The Protocols of Zion Today, Part 1

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Part 1 of 2 (Part 1 here ^[2])

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a number of stories appeared which alleged Israeli involvement ^[3]. Personally, I haven’t paid much attention, since thus far I’ve heard little along those lines that passes the Occam’s Razor test.[1] ^[4] Although I can’t deny that Jews have a regrettably high trouble-per-capita ratio, I’m not in the habit of assuming everything bad in the world was something they did.

The Jewish community has taken an active role in countering such stories, which is understandable. (If my own people took measures to counter mudslinging rather than shrugging it off as background noise, we’d be a lot better off.) The 2005 indie film Protocols of Zion, made in association with HBO/Cinemax, contributed to this effort. The producer searched for answers and arrived at an idea. As one might suppose from the title, the film proposes that these allegations of Israeli involvement in 9/11 were inspired by a very old book.

The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the original print edition

The movie references a book that emerged in Russia in 1905, or earlier by some accounts. It was purported to originate from an early Zionist conference held in Switzerland. The apparent editor was Sergei Nilus. That could be an alias for a Czarist secret police agent, and the last name perhaps signifies something akin to “Mr. Nobody.” Following its publication, literary analysis discovered that much of it had been plagiarized ^[5]  from a fictional postmortem bull session, Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu ^[6]. Maurice Joly, who wrote this obscure tract in 1864, didn’t have Jews in mind; he was dissing Napoléon III in a disguised fashion. (Apparently His Majesty was a royal jerk.) Some judge — who had the same mentality as today’s Tech Tyrants — sentenced him to 18 months in prison for it. That’s a hell of a shadow ban!

For the sake of fair disclosure, I have seen little of either document; certainly not enough to compare the two. From what I’ve heard, the themes are remarkably similar, and some of the language is close enough to indicate plagiarism at least as bad as that of Resident Joe Bidet ^[7]. In the name of fairness, I should add that even if the Protocols manuscript had been genuine, it would only be an indictment of Zionism. Jews who don’t behave that way are not at fault for what others do.

I can add one thing to the literary analysis to dispute the Protocols’ authenticity. A quick glance shows that its literary style resembles that of Lex Luthor on a bad hair day. (Since the dude’s bald, I suppose that’s every day.) Only lesbian separatists ^[8] are that transcendentally dyspeptic. Manifestos often get bombastic, but highly candid “internal use only” strategy memos are generally succinct and written plainly. Meanwhile, real Swiss Zionists with grandiose aspirations to immense worldwide power have an entirely different writing style ^[9] and aren’t shy about putting their bad attitudes ^[10] on full display out in the open where everyone paying attention can see.

Even so, back in the day, when the authenticity debate was still a hot topic in public discourse, there were some — including Hitler, according to one quotation; make of that what you will — who took an uncommitted but interested position. They considered that whether or not The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was genuine, it did seem to be a rather good summation ^[11] of Zionist strategy. Revilo P. Oliver had some intemperate words to that effect in “Those Awful Protocols ^[12]“:

Ever since the first publication of the Protocols in a European language, the Sheenies have been yelping that they are a “forgery,” i.e., not actually composed by Jews. That contention, of course, is, for all practical purposes, irrelevant. If we are given a map that purports to be taken from the London Times’s great atlas, whereas it was compiled by someone else and is thus a forgery, all that will really matter to us is whether or not the map is accurate.

In this case, Sergei Nilus — or whoever it really was — would’ve done better to write a policy analysis rather than disinformation. Getting caught making up stories will seriously undermine one’s position. Still, there’s a large group of people who don’t consider it important that a narrative is true — as in, yanno, factually true. They’re not the “uncommitted but interested” types; rather, they go all the way down the utilitarian “anything goes” rabbit hole. These people are called Leftists.

“Truthiness”

In 1983, a Guatemalan activist published a book called I, Rigoberta Menchú. Because it contained all the right tropes about oppression during a time of ideological conflict in Central America, and tended to embarrass the Reagan administration for its geopolitical strategy, it became a comsymp classic back then. She received some impressive accolades, including the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, which for quite some time has been a Leftist popularity contest. The problem is that she presented the atrocity porn as a 100% God’s-honest-truth autobiography, but some key details turned out to be fiction ^[13]. When this was revealed, many apologists rushed to the tubby feminist’s defense, saying that it didn’t matter that she lied, because what she wrote about is just the sort of thing that happens in Guatemala.

