriateness continued throughout the following year. See MEMRI, “Arab Press Debates Antisemitic Egyptian Series Knight without a Horse,” November 8, 20, and December 10, 2002. MEMRI provides excerpts from the series on its website: www.memri.org/video. Mark Sayigh, al-Hayat, November 3, 2002. Kamaran Karadaghi in a talk show entitled, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” on al-Jazeera, March 19, 2002. For Azmi Bishara, see al-Ahram Weekly, December 4, 2003, and Usama al-Baz, al-Ahram, December 23, 24, and 25, 2002. Hazim Saghiya, al-Hayat, July 29, 2001. ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri, al-Ahram Weekly, July 1–7, 1999. See also the entry “The Judaization of Society” in idem, Encyclopedia of the Jews, Judaism, and Zionism [in Arabic], vol. II (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1999), pp. 16−17. Ibid., pp. 371−74. Ibid., p. 374. Ibid. Suffice it to point to the book Zionism, Nazism, and the End of History in which Masiri tries to justify the argument that Zionism is in fact the intellectual heir of Nazism, with Nazism being perceived as the quintessence of western thought. Masiri claims that the term Muselmänner, used to label Jewish inmates in German concentration camps, proves that the actual enemy of Nazism, that is, of western modernity, was the Muslim. This enmity is now openly articulated in Zionist policies toward the Arab world. See Masiri, Zionism, Nazism, and the End of History [in Arabic] (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1997), pp. 227−28. Masiri, Encyclopedia of the Jews, vol. II, p. 373. See Masiri, Partial Secularism and Complete Secularism [in Arabic], vol. II (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2002), pp. 232−35. Masiri, Jewish Functional Groups [in Arabic] (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2002), pp. 19−34. Masiri, Encyclopedia of the Jews, vol. II, p. 273. The terms Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft appear here in their German form transliterated into Arabic. Masiri, al-Ahram Weekly, June 24−30, 1999. Ibid., July 8−14, 1999. See Masiri, Encyclopedia of the Jews, vol. II, pp. 233−308; also idem, The Hidden Hand: A Study in Destructive and Secret Jewish Movements [in Arabic] (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1998). Al-Ahram Weekly, July 4, 1999. Ibid., July 1, 1999. It should be noted that Marx did not speak of a “judaization of society.” While Marx’s well-known text “Zur Judenfrage [On the Jewish question]” indeed uses certain antisemitic images and stereotypes, the false ascription of the term “judaization” to Marx sheds more light on the theory developed by Masiri than on the argument used by Marx himself. Masiri, Partial Secularism, vol. II, p. 235. Ibid., p. 316. See, for example, Masiri, Interview, al-Jadid fi ‘Alam al-Kutub wal-Maktabat (Winter 1997), p. 45. Habermas and Arendt are referred to here as western intellectuals who developed a critical approach to western modernity. See also idem, “Features of the New Islamic Discourse,” part II, www.elmessiri.com. In another context, Masiri writes: “The overall unity [of western philosophy] is merely glimpsed but hardly ever fully articulated into a comprehensive paradigm.

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G. Nordbruch Had we developed a unified and complex paradigm of secularism, we would probably have seen some kind of a relationship between the Enlightenment and deconstruction; between modernization, modernism, and post-modernism; between Nietzscheanism and Hitler, pragmatism and Eichmann; between rationalism, imperialism, and the Holocaust.” See al-Masiri, “Secularism, Immanence and Deconstruction,” www.elmessiri.com (n.d.). Al-Ahram Weekly, July 30, 1998. Ibid. Ibid. “The cultural dimension of these commodities [i.e., hamburgers and takeaway food], which seems perfectly innocuous, absolutely halal [conforming to Islamic traditions], and entirely unblemished from the purely religious point of view, is an organic part of a worldview that conflicts with the Islamic worldview and Islamic certainties.” Masiri, “Features of the New Islamic Discourse,” Part III, www.elmessiri.com. Ibid., Part II. Ibid. Ibid., Part III. Ibid.

Part IV

The Protocols on trial

15 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in court The Bern trials, 1933−1937 Michael Hagemeister 1

I hope a time will come when nobody will understand why in the year 1935 almost a dozen quite sane and reasonable people racked their brains for 14 days before a Bern court over the authenticity of these socalled Protocols, these Protocols which, despite all the harm they have caused and may yet cause, are nothing more than ridiculous nonsense … With this I shall part from the Protocols stating that: the Protocols are a forgery, they are a plagiarism, and they fall under article 14 of the … law [against indecent literature].2 Walter Meyer (1885−1941), presiding judge in the case of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion quoted above, was mistaken in several respects. First, the case initially heard in the Bern District Court was not over; the defendants appealed and on November 1, 1937, the Court of Appeal overturned Meyer’s judgment, declaring that the Protocols could not legally be termed indecent. Moreover, the controversy over the Protocols continues to this day, and is frequently the subject of legal disputes. When Meyer pronounced his verdict the proceedings had already lasted for over a year and a half and had cost more than 30,000 Swiss francs. At the end of the trial, three of the five defendants accused of disseminating the Protocols were acquitted; the other two were fined 20 and 50 Swiss francs, respectively.3 But this was not the core of the issue. In their efforts to challenge or defend the authenticity of the text, both plaintiffs and defendants attempted to produce a convincing account of the origins of the Protocols. Whereas the plaintiffs’ version initially prevailed, the question of authenticity was later deemed irrelevant. More importantly, however, this chapter will try to demonstrate that their version of the origins of the Protocols, based on rather dubious testimonies, does not stand up to historical scrutiny. In June 1933, the United Jewish Communities of Switzerland (Schweizerischer Israelitischer Gemeindebund, SIG) and the Jewish Community (Israelitische Kultusgemeinde) of Bern filed a lawsuit in the Bern District Court against the disseminators of the Protocols, members and sympathizers of the antisemitic Swiss National Front. The plaintiffs invoked a local Bern law from

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1916 referring to “moving pictures and measures against indecent literature [Schundliteratur].”4 Article 14 of the law prohibited “circulating” texts, songs and images that might incite or instruct to commit a crime, endanger morals, gravely offend one’s sense of decency, exert a brutalizing influence, or “otherwise arouse serious objections.” The nominal charge therefore related to the sale of indecent literature. The object, however, was not to punish the Swiss Nazis; rather, it was hoped that proving the Protocols were a forgery would signify a decisive victory over the intense antisemitism that was especially rampant in Nazi Germany.5 In preparation for the trial, the plaintiffs formed a legal committee, with the prominent Bern lawyer Boris Lifschitz (1879−1967) as chair. Originally from Ukraine, he had political reasons for maintaining a discreet distance (he had worked as legal advisor to the Soviet mission in Switzerland in 1918). Instead, a young lawyer, Georges Brunschvig (1908−1973) took the more public role, since he was, in Lifschitz’s words, “an unknown quantity” (ein unbeschriebenes Blatt).6 In June 1934, at a closed legal meeting held in the boardroom of the Jewish community building in Basel, Brunschvig stressed that the Protocols formed the basis of the antisemitic movement in Germany and Switzerland. The goal, therefore, was to uncover the “mechanics” of the falsification, and “to reach a verdict,” according to which “expertise, witnesses and documents” would demonstrate that the tract was a forgery. Lifschitz added that this public confirmation − and branding − by the Swiss court would be in the “interests of all the Jews.”7 At the same time, it was in the plaintiffs’ interest to have a lengthy process during which the other side could state their position in detail. According to Saly Mayer (1882−1950), secretary of the United Jewish Communities of Switzerland and leader of the Swiss action against antisemitism, in a confidential circular to representatives of the Jewish communities, this would be the only way to ensure that “an image of complete objectivity” was communicated to the public.8 In a further letter to the communities, Mayer called on the representatives to use their contacts with the press to encourage as much coverage of the trial as possible. As the plaintiffs themselves were no specialists on Russian matters, they turned for help within and outside the Soviet Union. An extensive search in Soviet archives and libraries was coordinated by Aleksandr Tager (1888−1939), a Moscow lawyer and author of a book on the Beilis affair, who reported the findings to Bern.9 Outside the Soviet Union, a search for information was launched by Elias Tcherikower (Il'ia Cherikover, 1881−1943), a well-known Jewish historian, then living in Paris, author of a book on pogroms in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War, and one of the founders of the Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO) in Wilna (now in New York).10 In less than a year the plaintiffs managed to collect so many documents that they themselves were amazed. But together with the “avalanche-like growth” of the materials, as Lifschitz called it, the costs of the whole procedure exploded. All informants

The Protocols in court 243 worked for honoraria (for obtaining the Russian documents alone a sum of up to 10,000 Swiss francs had been provided), and some of the witnesses also asked for payment. Nevertheless the Bern lawyers insisted on continuing with the investigations. As Lifschitz stated: “We could get a judgment in our favor immediately without an expert report, but that would be of no use to us.”11 During the main hearings, in October 1934 and April−May 1935, the plaintiffs summoned a wide range of witnesses and experts. These included several participants in the first Zionist Congress in Basel, the president of the World Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann (1874−1952), and a number of prominent Russian émigrés, both Jewish and non-Jewish, including Sergei Svatikov (1880−1942), an expert on the tsarist secret police abroad; Vladimir Burtsev (1862−1942), an activist and historian of the Russian revolutionary movement, who had become famous by exposing a great number of agents provocateurs; Boris Nikolaevsky (1887−1966), another prominent historian and archivist of the Russian revolutionary movement; Genrikh Sliozberg (1863−1937), a lawyer and Jewish activist; and Pavel Miliukov (1859−1943), former leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party. The plaintiffs’ carefully planned strategy was clear. A unified and plausible story about the origins of the Protocols should prove their character as a fabricated, antisemitic concoction. The publicity surrounding the court proceedings would ensure the message reached a wide audience.

The plaintiffs’ case The plaintiffs adhered to the version that had begun to be circulated in 1921 by two self-proclaimed witnesses, Catherine Radziwill (1858−1941), a former princess of Russian−Polish origin, and the French count Alexandre du Chayla (1885−1945). The tale they told was of a sinister antisemitic conspiracy12 originating toward the end of the nineteenth century and involving the tsar’s notorious secret police, the Okhrana. Accordingly, Petr Rachkovsky (1850−1910), head of the Okhrana’s foreign agency in Paris, a reactionary and rabid antisemite, commissioned the unsavory Matvei Golovinsky (1865−1920), a Russian journalist and writer living in France, to fabricate an anti-Jewish text. The French manuscript reached the hands of Professor Sergei Nilus (1862−1929), a mystic and fanatical itinerant preacher in good standing at the tsar’s court.13 He translated and published the text in 1905 as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. With the help of the tsar, the Protocols were disseminated widely and used to fuel the fires of antisemitic hatred − leading to devastating pogroms in Russia. Radziwill and du Chayla claimed to have seen the French manuscript from Rachkovsky’s forgery workshop with their own eyes. Some aspects of Radziwill’s version − she was indeed a notorious swindler14 − were so obviously fanciful, however, that they met with immediate disbelief and soon disappeared from the discussion; she was not asked to testify.15 Du Chayla’s account, on the other hand, which was based on some elements of Radziwill’s

244 M. Hagemeister story (which he knew) but without her most obvious errors, was extremely successful. Lifschitz’s team was delighted, particularly since du Chayla had lived for an extended period in Russia and had known Nilus personally. Nilus had apparently shown him the French manuscript and confessed that he had received it from Rachkovsky. Overall, du Chayla’s depictions of the fanatical Nilus, the sinister machinations of the secret police, and the intrigues and conspiracies of the court, which had all led to the fabrication of the Protocols, seemed coherent and persuasive. In addition, they were written in a colorful and enthralling manner, and remain to this day a favored source, referred to frequently by refuters of the document.16 The guidelines for the witnesses’ statements were based on du Chayla’s claim that the Protocols originated in Rachkovsky’s forgery workshop. This version was used despite increasing doubts about the truth of his tale.17 Boris Nikolaevsky, for example, one of the coordinators on the side of the plaintiffs and an expert on the tsarist secret police, had come to the conclusion that “under no circumstances could [Rachkovsky] have had anything to do with the preparation of the Protocols.”18 Du Chayla’s description was false; he was a “swindler,” with no idea whatsoever about the origins of the Protocols.19 Nevertheless, Nikolaevsky did not present his findings at the trial, since, as he wrote later, such an action “would have been a stab in the back of the Russian experts, and would have … put the campaign against Hitler into disarray.”20

Figure 15.1 Plaintiffs and their lawyers; far right Georges Brunschvig (Courtesy of Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, Zürich).

The Protocols in court 245 Du Chayla, the principal witness in Bern,21 appears to have been motivated primarily by financial incentives. Even his sensational accounts of the origins of the Protocols, written in 1921, had been produced for a fee. Now he demanded 4000 Swiss francs to turn up at the trial, a sum which took a great deal of effort for the plaintiffs to raise and almost led to cancellation of his appearance.22 What the plaintiffs had no way of knowing, however, was that in Russia, du Chayla had emerged as an antisemite who himself believed in conspiracy theories. During the notorious blood libel trial against Mendel Beilis in Kiev in 1913, he had worked as a journalist supporting the accusation against the Jews and calling on the “secret leaders of the Jewish nation” to repent.23

The defendants’ case The defendants, who were forced to prove the authenticity of the Protocols, had been trying for some time to find an expert witness willing to take the stand. They eventually found Ulrich Fleischhauer (1876−1960), founder (together with Georg de Pottere, 1875−1951) and head of the German private propaganda and news agency Welt-Dienst (world service). This organization, based in Erfurt, was dedicated to “the resolution of the Jewish question” and to the dissemination of the Protocols.24 The “Jewish question” could be “resolved,” according to Welt-Dienst, through “total Zionism” (Voll-Zionismus) − the establishment of a Jewish national state in Madagascar. Fleischhauer, a retired colonel, was a victim of his own conspiratorial obsessions. He decided to counter the “underground Jewish International” with an “Aryan International of antisemitism,” which was equally as conspiratorial as its imagined enemy: it operated with code names and addresses, and sought to create an international network of opposition to Jews.25 The Jewish side, however, also succumbed to the temptation of conspiracy theories. They held that Fleischhauer’s Welt-Dienst was really an “international antisemitic secret society” which, according to the Jewish weekly Israelitisches Wochenblatt für die Schweiz, had some 30,000 agents throughout the world.26 Welt-Dienst was now being given the opportunity presented by the Bern trial, to crawl out of its (in Brunschvig’s words) “subterranean passageways and nesting places.”27 The reality, however, was quite different. Fleischhauer’s Welt-Dienst was indeed an industrious “society”28 with a certain sect-like character, but its international activities were being watched with increasing suspicion by Germany’s Gestapo and SD (security service). Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda had initially promised Fleischhauer its support during the Bern trial but withdrew it following an internal report that questioned the authenticity of the Protocols.29 Fleischhauer, who at the time was not a member of the NSDAP, repeatedly bemoaned the lack of response and backing by officials of the National Socialist state. An important coordinator on the side of the defendants of the Protocols was Nikolai Markov (1866−1945), leader of the extreme right in tsarist Russia

246 M. Hagemeister and, after the revolution, in Berlin and Paris. In 1935 he moved to Erfurt and became an associate of Fleischhauer in Welt-Dienst. In order to collect information about the origins of the Protocols, the authenticity of which he did not question, Markov began an extensive correspondence among like-minded compatriots. This documentation, scattered among various archives in Russia, western Europe, the United States and Israel, represents a kind of “Who’s Who” of Russian far right emigrés. Among Markov’s correspondents were the former Cossack ataman and prolific novelist Petr Krasnov (1869−1947), the antisemitic publisher Prince Mikhail Gorchakov (1880−1961), the former head of the Okhrana general Aleksandr Spiridovich (1873−1952), the anti-Masonic author Nikolai Stepanov (1886–1981), who wrote under the pseudonym “Svitkov” and ended up as Father Aleksandr, a monk, and the antisemitic writer Aleksandr Nechvolodov (1864−1938), all living at that time in Paris, as well as Petr Shabelsky-Bork (1893−1952) in Berlin, the enigmatic blood-libel propagandist Eugen Brandt (Evgeni Brant, 1889−1941) in Copenhagen, and Nikolai Zhevakhov (1874−1947) in Bari (Italy), to name only the most prominent ones. In the course of inquiries it became known that Rachkovsky’s son Andrei (1886−1941) was living in Clamart near Paris and had kept his father’s extensive archive. As a result, both opponents and supporters of the Protocols tried to get hold of these documents. One critic of the Protocols, the French

Figure 15.2 Ulrich Fleischhauer, expert witness for the defense (Courtesy of Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, Zürich).

The Protocols in court 247 writer and secret service officer Henri Rollin (1885−1955), even tried to buy the entire archive from Andrei, whose sympathies, however, were apparently on the side of the supporters. The latter convinced him to issue a statement in which he confirmed that his father had played no part in the process of concocting the Protocols.30

Trial proceedings and aftermath Thanks to intensive news coverage, the proceedings at the Bern District Court caused an international sensation. The Jewish Central Information Office (JCIO) in Amsterdam produced a detailed daily information bulletin.31 By far the majority of Swiss and international news publications declared outright support for the Jewish plaintiffs. In addition to their rejection of the Protocols, their views were influenced in large part by the arrogant, intransigent manner of the German “expert on Jews and Freemasons” Fleischhauer. His “expert report” − mostly produced by his staff (nicknamed the “Elders of Erfurt”) under the guidance of Hans Jonak von Freyenwald (1878−1953)32 − was a meandering, long-winded, and unintelligible composition filled with a potpourri of antisemitic stereotypes.33 By the end of his four-and-a-half day appearance, Fleischhauer, and thus the defenders of the Protocols, had publicly dismantled his own arguments.

Figure 15.3 The courtroom in Bern (Courtesy of Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, Zürich).

