The Protocols of the Elders of Zion stands as a notorious publication that emerged at the dawn of the 20th century. For over a hundred years, antisemitic conspiracy theorists have weaponized this text to propagate the falsehood that a clandestine Jewish body manipulates global affairs. Despite being repeatedly exposed as a fabrication, the Protocols persists in various forms, from printed editions to online dissemination across the internet and social media platforms, fueling hatred and misinformation.
First unveiled in a Russian Empire newspaper in 1903, the Protocols purported to be authentic minutes exposing a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. This claim, however, was entirely baseless. Journalistic investigations, legal proceedings, and governmental inquiries have unequivocally debunked the Protocols, revealing it as a fabricated document designed to incite antisemitism.
Yet, for more than a century, proponents of conspiracy theories targeting Jewish people have exploited the Protocols. This deceptive text is continually adapted to resonate with contemporary events, its enduring appeal rooted in the seductive nature of conspiratorial thinking – offering simplistic, albeit false, explanations for a complex world.
Deciphering The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Front page of a German newspaper with a large Gothic title font. The illustration on the front is a political cartoon featuring an antisemtic depiction of a Jewish man glaring at a weeping veiled woman labeled Europa. She is weeping on the chest of a large man with light skin tone and light.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion purports to be the confidential record of meetings held by a shadowy group self-styled as the “learned elders of Zion.” These supposed meeting transcripts are entirely fictitious. No such gatherings ever occurred, and the alleged leaders, the so-called Elders of Zion, are figments of antisemitic imagination.
Early publications of the Protocols comprised 24 chapters, or “protocols,” each presented as minutes from these fabricated meetings. These chapters detail the supposed secret agenda of the elders to seize control of global politics, economies, financial institutions, media outlets, educational systems, and various societal sectors, all for the perceived benefit of Jewish people. Other antisemitic fabrications embedded within the Protocols include accusations that Jews aim to dismantle Christianity and all other religions worldwide, and that they profit from global conflicts and wars.
Diverse versions and editions of the Protocols exist, yet they all serve a singular, sinister purpose: to attribute global problems and societal ills to Jewish people. This act of unjustly assigning blame is known as scapegoating. The underlying motive of those who promote the Protocols is consistently to demonize Jewish people by falsely accusing them of orchestrating various societal problems. This scapegoating tactic is a cornerstone of antisemitic conspiracy theories.
The Historical Context: Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories and the Protocols
Antisemitic conspiracy theories are not a modern invention; they have plagued societies for centuries. These theories have evolved over time, drawing upon religious, economic, nationalist, and racist ideologies to justify hatred and discrimination against Jews. Throughout history, Jewish people have been falsely accused of deicide (the killing of Jesus), instigating wars and revolutions, and even causing plagues and epidemics. The false claim of Jewish control over global politics and economies is a recurring theme in these baseless accusations.
The 19th century witnessed a surge in antisemitism. This period of significant social, economic, and political upheaval in Europe and North America coincided with advancements in communication technologies, particularly printing, which facilitated the rapid dissemination of ideas across the globe. One prevalent strain of 19th-century antisemitism asserted that Jews were secretly orchestrating these societal changes for their own nefarious purposes. These very conspiracy theories are woven throughout the various versions of the Protocols.
While the Protocols did not originate antisemitic prejudices, it served to consolidate and amplify them within a single, easily disseminated text. The book effectively reinforced and popularized pre-existing antisemitic conspiracy theories, giving them a veneer of documented legitimacy.
Unraveling the Origins: The Lie Takes Root
The earliest iteration of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion appeared in 1903. It was serialized in Znamia (The Banner), a St. Petersburg, Russia, newspaper, beginning that fall. Znamia was owned by Pavel Krushevan, a writer known for his antisemitic views and ruthless tactics. Krushevan, who owned multiple newspapers in the Russian Empire, used his publications to incite hatred against Jewish people. Notably, antisemitic articles published in one of Krushevan’s newspapers in April 1903 played a role in instigating a violent pogrom in Kishinev.