Okay, banana republics suck; I get it. I really do, especially now that I’m living in one. The thing is that Ms. Menchú could’ve made valid points without passing off fiction as fact, or at least put in a disclaimer that she jazzed up parts of the book. Lying caused embarrassment and called her story into question. If the Nobel Committee weren’t more Leftist than Comrade Lenin’s underwear, she would’ve suffered profound humiliation from having her Peace Prize revoked, especially since the book was so crucial for publicity and getting her on the map politically.

This cavalier attitude that The Narrative is more important than the facts is lately called “truthiness.” In 2005, Stephen Colbert made up this word to poke fun at Bush the Younger and his supporters. Even so, the phenomenon is pretty common on the Left, most especially the mainstream media. They have their favorite tropes and narratives, trying to interpret the world for us according to these rhetorical lenses and filters, whether or not the reality actually fits.

To take one notable example, this frequently occurs when black criminals get themselves hurt or killed. The media spins it their way before all the facts have come in, declaring the criminal to be an innocent martyr of “racism” who dindu nuffin. (The Narrative has become so pervasive lately that if a pack of black cops kill a black who is actually innocent, that, too, is white people’s fault ^[16].) All too often, their dishonest reportage foments deadly riots: the media lied, people died.

Let’s bring this full circle. If I, Rigoberta Menchú is regarded as close enough to the truth, and every white-on-black police mishap — or incident shoehorned into that category — is our fault “because reasons,” then The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion might as well be true according to the same “logic.” On the other hand, I’m not a Leftist puke such as the presstitutes who get paid to lie shamelessly to the public. In that case — please prepare to throw rocks at me in the comments section — I’ll have to say that the Protocols is a second-rate hit piece that got a lot of Jews beaten up unjustly by the Cossacks a century ago. Disinformation should be avoided. For those who feel like digging for dirt, isn’t there enough of the real thing?

Now for the movie

Marc Levin, the documentary’s director and producer, narrates much of the film. It opens with him amidst an argument in which a couple of ambiguously Levantine yoots — apparently a Palestinian and an Israeli — and a black dispute whether or not any Jews died in the World Trade Center. He reflects, shocked at what he’s heard, and in his home turf of all places:

It was hard to believe that here in New York City, people were talking about this tragedy at Ground Zero and repeating the same story over and over about the Jews and 9/11. One night I was in a cab with a young Egyptian driver, and he said the same thing, you know, “the Jews were warned, no Jews died. . .”

When questioned further, the cabbie says that it was all written a hundred years ago in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Here the book’s title gets shortened; this occurs frequently in the film, including its own title.

Then it cuts to his father’s residence. They appear together frequently, and I suspect that the elder Levin did much of the camera work. Marc had little experience of persecution as he came of age; nothing worse than awareness of some snobby WASP-only country clubs. His parents, however, who had come of age in the 1930s, had a tough time of it because of their background. Marc says, “I grew up thinking of myself as an all-American kid.” As he narrates this, he’s next to a large portrait of St. Che Guevara proudly displayed on his father’s dining room wall. That was good for a laugh! Was he playing a joke on himself, or did he fail to apprehend the irony? Either way, I had to wonder if maybe the all-American kid was really a red diaper baby like me.

Levin thought the Protocols had to be a joke, but “now it’s available on CDs and audiotapes.” To let it sink in, he rolls one of those tapes. He attempts to buy a copy from a street vendor, an African immigrant — from the physiognomy, I’m guessing Angolan — but he’s sold out of it. When asked why it’s such a hot seller, the vendor simply says while grinning broadly, “People buy it like crazy.” Levin’s voiceover notes, “You could even buy it at Walmart. Why have the Protocols emerged since 9/11?” The scene ends there, to let it sink in at the point when it’s most impactful. It’s a frequent cinematographic stylistic flair in this movie. I bet someone’s been to film school!