248 M. Hagemeister The plaintiffs, on the other hand, had apparently managed to prove, without a shadow of doubt, the origins of the Protocols. Their strategy turned out to be a resounding success. On May 14, 1935, trial judge Walter Meyer ruled that the tract was a forgery and a plagiarism, largely based on Maurice Joly’s political pamphlet Dialogue aux Enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu ou La politique au XIXe siècle (published anonymously in 1864 in Brussels), and that its dissemination contravened the Bern law on indecent literature. The plaintiffs welcomed the verdict as a victory in the campaign against Nazi antisemitism and designated the trial as the most significant “defensive battle” in the history of the United Jewish Communities of Switzerland. For the first time, declared the JCIO, the judiciary had officially branded the Protocols a forgery. German Nazis did not seem too unsettled, however. Even before the proceedings had ended, the NSDAP newspaper Völkischer Beobachter stated categorically that the verdict was quite irrelevant. More importantly, “the entire history of the preceding three decades has unfolded perfectly in line with the Jewish plan described in the Protocols.”34 Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung, edited by Carl Schmitt, dubbed the “crown jurist of the Third Reich,” also paid the verdict no heed. No legal decision could halt the course of history; the final verdict would be decided by history: “Trials that anticipate a historical decision are inevitably lost by the judiciary.”35

Figure 15.4 (From left to right) Judge Walter Meyer, Arthur Baumgarten, expert witness for the plaintiffs, and Carl Albert Loosli, independent court expert (Courtesy of Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, Zürich).

The Protocols in court 249 The Jewish plaintiffs were therefore sorely disappointed when in November 1937 the Bern Court of Appeal overturned the 1935 judgment. It ruled that the Protocols were indeed smutty literature in the aesthetical, literary sense, but not as defined by the law since the text was a political weapon. The question of authenticity was thus deemed irrelevant and dissemination of the Protocols not a criminal offense. The defendants were acquitted and the costs of both trials were deducted from state coffers.36 After analyzing the 50-page report detailing the grounds for the new ruling, prominent Swiss lawyer David Farbstein (1868−1953) − himself a participant in the first Zionist Congress and a witness at the Bern trial − strongly advised against criticizing the decision. No principles of law had been breached. The defendants had to be acquitted since it was unreasonable to expect them to notice what not even the judge could see despite the aid of a lengthy report − that the Protocols were a forgery.37 Fleischhauer and Welt-Dienst celebrated the appeal court verdict as if they themselves had won. But their elation was short-lived. In 1939 Amt Rosenberg (the Nazi organization under the command of Alfred Rosenberg) took over Welt-Dienst, moved its archive to Frankfurt, and replaced Fleischauer as head. The staff who, according to Adolf Eichmann, were “pretty dubious characters,”38 were all fired. Fleischhauer himself disappeared from the scene.39

Conclusion From 1939, the Protocols were no longer reprinted in Germany.40 The reason is unknown; perhaps, as suggested by some contemporaries, the authorities were concerned that their own methods and goals would be compared to those of the alleged conspirators. As early as May 1935, the independent court expert at the Bern trial, Swiss writer Carl Albert Loosli (1877−1959), had stated in his conclusion that no one adhered to the methods of the socalled Elders of Zion better than Adolf Hitler and his government.41 And in 1936, Russian émigré journalist Alexander Stein (aka Rubinstein, 1881−1948) subtitled his early analysis of Hitler “a disciple of the Elders of Zion.”42 In the following year, German émigré writer Iwan Heilbut (1898−1972), in his pamphlet Les vrais Sages de Sion, compared the Nazis’ cynical usurpation of power to the alleged plans of world Jewry in the Protocols.43 Hannah Arendt also pointed to the ideological similarities between the teachings of the Nazis and those of the Elders of Zion, noting that, “The Nazis started with the ideological fiction of a world conspiracy and modeled themselves, more or less consciously, on the example of the fictitious secret society of the Elders of Zion.”44 The Bern trials leave an ambivalent impression. On the one hand, the narrative employed by the plaintiffs in their attempt to uncover the origins of the Protocols was a dubious construction − a fact of which at least some of those involved were aware. On the other, the overall aim − providing historical evidence of the falsification and a court ruling to confirm this − proved

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to be rather ineffective in the ongoing battle to discredit the tract. Yet the same narrative continues to be told. In the critically acclaimed book The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (2005) − to which Umberto Eco wrote the introduction and which has been translated into many languages − the well-known cartoonist Will Eisner traces, in good faith, the “true history” of the Protocols. It is the tale originally told by Catherine Radziwill and Alexandre du Chayla and subsequently legitimized by the Bern trials.45 The key question formulated by Hannah Arendt some fifty years ago, thus, remains unanswered: It is not “to prove for the hundredth time what the whole world already knows … that we are dealing with a forgery,” but to explain why such a blatant forgery is still, to this day, believed by so many.46

Notes 1 Research for this article was supported by the Swiss National Scientific Foundation (project no. 100015–122087/1). 2 Stenographic protocol of court proceedings, May 14, 1935, in State Archive of Bern Canton: BB 15.1.1557 a. 3 For a concise depiction of the Bern trials, see Urs Lüthi, The Myth of a World Conspiracy: The Smear Campaign of the Swiss Frontists against Jews and Freemasons Illustrated by the Bern Trial against the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” [in German] (Basel/Frankfurt am Main: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1992). See also John S. Curtiss, “Protocols of Elders of Zion: The Bern Trial,” in The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Isaac Landman, vol. 4 (New York, NY: Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, 1941), pp. 48−52; Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981), pp. 216−31; Henryk Baran, “‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ on Trial,” in Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, ed. Richard E. Levy, vol. 2 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC−Clio, 2005), pp. 569–70. The Bern trials are also the topic of Hadassa Ben-Itto’s The Lie That Wouldn’t Die: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2005), a semihistorical fiction, based on documents, but with invented episodes, dialogues, and monologues. Despite its limited scholarly value the book was enormously successful among critics and has been translated into many languages. 4 The German term Schund can mean “trashy,” “smutty,” “obscene,” or “indecent.” For the purposes of this chapter, the word “indecent” will be used. 5 A trial that was already under way against disseminators of the Protocols in Basel was deferred in favor of the Bern trial. Since Basel Canton had no law against the dissemination of indecent literature, this case involved a libel suit (Ehrbeleidigung). The action had been brought by three well-known Jewish leaders, Jules Dreyfus-Brodsky (1859−1942), president of the Jewish Community of Basel, Marcus Cohn (1890−1953), president of the Swiss Zionist Federation, and Marcus Ehrenpreis (1869−1951), chief rabbi of Stockholm. The proceedings in Basel ended in July 1936 with a settlement. To this day, the Basel trial has been completely ignored by historians. 6 Boris Lifschitz to Helene Lifszyc, May 31, 1935, in Wiener Collection Tel Aviv: Bern Trial, box 28. The two other members of the legal committee were the Bern lawyers Walter Bloch and Willy Hirschel. 7 Protocol of a meeting of the legal committee, June 1, 1934 (note: “strictly confidential”), in Archiv für Zeitgeschichte (Archive for Contemporary History),

The Protocols in court 251

8

9

10

11 12

13

14

15

16

Zurich: SIG papers, Bern Trial (henceforth, AfZ: SIG, Bern Trial), box 77. The Jewish plaintiffs were accused by their antisemitic opponents and by a number of Swiss newspapers of using the court solely to prove the spuriousness of the Protocols. Werner Ursprung, lawyer of the defendants, to the judge’s office, November 28, 1933, in State Archive of Bern Canton: BB 15.1.1557 b, 117−19. Saly Mayer, letter of November 2, 1934, in AfZ: SIG, Bern Trial, box 76. On Saly Mayer and his role in the Bern trials, see Hanna Zweig-Strauss, Saly Mayer (1882−1950): A Rescuer of Jewish Life during the Holocaust [in German] (Cologne: Böhlau, 2007), esp. pp. 66−68. See Michael Hagemeister, “In Search of Testimony about the Origins of the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’: A Handwritten Edition that Disappeared from the Lenin Library” [in Russian], Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 96 (2009), pp. 134−53. The correspondence between Tager and the plaintiffs is kept in the Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, Zurich, and is being prepared for publication by the author. Tcherikower’s extensive correspondence is kept in the Tcherikower Archives, YIVO Institute, New York; the Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University, New York (Svatikov Collection); the Hoover Institution, Stanford (Boris I. Nicolaevsky Collection); the Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, Zurich (SIG papers); and the Wiener Collection Tel Aviv). See Henryk Baran, “The Struggle against the ‘Protocols’: Alexandre du Chayla, Sergei Svatikov and the Trial in Bern,” paper presented at the VII ICCEES World Congress, Berlin 2005. I wish to thank Henryk Baran (University at Albany) for information on the New York archives. Protocol of a meeting of the legal committee, May 1, 1934, in AfZ: Schwed Collection. “‘Protocols Forged in Paris’, Says Princess Radziwill in an Exclusive Interview with Isaac Landman,” American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger, February 25, 1921, p. 422; Catherine Radziwill, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” [in French], La Revue Mondiale, March 15, 1921, pp. 151−55; Alexandre du Chayla, “Serge Alexandrovitch Nilus and the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ (1909−1920)” [in French], La Tribune Juive, May 14, 1921, pp. 3−4; “Nilus, Fanatic Author of ‘Zion Protocols’, Admitted in 1909 They Were Tissue of Lies,” New York Call, June 13, 1921, p. 6; “Nilus, Perpetrator of the Protocols, Exposed. A.M. du Chayla, in ‘La Tribune Juive’, Explains How Protocols Came into the Possession of Nilus, His Fanatic Belief in Them and Their Origin,” American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger, June 17, 1921, pp. 119, 121, 128, 129, 136. On Nilus, who continues to be the object of speculation and mythmaking, see this author’s article in Biographical-Bibliographical Church-Encyclopedia [in German], vol. 21 (Nordhausen: Bautz, 2003), pp. 1063−67, available at http://www.bautz. de/bbkl/n/nilus_s_a.shtml. For a shorter version, see Michael Hagemeister, “Nilus, Sergei,” in Levy, Antisemitism, vol. 2, pp. 508−10. The French writer André Maurois branded her a “mythomaniac,” in whose life “everything was only deception and lies.” André Maurois, Prometheus or the Life of Balzac [in German] (Berlin/Weimar: Aufbau, 1981), pp. 761, 763. On Radziwill, see Lev Aronov, Henryk Baran and Dmitri Zubarev, “Princess Catherine Radziwill and the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’: Mystification as a Way of Life” [in Russian], Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 96 (2009), pp. 76−107. During the Bern trial the American Jewish Committee urgently warned the plaintiffs not to use Radziwill’s testimony. Her value as a witness would be “below zero.” American Jewish Committee to Alfred Wiener, February 16, 1934; Alfred Wiener to George Brunschvig, February 25 and March 2, 1934, in AfZ: Schwed Collection. Even recently the French expert on the Protocols Pierre-André Taguieff called du Chayla’s testimony on Sergei Nilus and the origins of the Protocols “certainly most important and trustworthy.” Pierre-André Taguieff, The Protocols of the Elders

252

17 18 19 20 21

22 23

24

25 26 27 28 29

30

M. Hagemeister of Zion: A Forgery and Its Use [in French] (Paris: Berg International, 2004), p. 41. The personality of du Chayla is still shrouded in mystery. During the 1930s he lived in Suresnes near Paris. After the occupation of France his personal papers were confiscated by the Germans. Later they fell into the hands of the Red Army, were brought to Moscow and hidden in a secret archive (osobyi arkhiv). This becomes clear from the unpublished correspondence between the plaintiffs and their witnesses, kept in the Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, Zurich, and in preparation for publication by the author. Boris Nikolaevsky to Boris Lifschitz, August 10, 1937, in AfZ: SIG, Bern Trial, box 57. Boris Nikolaevsky to Vera Cohn, August 15, 1964, in the Boris I. Nicolaevsky Collection, Hoover Institution, Stanford: series 11, box 20, folder 24. Ibid. Lifschitz labeled du Chayla “our crown witness” (unser Kronzeuge); protocol of a meeting of the legal committee, Bern, August 25, 1934 in AfZ: Schwed Collection. Du Chayla himself was quite aware of his importance: “I am the only real witness, the only one who has seen something,” he wrote to Lifschitz, May 2, 1935, in AfZ: SIG, Bern trial, box 85. For more on the difficult negotiations between du Chayla and representatives of the plaintiffs, see their correspondence in AfZ: SIG, Bern Trial, the Svatikov Collection and the Tcherikower Archives. Alexandre du Chayla, “On the Kiev Trial” [in French], Revue contemporaine, October 18, 1913, pp. 217−18. On du Chayla’s antisemitic journalism, see Henryk Baran, “On the Early Journalism of A.M. du Chayla: Contexts of the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’,” in Time and Place: Festschrift for Alexander Ospovat on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday [in Russian] (Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo, 2008), pp. 454−67. Contact was arranged by Boris Toedtli (1901−44), a Swiss fascist and antisemite born in Russia. A request to the Brown House in Munich, the national headquarters of the Nazi Party, to furnish the defense with an expert witness, was unsuccessful. On Fleischhauer and Welt-Dienst, see Magnus Brechtken, “Madagascar for the Jews”: Antisemitic Idea and Political Practice 1885−1945 [in German] (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1997), pp. 43−61, 68−74. “Espionage and Jew-Baiting” [in German], Israelitisches Wochenblatt für die Schweiz, November 11, 1938, p. 1. Emil Raas and Georges Brunschvig, Destruction of a Forgery: The Trial against the Fictitious “Elders of Zion” [in German] (Zurich: Die Gestaltung, 1938), p. 45. Strictly speaking, Welt-Dienst was not a registered society but a loose international alliance of like-minded persons. See Helmut Heiber, Walter Frank and his National Institute for the History of New Germany [in German] (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1966), pp. 1062−63. Rogge argues the opposite – without documentation: Fleischhauer admitted (“he … told us”) after the war that he had received 30,000 marks from the Ministry of Propaganda for the Bern trials. John Rogge Oetje, The Official German Report (New York/London: Thomas Yoseloff, 1961), p. 76. Testimony of A.P. Rachkovsky for the Bern trial, 1936 [in French], in AfZ: SIG, Bern Trial, box 57. Andrei Rachkovsky died in March 1941 in Southern France. The fate of his father’s archive is uncertain and the various statements concerning its whereabouts are contradictory. Nikolaevsky claims it was lost after being sold to German antisemites from Welt-Dienst; the Saint Petersburg historian Mikhail Lepekhin, however, stated in an interview with French television in 2007, that it was stolen in 1936 on Stalin’s orders by GPU agent Iakov Serebriansky (Bergman).

The Protocols in court 253 31 The Jewish Central Information Office, founded in June 1934 by Alfred Wiener (1885−1964) and David Cohen (1882−1967), supplied the plaintiffs in Bern and Basel with rare books and materials and carried out investigations. Its main task, however, was to report on the situation of Jews in Germany and on antisemitic movements throughout the world. 32 Ubald von Roll to Princess Mary Karadja, February 5, 1935, in AfZ: SIG, Bern Trial, box 75; von Roll, head of Bern district (Gauführer) of the National Front, quotes Jonak von Freyenwald’s pen-name “Dr. Richter.” 33 The report, for which he received 8.000 Swiss francs from the court, was published. Ulrich Fleischhauer, The Genuine Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Expert’s Opinion on Behalf of the Judicial Office in Bern [in German] (Erfurt: U. Bodung, 1935), 416 pp. 34 Völkischer Beobachter, December 23−24, 1934. 35 Unknown author in Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung 39, no. 23 (1934), p. 1465. 36 Protocol of the appeal process, November 1, 1937, in State Archive of Bern Canton: BB 15.1.1557 d. 37 David Farbstein to Saly Braunschweig, March 7, 1938, in AfZ: SIG, Bern Trial, box 70. 38 Eichmann, quoted in Brechtken, “Madagascar for the Jews,” p. 69. 39 After the war Fleischhauer fled to West Germany. He lived on welfare in Hürben near Heidenheim. Until his death in October 1960 he maintained contact with former colleagues in Welt-Dienst and experts on the “Jewish question,” among them Mahmoud Saleh (1909–?), who headed the Institute for the Study of Zionism in Cairo and wrote under the pseudonym Alfred Zingler. 40 A planned 8−13-volume edition of the files and reports of the Bern trials by Jonak von Freyenwald, was also cancelled in 1939 after only the first volume appeared. See The Bern Trial of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Records and Testimonials, vol. 1, Accusation and Testimonies [in German], ed. Hans Jonak von Freyenwald (Erfurt: U. Bodung, 1939). 41 Extracts from Loosli’s testimony, as well as some of his correspondence relating to the Bern trial have been published in Judaism and Antisemitism, vol. 6 [in German]) of Loosli’s collected works (Zurich: Rotpunkt, 2008). 42 Alexander Stein, Adolf Hitler, Disciple of the Elders of Zion [in German] (Karlsbad: Graphia, 1936). 43 Iwan Heilbut, The True Elders of Zion [in French] (Paris: Denoël, 1937). 44 Hannah Arendt: Elements and Origins of Totalitarianism [in German] (Munich/ Zurich: Piper, 1991), p. 595. It should be noted that the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg 1945 assumed that the crimes of the Nazi regime could be attributed to a common, coherent plan; a “gigantic conspiracy against humanity” with the aim of achieving world domination. 45 See Michael Hagemeister, “The ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’: Between History and Fiction,” New German Critique 103 (Winter 2008), pp. 83−95. 46 Arendt, Elements, p. 30.

