PROTOCOLS OF THE MEETINGS
OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION
PROTOCOL No. 1
1. ....Putting aside fine
phrases we shall speak of the significance of each thought: by
comparisons and deductions we shall throw light upon surrounding
facts.
2. What I am about to set
forth, then, is our system from the two points of view, that of
ourselves and that of the GOYIM [i.e., non- Jews].
3. It must be noted that
men with bad instincts are more in number than the good, and
therefore the best results in governing them are attained by violence
and terrorisation, and not by academic discussions. Every man aims at
power, everyone would like to become a dictator if only he could, and
rare indeed are the men who would not be willing to sacrifice the
welfare of all for the sake of securing their own welfare.
4. What has restrained the
beasts of prey who are called men? What has served for their guidance
hitherto?
5. In the beginnings of the
structure of society, they were subjected to brutal and blind force;
after words - to Law, which is the same force, only disguised. I draw
the conclusion that by the law of nature right lies in force.
6. Political freedom is an
idea but not a fact. This idea one must know how to apply whenever it
appears necessary with this bait of an idea to attract the masses of
the people to one's party for the purpose of crushing another who is
in authority. This task is rendered easier of the opponent has
himself been infected with the idea of freedom, SO-CALLED LIBERALISM,
and, for the sake of an idea, is willing to yield some of his power.
It is precisely here that the triumph of our theory appears; the
slackened reins of government are immediately, by the law of life,
caught up and gathered together by a new hand, because the blind
might of the nation cannot for one single day exist without guidance,
and the new authority merely fits into the place of the old already
weakened by liberalism.
GOLD
7. In our day the power
which has replaced that of the rulers who were liberal is the power
of Gold. Time was when Faith ruled. The idea of freedom is impossible
of realization because no one knows how to use it with moderation. It
is enough to hand over a people to self-government for a certain
length of time for that people to be turned into a disorganized mob.
From that moment on we get internecine strife which soon develops
into battles between classes, in the midst of which States burn down
and their importance is reduced to that of a heap of ashes.
8. Whether a State exhausts
itself in its own convulsions, whether its internal discord brings it
under the power of external foes - in any case it can be accounted
irretrievable lost: IT IS IN OUR POWER. The despotism of Capital,
which is entirely in our hands, reaches out to it a straw that the
State, willy-nilly, must take hold of: if not - it goes to the
bottom.
9. Should anyone of a
liberal mind say that such reflections as the above are immoral, I
would put the following questions: If every State has two foes and if
in regard to the external foe it is allowed and not considered
immoral to use every manner and art of conflict, as for example to
keep the enemy in ignorance of plans of attack and defense, to attack
him by night or in superior numbers, then in what way can the same
means in regard to a worse foe, the destroyer of the structure of
society and the commonweal, be called immoral and not
permissible?
10. Is it possible for any
sound logical mind to hope with any success to guide crowds by the
aid of reasonable counsels and arguments, when any objection or
contradiction, senseless though it may be, can be made and when such
objection may find more favor with the people, whose powers of
reasoning are superficial? Men in masses and the men of the masses,
being guided solely by petty passions, paltry beliefs, traditions and
sentimental theorems, fall a prey to party dissension, which hinders
any kind of agreement even on the basis of a perfectly reasonable
argument. Every resolution of a crowd depends upon a chance or packed
majority, which, in its ignorance of political secrets, puts forth
some ridiculous resolution that lays in the administration a seed of
anarchy.
11. The political has
nothing in common with the moral. The ruler who is governed by the
moral is not a skilled politician, and is therefore unstable on his
throne. He who wishes to rule must have recourse both to cunning and
to make-believe. Great national qualities, like frankness and
honesty, are vices in politics, for they bring down rulers from their
thrones more effectively and more certainly than the most powerful
enemy. Such qualities must be the attributes of the kingdoms of the
GOYIM, but we must in no wise be guided by them.
RIGHT IS MIGHT
12. Our right lies in
force. The word "right" is an abstract thought and proved by nothing.
The word means no more than: Give me what I want in order that
thereby I may have a proof that I am stronger than you.
13. Where does right begin?
Where does it end?
14. In any State in which
there is a bad organization of authority, an impersonality of laws
and of the rulers who have lost their personality amid the flood of
rights ever multiplying out of liberalism, I find a new right - to
attack by the right of the strong, and to scatter to the winds all
existing forces of order and regulation, to reconstruct all
institutions and to become the sovereign lord of those who have left
to us the rights of their power by laying them down voluntarily in
their liberalism.
15. Our power in the
present tottering condition of all forms of power will be more
invincible than any other, because it will remain invisible until the
moment when it has gained such strength that no cunning can any
longer undermine it.
16. Out of the temporary
evil we are now compelled to commit will emerge the good of an
unshakable rule, which will restore the regular course of the
machinery of the national life, brought to naught by liberalism. The
result justifies the means. Let us, however, in our plans, direct our
attention not so much to what is good and moral as to what is
necessary and useful.
17. Before us is a plan in
which is laid down strategically the line from which we cannot
deviate without running the risk of seeing the labor of many
centuries brought to naught.
18. In order to elaborate
satisfactory forms of action it is necessary to have regard to the
rascality, the slackness, the instability of the mob, its lack of
capacity to understand and respect the conditions of its own life, or
its own welfare. It must be understood that the might of a mob is
blind, senseless and unreasoning force ever at the mercy of a
suggestion from any side. The blind cannot lead the blind without
bringing them into the abyss; consequently, members of the mob,
upstarts from the people even though they should be as a genius for
wisdom, yet having no understanding of the political, cannot come
forward as leaders of the mob without bringing the whole nation to
ruin.