It didn’t have to be this way

Mr. Levin’s situation as he depicts it is indeed rather unenviable. It’s not difficult to read the subtext. He’s in the Big Apple, his home turf as well as the chief Jewish city of the Western Hemisphere, and now there are all these unfriendly outsiders ignorantly trash-talking his people right to his face. How the hell did this happen all of a sudden? Surely it’s quite discomforting.

Ironic, isn’t it? This is the same thing that white people in America have had to put up with because of population replacement migration and Leftist race agitation. Well, whose bright idea ^[17] was that ^[18]? In fact, the phenomena are inseparable. If not for the 1965 Immigration Act, the Palestinian yoot, the Egyptian cabbie, the African vendor, and many other unfriendly foreigners who Levin bumps into wouldn’t even be here. In a manner quite different from the mild rivalry they had with the WASPs, the vibrant outsiders haven’t the slightest hesitation about openly criticizing Jews, and some are harboring a very significant Old Country grudge. Why didn’t they see that one coming? The United States was the most welcoming host society the Jews ever had. Then the Zionist leadership got paranoid, took it upon themselves to agitate for open borders, and now the country is becoming a Third World mud pie.

Promoting minoritist, postcolonialist, and Third Worldist ideologies was also counterproductive. After carefully nurturing this stuff for decades, they’re beginning to lose control of The Narrative. Zionism was once unchallenged as the liberal-minority coalition’s queen bee, but the golems are becoming self-aware. Leftist opinion increasingly regards Israelis as imperialists and Palestinians as oppressed. By now, it’s even clearer ^[19] that these sneaky strategies of mass migration and subversive ideologies ultimately blew up in their faces. Well, just stop doing that, then!

The experts weigh in

He discusses the book’s renewed popularity with Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who tells him, “If you actually buy into this conspiracy theory, all roads lead to the Elders of Zion.” Levin discusses the document briefly, much as I did above. Then: “When the Czar was overthrown in 1917, the Communist revolution was portrayed as the first step in the Protocols’ plan of world conquest.” However, he doesn’t describe why anyone considered Communism as largely a Jewish racket; an honest discussion about their actual contributions to early Soviet history ^[21], the Bolshevik Revolution, or Marxism in general would’ve been tremendously counterproductive to his point.

Levin narrates that in 1920, Henry Ford began publishing the Protocols in the US, and “a few years later, Hitler incorporated them into Nazi ideology.” Then the Rabbi shows a bad-optics webpage with lots of animated GIFs, looking rather like it was designed in the late 1990s. It even features the Protocols in six languages! He goes on to discuss its prominence in Middle Eastern media. A voiceover reads in Arabic, while subtitles display the text in English. They sound remarkably similar to some actual dyspeptic Talmud quotes and snotty aphorisms from that putz Ovadia Yosef. (If the point is that the Protocols is hogwash, a different segment would’ve made his point a lot better.) The Rebbechik complained that Indonesian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad essentially ripped off the Protocols during a speech. The naughty text was, to wit:

The Europeans killed six million Jews out of twelve million, but today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them. ^[22] They invented Socialism, Communism, human rights, and democracy so that persecuting them will appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these, they have now gained control of the most powerful countries, and they, this tiny community, have become a world power.

That’s it? I downloaded a copy of the Protocols and did a text search. Protocol 3 had brief mentions of socialism, Communism, and human rights. There are no mentions of democracy, but there are a few elsewhere about republicanism. Thus, the concept of using ideologies duplicitously was there, but as a pretty minor agenda item that was not dwelt upon at length. There were no claims of Jews inventing any of that, even though pointing out Karl Marx should’ve been glaringly obvious for whoever wrote the Protocols. All told, the connection with PM Mahathir’s speech to the Protocols seems rather iffy.