16 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in South Africa From radical white right to radical Islamists Milton Shain1

The very condition of being oppressed, in a collectivity as much as in an individual, is likely to produce its own distorted forms of perception: mythical history, hatred and chauvinism towards others, conspiracy theories of all stripes, unreal phantasms of emancipation.2 Beginning with Norman Cohn, scholars have traced the meandering pathways of the Protocols and the remarkable ways in which this tract has been disseminated and adapted to local conditions across the globe. International links between antisemites, the role of individuals, and methods of adaptation and application of the Protocols to local circumstances have all been placed under the spotlight. In South Africa, the nexus of international antisemitism was evident in a major court case in 1934 − the so-called Greyshirt trial − during which a well-known British antisemite Hamilton Hamish Beamish, with close ties to the Canadian antisemite Adrien Arcand, gave evidence in support of three individuals charged with libel and propagating the Protocols.3 Further examples of international connections and transmission of the Protocols to South Africa during the 1930s were evident in My Ontwaking (My awakening), a booklet by J.H.H. de Waal jr., first published in 1935,4 and in the trial (four years after the Greyshirt one) of Boer War hero and later rebel Saloman (Manie) Maritz. The latter was charged with popularizing Jewish conspiracies in his autobiography My Lewe en Strewe (My life and struggle).5 Both de Waal and Maritz were disaffected Afrikaner nationalists, angry at the rapprochement between English and Afrikaner speakers and disturbed by the putative power of Jews in the South African economy. Since the 1990s conspiratorial and antisemitic links have widened into a global web, mainly associated with the Internet. This became evident in South Africa during the World Conference against Racism, Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerances (WCAR), held in Durban under the auspices of the United Nations in 2001. It was apparent there that international anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist forces had orchestrated an assault on Jews and the Zionist enterprise, built upon Jewish conspiracies seemingly impermeable to rational thought.

The Protocols in South Africa 255 In the 1930s the radical white right − more specifically the Afrikaner right and one of its extra-parliamentary movements, the Greyshirts − influenced the conspiratorial mindset; 70 years later in Durban, radical Muslims tied to global politics and developments in the Muslim world were the main torchbearers of hatred and accusations of conspiratorial Jewish behavior. The 1930s were marked by economic crisis, political instability, the threat of bolshevism, and the rise of Nazism; events in Durban took place within the context of burgeoning Islamism, an increasingly radicalized South African Muslim community, failed Israeli−Palestinian negotiations, and the birth of a new democratic South Africa.

The emergence of the “Jewish question” The 1930s witnessed the emergence of the “Jewish question” in South Africa, against the backdrop of economic depression and an escalating, exclusivist Afrikaner nationalism that was struggling to capture the political high ground. It was a time of great concern for the approximately 90,000 Jews, most of whom were living in the larger centers where Afrikaners, clustered on the lower rungs of the social ladder, saw them as dominant and upwardly mobile. Jews were particularly concerned about the radical white right, which was emboldened by Nazi Germany’s “revolution” following the rise of Hitler. Indeed, some scholars have even argued that the country’s herrenvolk democracy was informed by Nazi racial thought. Others have minimized this impact.6 There is agreement, however, that extreme radical right organizations − such as the South African Christian National Socialist Movement, better known as the Greyshirts, the bodyguard of the movement − were influenced by organizations such as the Nazi Brownshirts. The Greyshirts sprang into prominence early in 1934, when the leader of the South African Christian National Socialist Movement in the Eastern Province, Johannes Strauss von Moltke, claimed to have uncovered a sensational plot. All was revealed in a document that had been stolen from the Western Road Synagogue in Port Elizabeth, he told an audience in the economically depressed Eastern Cape hamlet of Aberdeen. The signature of the “rabbi” of the synagogue, according to von Moltke, attested to its authenticity. On April 6 the speech was reported in Rapport, a newspaper owned by David Hermanus Olivier jr., with clear sympathies for the Greyshirts. It was suggested that non-Jews should avoid taking action until such time as the accused have had an opportunity of defending themselves. If they cannot definitely prove their innocence of this notorious document, they go by default and then there can only be one procedure for our Christian state: the ejection of Jews from South Africa. One week later, Von Moltke repeated his accusation at a mass public meeting in Port Elizabeth. Reading from the document, he appealed to the “Nordic

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peoples” in Port Elizabeth to form a self-defense organization to deal with “such occult, alien organizations as are harbored in the Jewish synagogues … If the Jews dispute the truth of the contents of this document let them prepare a charge of theft against any person; then the Judiciary of this land will be able to decide what occult movement belongs to Jewry.”7 Jewish leaders availed themselves of the opportunity to dispute the charge. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies (hereafter, the Board) was able legally to challenge the accusation because an individual, the Rev. Abraham Levy of the Western Road Synagogue, had been identified.8 The case also provided an opportunity to question before a court of law the authenticity of the Protocols – palpably the inspiration behind von Moltke’s accusation and often referred to in the Greyshirts’ newspaper Die Waarheid (The Truth) – and to demonstrate the international character of antisemitic propaganda. At the trial it became obvious that the document in question was influenced by the Protocols. It was purportedly written by a learned Jew and derived its authenticity from Hebrew lettering at the top. The document was supposed to be a copy of lectures discussing Jewish attitudes toward Christianity as well as issues pertaining to antisemitism and the Greyshirts. Accordingly, beginning with Luther, Jews had manipulated the Christian Church and planned to destroy the Roman Catholic Church, establish world communism and a dictatorship of the proletariat, and hand South Africa to the black population. Jews believed that Pharaoh was the first antisemite and that Hitler would be the last. They also planned to cripple the Greyshirts. The case was heard in the Supreme Court of the Eastern Province in Grahamstown, presided by judge Sir Thomas Graham and justice Clemens Gutsche. The focus was primarily on the authenticity of the document, the question of whether it had been stolen, the views of the defendants regarding it and their motives for making it public.9 Substantial press coverage demonstrated a keen interest in the matter. After eleven days of hearings the court found the document to be false and the defendants to have conspired to promote the interests of the Greyshirt movement. In their defense, von Moltke and Inch alleged that they had been the victims of a Jewish plot. Of particular interest was the clear link between international antisemitism and Nazi ideas and a conspiratorial anti-Jewish worldview, including notions about Jewish machinations in South Africa. Von Moltke was demonstrably inspired by Hitler’s revolution, but even more so by H.H. Beamish,10 with whose writings he was acquainted, and the latter actually gave testimony at the trial. Indeed, Beamish referred to the document allegedly stolen from the synagogue as a miniature Protocols superimposed on South African conditions, which were not unknown to him. He indicated that he was “a firm believer in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and that he could “prove every one of them.” In his view all the prime ministers of England had been under Jewish influence and Jews had been behind all the revolutions in history.11 The Zionist leader Nahum Sokolov, who was visiting South Africa at the time of the trial, appeared as an expert witness in defense of Levy, refuting

The Protocols in South Africa 257 the false and malicious allegations made in the Protocols. There was absolutely no truth in the suggestion that there was a Jewish plot to overcome the world, he told the court.12 The judges agreed with Sokolov and awarded damages in favor of the plaintiff. Despite the outcome of the case and the Board’s publication of pamphlets to combat notions of a Jewish conspiracy, the Protocols continued to be quoted intermittently in far right literature. The trial, moreover, stimulated the acceleration of Shirtist activities.13 Among those encouraged by the Protocols was J.H.H. de Waal jr., the son of a prominent South African politician and a member of the Greyshirts before he broke away to form a splinter group, the Christenvolk-Beskermingsbond (Christian people’s protection league), in 1935. The central aim of his breakaway movement was the removal of Jews from their alleged control over South Africa. In the same year de Waal had published My Ontwaking, a booklet based on Nazi propaganda and patently connected to international antisemitic literature, including a chapter lifted directly from the Protocols. Jews were described as exploiters, the disciples of Satan, ritual murderers, Bolsheviks, and an international octopus bent on dominating the world. Significantly, one of the cartoons, “Rituele Moord” (Ritual murder) was taken from the “blood libel” number of the Nazi broadsheet Der Stürmer, as indeed were other pictures. Obviously, de Waal was connected to the international currents of anti-Jewish hatred. My Lewe en Strewe, the autobiography of another member of the radical right, General Manie Maritz, published in 1938, similarly illustrated the international reach of antisemites and the impact of Nazi ideas in South Africa; the very title of the book suggests that it was modeled on Hitler’s Mein Kampf. My Lewe en Strewe included twenty-seven pages of portions of the Protocols translated into Afrikaans. Most of the book was a diatribe against the Jews, including “quotations” from the Talmud and other Jewish sources. More importantly, Maritz applied the Protocols to South Africa. In addition, he made use of the publication The Key to the Mystery, a conspiratorial account of Jewish world domination by Canadian antisemite Adrien Arcand, as noted above, a close friend of Beamish.14 Because of its hate-filled content Maritz − an icon of Afrikaner history – was tried in South West Africa15 and found guilty of promoting “a strong feeling of hostility against the Jewish race.” Gus Saron, an expert witness at the trial, reported that Arcand’s Key to the Mystery was translated directly into Afrikaans and was, according to Maritz’s attorney, brought to his client’s attention by Beamish.16 Again, one sees the connection between antisemites. As noted, Beamish was a close associate of Arcand. During the trial Maritz explained how the Kristelike−Bond (Christian union) in Johannesburg,17 had showed the Protocols to him in 1924, the year in which he first publicly harangued against the Jews.18 The tract had opened his eyes to the role of the Jew in the Afrikaners’ misfortunes and corresponded to his understanding of earlier

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South African conspiracy theories, notably the Jews as the fomenters of the Boer War, a canard initially popularized by J.A. Hobson. Although in 1945 the Smuts government prohibited the importation of the Protocols,19 they emerged from time to time, publicized by S.E.D. Brown, editor of the far right monthly the South African Observer.20 But their appeal waned as the “Jewish question” rapidly receded from the public agenda. In 1955 the government, at the prompting of the Board, banned possession and distribution, and again in 1980 the tract fell under books proscribed by the Directorate of Publications.21 The ban was lifted briefly on July 12, 1991, when the Publications Committee “concluded that it was a document that had been overtaken by history and the relations between Jews and non-Jews in South Africa had become so good as to render the publication harmless.”22 A few months later the Board and the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists had the decision reversed. In its decision, the Appeal Board noted: “The publication is a lie and would constitute potential for fanning racial tension and in the hands of malicious individuals could be used as a tool to that end.”23 The Protocols played a very minor role in the far right’s arsenal of antiJewish invective after World War II. Rather it was Holocaust denial and nefarious Zionist machinations that characterized conspiratorial paranoia.24 Zionists were accused of being behind the “Genocide” episode in The World at War television documentary, which caused a minor controversy in South Africa during its screening in 1976. According to the South African Observer, the entire series, which traced the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, was “nothing more than history of the last war selected, compiled and purveyed, not by qualified historians, but by two Zionist Jews, [executive producer] Jeremy Isaacs and [scriptwriter] Charles Bloomberg.” “The other side of the story,” complained the newspaper, “had been completely blacked out or smothered out.” It was “nothing else than another installment in the gross continuing libel against Germany and the German people as a whole at the hands of exploitative Zionists.”25

Toward the turn of the millennium While the notion of sinister Zionists and Jewish conspiracies had some resonance among the far right, these ideas had greater purchase among the Muslim minority, centered mainly in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.26 As early as 1971, Muslims were warned of “Zionist designs” and readers of Muslim News (later Muslim Views), a mainstream Muslim newspaper, were urged to avail themselves of the Protocols and become acquainted with their content.27 However, the focus of conspiratorial thought among Muslims was more on the power of the Jewish state and its alliance with the United States than on the Protocols as such. Nonetheless, the tract was well known, readily available, and invariably connected to Zionism.

The Protocols in South Africa 259 At root was the notion of Jewish power and manipulation, manifested in the “Zionist state.” Concern became increasingly strident in the 1970s as a new generation of Muslims, more in touch with international developments and inspired by the anti-apartheid struggle and the Iranian Revolution, took a more radical position. Successive defeats of Arab states by Israel demanded an explanation: sinister Jewish power and the Jewish lobby in the US provided the answer. Qibla, a radical Cape Town-based Muslim organization, founded in 1979 and inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran in that year, identified Zionism as the “citadel” of imperialism, a term that resonated powerfully in the apartheid context. Indeed, for some observers, Jewish and Zionist manipulation was responsible for South Africa’s race-based policies.28 Qibla challenged the South African state from a Muslim perspective. “Islamic revolution in South Africa” became a popular slogan in Cape Town. In the 1980s, the Muslim press regularly wrote of international financial machinations centered on Zionism. Even local newspapers, noted Sheikh Nazeem Mohammed, president of the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC), the official voice of Muslims in South Africa, were “controlled by the Jews.”29 These conspiratorial ideas were taken further by journalist and academic Ibraheem Mousa, who spoke of Jews being “in control of a large stash of economic power in South Africa” and therefore having substantial influence and political power.30 A pamphlet distributed by Muslim students on the campus of the University of Cape Town referred to the Protocols as the “secret ‘manifesto’ of Zionism for a plot to dominate the world.”31 A principal fount of conspiratorial thought was Durban where a Muslim educational center, the Islamic Propagation Centre International (IPCI) under Sheikh Ahmed Deedat, popularized notions of Jewish power, cunning, and duplicity.32 Although not directly employing the Protocols, pamphlets dealing with the diabolical behavior of Jews, implied Jewish world conspiracies. In a booklet Arabs and Israel, Deedat claimed that Jews influenced the press and that leading newspapers in South Africa feared the “Zionist establishment” which was “gagging us.” Deedat argued that a Jewish lobby that had helped Israel in its military victories over the Arabs dominated the United States. Indeed, he added, Jews controlled all western powers and were bent on controlling the world.33 By the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991 a conspiratorial mindset among Muslims was already well developed. Arguments that the United States – the “Great Satan,” a termed coined by Ayatollah Khomeini − and the Zionists were collaborating at the expense of the Muslim world were widespread. The editor of Muslim Views even suggested that South Africans were under the threat of an evil, overpowering Zionism.34 More sinister, however, was the depiction of the struggle between the West and the Muslim world in metaphysical terms. This encounter “was not merely between earthly foes; it was rather a battle of far greater import − a struggle between the forces of good and evil, Islam against the evil West.”35

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Muslim Views argued that Saddam Hussein’s retreat in 1991 “was just an event staged by Zionist-controlled media. Saddam has a secret weapon and will be back to destroy Israel as well as the USA forces.”36 Some Muslims even believed that Iraq was winning the war, but that the truth was not known “because all the news is controlled by the Pentagon and their allies.”37 This sort of worldview steadfastly refused to accept even television scenes of the Kuwaiti flag flying again over Kuwait City as a sign of Iraq’s defeat. “The Americans,” wrote one correspondent, were “masters at creating film sets” and had “created a fictitious Kuwait. These so-called Iraqi prisoners are Kuwaiti’s dressed up in Iraqi uniforms.” “This CNN stuff is sheer propaganda, sheer propaganda!” exhorted one Muslim worshipper as he left a mosque after Friday prayer.38 Here one can see evidence of a distorted worldview common in the Arab Muslim world. “Lost wars, economic poverty, and medical backwardness are the West’s fault,” wrote Daniel Pipes in his examination of Middle Eastern fears of conspiracy.39 The Jewish state was a locus of evil and a conspiratorial center, rooted in the Zionist movement. Such sentiments were articulated at an international Muslim conference “Creating a New Civilisation of Islam,” organized by the Toronto-based Crescent International, held in Pretoria in April 1996. Among the speakers at the conference were the historian and convert to Islam Dr. Yaqub Zaki, Achmad Cassiem of the South African Islamic Unity Convention, Haroon Kalia, of the British Muslim Parliament, and Sheikh Muhammad al-Asi, editor of Crescent International. A number of commentators reportedly referred to Jews as “a powerful economic force” and blamed Zionists for “all evils in society.”40 Conspiratorial thinking was succinctly captured in the response of Fu’ad Rahman, a foreign journalist and one-time anti-apartheid activist based in Cape Town, to an African National Congress (ANC) document, “The Threat of Fundamentalist Islam,” issued after the emergence in 1996 of PAGAD (People Against Gangsterism and Drugs). A Qibla-dominated vigilante movement in Cape Town, PAGAD was born out of the breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of the demise of apartheid and the loosening of the police state in the early 1990s.41 Rahman maintained that the document was a product of “the Israeli intelligence network known as Mossad” and that the ANC government was “heavily influenced and controlled by Zionists.” Mossad, he continued, “working hand in glove with the CIA (American intelligence), due to their extensive surveillance on Muslims here, knew about PAGAD before PAGAD knew about PAGAD.”42 Rahman’s conspiratorial outlook reflected a paranoid cast of mind among South African Muslims, typically observed in societies undergoing disruptive change, claimed historian David Brion Davis.43 South Africa’s moral collapse was linked to the Jewish mining magnate Harry Oppenheimer,44 the “South African equivalent to the American moneymonger known as Rockefeller who due to his wealth and ‘owning’ America, dictates American policy.” Oppenheimer was accused of being a Zionist, and of manipulating American

