Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Although its falsehood was unmasked shortly after its publication, this has been the libel most used by the organizations anti-Semites of all kinds (such as the Nazi party in Germany and Austria in the 1930s and early 1940s) to discredit the population bean. And still today, some believe it.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion It is the falsification of a supposed book of minutes of meetings of a Zionist leadership, commissioned by a senior police officer Tsarist policy with the purpose of denouncing a worldwide Jewish plot and thereby discrediting and criminalizing the community bean.

Jewish communities have been seen, in many cases throughout history (Spain at the end of the 15th century, Russia at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, or Germany in the 30-40s) as a “threat" to civilization and Western culture in general and of the country in question at each historical moment, and also as a threat to the political power of the same country.

That search for the blame of a national community (let's not forget that, for example, in the First World War, the Jews French or German fought for their respective countries on opposite sides) often responds to vested interest in finding a "Internal enemy" on which to shake the blame of a problem or crisis that has been created by the prevailing situation or because of everyone.

In the case of Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the political-social instability resulting from the poverty that led the workers and peasantry to look suspiciously at the nobility, and at a system that had little evolved since the feudalism and that it divided society into a tiny noble class, a small one (compared to other countries that had gone evolving, like Great Britain) middle class, and a large working and peasant class much mistreated by the landlords and businessmen.

To these factors, and later they would be joined by military defeats (as in the Russo-Japanese War from 1904 to 1905) due to the ineffectiveness of the military leadership, reserved for the nobility, and the loss of prestige of the royal house of the Romanov. But let's not anticipate events.

The author of the ProtocolsBut it is known with certainty that it was commissioned by Pyotr Rachkovski, head of the Okhrana delegation in Paris, the Tsarist political police.

They were first published in Saint Petersburg (then the capital of the Russian Empire) in 1902, but did not gain popularity until after the First World War.

The text itself is a plagiarism of several works, including a pamphlet against the French emperor Napoleon III entitled "Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu”(Maurice Joly, 1864), the novel Biarritz (Hermann Goedsche, 1868) which also contained anti-Semitic elements on clandestine meetings, and “The Jewish state”(1896), by Theodor Herzl.

This last book, which laid the foundations of Zionism, addressed the problem of anti-Semitism, and proposed as the only possible solution the founding of a state-nation for Jews. The doctrine of Herzl is credited with a great influence on the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

Obviously, in the Protocols Herzl's claims are taken out of context and ridiculed to give the image that what the Zionists were looking for was to conquer the world.

In their diaspora after losing the post-revolution civil war, White Russians led the Protocols to the rest of the world.

This included a Germany that, after losing in World War I, found itself out of place and in need of explanations to justify its defeat.

A "malevolent" Jewish plan for world domination involving the defeat of the "superior" German civilization seemed the perfect excuse, and radical nationalists and anti-Semites adopted the Protocols like a castaway who lives in a life preserver.

In the United States, the businessman Henry Ford (yes, the founder of the Ford Motor Company and recognized anti-Semite) was one of the main endorsers of the Protocols, not hesitating to pay out of his own pocket for an extensive edition that was sent to all corners of the United States.

In August 1921, the British newspaper Times revealed the deception by indicating the sources of the libel.

He was able to do so thanks to an anonymous report from a Russian related, in some way, to the conception of the book.

Although its origin had been uncovered, anti-Semites continued to consider it true and, therefore, use it in their smear campaigns.

A good example of this is that the Nazis themselves were still using it in the early 1930s, when it had been proven false for a decade.

However, it is true that, as the regime established itself in power, the Protocols they stopped being used so much in anti-Jewish campaigns, and became something secondary.

Currently, the impact of Protocols it is scarce if not null in the West (with the exception of the ultra-rightist and anti-Semitic movements), but it remains in the Arab countries neighboring Israel.

Photo: Fotolia - william87

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