Quite a challenging read as there is a lot to take in, with a lot of different personalities involved, in the very convoluted history of this pernicious forgery which was used to justify such terrible persecution of the Jews. I had heard of this document as being a fake produced by the Tsar's secret police before the Russian Revolution as a tool of oppression against the Jews, which was then taken up and used by various anti-Semitic groups, the most heinous being the Nazis, but was not aware of the full ramifications, the international basis of the forgery's acceptance and the context of similar documents from which it arose.

Very broadly, modern anti-Semitism, as opposed to the Medieval persecution of the Jews, which had been based on the biblical context in which they were blamed for the crucifixion of Christ and which viewed Jews as devil worshippers etc, arose out of the growing discomfort with modern life among the populations of various countries including France, Russia and Germany (but many others) as they transformed into modern societies. To many traditionalists in such countries, the Jews were identified with modernity, city living, modern "vices", etc whereas the concentration of Jews in cities were due to various historical reasons. These prejudices ignored the wide variation among Jews, with some still of an Orthodox religion, some of a more progressive Judaism and some of no faith or having converted to Christianity. At one time, the prejudices had focused on the Jews' religion and only viewed those who followed Judaism as Jews, but there came to be an idea of a Jewish "race" with certain inherent tendencies, all negative ones. Meanwhile, due to the poor living conditions in many industrialising nations, and the prejudice against them, some Jews were drawn to Communism. This later led to them being identified with Communism/Bolshevism, by the Nazis in particular, and held to blame for the Russian Revolution and other Communist-inspired events.

The first instruments of modern anti-Semitism were documents written after the French Revolution, initially blaming it on machinations of the Freemasons. Before long, however, this switched the blame to the Jews, who were deemed to control the Freemasons and use them as a front (ironically, as the author shows, since the Freemasons themselves were broadly anti-Semitic at the time). One influential work was a novel written by a mid 19th century German author which included a chapter in which the hero spies on a gathering of Jews at night in a cemetery in which they report to Lucifer the progress they have made in suborning Gentile society and bringing about various wars, revolutions, economical difficulties and so on. This chapter was later published as if it was non fiction under the title of "The Rabbi's Speech" and became a best seller. It was an influential precursor to the protocols.

The Tsar's secret police had an office in Paris - the Russian aristocracy divided their time between France and Russia - and its head was notorious for many forgeries which aided the propaganda purposes of the Russian state, so was probably the originator of the protocols. The author pins down its writing to a few years in the 1890s from references to politicians and events in France at that time.

It was recognised quite early on that the bulk of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as it came to be known, was plagiarised from a French work which had nothing whatsoever to do with the Jews but had been written as a dialogue between Machiavelli and another personality, discussing the despotic behaviour of Napoleon III. Whole chunks were lifted and became the protocols, with additions which reflected the prejudices against Jews and served the interests of the Russian state. In an appendix the author compares English translations of this original document against chunks of the protocols, showing just how similar the lines of argument are, and in another appendix has some English translations of some of the most important additional passages.

The forgery, purporting to be the master plan of the Jews for a worldwide conspiracy against all nations - a conspiracy which was rapidly coming to its completion - was soon translated into Russian and published in Russia in various newspapers etc, where it was used as a justification for pogroms. The author follows the very torturous route by which this occurred, with many personalities involved. It was then taken up by a mystic called Nilus who for a time was attached to the Russian court where mystics were entertained by the Tsar and Tsaritsa (Tsarina is an incorrect English term as the author explains) and who had written a book. He became a wholehearted believer and added a copy to the third edition of his book. This caused a sensation, and the "Protocols" was soon published in its own right, becoming a best seller.

When the Russian Revolution took place and the "White" Russians, opponents of the Communists and anti-Semites, were defeated, their officers were offered places on the trains back to German with the retreating German army, and some became prominent publishers of the protocols in German translations. These were best sellers. Eventually the document was translated into many languages and disseminated worldwide, not only in the form of books, but also as cheap pamphlets, which were often given away, and it was also serialised in many newspapers. Even Henry Ford in America published a best selling copy of it after serialising it in his newspaper, though he was later made to retract it due to lawsuits brought by Jewish organisations.

Despite those who came forward, showing that the document was a complete forgery, partly plagiarised from the earlier French work, other so-called scholars wrote defences of it, and otherwise sensible people became wholehearted believers, with the most keen being among the middle class and among university students. The document was subsequently drawn upon heavily by the Nazis, becoming a set text in schools and later used to justify the increasing persecution of Jews in Germany and other European countries.