The Protocols in South Africa 261 President Bill Clinton and defining his anti-Islamic policies. “This is why America (used and under control by the zionist conspiracy) has ousted the popularly voted in FIS-government in Algeria [in 1992] and replaced it with a puppet yes-boss dictator [sic],” noted Rahman. In his view “zionists,” whom, he alleged, controlled the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and had “infiltrated major ANC-government structures with so-called white liberals sitting in key positions,” were manipulating South Africa. The Oppenheimer family “dictates global economy trends due to the wealth of all South Africans they have usurped … He [Oppenheimer] is also linked to a major zionist structure, conspiring to dictate world policy due to owning the world’s wealth [sic].”45 Rahman even blamed the demise of the National Party, which relinquished power in 1994, on the “zionists,” and predicted that they would similarly make the ANC incapable of governing. This would ensure “greater money control on the wealth of the nation.” Muslims, contended Rahman, were not only informed of the evil machinations of Oppenheimer and his “Zionist” cohorts, but knew that all those opposed to PAGAD were under their influence. Given such views, it is hardly surprising that Rahman claimed Jews controlled the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, and supported butchering Muslims the world over. Islam was a challenge to this global conspiracy.46 While not specifically relating to the Protocols, it is apparent that the discourse employed by Rahman was of a similar genre. In much the same way, Holocaust denial – heard not infrequently on Radio 786, a Cape Town Muslim radio station − served to bolster the Muslim conspiratorial arsenal. Thus Swiss German Holocaust denier and convert to Islam Ahmed Huber, speaking in 1997 from Switzerland on Radio 786, suggested that the Holocaust was exaggerated and that the peace process in the Middle East was an American Zionist swindle.47 Notwithstanding an apology after complaints by the Board,48 the same station interviewed Dr. Yaqub Zaki, who, besides claiming that the “million plus” Jews who perished in World War II had died of infectious diseases, spoke at length of elaborate Jewish conspiracies, including a bizarre connection between Jewish financiers, the Boer War, Lord Alfred Milner (the British high commissioner in South Africa at the time), and Zionism. In addition, the Third Republic in France “fell into the hands of Jews,” the Bolshevik Revolution was funded by Kuhn, Loeb, and Company, the great Jewish bank of New York; President Woodrow Wilson was an adulterer whom Jews threatened to expose in order to promote their nefarious goals, and the Freemasons, controlled by Jewish finance, got Milner and Balfour – both initiates of the Grand Lodge of Great Britain – to issue the Balfour Declaration. Communism and Zionism, claimed Zaki, “were two sides of the same coin.”49 Legal wrangles surrounding the broadcast did not prevent Muslim Views from suggesting − shortly after a Holocaust center was opened in Cape Town

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in 1999 − that its readers avail themselves of a number of books denying the Holocaust. Exploitation of the “six million,” explained Jameel McWilliams, a journalist on the newspaper, was a “red herring” to divert attention from Israeli “aggression” against the Palestinians. McWilliams went on to explain that the furnaces had been necessary to burn dead bodies in order to prevent the spread of disease. “We are constantly reminded of the suffering of the Jews by the media, by Hollywood, particularly Steven Spielberg. But where is the evidence that the Germans gassed six million Jews? Was there even a deliberate policy of extermination by the Nazis of European Jewry?”50 Readers of Muslim Views did not challenge McWilliams. It was thus no surprise that the Protocols were sold at the WCAR in Durban in 2001 where South African Muslims joined their co-religionists from abroad and others hostile to Israel in what turned out to be an anti-Zionist hate-fest. Indeed the occasion illustrated conspiratorial thinking at its apogee. Aided by what was palpably huge international support, the gathering turned into “an extension of the Arab−Israeli conflict,” and an opportunity “to insert wording into draft resolutions portraying Israel and Zionism as racist and minimizing Jewish suffering and anti-Semitism.” South Africa was a tempting context in which to equate Zionism with racism, especially given apartheid South Africa’s ties with the Jewish state.51 Only a few days after the Durban conference – perhaps even inspired by it – Sheikh Mogamat Faaik Gamieldien of Cape Town wrote a letter, entitled “The Golden Calf of Judaism” to the mainstream Cape Town daily Cape Argus, in which he quoted the Protocols approvingly. He recalled that the Protocols had been banned under the apartheid regime, and that they clearly provided an explanation for Zionist and Israeli actions.52 In addition, Henry Ford’s International Jew was on sale online as late as 2001 and advertised in printed literature until 1988.53 It is therefore not surprising that many South African Muslims, following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon, took conspiratorial ideas further. Invariably Zionist connections with the US were identified.54 Classic conspiratorial thinking was evident in an interview conducted in September 2004 with a young Cape Town sheikh, Mogamat Colby, a student at al-Azhar University in Cairo. Referring to the Protocols, the sheikh noted that Jews controlled “economic systems in the world … all our land, all the means of the radio stations, the newspapers, the televisions − they are controlling all these things − and this is how they have full control over the whole world.”55

Explaining the warm reception of the Protocols and Jewish conspiracies In his discussion of conspiracy theories, the social scientist, Dieter Groh, makes the important observation that when human beings find themselves

The Protocols in South Africa 263 in situations they cannot understand, they seek simple explanations. “Their suffering,” he points out, is described as an injustice, a wrong, an evil, bad luck, a catastrophe. Because they themselves live correctly, act in an upright, just manner, go to the right church, belong to a superior culture, they feel that this suffering is undeserved. In the search for a reason as why such evil things happen to them, they soon come upon another group, an opponent group to which they then attribute certain characteristics: This group obviously causes them to suffer by effecting dark, evil, and secretly worked out plans against them.56 Clearly “the Jew” provided an ideal explanation for the Afrikaner in the 1930s, and “the Zionist” for the Muslim in contemporary South Africa. For Afrikaners and Muslims, Jewish conspiracies, evident most notably but not only in the Protocols, served deep psychological needs. They built upon a mature, widely disseminated anti-Jewish stereotype. In the case of South Africa’s Afrikaner fascist movements, conspiratorial thinking appeared to relate to their experience: Jews had fomented the Boer War, inspired blacks against white civilization, controlled the press, exploited Afrikaners and dominated society. Against a backdrop of drought, depression, and rapidly increasing black economic competition, these fascist clones, with a “marked preference for adopting the language and symbolism of Nazism,” devoted themselves “to attacking the oldest of scapegoats, the Jews,”57 in which the arsenal of hatred provided by the Protocols was a godsend. They explained the plight of the “poor white” Afrikaner − dislocated, unskilled, and the victim of modernity. The growth of Muslim radicalism and its susceptibility to conspiratorial thought was similarly rooted in specific contingencies related to the South African Muslim experience, coupled with the penetration of virulent antiJewish ideas. The latter were particularly plausible in an apartheid society that separated whites from blacks, including Jews from Muslims. Moreover, South African Muslims increasingly understood the plight of fellow Muslims in the world through the South African prism, fed by radical Islamist thought from abroad. The Israeli−Palestinian conflict and American machinations in the Middle East, in particular, informed a sense of victimhood, encouraged by their second-class status in apartheid South Africa. Although Muslims identified with the notion of nakba58 at the time of the Israeli War of Independence, and although they shared in the humiliation of their “brothers and sisters” during the string of Arab defeats at the hands of Israeli forces, it was only from the 1970s that a younger generation began to imbibe conspiratorial explanations for their condition. There is evidence of increased radicalization as the younger generation absorbed classical Islamist texts, including the anti-state writings of Abul-A‘la al-Mawdudi (Pakistan, 1903−79) and Sayyid Qutb (Egypt, 1906−66), the spiritual leaders of political

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Islam who challenged western notions of modernization, democracy, and the legitimacy of the State of Israel.59 The success of the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979 provided further impetus, and the writings of Ayatollah Ali Shari‘ati (1933−77) and Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini became recommended reading for young South African Muslims. Secularism, the West, and deviant Arab regimes were all targeted. Against this background, the calls to Muslims to become acquainted with the Protocols fell on fertile ground. Young Muslim activists rapidly absorbed alternate worldviews through study groups, as well as in more informal settings. By the time Israeli forces had occupied southern Lebanon in 1982, a new generation of Muslims had begun to challenge their more conservative elders. Muslim demonstrations against Israel and Zionism on the campuses of the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand at the time of the September 1982 Sabra and Shatilla massacre of Palestinians by Christian militias in Lebanon60 revealed an intensification of Muslim anti-Zionism and a new determination for action among the younger generation. Qibla continued to reject what was in essence the road to a negotiated settlement between whites and blacks. Its leader, Achmad Cassiem, called for an exclusivist Islamic unity, an appeal that attracted both conservative and radical Muslims and exploited the powerful strains of anti-western sentiment within the Muslim community, and in particular, the alleged nexus between the United States and Israel. More importantly, a conspiracy was identified in which Jews, bent on controlling world finances, were manipulating the West. In the minds of some, the Zionist−US coalition was determined to destroy Islam.61 Such attitudes became vividly apparent in the wake of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and during the ensuing Gulf War.62 Muslims were called upon to identify with the global Muslim struggle, with the Palestinian problem at its core. This was the context within which PAGAD emerged.63 It is this conspiratorial framework that has informed many Muslims in South Africa since the turn of the millennium. Moreover, it is clear that South African Muslims are intricately tied to an international network of anti-Zionism that incorporates Holocaust denial within its armory of hatred. South African Muslims share a sense of oppression with their co-religionists abroad. With strong international opposition to its existence, an explanation for the survival of the Jewish state is demanded. Here the groundwork has been well laid in a global literature, which demonizes the Jew/Zionist and his so-called allies in the United States. Facilitated by the Internet, all this meshes easily and smoothly with the Protocols. Demonization of the Jew is something radical South African Muslims have in common with the Afrikaner right of the interwar years. Both Afrikaners and Muslims constructed a mythical past, a sense of righteousness and paranoid fantasies to cope with their situations. In the case of South African Muslims, the experience of living under a centrally controlled, authoritarian, and manipulative apartheid regime converged with notions of Jewish

The Protocols in South Africa 265 conspiracy, machination, and intrigue. An explanation was sought for the success of Zionism and the power of its creation. The Protocols, or at least the essential ideas underpinning this tract, compensate the losers, as Stephen Bronner puts it, “for the deficit they feel in their own lives.”64 The Protocols have come to be embodied in Zionism and the Jewish state. Israel serves as the locus of this fantasy. Radical right Afrikaners of the 1930s had no such focal point. The historical hand has moved on, but the “hidden hand” of the Jew remains.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10

The author wishes to thank Deborah Donig for her research assistance. Fred Halliday, Islam & the Myth of Confrontation (London: I.B. Taurus, 2003), p. 5. Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide (London: Serif, 1996), p. 256. J.H.H. de Waal, My Awakening [in Afrikaans] (Cape Town: De Waal, 1935). Saloman Gerhardus Maritz, My Life and Struggle [in Afrikaans] (Johannesburg: M. Maritz, 1938). For recent exchanges, see Hermann Giliomee, “The Making of the Apartheid Plan, 1929−1948,” Journal of Southern African Studies 29, no. 2 (June 2003), pp. 373−92; idem, The Afrikaners: Biography of a People (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2003), and Patrick Furlong, “Apartheid, Afrikaner Nationalism and the Radical Right: Historical Revisionism in Hermann Giliomee’s The Afrikaners,” South African Historical Journal, no. 49 (2003), pp. 207−22. Quoted in Mark Lazarus, The Challenge (Port Elizabeth: Mercantile Press, 1935), cover. The Challenge is a narrative of the proceedings of the Greyshirt trial. Lazarus, a Port Elizabeth local Labour Party politician, observed the case. In terms of South African libel law, an attack on the community as a whole could not be considered libel; identifying an individual could. See Hadassa Ben-Itto, The Lie That Wouldn’t Die: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Vallentine Mitchell: London, 2005), pp. 237ff. Beamish was born in Ireland in 1874. Having left school at the age of sixteen, he found his way to the Cape Colony via Alaska and Ceylon as a member of the Ceylon Mounted Infantry during the Boer War. Rising to the rank of captain he imbibed the notion that Jews were conspiring to rule the world, ideas apparently supported by his upbringing and no doubt reinforced by his understanding of South Africa. He settled in South Africa after the Boer War, and then went to Rhodesia before returning to the Transvaal. During the Great War he distinguished himself as a jingoistic anti-German, ultimately fighting on the Western Front with the Natal regiment of the South African Infantry. Thereafter he rapidly entered the world of far right British politics and was a founder of the Britons, “a society dedicated to disseminate anti-Semitic propaganda.” See Gisela Lebzelter, Political Anti-Semitism in England 1918−1939 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1978), p. 2. Shortly after the formation of the Britons, Beamish attracted publicity in a libel case brought by Sir Alfred Moritz Mond, the first commissioner of works in 1919. The occasion allowed him to castigate the Jews whom, he argued, could not be real Englishmen. A “person can’t be by race both English and Jew,” he explained. See The Times, December 2, 1919. Beamish was found guilty and following a failed appeal he returned to South Africa without paying the fine. During his active years with the Britons Beamish had founded the Judaic Publishing Company, renamed Britons Publishing Company in 1922, noted for its antisemitic propaganda. In 1920 he published The Jews’ Who’s Who, allegedly exposing Jewish financial and political interests. Perhaps most importantly, the

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16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24

M. Shain Britons kept the Protocols in circulation, having purchased the plates of a British edition from Eyre and Spottiswoode in 1920. In 1923 they published a new edition by Victor Marsden, based on a translation Marsden had done for the Morning Post. See Lebzelter, Political Antisemitism, pp. 21−22. In addition to his domestic anti-Jewish agitation Beamish, according to Gustav Saron, general secretary of the Board from 1936, met Mussolini and Hitler in the early 1920s and kept the South African Shirt movements in touch with similar movements abroad. See Gustav Saron, “History of South African Jewry subsequent to 1910” unpublished manuscript, Archives of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, ARCH 117, Johannesburg, 1977. See Beamish’s evidence in Lazarus, The Challenge, pp. 77−97. Lazarus, The Challenge, p. 52. Michael Cohen, “Anti-Jewish Manifestations in the Union of South Africa during the Nineteen Thirties,” unpublished BA Hons Thesis, University of Cape Town, 1968, p. 81. Significantly, the Greyshirts claimed that the nefarious activities of the Jews were on an international scale. “The Jews are the organized exploiters and oppressors par excellence, and moreover their organization is international.” Die Waarheid −The Truth, February 7, 1935; cited in F.J. van Heerden, “Nasionale Sosialisme as a Faktor in die Suid-Afrikaanse Politiek, 1933−1948,” unpublished diss., University of the Orange Free State, 1972, p. 78. Adrien Arcand, The Key to the Mystery (Montreal: Montreal Women’s AntiCommunist League, 194? [n.d.]). South African law precluded attempts to have My Lewe en Strewe banned. But when the book began to circulate in South West Africa (under South African mandate) the law allowed for its banning on the grounds that it promoted “feelings of hostility between different races of the community” (Section 4, Criminal Amendment Act 13, 1934). Maritz was found guilty on the charge of promoting “a strong feeling of hostility against the Jewish race” and fined 75 pounds. This was probably a reference to the Leagues of Gentiles which was reported in the press in the 1920s. See Milton Shain, The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa (Charlottesville/ London: University of Virginia Press, 1994), pp. 121−23. See Shain, The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa, pp. 114−15. Hansard, 29 May, 1959, col. 6968. See for example, “The Great Conspiracy to Destroy the USA,” South African Observer, December 1955. The South African Observer was a far right monthly. On March 29, 1976, it was reported in Beeld that far rightists were disseminating the Protocols. Republic of South Africa Government Gazette, vol. 182, no. 7195, August 22, 1980. Citizen, November 28, 1991. Ibid. Arthur Butz’ book, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (Richmond, Surrey: Historical Review Press, 1975) was accorded a positive reception in the South African Observer (September 1976). This classic of Holocaust denial literature clearly suited the South African Observer’s conspiratorial worldview, which had been molded by its editor, S.E.D. Brown. Brown applauded Butz’ work which, he argued, combined “the historian’s mastery of documents with the technical knowledge of a scientist”. International neo-Nazi links were even more apparent in the publication Did Six Million Die? – The Truth at Last (Richmond, Surrey: Historical Review Press, 1974), a booklet written in 1974 by Richard Verrall under the pseudonym Richard Harwood, supposedly of the University of London, and disseminated widely in the UK. See Milton Shain, “South Africa,” in The World Reacts to the Holocaust, ed. D.S. Wyman (Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 682. Ivor Benson, a well-known Holocaust revisionist who wrote the

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27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

introduction to The Controversy of Zion (Durban: Dolphin Press, 1978), by Douglas Reed, a notorious British right-wing journalist, and author, shared these sentiments. Reed spent the last twenty-two years of his life in Durban, and Benson arranged for its publication posthumously. Shain, “South Africa,” p. 684. Given these “revisionist” impulses circulating among the radical white right, it is not surprising that a controversy erupted around the screening of the “Genocide” episode in the television series The World at War. But for substantial popular pressure, the South African Broadcasting Corporation would have refrained from showing the episode on the grounds that it might have disturbed race relations and given offense to one of the population groups. Good sense prevailed much to the chagrin of the extreme right. “The alleged slaughter of six million Jews is based on falsification and fraud and lies,” explained the far right Die Afrikaner (May 21, 1976). Predictably the most vicious attack came from the South African Observer, which described the screening of “Genocide” as “the capitulation of the Vorster government to the forces of world Zionism” (June 1976). According to the 1996 census, the largely Sunni Muslim population numbered 553,585, or 1.4 percent of the total population. Muslims are essentially a part of the Colored and Indian population. They are the descendents of political prisoners, brought to the Cape by Dutch rulers from the Indonesian islands in the seventeenth century, ex-slaves, nineteenth-century Indian immigrants, and the offspring of black/white miscegenation. Muslim News, April 10, 1971. Ebrahim Rasool, interview in The Jews of South Africa: What Future? ed. Tzippi Hoffman and Alan Fischer (Johannesburg: Southern Books, 1988), p. 118. Nazeem Mohammed, interview in Hoffman and Fischer, The Jews of South Africa, p. 137. Ibraheem Mousa, interview in ibid., p. 172. The pamphlet was distributed at the University of Cape Town and is on file at the archives of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies. See also the University of Cape Town Jewish student newspaper, Strike, April 1991. The IPCI was funded in part by the Bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia. See The Mercury, September 26, 1998. Ahmed Deedat, Arabs and Israel Conflict or Conciliation? (Durban: Islamic Propagation Centre International, n.d.), pp. 1−80. Muslim Views, August 1990. Margo Bastos, “Muslim Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism since the Second World War, with special reference to Muslim News/Views,” unpublished MA diss., University of Cape Town, 2002, p. 89. Muslim Views, February 1991. Ibid. Ibid. Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), p. 26. Antisemitism World Report 1997, 6th ed. (London: Institute for Jewish Policy Research and the American Jewish Committee, 1997), p. 356. PAGAD was founded in 1996, mainly by Muslims. The movement promised to provide solutions to rising crime and gangsterism. Against a background of unemployment and poverty, Muslims joined marches to the homes of known drug dealers, adopting the universal Islamist slogan, “Islam is the only solution!” Those who questioned PAGAD’s activities were accused of belonging to a “global conspiracy.” See Raashied Galant and Fahmi Gamieldien, Drugs, Gangs, People’s Power: Exploring the Pagad Phenomenon (Claremont: Claremont Main Road Masjid, 1996).