Perhaps the Wiesenthal Center’s head honcho considers pointing out Jewish influence well beyond their numbers on the world stage, or Machiavellian stuff in general, to be equivalent to ripping off the Protocols. (Such a viewpoint would have it backwards, since the Protocols is a rip-off of Maurice Joly’s Machiavelli fan fiction.) If so, that seems a bit clumsy. It would’ve been better to criticize PM Mahathir’s speech on other grounds, such as by disputing the facts, rather than saying he got it from a disreputable book. One might expect a clearer argument from someone who pulled in a $447,460 salary from his foundation ^[25].

Then we get the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman, who also has bitter remarks about PM Mahathir’s speech. Cool deal, another expert! At the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) itself he made $167,875 a year ^[26], as of the reported December 2021 figures, and another $86,600 ^[27] per annum at the ADL Foundation. Although it looks like he’s being woefully short-sheeted compared to the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s poobah, the reports say he works at the ADL for 2.5 hours per week, and 3.5 hours at the ADL Foundation. (This is a wee bit more than my billable. I sure got into the wrong racket!) If all the reports are accurate, then Foxman rakes in a quarter million clams a year for a gig requiring six hours of labor a week. It’s practically the perfect sinecure. Epic! Meanwhile, poor Rabbi Cooper must toil 36 hours a week for his hard-earned $447K and change. Indeed, the Rebbechik is keeping it real according to Scripture: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” and all that jazz. Oy veh! But, I digress . . .

At a later point Levin even has a chat with Lionel Ziprin, a Kabbalah scholar. He explains that it’s tradition for Jews not to take sides in the politics of their host nations, since it would incite savage reprisals by the gentiles. I like this guy, and he seems to be a cool old fellow. I’ll credit him with having the best of intentions.

It’s unclear why this part was included, though. The tradition of staying out of goyische politics was clearly abandoned ^[28] long ago. For merely one example among many ^[29] of influence vastly disproportionate to their numbers is the overwhelmingly Jewish character of Joe Biden’s cabinet. That alone is a lot of influence, since these are officially the closest advisors to Mr. Potato Head himself. Or is this scene included to suggest that Jews indeed stay aloof from American politics? I can’t read Mr. Levin’s mind here, but I do know that I didn’t just fall off of a turnip truck, and I don’t think he did, either. If that’s really what the scene was meant to convey, then that degree of disingenuousness would seem the equivalent of pissing on my leg and telling me it’s raining.

War! War! War!

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The film came out soon after the second Gulf War began. Richard Perle, who served as Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee during Bush the Younger’s term (and who looks like he could be a contender for the throne of the Goblin King) is well known as one of the Washington neocons who advocated for war. He explains during a discussion with Ben Wattenberg:

Sometimes there’s an out-and-out accusation that if you take the view that I take and some others take toward Saddam Hussein, we are somehow not motivated by the best interests of the United States, but by Israel’s best interests. It’s a nasty line of argument.

The film doesn’t mention it, but this is the same Richard Perle who was involved in Israel’s 1996 “Clean Break” memo ^[31], as well as the Project for a New American Century ^[32], which agitated for the Second Gulf War and other interventions in the Middle East. He was thus effectively politically involved at high levels in both countries. Moreover, since some of his fellow influential neocons are Israeli-American dual citizens — another detail not explained in the film — it’s hardly a stretch to wonder where the loyalties of at least those ones are. Looking at it another way, if a highly disproportionate number of cabinet members, presidential advisers, and highly influential inside-the-Beltway types were diehard Irish Catholics, including lots of outspoken Irish Republican Army sympathizers, and this Sinn Fein Amen Corner began agitating for “liberating” Northern Ireland ^[33], then it would be natural to wonder if their background had something to do with it.

Perle concludes by stating that hawkish Jews were greatly outnumbered by dovish Jews. I’m not certain what their average sentiment was at the time, but there may be something to that. Still, the neocon faction was the one that had the ear of the Presidency. Moreover, if it had been a Gore administration resuming hostilities with Iraq, surely the Left would’ve had made far less fuss, and it would’ve been Republicans asking if the invasion was worth the trouble. That’s just the nature of politics. Bush the Younger got the worst of it: The President obeyed his (((advisors))), but the (((media))) still made him into a punching bag. What a no-win situation!