The sad tale of this document, which was used to justify pogroms and eventually mass murder, is also a salutary one. In the modern age, we are accustomed to the dissemination of false information on social media, but this book shows how earlier ages were also credulous. Perfectly reasonable people, often well educated, believed wholeheartedly in this concoction. Others knew it was a fake but seized upon it for reasons of expediency, deriving income, prestige and power from it, and in some cases finding opportunities to indulge their sadistic urges. Some, such as Goebbels, started off fully aware that it was a piece of propaganda, but ended up believing in its lies. A sobering read and I have only deducted one star from a full rating because the book does dart about in the timeline here and there and is a bit hard to follow in places, and I don't really believe in his Freudian based explanation for anti-Semitism as I think it is more a case of 'the Other' as in the tribal 'us and them' phenomena. But a solid 4 star read. ( )

Massively depressing and frightening but very good indeed. Discusses the fraud of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forged record of a meeting of the Jewish 'world government' and its plans to dominate the world. The Protocols gained particular traction in Russia after the revolution and informed the Nazi view of the Jews - for SS officers in concentration camps, belief in the conspiracy the Protocols described was universal. A lame and obvious fraud, proven to be so well before the Nazis got hold of it, ended up having no small part in the death of millions of people. Grim. ( )

En deux parties: les 'Protocoles' et leurs origines; le rôle historique du mythe des 'Protocoles des Sages de Sion'.

Este es el mejor estudio sobre el mito de los Protocolos de los Sabios de Sion. En realidad, no es un sólo libro, sino que cada edición ha sido adaptada a las necesidades de los antisemitas de cada país, ha sido traducido y retraducido y ha incorporado nuevos elementos de otros autores.

El texto en sí es en su mayor parte un plagio de una obra política llamada Dialogue aux Enfers, escrita por Maurice Joly, que hacía discutir a dos personajes: "Maquiavelo" y "Montesquieu" sobre la mejor forma de gobernar. Además de esto, incluye varios pasajes que no forman parte de esa obra original y que demuestran el pensamiento típico de la aristocracia rusa. Porque fue el servicio secreto ruso (la Ojrana) el encargado de plagiar la obra de Joly para que sirvieran como material de agitación contra los judíos y en contra de las ideas liberales (que fueron atribuidas a un complot judío) que amenazaban la autocracia zarista.

Los "Protocolos" fueron difundidos en todo el mundo principalmente a través de exiliados rusos "blancos" de la Revolución comunista de 1917, los cuales financiaron la traducción y publicación de la/s obra/obras a varios idiomas o las hicieron conocer a sus contactos en los servicios de seguridad y la nobleza de otros países.

Es interesante notar que hoy en día que desde ciertos círculos de la izquierda se quiere efectuar una diferencia tajante entre antisemitismo y anti-sionismo, debido a diferencias conceptuales supuestas, que esta diferencia prácticamente no existe en el texto de más influencia para el pensamiento antisemitia (incluso mayor que Mein Kampf de Adolf Hitler). En los "Protocolos", aunque no en todas las versiones, se identifica a los "sabios de sion" con los dirigentes sionistas, y muchos tienen un epílogo ilustrado en el cual se ve una serpiente (que representa a los judíos) que sale de Jerusalem en el 70 e.c. y vuelve a Jerusalem en el futuro próximo. En su movimiento, "encadenando" a los pueblos europeos. Asimismo, varios editores de los protocolos los identificaron a posteriori con minutas tomadas en la reunión del Primer Congreso Sionista en Basilea, Suiza, en 1897, o con las minutas de una -inexistente- reunión secreta en ese congreso. Lo que me lleva a reflexionar que el antisemitismo y el anti-sionismo han estado siempre relacionados entre sí.

Un capítulo por demás interesante en el libro de Cohn es su reseña del juicio por falsificación y difamación que se llevó a cabo en Berna, Suiza, contra los editores de los "Protocolos" en ese país. La baja calaña de los defensores de esa falsificación es expuesta claramente, así como la decisión del juez de condenarlos por falsificación e indecencia.

El libro de Norman Cohen es muy recomendable para quien tiene interés en el pasado de este panfleto y sus promotores y el clima ideológico en el que fue creado y creído. ( )

This is an absolutely essential work for anyone wishing to understand European history in the late 19th century, the 20th century, or "current events" (think especially the Middle East and Iran), as Cohn examines the roots of the long-lived propaganda screed titled The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as the plagiarism-cum-pastiche wrought by nameless agents of the Okhrana (the tsarist secret police) and various far-right French monarchists; the plagiarism comes from the fact that these spooks built on a chapter from the 1868 proto-pulp thriller Biarritz by Sir John Retcliffe (nom de plume of Hermann Goedsche) and Maurice Joly's satrical attack on Napoleon III, Dialogue aux Enfers entre Montesquieu et Machiavel (1864). And yet, as Robert Anton Wilson noted in his 1998 Everything Is Under Control: Conspiracies, Cults and Cover-Ups, he still gets approached by several people each year bursting to tell him about Protocols and who refuse to believe him when he tells them that it's an anti-Semitic forgery designed solely to stir up hatred of the Jews. Along the way Cohn reveals such tidbits as the fact that Madame Blavatsky -- one of the founders of the Theosophical Society -- attempted, "in vain," to get hired into the Okhrana. This just further underscores the murky connections between "alternative religions" (none dare call them "crackpot"...) and espionage that modern conspiracy theorists and some journalists delight to point out, and is but one of the many things that makes Warrant For Genocide so morbidly fascinating. ( )