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42 Muslim Views, March 1997. 43 See The Fear of Conspiracy: Images of Un-American Subversion from the Revolution to the Present, ed. David Brion Davis (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1971), p. xv. 44 Oppenheimer was an apostate Jew. 45 Muslim Views, March 1997. 46 Ibid. See also “How the Media Manipulates the Truth about Terrorism” for evidence of conspiracy theories explaining how the West demonizes Islam, Muslim Views, April 1997; similarly, “Israel’s attack on Christianity,” in which the western media are accused of helping to establish Zionism. Muslim Views, August 1997. 47 Milton Shain, “South Africa,” in American Jewish Year Book 1998, ed. David Grossman, (Philadelphia: American Jewish Committee, 1998), p. 403. 48 Ibid. 49 Interview “Prime Talk,” Radio 786, May 8, 1998. See Milton Shain, “South Africa,” in Grossman, American Jewish Year Book 2001, p. 464. 50 See Muslim Views, February 2000. 51 South African Jewish Report, July 13, 2001. 52 Cape Argus, September 6, 2001. 53 I am indebted to Deborah Donig for this information. 54 Muslim Views, September 2001. 55 Interview, Voice of the Cape, a Cape Town-based radio station, September 10, 2004. 56 Dieter Groh, “The Temptation of Conspiracy Theory, or: Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? Part 1: Preliminary Draft of a Theory of Conspiracy Theories,” in Changing Conceptions of Conspiracy, ed. C.F. Graumann and S. Moscovici (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1987), p. 1. 57 Patrick J. Furlong, Between Crown and Swastika: The Impact of the Radical Right on the Afrikaner Nationalist Movement in the Fascist Era (Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press, 1991), p. 13. 58 Muslims protested at Faure, outside Cape Town in 1948 against the “occupation of Palestine by the Zionists.” See Muhammed Haron “The Muslim News (1960−1986): Expression of an Islamic Identity in South Africa,” in Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed. Louis Brenner (London: Hurst & Company, 1993), p. 222. 59 See Abdulkader Tayob, Islamic Resurgence in South Africa: The Muslim Youth Movement (Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 1995), ch. 3; Desmond Charles Rice, “Islamic Fundamentalism as a Major Religiopolitical Movement and its Impact on South Africa,” unpublished MA diss., University of Cape Town, 1987, pp. 438−52. The writings of Mawdudi and Qutb were serialized in the Islamic Mission, a newsletter started by the Claremont Muslim Youth Association. 60 See Varsity (official student newspaper of the University of Cape Town) 41, no. 9 (August 1982). 61 See for example, letters to Muslim Views, August 1990. 62 Ibid. 63 According to Esack, several militant elements within Qibla formed the core of PAGAD. See Farid Esack, “Pagad and Islamic Radicalism: Taking on the State,” Indicator South Africa 4, no. 13 (Spring 1996), p. 9. 64 Stephen Eric Bronner, A Rumor About the Jews: Antisemitism, Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 143.

17 The case of the Brazilian revisionist S.E. Castan Luiz Nazario

Siegfried Ellwanger (aka S.E. Castan), a Brazilian engineer of German descent and a senior partner at Revisão Editora (Revision Publishing Company) in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, has been publishing, selling, and distributing antisemitic and Holocaust-denying books nationally and internationally since 1988. The first lawsuit against him was filed in July 1990, by members of the Popular Anti-racism Movement (MOPAR), for deliberately inciting discrimination and prejudice in violation of Brazil’s anti-racism law. His case had many phases, with various trials, deliberations, sentences, and appeals, until it arrived in the highest court of the country, the Supreme Federal Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal − STF), which finally passed judgment in 2003.1 The Castan case represented “a head-to-head conflict between two constitutional freedoms: freedom of expression versus freedom from racial incitement,”2 and a pre-Holocaust perception of racism versus the postAuschwitz world, with new genocidal ideologies disguised as “historical revisionism.” The case highlights two key aspects: the intricacies of the struggle against revisionism as a form of racism, and the new phenomenon of virtual racism adopted by neo-Nazis in an attempt to disseminate their ideology throughout the world. This chapter examines the various phases of the Castan case from the legal point of view, reflecting on the discourse accompanying it in Brazilian society. In 1988, Siegfried Ellwanger settled in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, and founded Revisão Editora.3 In addition to general literature – two books for children, a detective novel, and a book of local poetry – the company published and distributed forty-two titles of original and translated antisemitic literature, such as Martin Luther’s On the Jews and Their Lies,4 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,5 Henry Ford’s The International Jew,6 Louis Marschalko’s The World Conquerors: The Real War Criminals,7 Gustavo Barroso’s Brazil: A Bankers’ Colony,8 and The Secret History of Brazil,9 as well as books denying the Holocaust, including The Gas Is Over! The End of a Myth,10 Who Wrote Anne Frank’s Diaries?11 and Sérgio Oliveira’s Hitler, Guilty or Innocent?12 The centerpiece of the collection was Holocaust: Jewish or German? Behind the Scenes of the Lie of the Century,13 by Castan himself. The book became a revisionist “classic” among neo-Nazi militants, with thirty editions sold out, and

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translated into English, German, and Spanish. The book itself is a translation of Richard Verrall’s (aka Richard Harwood) Did Six Million Really Die? (1974 pamphlet edited by Ernst Zündel), with local adaptations and commentaries.14 Among his claims in the book, Castan accuses the Jews of wishing to “exterminate the Germans,” labels the gas chambers “sheer fantasy,” dismisses the survivors’ testimonies as “lies,”15 and asserts that the Jews should be persecuted as “the plague of society.”16 After becoming the main Nazi propagandist in Brazil, Castan freely displayed his collection of antisemitic publications at the 1988 São Paulo Book Fair.17 But in August 1989, MOPAR, which is composed of three human rights movements: Movimento de Justiça e Direitos Humanos (MJDH), represented by Mauro Nadvorny and Jair Krischke; the Black Movement; and the Independent Jewish Movement, filed a lawsuit against Castan in Porto Alegre, under Press Law no. 5.250. In July 1990, MOPAR filed another lawsuit against him, with the support of the Jewish Federation of Rio Grande do Sul (FIRGS), under Law no. 8.081, but lost the action, with the FIRGS having to pay the costs of the process.18 At the same time, in São Paulo, the writer and Holocaust survivor Ben Abraham,19 president of the Brazilian Holocaust survivors organization She’erit Hapleita, filed another lawsuit against Castan for defamation and insult, under Article 140 of the Brazilian Penal Code.20 After Castan and his wife founded the L.E. Scotton Company for marketing products such as imported videos and Nazi propaganda,21 an additional lawsuit was filed against him in Porto Alegre in October 1991 by MJDH and MOPAR for Revisão Editora’s alleged uninterrupted publication and distribution of antisemitic books. For the sake of prudence, Castan closed the company in July 1992, but created in its stead the Scotton International, handing its management over to the Argentinean Francisco de Asís Valdemoros.22 In September 1993, Ellwanger was judged guilty by the 27th Criminal Court of São Paulo in the Ben Abraham vs. Castan case. It was the first conviction of a neo-Nazi in Latin America, but the verdict was merely symbolic, since it was given after three years of bureaucratic legal procedures. Counting on the slow process of Brazilian justice, and despite the nationwide prohibition on disseminating literature that questioned the Holocaust or accused the Jews of responsibility for the evils of mankind, Ellwanger continued distributing his books locally, such as at airport newsagents, as well as at international events. In 1994, he published a pamphlet claiming that American, French, German, and Polish researchers should disclose the non-existence of the gas chambers in the German concentration camps. He also set up an “Enlightenment Prize,” to be paid to the first witness who could prove the murder of even a single Jew in Auschwitz. As nobody appeared to be eligible, Ellwanger believed this to be “proof” of Auschwitz’s salubrity.23 The proceedings from the MOPAR vs. Castan case from 1991 were concluded on June 14, 1995. Impressed by the antisemitic publisher’s idealistic cause, substitute judge Bernardete Friedrich from the 8th Criminal Court

The case of the Brazilian revisionist 271 of Porto Alegre acquitted Castan on the grounds of “constitutional exercise of freedom.” She did not consider that the books published by Revisão discriminated against the Jews, but as describing historical facts from an unfavorable angle.24 MOPAR appealed in July 21, 1995, and on October 31, 1996, the 3rd Criminal Appeal Court of Rio Grande do Sul sentenced Castan under Law no. 7.716 to two years imprisonment and confiscation of all copies of the seven books mentioned in the lawsuit. But due to a technicality the sentence was commuted to four years community service since he was supposedly a first-time offender. Three days later, Luis Milman and Mauro Nadvorny, members of the Independent Jewish Movement, acquired samples of banned Revisão Editora books displayed at the Porto Alegre Book Fair,25 and filed another complaint against Castan, in cooperation with Jair Krischke, from MJDH, and Luiz Francisco Barbosa, from the Black Movement. Castan was sentenced again in 1997, under Law no. 7.716, by the Rio Grande do Sul State Law Court to two years imprisonment and confiscation of all copies of the seven books mentioned in the lawsuit. Due to another technicality, this sentence was again commuted to probation (sursis), as if he were a first-time offender. In April 2000, the sentence imposed by the Rio Grande do Sul State Law Court was confirmed by the Brazilian Supreme Court. Castan was found guilty of writing, editing, and selling works with antisemitic messages that incited “feelings of hatred, contempt and prejudice against people of Jewish origin.” Stating that antisemitism was one of multiple forms of racism, and therefore an unbailable and imprescriptible crime, the Brazilian Supreme Court imposed a two-year prison sentence. It was “the first time a definitive sentence for antisemitism had been pronounced in Latin America.”26 But the sentence was postponed pending Castan’s appeal. Although obliged to close his publishing company, Castan maintained his website, Holocaust: the Century’s Lie, which continued to sell his banned books, including the Protocols, which he even exhibited at book fairs. In October 2000, a group of some one hundred intellectuals addressed a petition to Paulo Ledur, president of the Rio Grande do Sul State Book Chamber (Câmara Rio-Grandense do Livro), demanding a ban on the sale of Editora Revisão books at the Porto Alegre Book Fair. Ledur, however, warned that if a “regime starts off by prohibiting something, it ends up prohibiting everything; ideas must only be fought by other ideas.”27 The petition aroused a heated debate involving journalists and intellectuals on the subject of free speech. Some supported Castan’s position; editor and writer Greudo Catramby, for example, stated that “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is about … the power of money. The Jews in general do not like this book because they feel insulted. But the remainder of the people should have the opportunity to read it and make up their own minds.”28 Journalist and writer André Carvalho, considered Castan a victim of intolerance.29 Few prominent Brazilian intellectuals outside of the Jewish community expressed views against Castan in the debate.

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In March 2001, after the Supreme Court rejected Ellwanger’s application for a writ of habeas corpus, Ellwanger’s lawyer Werner Becker decided to try and change the charge from racism to discrimination. Thus, his client could be accused only of a crime “against the Jews, against Judaism, against the Jewish community.”30 Since the Jews were a people, not a “race,” there would be no “racial” crime in Ellwanger’s dissemination of antisemitic materials. For Becker, no act committed against a Jew would denote racism, since the Jews are not “a race.” But racism does not signify discrimination among races since there is only one race, the human race; racism means to isolate from the human race an indeterminate subject from a determinate group, as if that subject were an element of a group that formed another “race.” The Federal Prosecuting Counsel contested Becker’s argument. According to the report written by attorney general Eitel Santiago de Brito Pereira, who passed it on to the rapporteur of the proceedings, chief justice Gilson Dipp, the defense lawyer did not distinguish between the anthropological meaning of the word “racism” and its juridical meaning. In his report, Brito Pereira argued that the word racism as it was employed in the legislation served to identify any sort of segregationist doctrine. Racism, in the legal language of the Constitution, was not merely prejudice motivated by racial differences. Racism also applied to any kind of illegal discrimination against a group of people linked to one another by a common religion, nationality, shared regional background, or even by emotional and psychological traits. Thus, if the defendant was convicted of a crime against the Jewish community, “there is no way to detach racism from his or her criminal behavior.” Nevertheless, the report stated that it would not be legitimate to broaden the interpretation of the constitutional rule which considered racism an unbailable and imprescriptible crime, in order to cover an equally unbailable and imprescriptible crime of those who “only incited discrimination or prejudice against the Jews.” The report was thus favorable to quashing punishment, since Castan’s crime did not involve the practice of racism. His conviction, according to the representative of the Federal Prosecuting Counsel, would have been the result of “mere stimulation to more offensive behavior, the practice of racism.”31 In fact, nobody noticed the implicit racism in the argumentation of the defense presented by Ellwanger’s lawyer: the claim that the term “antisemitism” was simply a sophism. Becker assumed that to offend or even kill Jews could be considered aggression without racist connotations, and no act committed against a Jew would denote racism, since the Jews were not a race.32 However, as some legal experts note, it is racism that defines race, not the other way round.33 In Brazil, the Jews, like other minorities that are subject to racial discrimination, have the right to be protected against racism, and this is a fundamental principle of the social pact. On April 13, 2002, rapporteur Reinaldo Pereira da Silva’s report defining antisemitism as racism and Ellwanger’s habeas corpus appeal were discussed by the Brazilian Supreme Court, where cases are normally judged by three

The case of the Brazilian revisionist 273 chief justices (a rapporteur, a reviewer, and a third person), or exceptionally by the plenum. As Ellwanger already had two convictions, if he was found guilty he would carry out his sentence in a penitentiary.34 This was a relatively new concept in Brazil, and there was no Supreme Court precedent. On December 12, 2002, the rapporteur, chief justice Moreira Alves, a conservative Catholic appointed by General Ernesto Geisel during the military dictatorship,35 accepted Werner Becker’s argumentation, agreeing that if even the Jews did not consider themselves a race but a people, the crime of discrimination for which the defendant had been convicted could not be considered one of racism. Following this pronouncement, the president of the Supreme Court, chief justice Maurício Corrêa, who defended the concept that racism should be comprehensive and should include prejudices against minorities, be they based on skin color, ethnicity, or religion, ordered an adjournment and a re-examination of the records. A strictly formal reading of the 1988 Constitution, which regards racist practice as unbailable and imprescriptible, reveals a legal loophole: there are no scientifically identifiable races. Morally speaking, however, Brazilian society has accepted the concept of racism as a socio-cultural phenomenon and the need to fight it using legal weapons. On this subject, Celso Lafer, former foreign minister in the administration of president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, wrote in 2003: In fact, the Jews are not a race, like whites, blacks, mulattoes, Indians, gypsies or any other members of the human species. All of them, nevertheless, can be victims of racist practice. Thus, discussing the crime of racist practice based on the term “race” empties the juridical content from the constitutional precept. It means, at worst, to convert the crime of racist practice into an impossible crime due to the non-existence of the object: races. The foundations of crimes of racist practice are prejudice and its dissemination, which discriminate against groups and people, and ascribing all the characteristics of an inferior “race” to them, based on their appearance or origin.36 In the following session, chief justice Maurício Corrêa voted against the habeas corpus appeal based on the reports written by legal experts Cláudio Fonteles, Celso Lafer, and Miguel Reale Jr., who contested the conceptual distortion proposed by Werner Becker. Chief Justice Corrêa’s vote was emphatically supported by chief justice Celso de Mello, to whom “the discussion about the definition of race and people is secondary, since the core of the debate is the defense or not of any kind of prejudice or discrimination against the only true race – the human race.”37 Since the session was in turmoil, chief justice Gilmar Mendes requested another adjournment to re-examine the proceedings. Due to the sharp differences over the issue in the Supreme Court, advocate José Fernando Mandel requested an opinion from the Federal Commission

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for Human Rights of the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB). Deputy Lincoln Portela from the Liberal Party of Minas Gerais State proposed that the law condemning racism be termed in more precise language, with more effective punishment for crimes involving discrimination or prejudice.38 In the third session of the trial, on June 26, 2002, Mendes surveyed the concepts of race and racism, quoting the various international agreements signed by Brazil, and the limits of freedom of expression imposed by the Federal Constitution.39 He concluded that the decision of the Rio Grande do Sul State Law Court to convict Castan was appropriate and proportional, thus attaining “the goal of protecting a pluralist society, guided by tolerance.” He said it was evident that the books published by the editor were not merely discriminatory, but repeatedly incited to hatred and violence against the Jews. Thus he voted against granting the writ. Observing that in the books published by Castan the Jews are depicted as a race, such as: “Jews’ racial and parasitic inclinations,” “tendencies of the Jewish blood,” and “Jews as the culprits and beneficiaries of the Second World War,” chief justice Carlos Velloso concluded that “the conduct of the accused implies racist practice, which is regarded by the Constitution as a serious and imprescriptible crime.” Referring to the concept of freedom of expression, he reasoned that although it was preserved by the Constitution, it was not absolute: “If there is an apparent clash of fundamental rights, the question is solved on the basis of precedence of the right that best protects constitutional rights and guarantees.” He, too, opposed granting habeas corpus. Chief justice Nelson Jobim also considered that Ellwanger published books in order to promote antisemitism. Refuting the defense’s argument that the Jews were a people not a race and therefore did not come under the constitutional clause on racist crime, he claimed their thesis “hinges on the supposition that the expression of racism – as used in the Constitution – would have an anthropological connotation and concept that simply does not exist.” The other chief justices took a similar approach, and thus the first round of votes rejected Ellwanger’s writ for habeas corpus. However, chief justice Carlos Ayres de Britto requested a further re-examination of the proceedings, which interrupted the trial once again. There was also a request for an adjournment from justice Marco Aurélio, who hinted that he wished to think matters over from the perspective of freedom of expression. Interviewed soon after the session, Celso Lafer commented on the outcome of that first vote: [The Castan case] is not about the publication of one or two books, but about a whole book company, including some books written by himself, deliberately devoted to the dissemination of racism and antisemitism; it is, unmistakably, a case of racism. The decision we made will be a leading case in relation to this theme, which transcends the Jewish community, and constitutes an important vote for all of those who are or might be subject to discrimination and to its most perverse manifestation, racism.