Then the film cuts to a peace demonstration in New York, and Levin raises the famous Prime Directive: “Is it good for the Jews?” A lady replies, “This war is shit for the Jews, and what’s going on in Israel is shit for the Jews.” I should note that she’s one of the most relatable people in the film thus far. She’s just an ordinary citizen who only wants what’s best for her two favorite countries. Even despite a light sprinkling of salty language, she’s far more articulate than the vibrant New York yoots have been, and clearly pleasanter company. Heck, why can’t all Jews be like her? We’d be getting along so much better.

Levin brings up the subject of neocon support for the war. She replies, “As Jews, we’re screwed no matter what side of it you’re on, so you have to decide for yourself what feels right.” Indeed, there’s a lot of diversity of opinion in the Jewish community. Dissident Rightists should give that more consideration. The flip side of the coin is that with nearly the entire political spectrum greatly saturated ^[36] by different schools of Zionist thought, any mainstream debate on our country’s affairs starts feeling like stepping into someone else’s family quarrel. Can’t we have our own perspective? Recalling the peacenik lady’s point, the rest of us are in a double-bind as well. As strange as it seems, even Palestinian politics sometimes gets colonized ^[37] by Jewish factions.

Back to the Arabs

Levin then heads next door to New Jersey, interviewing a Palestinian publisher who issued an edition of the Protocols. He got hundreds of irate calls over that, including at least one death threat. But he tells Levin plainly that the Protocols is a fabrication, and in fact printed this at the end of the book. Even so, the publisher tends to agree that Jews run the world. The discussion ends there, leaving the viewers to ponder the irony. Nice try, but it’s not mutually contradictory to conclude that the Protocols is phony while observing that Jews exercise influence vastly disproportionate to their numbers. Still, “run the world” is an imprecise exaggeration. No power bloc presently exerts hegemony over the entire planet — though not for lack of trying by the globalists ^[38].

Soon after he’s debating some Palestinian equivalents of wiggers. As usual, the vibrant yoots are none too articulate, one equating “Zionist pigs” with “Mason motherfuckers” from George Washington to Bush the Younger. Cringe! Then:

Levin: Why are we talking about the Protocols and the Jews running the world? What about Skull and Bones and the WASPs? Who really has the power?

Yoot: Yeah! White fuckin’ Americans!

Levin: All right. Well, that’s my point.

It’s heartwarming that he did his part to set these yoots straight on where to point fingers. Come to think of it, Mr. Levin’s touching burst of ecumenicalism has inspired me. Maybe I should chat with the Arabs at the nearby convenience store and clue them in ^[39] about some things.

Oddly enough, he doesn’t tell the Palestinian wiggers about Zionist entryism into key WASP establishment institutions such as the Council on Foreign Relations ^[40]. Even the Ivy League ^[41] — which of course includes Yale and its interesting associations such as Skull and Bones — has become a No Jewish Child Left Behind program. (This entryism is a one-way street; if Hunter Bidet tried to use his connections to get a seat on the Israeli Knesset, that wouldn’t fly.) Moreover, the film doesn’t mention that the WASP side of the Deep State has been kissing Zionist butt since Bernard Baruch and Samuel Untermyer tooled Woodrow Wilson. A few presidents have grumbled a bit, nearly imperceptibly, but the last one who really attempted to put his foot down when dealing with the Israelis was John F. Kennedy.

 

Note

[1] ^[42] Although there’s a case to be made ^[3] that Israeli intelligence might have had some foreknowledge and didn’t give warning, that would fall short of actual instigation. That would be more like looking the other way while their enemy gets ready to sucker-punch their brawny but slow-witted Uncle Sam. Jihadists have a long track record of proving themselves quite capable of orchestrating skyjackings on their own, as well as conducting suicide missions. There’s another excessively cynical speculation, one favored by Leftists, which alleges that the Bush administration was behind 9/11 so that they could grant themselves more power. Well, 19 Arabs might misguidedly self-immolate in the name of jihad, but they’re not going to go kamikaze to help Dick Cheney pass the “Patriot Act.” Likewise, talking 19 Arabs into dying for Israel would be even more difficult. Nobody gets 70 virgins in heaven for helping the enemy, right?