The History of a Lie 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion'

Excerpt

FOREWORD

This is the history of a Lie—of a cruel and terrible Lie invented for the purpose of defaming the entire Jewish people. Given out as fiction, by a German anti-Semitic writer, involved in the Waldeck forgery case, who concealed his identity under the pen-name of an Englishman, it was gradually changed and elaborated, and finally groomed as fact. Agents of the Russian secret police department and of the unscrupulous “Black Hundreds” then utilized this fiction as the framework for the “protocols” through which they sought to crush the Jews and prop up the tottering Russian dynasty.

Tsarism destroyed itself, but the agents of Tsarism, still dreaming of their past glory and of a restoration of their privileges, are at work again, both here and abroad.

Out of the scrapheap of Russian autocracy, they have exhumed their old weapons and are striking at the Jews again. Upon the structure of the old myths they are striving to erect new falsehoods in order to intensify everywhere chaos and confusion and dissatisfaction so that they may attain their own dastardly and selfish ends.

In the war’s aftermath the Jews are being blamed by the minions of autocracy and reaction for all the ills that have befallen mankind. Some blame them for the war, and others for the peace. Some attack them for the defeat of the German military machine, and others for the victory of the allies. In Germany they are attacked by the Junkers for having opposed the submarine warfare and thus assured Germany’s defeat; while in some of the allied countries the Jews are denounced for constituting “the brains of Germany.” All the revolutionary leaders of Germany are credited to the Jews, and bolshevism, which has as little in common with Judaism as it has with Christianity, is branded as a Jewish movement; and there are Jew-baiters who in their blind madness have gone so far as to declare that ex-Kaiser Wilhelm was not only influenced by the Jews but is himself of Jewish descent, and for this reason did not defend Germany as loyally as he should have done. He conspired against the Hohenzollern dynasty and undermined it. He destroyed his own throne because he was serving the secret Jewish world organization.

On such absurdities have people been fed, since the armistice, in civilized countries by antisemitic agitators and their dupes, while Jews have been slaughtered in the Ukraine, in Poland and in Hungary.

I submit in this little book the documentary evidence showing how the so-called “Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion” on which this new crusade is predicated, were forged.

Herman Bernstein.

New York, February, 1921.

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The Mysterious Protocols

The Lie of a Jewish World Conspiracy—Is There a Jewish Conspiracy?—Anonymous Accusations—The Mysterious “Protocols” of Sergei Nilus—How did “Nilus” Secure Them?—Contradictory Explanations—Who is “Nilus”? How his Sponsors Disagree—What Russian Publicists Say

The Story From Which the Protocols Were Fabricated

Essence of “Protocols” Was German Fiction of “Sir John Retcliffe”—Who Was “Retcliffe”?—His Infamous Record—His Bloodcurdling Story—The Meeting in the Cemetery—An Avowed Myth—Meeting Every Hundred Years Attended by “Representatives of the Twelve Tribes of Israel”—The “Son of the Accursed” Also Attends and Provides Comic Interludes

Fiction Forged Into “Fact”

The Lie in its Second Stage—The Tale Becomes “Fact”—The “Rabbi’s” Speech—Its Authenticity Vouched for by “Retcliffe”—An Illuminating Footnote—A Dedication to The Russian “Black Hundreds”—The Imaginary “Speech” Bears Witness to Authenticity of “Protocols,” Themselves Based on “Speech”—Three Stages of the Lie

The Russian Sponsors of the Forgery

Nilus on the Protocols—Only “the God-Anointed Tsar of Russia” Can Save the World—Passages from Nilus Omitted by Translators—On Tolstoy—On the Emancipation of Women—On the “Sanhedrin” and “its Faithful Ally, England”

Forgers Disagree

The Butmi Protocols—“Representatives of Zion” Not to be Confounded with “Zionists”—Butmi Contradicts Nilus—Plan for World Conquest Conceived 929 B. C. E.—The “Symbolic Snake”—Universal Suffrage a Jewish Device—Every Jew Familiar with Plot

The Black Hundreds, Their Dupes and Crimes

Russia in 1905—The Unsuccessful Revolution—The Reaction and the Reactionaries—Lutostansky and His Work—The “Symbolic Snake” According to Lutostansky—Who Plagiarized?—Lutostansky on the English People—Are the English the “Lost Tribes”?—How the Protocols Were “Doctored” by Butmi—Conclusion

CHAPTER ONE

THE MYSTERIOUS PROTOCOLS

The Lie of a Jewish World Conspiracy—Is There a Jewish Conspiracy?—Anonymous Accusations—The Mysterious “Protocols” of Sergei Nilus—How did “Nilus” Secure Them?—Contradictory Explanations—Who is “Nilus”?—How his Sponsors Disagree—What Russian Publicists Say....