The case of the Brazilian revisionist 275 I see that [notion of] imprescriptibility was deliberate[ly adopted] … by the members of the Constituent Assembly with the aim of avoiding recidivism … – and the 1988 Constitution is clear in that sense – the construction of a fraternal society, free of discrimination.40 However, the decision aroused controversy in the legal and general press and there were some who believed that the crime of racism against Jews was defensible. Federal prosecutor Osório Barbosa, for example, criticized the Jewish press for never “condemning the execution of Palestinian children or the elderly,” and wondered whether the Palestinians belonged to any race. He recommended Norman Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry and insisted that the Constitution “cannot be accepted only partially, insofar as it benefits me; either it is accepted in its entirety or no part of it is of any use. Thus, if I used it to defend my thesis, should I also accept it when it protects criminals?’”41 In July 2003, in an attempt to sway the jury, Castan, on behalf of the revisionist National Center of Historical Research, founded in 1992 in Porto Alegre, sent an anonymous letter to chief justice Celso de Mello, with copies to the other justices of the Supreme Court, denouncing Rabbi Henry Sobel who allegedly used “a virulent expression of racism, prejudice, and aversion toward the country that had sheltered him for over 30 years.” The letter, which used antisemitic motifs drawn from the Protocols, referred to “people who are linked to a powerful political, foreign and racist movement [Zionism],” which since 1987 had pursued him in his own homeland through continuous lawsuits and boycotts, “utilizing the influence they have in the media to spread defamation, slander and lies about him.” It accused Zionism of imposing those lies on the world every single day for more than half a century, and of persecuting him for, checking and disclosing the Zionists’ historical swindles – not for racism … The Zionist movement’s desire is to lay waste to more than 30 years’ exhaustive study … in order to remain in their privileged position of unassailable victims. If this Zionist goal is reached, it would mean the end of freedom to write on historical issues pertaining to the Jews in our country.42 The case was resumed on August 27, 2003. Perhaps influenced by the revisionist campaign, chief justice Joaquim Benedito Barbosa Gomes, who replaced da Silva as the chair of the case, proposed a question of order relating to Federal Law 8.081/90 from September 21, 1990, which had not been mentioned during the trial. The law, which considered racism practiced by the media as a crime, was adopted subsequent to the offense attributed to Castan. The law, he explained, altered Penal Law 7.716/89 by the addition of Art. 20, which stipulated two to five years imprisonment for anyone who “practiced, induced, or incited racial, religious, ethnic, or nationalist prejudice through social communication or any kind of publication.”

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To Justice Britto, the prosecution’s mission was to prove that the crime had happened after the appearance of the provision penalizing that act, since until Law 8.081/90 became legally valid the crime of racial prejudice was not associated with its circulation in the mass media or via any publication. He invoked Art. 5 of the Constitution and Art. 41 of the Penal Code to corroborate his thesis: the first establishes that, “there is no crime without a previous law to define it, nor a sentence without a previous legal sanction”; the second stipulates that “the denunciation or complaint must contain the exposition of the crime in minute detail, qualification of the accused or additional information by which he might be identified, classification of the crime, and, when necessary, the witnesses.” Justice Britto compared the date of publication of Federal Law 8.081/90, with that of the publication or re-publication in 1989 of the books under examination by the legal process and concluded that no one could prove that Law 8.081/90 preceded them. He recognized the lack of just cause to institute a criminal action against Castan, and proposed that the question of order be decided by the ex officio granting of habeas corpus, “due to the cause being so peculiar.” He concluded his reasoning by reading selected extracts from Os conquistadores do mundo, published by Revisão Editora, stating that this and other revisionist books published by Castan were not anti-Jewish, only “anti-Zionist.”43 After Justice Britto’s vote, the trial was adjourned for the fourth time, due to chief justice Marco Aurélio’s request to re-examine the proceedings. They resumed on September 17, with the vote of the latter, who supported granting the writ. In his opinion, Castan had not committed a racist crime; further, he claimed that the 1988 Federal Constitution applied to the Brazilian people, and its reference to racism concerned the black people and not the Jewish people. He thus implied that Brazilian Jews were “aliens,” and not constituent elements of the Brazilian people. In addition, Aurélio also claimed that the notion of imprescriptibility of a crime violated the constitutional guarantee of fundamental rights. The other chief justices finally voted again, confirming the concept that antisemitism was a form of racism, and as such was an unbailable and imprescriptible crime under the Brazilian Constitution. The writ of habeas corpus was thus rejected by a majority of eight, with three dissenting voices (Moreira Alves, Carlos Britto and Marco Aurélio). After another long delay, the sentence was finally published on August 30, 2004: based on Law 7.716/89, following its amendment by Law 9.459/97, Castan was again ordered to serve one year and nine months in an open prison, commuted to community service and a fine, to be donated to the Christian charity Associação Beneficente Fraterno Auxílio Cristão da Sagrada Família de Porto Alegre. Castan’s appeal was rejected in 2006 by the Public Ministry.

The case of the Brazilian revisionist 277

Conclusion The Castan case, which lasted a total of sixteen years, was significant in that his conviction was the first step taken by the Brazilian judicial authorities toward the curbing of antisemitic crime. Brazil thus became the leader of the struggle against antisemitism in Latin America. The court’s rejection of the right of habeas corpus was due mainly to intense mobilization by the Brazilian Jewish community leadership, the convincing arguments of liberal intellectuals involved in the case,44 and the good sense of the majority of the STF. The Castan case concerned a veiled antisemitic propaganda campaign conducted through the systematic, mass publication of books and videos for people with only superficial historical knowledge. Although the legal precedent set would impact the future of the country’s minorities, racist propaganda previously contained in books, newspapers, and pamphlets has largely been replaced by virtual racism. Thus, the closing of Castan’s publishing house had little effect, since his site (which was banned in 2005),45 provided links for downloading free online versions of his Holocaust: Jewish or German? and other books.46 One article published on Castan’s site asserted that “Brazil is a country under the total control of the worst kind of Jew: the banker,” and Jewish interests, “strongly supported by Hebrew symbolism” dominated “a large part of the country’s culture and economy.” The piece includes an image of a twenty Real bill highlighting in gold a large Star of David supposedly formed by the branches supporting a monkey(mico-leão dourado, literally “golden lion-monkey”). According to the author (Castan himself?), “in order to make it less obvious, one of the points of the star has been omitted.” He associates the image of the Jew with the simian, thus desecrating a sacred Jewish symbol. Star of David shapes are ingrained in the texture of the banknote, and even in the monkey’s tiny eyes: […] by magnifying the eyes of the symbol-animal [sic] we can observe that its pupils are indeed made up of shapes that remind us of the Star of David … and near the feet … we see faces of characters created by the Jews in order to “entertain” the non-Jews. One of these seems to be a cartoon character, whereas the other belongs to Merilyn [sic] Monroe. The irrational elements presented in those antisemitic images, which to some might even appear comical, could have a harmful influence if addressed to an uneducated mass, already molded by a traditionally antisemitic Christian culture. This might be translated into persecutory actions which, as in 1930s’ and 1940s’ Germany, could lead to social exclusion, and even to the extermination of a minority classified as “tyrannical,” “powerful,” “influential,” and “domineering.” Revisionist publishing houses can be closed down, but as long as the internet remains open to the dissemination of neo-Nazi propaganda, it will always be possible for Nazism to reappear in new forms, making use

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of a virtual universe of like minds to undermine and paralyze democracies through a mass blackout of people’s thought processes.

Notes 1 Constitution of the Republic of Brazil, 1988, https://www.planalto.gov.br/ ccivil_03/Constituicao/Constituiçao.htm. 2 Jacksohn Grossman, “Supreme Court of Brazil Defines Crime of Racism,” Justice, no. 46, International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, Tel Aviv (Spring 2009), p. 19. 3 See “Revisão Editora Ltd.: Social Contract,” Movement of Justice and Human Rights Collection (n.d.). 4 The Jews and Their Lies: A Jewish Question! first published in German in 1543; reprinted by Castan in 1989. Includes the quotation: “All men agree … in seeing in the Jew a universal danger,” p. 5. 5 Os Protocolos dos Sábios do Sião, first published in Russia in 1905; 1936, first Brazilian edition annotated and published by Gustavo Barroso (1888−57) – a writer and politician from the ultranationalist Brazilian Party Ação Integralista Brasileira (AIB), founded in 1932 by Plínio Salgado. Both were known for their pro-Nazi and antisemitic attitudes. Reprinted by Castan in 1991. 6 O judeu internacional; first published as a book in 1920; first Brazilian edition published by Editora Globo, Porto Alegre in 1933; reprinted by Castan in 1989. 7 Os conquistadores do mundo – Os verdadeiros criminosos de guerra (Porto Alegre: Revisão Editora, n.d.; circa 1989); first published in Hungary in 1958. 8 Brasil, colônia de banqueiros (Porto Alegre: Revisão Editora, 1989; reprint of the 1934 first edition). The author attributes all the evils of Brazil to the “rapacious and disgusting” Jewish presence (v. 1, p. 95). 9 História secreta do Brasil, 6 vols (Porto Alegre: Revisão Editora, 1990, 1991; reprints of the first edition of 3 vols: 1936, 1937, and 1938). 10 Acabou o gás! O fim de um mito (Porto Alegre: Revisão Editora, 1989). A translation of The Leuchter Report: The End of a Myth –– A Report on the Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, Poland, by an Execution Equipment Expert (1988), by Fred Leuchter, a manufacturer of execution equipment, in defense of Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel, during his trial in Toronto; published by British Holocaust denier David Irving, with a preface by French denier Robert Faurisson. 11 Quem escreveu o Diário de Anne Frank? (Porto Alegre: Revisão Editora, 1990). A translation of Robert Faurisson’s essay “Is the Diary of Anne Frank Genuine?” appeared first in Holland, then in France in Serge Thion, Historical Truth or Political Truth? (Paris, La Vieille Taupe, 1980), pp. 213−300. 12 Hitler culpado ou inocente? (Porto Alegre: Revisão Editora, 1989). The “historian” Sérgio Oliveira is a military man from Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul State. Ivo Beuter, a doctor from Palmitos, Santa Catarina State, is another Brazilian revisionist published by Revisão. 13 Holocausto: judeu ou alemão? Nos bastidores da mentira do século (Porto Alegre: Revisão Editora, 1988). About the book, see Natália dos Reis Cruz, Denying History: Editora Revisão and Neo-Nazism, MA diss. in history, Rio de Janeiro: Universidade Federal Fluminense, 1997. 14 Luis Milman, “Neo-Nazi Literature and the Ellwanger Case: Freedom of Expression or a Crime,” Movement of Justice and Human Rights Collection (n.d.). 15 Castan, Holocaust: Jewish or German? pp. 205−6. 16 Ibid., p. 59.

The case of the Brazilian revisionist 279 17 Zero Hora (Porto Alegre), November 8, 1990, part 2, p. 7. 18 Correio do Povo (Porto Alegre), June 7, 1990, p. 7. 19 Ben Abraham’s real name was Henry Nekricz. Lawyer Idel Aronis had all his staff of lawyers available to work for him without remuneration. 20 Penal Code − CP − DL-002.848–1940, http://www.dji.com.br/codigos/1940_ dl_002848_cp/cp138a145.htm. 21 Their catalog, with more than 100 titles (in 1992), was called Videos on Historical Culture, and included films such as The Young Hitlerite Quex, 1933, by Hans Steinhoff; Patrioten (Patriots, 1937), by Karl Ritter; and Olympia, 1938, by Leni Riefenstahl. 22 The old company operated at 24/397 João Pessoa Avenue, in Porto Alegre; the new one at 95/204 Colonel Vilagran Cabrita Street. See Jayme Brener and Claudia Camargo, “Nazism in the Air,” Isto é, no. 1,261, December 1, 1993. 23 To Castan, the “farce” of six million Jews exterminated in the Nazi camps had two purposes: 1) to present Hitler’s Germany as a state of criminals; 2) to defame the German people in order to perpetually extract personal compensation. See Movement of Justice and Human Rights Collection, Porto Alegre. May 1, 1994. 24 See Process no. 013.91.013.255, Sentence, June 14, 1995; Appeal, July 20, 1995, “Holocaust Jewish Award,” Movement of Justice and Human Rights Collection (n.d.). 25 Besides Luther’s On the Jews and Their Lies, they included, inter alia, Barroso’s Secret History of Brazil, Castan’s No More Gas! (4th expanded ed.) and Sérgio Oliveira’s Zionism vs. Revisionism – Fantasy vs. Reality (1993); Charles Whitlock Porter’s Not Guilty at Nuremberg (1996); and collected articles on the Protocols, glorified by the organizer as “the most antisemitic [book] of all times” (p. 56). See Penal Action no. 01391013255, Movement of the Justice and Human Rights Collection. 26 Jack Terpins, “An Exemplary Sentence,” Folha de S. Paulo (São Paulo), April 13, 2000. 27 Folha de S. Paulo, October 18, 2000. 28 O Tempo (Belo Horizonte), October 27, 2000; February 1, 2001. 29 O Tempo, October 27, 2000; O Tempo, February 1, 2001. 30 Folha On-Line, July 9, 2001, http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ ult96u22111.shtml. 31 “Nazi Trial at Supreme Court Involves Wordplay” [in Portuguese], Law Consultant Journal, July 9, 2001. 32 According to Nazi racism, as well as to Ellwanger in his books, the Jews belong to the “Semitic race.” Resolution no. 623 of the UN General Assembly of December 9, 1998, item 17 considers “contemporary manifestations of racism and racial discrimination,” to be among others, “against blacks, Arabs and Muslims, xenophobia, negrophobia, antisemitism and suchlike intolerances.” The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopts a broad understanding of racism, qualifying as racial discrimination any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preferences based on race, color, descent, or nationality, ethnic origin or cultural traits which distinguish a certain human group. 33 Gustavo Binenbojm, “Racism and the Moral Reading of the Constitution” Mundo Jurídico. April 21, 2003, http://www.mundojuridico.adv.br/sis_artigos/artigos. asp?codigo=542. 34 Only in Germany, France, and Canada were those found guilty of similar crimes sent to jail. 35 With his retirement in April 2003, President Lula replaced him with Joaquim Benedito Barbosa Gomes. 36 Celso Lafer, “Racism: the Federal Supreme Court and the Ellwanger Case,” Jewish Tribune, August 3−17, 2003, p. 24.

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37 In an emotional reaction, rapporteur Moreira Alves accused Maurício Corrêa of “plagiarizing” Lafer’s report. 38 Bill no. 829/2003 rewrites the first article of Law n.7.716/89 (from January 5, 1989), which defines crimes resulting from prejudice of race or color: “The Congress decrees: Art. I and Art. III of Law no. 7.716, of January 5, 1989, rules as follows: “Art. I. Crimes resulting from discrimination or prejudice of race, color, ethnicity, religion, nationality, or people will be punished according to the law.” Art. II – This law takes effect on the date of its publication. Art. III – The contrary provisions are revoked. 39 “Racial discrimination effected by freedom of speech jeopardizes one of the mainstays of the democratic system, the idea of equality itself … Freedom of expression cannot be followed to the letter, because there have been restrictions to freedom of information, which should be exercised in a compatible way with the right to image, honor and privacy” (Art. V, X). “In the same way, one cannot attribute primacy to freedom of expression, in the context of a pluralist society, if you take into account other values such as equality and human dignity. Hence the 1988 Constitution text regards racism as an imprescriptible and unbailable crime (Art. V, XLII), in a clear and unmistakable way, and it also determines that the law should establish other forms of repression to the discriminatory manifestations” (Art. V, XLI). 40 Depositions collected and published by Lia Bergmann, press agent of B’nai B’rith of Brazil. 41 Félix Soibelman, “Discrimination against the Jews and the Meaning of Racism,” Consultor Jurídico, April 9, 2003, http://www.conjur.com.br/2003-abr-09/discriminacao_judeus_significado_racismo; Osório Barbosa, “Lawyer Tries to Discredit Supreme Court Minister,” Consultor Jurídico, April 22, 2003, http://www.conjur. com.br/2003-abr-22/advogado_tentou_desqualificar_ministro_supremo; idem, “The Conduct of the Author of Nazi Books is Criminal,” Consultor Jurídico, April 24, 2003, http://www.conjur.com.br/2003-abr-24/conduta_autor_livros_nazistas_criminosa; emphasis in original. 42 After the verdict, a version of the anonymous letter was published as an article: Siegfried Ellwanger, “The Ellwanger Case,” Folha de S. Paulo, May 3, 2004. 43 Federal Supreme Court, The Crime of Racism and Antisemitism − Historical Judgment of the STF [in Portuguese], Hábeas Corpus no. 82.424/RS (Brasília: Jurídica, 2004), pp. 160−1. 44 Celso Lafer, professor of philosophy, São Paolo University (USP), jurist, exminister of foreign affairs; Izidoro Blikstein, professor of semiotics (USP); Sônia Ramagem, professor of anthropology (University of Brasilia, Montgomery College), among others. 45 The site (http://www.revision.com.br) had 92,016 visitors on September 1, 2003. Although no longer online, many of his books were digitalized and remain on neo-Nazi sites. 46 Such as Ahmed Rami’s Radio Islam (http://www.radioislam.org/islam/index. htm); VHO – The world’s largest website for historical revisionism (http:// www.vho.org); AAARGH – L’Association des Anciens Amateurs de Récits de Guerres et d’Holocaustes (http://aaargh.com.mx); Gerald Fredrick Töben’s Adelaide Institute (Australia, http://www.adelaideinstitute.org); Alejandro Carlos Biondini’s Libre Opinion (Argentina, http://www.libreopinion.com); White Revolution (EUA, http://www.whiterevolution.com); Die Hard Records (EUA, http://www.diehardrecords.net), and Stormfront (http://www.stormfront. org/forum).