Scholarly consensus points to Krushevan as the likely original author of the Protocols. When Znamia published the text, Krushevan penned both a foreword and an afterword, falsely claiming the Protocols were verbatim minutes from a clandestine meeting of the “World Union of Freemasons and Elders of Zion.” He accused Jewish people of plotting global dominance, citing the burgeoning Zionist movement as supposed “evidence.” Zionism, mirroring other nationalist movements of the era, advocated for the establishment of an independent Jewish state in their historical homeland. A false claim later emerged that the Protocols were minutes from the First Zionist Congress, held in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897 – a claim historically inaccurate.
In 1905, the Protocols was appended to a book about the Antichrist, authored by the Russian mystic Sergei Nilus, known for his antisemitic beliefs. Nilus’s book furthered the lie that Jews were agents of satanic forces intent on destroying the world.
Global Dissemination: The Protocols Spreads Worldwide
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion gained wider circulation following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. In that year, amidst widespread unrest and demands for food, an end to World War I, and the termination of imperial rule, the Russian Tsar abdicated. Months later, the Bolshevik Party seized power in Russia in the Bolshevik Revolution, later becoming the Communist Party.
Fear of similar communist revolutions spreading across Europe amplified a key antisemitic conspiracy theory propagated by the Protocols: the false accusation that Jews were responsible for Communism and the Bolshevik Revolution. This false narrative is often termed “Judeo-Bolshevism.”
In the ensuing years, the Protocols found receptive audiences across numerous countries. It was translated into dozens of languages and published globally. A German edition appeared in 1919, and throughout the 1920s, versions proliferated across Europe and the United States, including French translations in Paris and English translations in London, New York, and Boston. Editions soon emerged in Japanese (1920), Italian (1921), Swedish (1921), Norwegian (1921), and Polish (1923). By 1925, an Arabic translation was available in Syria.
The Protocols served as inspiration for numerous other books promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories. A prominent example in the United States was Henry Ford’s The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem. Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, was a highly influential and respected figure in 1920s America. The International Jew was initially serialized in Ford’s newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, and quickly published as a book, translated into at least 16 languages, including German. Nazi Party leaders, including Adolf Hitler, drew inspiration from The International Jew.
As the Protocols circulated globally, its content was often adapted to reflect current events and local contexts. This explains the variations in content across different editions and languages. However, the core antisemitic themes remained consistent throughout all versions.
Exposure and Discrediting: The Lie Unravels in the 1920s
- as fraudulent. The most widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times, the Protocols falsely purports to be the record of secret meetings of Jewish leaders who were plotting to take over the world. The text has been repeatedly discredited since, but continues to circulate today.](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/gallery/the-times-august-17-1921)
In 1920, British journalist and diplomat Lucien Wolf published a book that exposed the Protocols as a fabrication. Wolf traced elements of the text to a chapter in the German-language novel Biarritz (1868). This fictional work depicted Jewish leaders secretly meeting in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague, culminating in the Devil’s arrival to offer support.
The following year, The Times newspaper of London unequivocally declared the Protocols a “fake” and a “clumsy forgery.” The Times‘ investigation revealed that significant portions of the Protocols were plagiarized from a French political satire, Maurice Joly’s Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu (1864). Crucially, Dialogue in Hell contains no mention of Jews.
Further exposés soon emerged in the United States and Germany. New York Herald reporter Herman Bernstein published The History of a Lie: The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion in 1921. In 1924, German journalist Benjamin Segel authored The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Critically Illuminated (Die Protokolle der Weisen von Zion, kritisch beleuchtet). In the preface to an English edition, Segel wrote:
“This forgery has caused untold misery to the Jews, and still exercises an incredible spell on the minds of the seduced masses.”
Hitler and the Protocols: Fueling Nazi Ideology
In the early 1920s, Alfred Rosenberg, a leading Nazi Party ideologue, introduced Adolf Hitler to the Protocols. The conspiracy theories contained within the book reinforced Hitler’s pre-existing conviction that Jews were responsible for Germany’s defeat in World War I.
Hitler referenced the Protocols in his early political speeches in the 1920s and discussed it in his autobiographical manifesto, Mein Kampf (1925). Hitler asserted that the Protocols “reveal the nature and activity of Jewish people and expose…their ultimate final aims.” He predicted that the “Jewish menace” would be “broken” once the Protocols gained wider recognition.
After becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Hitler rarely directly mentioned the Protocols in public speeches. However, he frequently echoed its central lies, including the false claim that Jews were responsible for the spread of Communism, the Judeo-Bolshevism conspiracy theory.
Nazi Propaganda and the Protocols: Weaponizing the Lie
The Protocols had been exposed as a hoax well before the Nazis seized power in 1933. Nevertheless, Nazi propaganda strategically employed the Protocols to mobilize Germans around the idea of defending themselves from Jewish “aggressors.” While it’s unlikely most Germans read the Protocols directly, its antisemitic lies were pervasive in Nazi propaganda campaigns.
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, recognized the Protocols‘ potential to demonize Jews. Despite acknowledging in his diary, “I believe that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a forgery,” Goebbels also wrote, “I believe in the inner, but not the factual, truth of The Protocols.” For Goebbels, the Protocols‘ utility lay in its ability to advance the Nazi antisemitic agenda, regardless of its factual basis.
Some of the Nazi Party’s most virulent antisemitic propaganda utilized themes from the Protocols. Julius Streicher, publisher of the antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer, consistently published stories throughout the 1930s drawing upon ideas from the Protocols. The Nazi Party’s central publishing house (Franz Eher Verlag) issued 22 editions of the Protocols between 1919 and 1938.
Continued Exposure: The 1930s Court Cases
Nazi sympathizers beyond Germany also disseminated the Protocols, leading to legal challenges.
In 1934, a lawsuit was filed in Grahamstown, South Africa, against leaders of the South African Gentile National Socialist Movement (the Greyshirts). They were sued and fined for distributing a document resembling the Protocols. The South African Supreme Court ruled the Protocols a “defamatory document.”
In 1935, a Swiss court fined two Nazi leaders for distributing a German edition of the Protocols at a National Front demonstration in Bern, Switzerland. The presiding justice declared the Protocols “ridiculous nonsense.”
Wartime Nazi Editions: Spreading Hate During World War II
During World War II (1939–1945), as Germany occupied vast swathes of Europe, including parts of the Soviet Union, the Nazis distributed the Protocols in occupied territories. Even amidst the ongoing genocide of European Jews in the “Final Solution,” German authorities published editions of the Protocols in Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian in 1943. Versions of the Protocols and similar antisemitic texts also appeared in German-occupied France, Belgium, and Poland.
Post-Holocaust Condemnation: The Lie in the Modern Era
In 1964, a US Senate subcommittee issued a report denouncing the Protocols as “a vicious hoax.” Written during the Cold War amid concerns about Communism, the report clarified that the Protocols “are one of a number of fraudulent documents that peddle the myth of an ‘international Jewish conspiracy.’” The Senate report dismissed the Protocols as “gibberish.”
The Enduring Threat: Antisemitism, Holocaust Denial, and the Protocols Today
Despite repeated exposures as a lie, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion retains its power to incite antisemitism even after the Holocaust. Conspiracy theories about Jewish people, fueled by the Protocols, persist. Editions of the Protocols in numerous languages remain available in print and online. References to the book are frequently found on social media. A 2024 US Department of State report indicates the Protocols retains significant influence in Russia, its country of origin.
Contemporary adaptations of the Protocols often falsely blame Jews for the COVID-19 pandemic, wars, and acts of terrorism, such as the September 11, 2001 attacks. In some regions, the Protocols has been incorporated into school textbooks and adapted into television programs.
The Protocols continues to be used in political propaganda and by political leaders. Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005–2013) frequently employed themes from the Protocols in his antisemitic rhetoric. Other influential political and social figures, particularly in the Middle East, have publicly asserted the book’s authenticity. The terrorist organization Hamas utilizes the Protocols to justify calls for the destruction of both Jewish people and the State of Israel.
Some recent versions of the Protocols incorporate Holocaust denial, while others distort Holocaust history, falsely claiming Jewish collaboration with the Nazis to establish the State of Israel.
The underlying objective of these modern adaptations of the Protocols remains unchanged: to propagate antisemitic conspiracy theories and incite hatred against Jewish people.
Footnotes
Last Edited: Nov 26, 2024
Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC