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Index

Abraham, Ben 270, 279n19 Adam, Juliette 28, 40n17, 41n33, 42ns46, 47 Adelaide Institute 150, 280n46 Adorno, Theodor W. 234 Afghanistan 13, 177, 193n71 African National Congress (ANC) 260, 261 Ahmad, Jalāl ’Āl- e 198 Ahmad, Muhammad Sid 186 Ahrīman 208 AIPAC 180 al-Akhbar 180 Akhbar al-‘Alam al-Islami 178 Akhir Sa‘a 186 al-‘Ālam 210 Alexander I (emperor) 41n40, 53, 54, 55, 56, 169 Alexander II (emperor) 33, 34, 41n39 Alexander III (emperor) 15, 27, 30, 32, 35, 36, 37, 41n31, 41n32, 41n42 Aleksandrovna, Maria (empress) 29, 32 Allen, Gary 167, 173n27 Alliance Israélite Universelle 31, 36, 38, 43n61, 59−61, 73, 212 Alves, Moreira 273, 276, 280n37 American Jewish Committee (AJC) 73, 251n15 Amsterdamski, Stefan 140 Amt Rosenberg 249 Andrieux, Louis 33 anti-Christian polemics 18, 95 anti-Jewish violence 46; pogroms 2, 138 antisemitism 1–15 passim, 45, 62, 101, 114, 115, 148, 149, 197–200, 201, 204, 212, 214, 221, 242, 245, 248; Catholic 125n15; cryptic 79; eliminationist 16, 69; Nazi 16, 69, 72, 84; Polish 133–40, 144n26; Russian 66n44; in Argentina

101–9; in the Arab world 177, 180, 181, 182, 185, 186–9; in Brazil, 271, 272, 274, 276, 277; in South Africa 254, 256; on the internet 148–8 anti-Zionist campaign. See Poland, March events al-‘Aqqad, ‘Abbas Mahmud 176, 179, 180, 181, 190n9 al-Aqsa intifada. See intifada, second Arab-Israeli conflict 18, 172, 175−95, 229, 262; Six Day War (1967) 133, 139, 143n5, 177, 180, 186, 223, 225 al-‘Arabi 178 Arcand, Adrien 254, 257 Arciniegas, Germán 120, 128n68 Arendt, Hannah 4, 234, 237n25, 249, 250 Arseven, Serdar 224 Aryan Hypothesis 197, 215n6; international of antisemitism 245; mind 4; race 72, 80, 197; side 136, 141; Aryanization 97 Ashraf, Ahmad 197, 200 Ashūrī, Dāryūsh 198 al-Asi, Sheikh Muhammad 260 Assaf, José E. 107−8, 109 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 19, 221, 227n2 ‘Attar, Ahmad ‘Abd al-Ghafur 176, 184 Aum Shinsen 169 Aum Shinrikyō 169 Aurélio, Marco 274, 276 Avanguardia 109 ‘Awad, Nazir 178 al-‘Azm, Sadiq Jalal 186 al-‘Azma, ‘Aziz 186 Badi‘, Ahmad ‘Abbas ‘Abd 179 Baha’is 18, 196, 197, 211 Bakhmet’ev, Iu.p. 35

310

Index

Balfour Declaration (1917), 64n15, 261 Balkan campaign 61 Bāqerī, ‘Alī 209 Barbosa, Luiz Francisco 271 Barbosa, Osório 275 Barkun, Michael 7, 8−9, 13 Barroso, Gustavo 269, 278n5 Bartal, Israel 53 Basel 2, 3, 4, 116, 179, 202, 242, 243, 250n5, 253n31 Bauman, Zygmunt 234 al-Baz, Usama 188, 230 Beamish, Hamilton Hamish 254, 256, 257, 265–6n10 Becker, Bernhard 152, 159n23 Becker, Werner 272 Begunov, Iurii Konstantinovich 29, 40n18, 66n53 Beilis, Mendel 245. See also blood libel Benedict XVI (pope) 150 Ben-Itto, Hadassa 181 Ben Meir, Levy Itshak (Levy Yitshak from Berdichev) 53 Benz, Wolfgang 5, 6, 13, 20n1 Berlet, Chip 7, 8, 10, 12 Bern trials. See Protocols Berr, Berr Isaac 46, 50 Bible 3, 90, 91, 226; Christian 94, 96, 150, 151, 154, 156, 172; Moody Bible Institution 89; Osaka Bible Christian Church 164 Birchall, Clare 8, 14 Bishara, Azmi 177, 230 Bismarck, Chancellor 30, 31, 35, 36, 37, 41n35 Black Friday 200 Black Movement 270, 271 Blackstone, William E. 91, 92, 93 Blavatsky, Helene Petrovna 37 Bloomberg, Charles 258 Blondet, Maurizio 156 blood libel 60, 92, 188, 221, 245, 246, 257; Beilis 58, 74, 242 Blum, Léon 75 Boer War 254 Bolívar, Simón 124n10, 129n79 Bolkhārī, Hassan 211 Bolshevik Revolution. See Russian Revolution bolshevism 20, 79, 162, 255. See also conspiracy theories, Judeo-Bolshevik Bosnian War 225 Brafman, Yakov 60−1 Brandt, Eugen (Evgeni Brant) 246

Britto, Carlos Ayres 274, 276 Brinner, William 185 Bronner, Stephen Eric 7, 265 Brown, S.E.D. 258, 266n24 Brownshirts 255 Brunschvig, Georges 242, 244, 245 Bulgarin, Faddei 58, 59 Burtsev, Vladimir 243 Butmi, Georgii 61, 62 Cardoso, Fernando Henrique 273 Carvalho, André 271 Cassiem, Achmad 260, 264 Castan, S.E. See Siegfried Ellwanger Castellani, Leonardo 101, 102 Catholic Church 16, 17, 73, 81, 101−11 passim, 114, 125n15, 143, 256; General Intentions 115, 126ns9,3,33; perceptions of Jews and Judaism 102 Chiaki, Nishiyama 173n24 Chizuo, Matsumoto See Shōkō, Asahara Christenvolk-Beskermingsbond (Christian people’s protection league) 257 The Cinema – the Promised Land 212 Clermont-Tonnerre, Count Stanislas 45, 47 Cohn, Joseph 96−7 Cohn, Norman 11, 17, 28, 30, 40n16, 254 Colby, sheikh Mogamat 262 Cold War 9, 139, 164 Coleman, John 168 Committee for Open Debate of the Holocaust (CODOH − USA) 150 conspiracy theories 5, 226; Apocalyptic conspiracy theories, 152; conspiratorial thought 230–1, 258, 259, 263; Judeo-Bolshevik 151; Judeo-Masonic, 17, 57, 72, 112−30, 174n33, 196, 208; Judeo-Zionist 12, 14, 18, 134−5, 139, 140, 142, 175−95, 196, 200−14 passim, 223, 224, 231, 254, 258−64, 275; Napoleonic-Judaic 57; 9/11 related 14, 149, 152, 154, 159n10, 193n71, 209, 227, 262; in Poland 17, 133−46; on the internet, 147−60; tsunami 13, 151 Cook, Charles 93, 94 Corrêa, Maurício 273, 280n37 Crescent International 260 Criterio 105−9 passim Cündioğlu, Dücane 226

Index da Silva, Reinaldo Pereira 272, 275 Daily Express 152 Daikichi, Irokawa 163, 172n7 al-Dajani, Hashim 186 David, Luis R. 116−17 Davis, David Brion 260 de Benoist, Alain 149 de Brito Pereira, Eitel Santiago 272 de Mello, Celso 273, 275 de Poncins, León 116, 117, 118, 119, 126n27 de Pottere, Georg 245 de Waal, J.H.H. jr. 254, 257 Dearborn Independent 94, 181 Década infame 102 Deedat, Sheikh Ahmed 259 Defensive Shield, Operation 224 Der Stürmer 103, 257 Die Waarheid (The Truth) 256 Disraeli, Benjamin (Lord Beaconsfield) 61 Doğan, Mehmet 224, 227n9 Dönmes 226, 227 Dreyfus affair 2, 42n46, 183 du Chayla, Alexandre 20, 243−5, 250, 251n16, 252n21 Dudakov, Savelii 58 Dughin, Aleksandr 149 Dynner, Glenn 53 Ecevit, Bülent 220 Echandía, Darío 118, 122−3 Efron-Litvin, Savelii 61 Eichmann, Adolf 73, 210, 216n19, 238n26, 249; The Adolf Eichmann Affair 199, 216n20; capture 210; Operation Eichmann (film) 210; trial 199, 210 Eisner, Will 19, 250 Eisler, Jerzy 134 Elqānayān, Hāj 203 Ellwanger, Siegfried (aka S.E. Castan) 20, 269–78, 279n23 Emre, Sūleyman Arif 220, 221, 225 Encyclopaedia Iranica 197 Erbakan, Necmettin 220, 225 Erdoğan, Tayyip 221 Escallón, Luis Caro 120 esoterics 156–7 Evola, Julius 149 Fakhr, Saqr Abu 186 Farbstein, David 249 Farhang, Mustafa 196

311

Farmān 198 Farrakhan, Louis 155 Fathī, Hassan 212 Feder, Gottfried 79 Fedorovna, Aleksandra (empress) 30 Fedorovna, Maria (empress) 30, 40n41 Felicity Party 220, 225 Fendi, Ma’mun 187 Fenster, Mark 10 Figaro, Le 33, 42n46 Filippo, Virgilio 101, 102 “Final Solution” 82, 235. See also Holocaust Finkelstein, Norman 275 Fīrdowsī, Abū al- Qāsem 208 first Zionist Congress. See Zionism Fleischhauer, Ulrich 245, 246, 247, 249, 252ns29,39 Fonteles, Cláudio 273 Ford, Henry Sr. 3, 6, 12, 94, 96, 180, 181, 211, 227n4, 262, 269 Franceschi, Gustavo 105, 106, 108, 110n22 Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Pii X 150 Freemasons 11, 17, 28, 59, 72, 73, 81, 112−30, 162, 169, 170, 196, 208, 281n60, 226, 246, 247, 261; antiMasonic campaigns 57, 113, 114, 116, 119, 120−3 French Revolution 7, 9, 11, 57, 60, 102, 103, 105, 115 Friedrich, Bernardete 270 Friedrich Wilhelm III (king) 56 Fritsch, Theodor 4 Fry, L. (Leslie) 28, 32, 33, 39n11 Fu’ad, Hala 180 Fugu Plan 163, 172n9, 173n10 Fuller, Charles E. 89, 93 fundamentalist Christians 6, 89−100; perceptions of the Jews, 11, 91−6 Furtado, Abraham 46, 51 Gaebelein, Arno 89, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97 Gálvez, Manuel 108−9, 111ns32, 35 Gamieldien, Sheikh Mogamat Faaik 262 Garaudy affair 186, 194n98 Geisel, Ernesto 273 Germany 3, 4, 5, 16, 31, 35, 62, 69, 70, 78, 95, 118, 125n17, 126n40, 136, 141, 153, 154, 197, 210, 249, 253ns 31, 39; German-Iranian relations 197; German revolution 70; Nazi 70–86, 97, 106, 129n84, 152, 163, 186, 187, 242, 245, 255, 258, 277, 279ns23, 34; West 135, 143n5, 152, 253n39

312

Index

Gestapo 136, 245 Glinka, Iustin’ia Dmitrievna 15, 27−43 Glinka, Dmitrii Grigor’evich 32, 40ns21, 22, 44 Glinka, Dmitrievich Nikolai 32 Global Jewish Government 18, 183, 196, 202 Global Restoration Party 168, 169 Global Restoration Society 168 globalization 12, 13, 18, 19, 148−9, 156, 157, 158, 177, 193n71, 230, 236 Głowiński, Michał 134 Glubb, Philip 186 Goebbels, Joseph 73, 86, 245 Goedsche, Hermann Ottomar Friedrich (Sir John Retcliffe) 2 Golovinskii (Golovinsky), Matvei 61−2, 243 Gomes, Joaquim Benedito Barbosa 275 Gómez, Laureano 113, 114, 117−23, 128n53 Gomułka, Władysław 134, 139 González Arbeláez, Juan Manual 120, 128n66 Gorchakov, Prince Mikhail 32, 246 Gougenot des Mousseaux, Henri Roger 124n15 Graf, Jürgen 152, 155, 159n30 Gray, James M. 89, 93 Great Satan 201, 259 Grégoire, Abbé Henri Battiste 45, 46 Greyshirts 255−6, 266n13; trial (1934) 20, 254, 256−7 Grimm, Baron 33 Groh, Dieter 262 Gūdarzī, Majīd 211 Güler, Ali 224 Habermas, Jürgen 234, 237N25 Haddad, Nicola 181 Hamas 155, 177, 191n21 Hapstein, Israel ben Shabbetai (Maggid of Kozienice) 54 Haqqani, Hussein 188 Harkabi, Yehoshafat 189 Hasan, Faruq 180 Hasian, Marouf Jr. 7 Hatipoğlu, Yasin 225 Hayek, Friedrich 173n24 Heilbut, Iwan 249 Helsing, Jan van 154 Heptagon Forum 152, 153, 159n31 Hercberg, Ryszard 141

Herrera, Enrique Olaya 117, 118, 126n32, 127n42, 128n68 Herzog, Chaim 223 Hilferding, Rudolf 75 Himmler, Heinrich 73 Hirotaka, Okuda 170 Hitler, Adolf 4−5, 9, 69, 70−3, 75, 79, 81−2, 85, 106, 122, 126n40, 163, 165, 169, 173n26, 181, 186, 188, 244, 249, 255, 256, 266n10 Hizballah 155, 177, 178, 191n21 Hofstadter, Richard 8 Holocaust 12, 17, 62, 69, 121, 137, 138, 141, 152, 157, 183, 187, 199, 210, 212, 234, 238n26, 270; denial of 20, 150, 152−6, 157, 169, 170, 181, 183, 188, 211, 258, 261−2, 264, 266n24, 269, 271, 277 Holy Brotherhood 34, 35, 40n12, 41n33, 42ns55, 57 Holy Synod. See Russian Orthodox Church Horseman without a Horse 158, 178, 229 Houghton, Harris A. 94, Hourwitz, Zalkind 45 Huber, Ahmed 153, 261 Hugo, Victor 36 al-Husayni, Hajj Amin 176 Ibrahim, Saad Eddin 186 Icke, David 152, 154 Illuminati. See Protocols ‘Inan, Muhammad ‘Abdallah 182 the Independent Jewish Movement 270 Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO) 242 L’Intransigeant, 33, 42n49 Iraq 13, 157, 177, 191n27, 193n73, 225, 260, 264 Iranian Revolution. See Islamic Republic Revolution Irving, David 150, 155, 278n10 Intifada, Second (al-Aqsa) 17, 148, 171, 177, 191n23 ‘Isa, Salah 187 Isaacs, Jeremy 258 Islam: new Islamic discourse 229, 234–6; Islamic Republic 201, 209, 210, 211, 217n49, 227; Revolution 196, 197, 200–1, 204, 206, 214, 259, 264; Islamic Revolutionary Court 203; Islamist worldview/ thinking 19, 230, 235, 236; Islamists 149, 154, 155, 157, 158, 177, 189, 221, 222, 223, 226, 254; Political Islam 220, 223

Index Islamic Propagation Centre International (IPCI) 259, 267n32 Israeli-Arab conflict. See Arab-Israeli conflict Jaworski, Rudolf 142 Jews: Jewish Question 47, 105, 106, 108, 115, 144n11, 214n2, 237n22, 245, 253n39, 255–8; Jewish Agency 212; “Jewish threat” 165, 168, 198, 236; Jewish world domination 103, 221, 257; international Jew 3, 4, 17, 84, 94, 180, 211, 162, 269; international Jewish conspiracy 96, 112, 125, 127ns45,48, 209, 210, 211, 217n49; international Jewry 17, 37, 60, 77, 82, 85, 181, 201; perceptions of 103−4. See also Catholic Church, perceptions of Jews and Judaism; conspiracy theories Jewish Federation of Rio Grande do Sul (FIRGS) 270 Jobim, Nelson 274 John Birch Society 167 Joly, Maurice 2, 13, 44, 248 Journal of Palestine Studies 186 Jum‘a, Sa‘d 180 Jomhūrī- ye Eslāmī 209, 210 Justo, Agustin P. 102 kahal 29, 33, 53, 60, 61, 103 Kahal, El (book) 103−7, 109, 117, 127n45 Kalia, Haroon 260 Kamālī, Mohammad Mehdī Amīr 211 Kambūzīyah, Amīr Tavakkol 209 Kan’ichi, Kuroda 167 Kaplan, Yaşar 224 Kapnist, P.A. 35 Karadaghi, Kamaran 229 Karamzin, Nikolai 59 Karanjia, Rustum 177 Kefaya movement 229 Keyhān 200 Khadr, Hashim 178 Khamene’i, ‘Alī Ayatollāh 209, 212 Khomeini, Ruhallah Imam 200, 202, 259, 264 Kīmyā’ī, Mas‘ūd 203 al-Kiyali, ‘Adanan 181 Kinji, Yajima 165–6, 172 Kinzer, Stephen 197 Kmitowski, Władysław 142 Knight, Peter 8, 10, 14 Kobler, Franz 64n15

313

Kochubei, Princess Elena Pavlovna 31, 41n42 Koneczny, Feliks 142−3 Koreshige, Inuzuka 163 Korzec, Paweł 141 Krämer, Gudrun 188 Krasnov, Petr 246 Krestovskii, Vsevolod 61 Krischke, Jair 270 Kristelike−Bond (Christian union) 257 Krusche, Klaus 153 Krushevan, Pavel 15, 45 Kōshi, Hō 162 Kuhn, Loeb, and Company 261 Lafer, Celso 273, 274, 280ns37,44 Lambelin, Roger 124n4, 214n1, 227n4 Lavater, Johann Caspar, 46, 63n7 L.E. Scotton Company Lead (Sorb) 203, 211 Ledóchowski, Wladimir 115, 126ns26, 27, 40 Ledur, Paulo 271 Leo XIII (pope) Levy, Rev. Abraham 256 Levy, Richard 1, 9, 12, 13 Lewis, Bernard 176, 185 Liciardo, Cayetano 109 Lifschitz, Boris 242, 243, 244, 252n21 Lindsey, Hal 165, 167 Lipset, Seymour 8, 11 Litvak, Meir 204 Loosli, Carl Albert 248, 249, 253n41 Luther, Martin 168, 171, 269 Machtergreifung 71, 79 Magnitskii, Mikhail 58, 59 al-Majd, 178, 190n9 Makow, Henri 157 Malesherbes, Chrétien Guillaume de Lamoignon de 46 Mandel, José Fernando 273 Marcus, George 9 Maritain, Jacques 105 Maritz, Saloman (Manie) 254, 257, 266n16 Markov, Nikolai 245, 246 Marsden, Victor 3 Marschalko, Louis 269 Martin, Willie 156 Marx, Karl 11, 42n48, 105, 233, 234, 237n22; marxist 76, 167, 173n29, 235 Masami, Uno 164–5, 167, 170, 172

314

Index

al-Masiri, ‘Abd al-Wahhab 19, 175, 181, 184, 187, 229−38 Mattogno, Carlo 153 Mayer, Saly 242, 251n8 al-Mawdudi, Abul-A‘la 263, 268n59 McWilliams, Jameel 262 Mein Kampf 5, 7, 72, 173n26, 177, 226, 257 Meinvielle, Julio 101, 102 Menashri, Daviv 200, 216n27 Mendel, Menahem 53 Mendelssohn, Moses 46, 63n7 Mendes, Gilmar 273, 274 Mensajero del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús 114, 115, 116−17, 119, 121, 125n24, 126ns29, 33, 127n42 Men’shikov, Mikhail Osipovich 27, 28, 29, 37, 39ns3,9 Mesbar Center for Studies and Research 185 Meyer, Walter 241 Michelis, Cesare G.De 29, 21n3, 39n7, 40n24, 44, 58, 63n3, 87n2 Miliukov, Pavel 243 Millî Gazete 220, 225 Milman, Luis 271 Milner, Lord Alfred 261 Mirabeau, Honoré-Gabriel de Riquetti 45 Mohammed, Sheikh Nazeem 259 mondialism. See globalization Monsieur de Bélina 33, 42n46 Mora Díaz, Francisco 117, 121 Mossadeq, Mohammad 197 Movimento de Justiça e Direitos Humanos (MJDH) 270, 271 Mubarak, Husni 188 Müller, Ludwig. See zur Beek, Gottfried Mullins, Eustace 168 Mundo Israelita 105, 106 Murav’ev, Count M.N. 35 Muslim Brotherhood 229 Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) 259 Muslim News 258 Muslim Views 258, 259, 260, 261, 262 My Lewe en Strewe (My life and struggle) 254, 257, 266n15 My Ontwaking (My Awakening) 254, 257 Nadvorny, Mauro 270, 271 Na‘īm, ‘Azīzullāh ben Yūnā 203, 217n6 Najib, Hafiz 183 Nakba 154, 159n38, 263 Namīn, ‘Abbās Salīmī 212

Napoleon I 15, 44, 47−66 Napoleon III 44, 59 Naryshkin, K.M. 35 al-Nasir, Jamal ‘Abd 177 Nasira, Hani National Center of Historical Research 275. See also revisionist National Democratic Party (NDP) 154 National Journal 155 National Order Party 220, 223 National Salvation Party 220, 225 National Socialism 3, 7, 134; national socialist 5, 6, 7, 72, 87n12, 245; national socialist antisemitism 16, 69, 77; National Socialist Party (NSDAP) 4, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 79–84, 86, 88n17, 245, 248; national socialist propaganda 70, 77; South African Christian National Socialist Movement 255 National-Zeitung 154 Nazism 12, 20, 102, 118, 163, 176, 187, 188, 199, 234, 237n13, 255, 263, 277; Nazi ideology 16, 69−88, 97, 197, 199; neo-Nazis 20, 109, 147, 149, 156, 159n10, 169, 266n24, 269, 270, 277, 280 National View (Milli Görüş) 220, 221, 225 Nechvolodov, Aleksandr 246 New Age 152 Newman, Elias 96−7 New World Order 12, 13, 154, 156, 157 Nicholas II 30 Nikolaevskii (Nikolaevsky), Boris Ivanovich 28, 30, 40n16, 243, 244, 252n30 Nilus, Sergei Alexsandrovich 2, 21n7, 27−8, 29, 30, 61, 96, 243, 244, 251n16 Nobutaka, Shiōden 162 Norihiro, Yasue 162 Nouvelle Revue 33 Nuñez, Rafael 114 Nuwayhid, ‘Ajjaj 180 Okhrana (Russian secret police) 2, 243, 246 Oliveira, Sérgio 269, 278n12 Olsen, Alfred 150, 159n14 Oppenheimer, Harry 260, 261, 268n44 Ören, Enver 224 Orlov, Prince Nikolai Alekseevich 33, 34, 35 Oro 103−7, 108, 117, 127n45

Index Orzhevskii, Petr Vasil’evich 28, 30, 35, 39n12 Ospina, Pedro Nel 128n54 Özcan, Mustafa 224 Özfatura, Mustafa Necati 224 PAGAD (People Against Gangsterism and Drugs) 260, 261, 264, 267n41, 268n63 Paula Santander, Francisco de 124n10 Pavlovich, Grand Duke Konstantin 31, 41n39, 41n40 Perdomo, Ismael (archbishop) 116, 120, 126ns32,39 Pérez y Soto, Simón 118−19 Piłsudski, Józef 144N26 Pipes, Daniel 7−12 passim, 175, 184, 160, 215n8 Pius IX (pope) 113, 114, 125 Pius XI (pope) 105, 121, 129 Platonov, Oleg Anatol’evich 29, 40ns16,28 pogroms. See anti-Jewish violence Popper, Karl 8 Popular Anti- racism Movement (MOPAR) 20, 269, 270, 271 Portela, Lincoln 274 Prague Spring 134 Pranitis, I.B. 171 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the: Castan case. See Siegfried Ellwanger; illuminati 11, 151–4; in South Africa 255–8; translations 2, 3; trials of, Bern 19−20, 28, 241−53; Zion kahal 29, 33 Przeclawski, Osip 59, 60 Pumarejo, 118, 120, 121 Qabbānī, Nizār 207 Qibla 259, 260, 264, 268n63 al-Qusari, Muhammad Fa’iz 180, 181 Qutb, Sayyid 236, 263, 268n59 Raab, Earl 8, 11 Rabbi Nachman of Breslov 53 Rachkovsky, Andrei 246, 252n30 Rachkovskii (Rachkovsky), Petr Ivanovich 35, 62, 243, 244, 246 Radical, Le 33, 34, 35, 42n49, 51, 52 Radio 786 261 Radio Islam. See Rami, Ahmed Radziwill, Catherine 20, 243, 250 Rahman, Fu’ad 260, 261 Rahmānī, Shams al- Dīn 211, 214n1

315

Rami, Ahmed 150, 152, 153, 154−6, 160n41, 280n46 Ramírez, Pedro P. 101 Rapport 255 Rathenau, Walter 5 Rawls, John 173n24 Reale, Miguel Jr. 273 Recht und Freiheit 152 Reed, Douglas 179,267n24 Reisegger, Gerhoch 154 Rejnik, Hieronim 139, 141 Reptile connection 59, 152 Republican People’s Party 220 Restrepo, Félix 119, 125n17, 127n48 Retcliffe, Sir John. See Goedsche, Hermann Ottomar Friedrich Revisão Editora 269, 271, 276 Revisionism 155, 269, 280n46; revisionist 150, 152, 153, 155, 156, 181, 187, 266, 267, 269, 275, 276, 277 Revista Judío Masónico 120 Reyes, Rafael 118 Rezā, Muhammad Shah 196, 199, 200 Rezā Shah 197, 203 Riley, William B. 89, 93, 96, 97 al-Risala 181 Risi, Armin 153 ritual murder, 114, 138, 257 Rogger, Hans 62 Rollin, Henri 247 Rosenberg, Alfred 4, 7, 73, 79, 249 Ruano, Jesus Maria 115, 126n31 Rüggeberg, Dieter 153 Russian Civil War 242 Russian Orthodox Church 55, 57, 60, 162 Russian Revolution 2, 73, 95, 162, 183, 261; Revolutionary movement 243 Ryū, Ohta (Ryūichi, Kurihara) 167–8, 169, 171, 172 Sacred Heart Messenger. See Mensajero del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Saddam, Hussein 260 Saghiya, Hazim 230 Said, Edward 186 Sa‘īdī, Sayyid Gholām Rezā 196, 198, 199 Sakuzō, Yoshino 162, 172n6 al-Salam, Muhammad ‘Abd 185 Salama, Salama Ahmad 182 Salih, Ahmad ‘Abbas 189 Salim, Majdi 179

316

Index

Sanhedrin, 49−53, 55, 57, 59, 60−1, 62, 64n15, 65n33 Santos, Eduardo 119, 128n68 al-Saqa, Ahmad Hijjazi 178 Saron, Gus 257, 265–6n10 Sayar, Süleyman 226 Schallman, Lázaro 105, 108 Schmidt, Peter 152 Schmitt, Carl 6, 248 Schorst-Shapiro, Joseph 28 Schwarz Korps, Das 82 Scopes, John T. 95 Second Intifada 17, 148, 171, 177 Segel, Binjamin 13 September 11, 2001 events 13, 165, 177. See also conspiracy theories, related to 9/11 Serena, Carlos (papal nuncio) 120 Shabbatai Tsvi 57 Shabelsky-Bork, Petr 246 Shāhandeh, ‘Abbās 198 Shāhbāzī, Abdollāh 213, 219n87 Shāhnāmeh 209 Shakir, Muhammad Mahmud 182 al-Shakur, Mahmud ‘Abd 180 Shari‘ati, Ayatollah Ali 264 al-Shatat. See The Diapora Shaykhī, Hamīd Rezā 201 Shīrāzī, Sayyed Mohammad Hussaynī Ayatollāh ‘Uzma 207 Shismareff, Paquita de, see Fry L. Shōkō, Asahara 168–70, 172 Shukri, Muhammad Fu’ad 186 Siberian intervention 162 Siglo, El 118, 119, 120, 121, 122 Simons, George S. Sionskii vestnik 57 Skobelev, Mikhail Dmitrievich 35 Skuratovskii, Vadim (Skuratovs’kyi, Vadym) 29, 32, 40ns20,21, 44, 58, 66n3 Sliozberg, Genrikh 243 Smith, Gerald L.K.97 Sobel, Henry 275 Sobh 209 Sokolov, Nahum 256, 257 Sonnenberg, Berek 53 Soroudi, Sorour 198 South African Christian National Socialist Movement. See National Socialism South African Observer 258, 266ns20, 24, 267n25 Spanish Civil War 119, 121, 128n59

Spiridovich, Aleksandr 246 Spychalski, Józef 140, 141 Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich 9, 79, 81, 83, 163, 167, 252n30 Stalinism 137, 142, 143 Stein, Alexander (aka Rubinstein) 249 Steinemann, Thyl 152, 153 Stepanov, Filipp Petrovich 28, 29, 39n10, 246 Stola, Dariusz 135, 142 Suárez, Marco Fidel 128n54 Subhi, Muhammad 178, 180, 184, 187 Sukhotin, Aleksei Mikhailovich 27, 28, 29 Supremo Tribunal Federal − STF (Supreme Federal Court) 269, 277 al-Suwayd, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz 178 Svatikov, Sergei 243 Swiss National Front 241 Tager, Aleksandr 242, 251n9 Taguieff, Pierre-André 1, 11, 251n16 Takashi, Hirose 168 Takashi, Saito 163, 172n8 Takashi, Tahibana 169, 174n34 Tales and Magic (Al- Sāmerī wa-alSāher) 211 Talmud, 49, 50, 61,104, 154, 171, 176, 179, 181, 187, 202, 217n39, 226, 257 Tamimi, ‘Azzam 187 Tanyu, Hikmet 226 Taqipūr, Mohammad- Taqī 203, 211 Tcherikower, Elias (Il’ia Cherikover) 242, 251n10 Tehran Times 210 Tencer, Gołda 141 terrorist attacks, 9/11 attacks 13, 14, 154, 165, 227, 262 The Diaspora 178, 183, 192n33 The Key to the Mystery 257 The Secret of Armageddon 203 The World at War 258, 267n25 Theosophical Society 37 Thompson, Alfred 93 Tiempo, César 105, 106, 107−8 Tilset agreement 56 Tom and Jerry TV series 211 Tōru, Kawajiri 169 Trotskyist League of Japan 167 Tsion, Il’ia 28 tsunami (Indian Ocean) 13, 151 Tsuyanosuke, Higuchi 162 al-Tunisi, Muhammad Khalifa 176, 178, 179, 180, 184, 190n9, 191n27

Index Türkiye 224 Tynianov, Iurii 36 ufology (UFO) 13, 148, 153, 154, 156−7, 168 ‘Umar, Fathallah 183 al-Usbu‘ 178 Vaiskopf, Mikhail 58 Vakit, 224 Valdemoros, Francisco de Asís 270 Valencia, Guillermo León 123 Valeri, Valerio 129n83 Velloso, Carlos 274 Verrall, Richard (aka Richard Harwood) 266n24, 270 Vialls, Joe 154 Violencia, La (1946−64) 17, 112, 123 Völkisch nationalist movement 3−4, 5, 70, 72, 73, 85 Völkischer Beobachter 70, 72, 76, 77, 78, 81, 83, 248, Volkova, Maria 59 von Freyenwald, Hans Jonak 247, 253ns32,40 von Hausen, Ludwig Müller. See zur Beek, Gottfried von Moltke, Johannes Strauss 255, 256 al-Wahid, Husayn ‘Abd 179, 180 Wallace, George 167 War of the Thousand Days 118 Wardam, Batir Muhammad ‘Ali 188 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 140 Wast, Hugo 16, 101−11, 117, 119, 127n45 Wataru, Nakajima 170 Weber, Timothy 95 Weitzman, Mark 147, 148 Weizmann, Chaim 243 Welfare Party 220 White Revolution (Iran) 204 Williamson, Richard (bishop) 150 Wimpffen Count Felix von 30, 32, 36, 37, 41n36, 42n59 Winrod, Gerald B. 89, 93, 95, 97 Virtue Party 220 Wistrich, Robert 189 World Conference against Racism, Discrimination, Xenophobia and

317

Related Intolerances (WCAR) 20, 254, 255, 262 World War I 2, 3, 16, 62, 70, 84, 144n28 World War II 9, 12, 16, 17, 19, 97, 135, 142, 165, 167, 169, 176, 183, 199, 221, 158, 261 Yamin, al-Khouri Anton 176, 190n9 “Year of Terror.” See anti-Jewish violence Yitshak, Rabbi Yakov (the Seer of Lublin) 53 Yom Kippur War 223 Zaki, Yaqub 260, 261 Zalman, Shneur (of Liady) 54 Zaman 224, 227n9 Zaydan, Yusuf 178 al-Zayyat, Ahmad Hasan 181 Zelin, Wu 172n8 Zero Degree Orbit (Madār- e Sefr Darageh) 203, 212 Zhevakhov, Nikolai 246 Zikra, Wajih Abu 180 Zimmerli, Traugott A. 155 Zion kahal. See Protocols of the Elders of Zion Zionism 12, 17, 18, 91, 92, 133–5, 142, 154, 155, 157, 175–7, 179–83, 186–8, 199, 201–4, 213, 221, 224, 226, 227, 229–31, 233, 237n13, 245, 253n39, 258–62, 264, 265, 267n25, 268n46, 275, 279n25; first Zionist Congress (1897) 2, 115, 116, 179, 202, 217n41, 243, 249; “international Zionism” 135, 176, 179, 180, 203; total Zionism 245; Zionist-Nazi Cooperation (collaboration) 183, 210 ZOG (Zionist Occupied Government) 150, 156 Znamia 15, 45 Zografo, M.K. 35 Zoroastrian worldview 208; symbol 209 Zündel, Ernst 152, 155, 157, 270, 278n10 zur Beek, Gottfried 4, 70, 72, 80–1 Zurayq, Fridrick 176 Zuviría, Gustavo Martínez. See Wast, Hugo Zweig, Arnold 5