19. Only one trained from
childhood for independent rule can have understanding of the words
that can be made up of the political alphabet.
20. A people left to
itself, i.e., to upstarts from its midst, brings itself to ruin by
party dissensions excited by the pursuit of power and honors and the
disorders arising therefrom. Is it possible for the masses of the
people calmly and without petty jealousies to form judgment, to deal
with the affairs of the country, which cannot be mixed up with
personal interest? Can they defend themselves from an external foe?
It is unthinkable; for a plan broken up into as many parts as there
are heads in the mob, loses all homogeneity, and thereby becomes
unintelligible and impossible of execution.
WE ARE DESPOTS
21. It is only with a
despotic ruler that plans can be elaborated extensively and clearly
in such a way as to distribute the whole properly among the several
parts of the machinery of the State: from this the conclusion is
inevitable that a satisfactory form of government for any country is
one that concentrates in the hands of one responsible person. Without
an absolute despotism there can be no existence for civilization
which is carried on not by the masses but by their guide, whosoever
that person may be. The mob is savage, and displays its savagery at
every opportunity. The moment the mob seizes freedom in its hands it
quickly turns to anarchy, which in itself is the highest degree of
savagery.
22. Behold the alcoholic
animals, bemused with drink, the right to an immoderate use of which
comes along with freedom. It is not for us and ours to walk that
road. The peoples of the GOYIM are bemused with alcoholic liquors;
their youth has grown stupid on classicism and from early immorality,
into which it has been inducted by our special agents - by tutors,
lackeys, governesses in the houses of the wealthy, by clerks and
others, by our women in the places of dissipation frequented by the
GOYIM. In the number of these last I count also the so-called
"society ladies," voluntary followers of the others in corruption and
luxury.
23. Our countersign is -
Force and Make-believe. Only force conquers in political affairs,
especially if it be concealed in the talents essential to statesmen.
Violence must be the principle, and cunning and make-believe the rule
for governments which do not want to lay down their crowns at the
feet of agents of some new power. This evil is the one and only means
to attain the end, the good. Therefore we must not stop at bribery,
deceit and treachery when they should serve towards the attainment of
our end. In politics one must know how to seize the property of
others without hesitation if by it we secure submission and
sovereignty.
24. Our State, marching
along the path of peaceful conquest, has the right to replace the
horrors of war by less noticeable and more satisfactory sentences of
death, necessary to maintain the terror which tends to produce blind
submission. Just but merciless severity is the greatest factor of
strength in the State: not only for the sake of gain but also in the
name of duty, for the sake of victory, we must keep to the programme
of violence and make-believe. The doctrine of squaring accounts is
precisely as strong as the means of which it makes use. Therefore it
is not so much by the means themselves as by the doctrine of severity
that we shall triumph and bring all governments into subjection to
our super-government. It is enough for them to know that we are too
merciless for all disobedience to cease.
WE SHALL END LIBERTY
25. Far back in ancient
times we were the first to cry among the masses of the people the
words "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," words many times repeated
since these days by stupid poll- parrots who, from all sides around,
flew down upon these baits and with them carried away the well-being
of the world, true freedom of the individual, formerly so well
guarded against the pressure of the mob. The would-be wise men of the
GOYIM, the intellectuals, could not make anything out of the uttered
words in their abstractedness; did not see that in nature there is no
equality, cannot be freedom: that Nature herself has established
inequality of minds, of characters, and capacities, just as immutably
as she has established subordination to her laws: never stopped to
think that the mob is a blind thing, that upstarts elected from among
it to bear rule are, in regard to the political, the same blind men
as the mob itself, that the adept, though he be a fool, can yet rule,
whereas the non-adept, even if he were a genius, understands nothing
in the political - to all those things the GOYIM paid no regard; yet
all the time it was based upon these things that dynastic rule
rested: the father passed on to the son a knowledge of the course of
political affairs in such wise that none should know it but members
of the dynasty and none could betray it to the governed. As time went
on, the meaning of the dynastic transference of the true position of
affairs in the political was lost, and this aided the success of our
cause.
26. In all corners of the
earth the words "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," brought to our
ranks, thanks to our blind agents, whole legions who bore our banners
with enthusiasm. And all the time these words were canker-worms at
work boring into the well-being of the GOYIM, putting an end
everywhere to peace, quiet, solidarity and destroying all the
foundations of the GOYA States. As you will see later, this helped us
to our triumph: it gave us the possibility, among other things, of
getting into our hands the master card - the destruction of the
privileges, or in other words of the very existence of the
aristocracy of the GOYIM, that class which was the only defense
peoples and countries had against us. On the ruins of the eternal and
genealogical aristocracy of the GOYIM we have set up the aristocracy
of our educated class headed by the aristocracy of money. The
qualifications for this aristocracy we have established in wealth,
which is dependent upon us, and in knowledge, for which our learned
elders provide the motive force.
27. Our triumph has been
rendered easier by the fact that in our relations with the men, whom
we wanted, we have always worked upon the most sensitive chords of
the human mind, upon the cash account, upon the cupidity, upon the
insatiability for material needs of man; and each one of these human
weaknesses, taken alone, is sufficient to paralyze initiative, for it
hands over the will of men to the disposition of him who has bought
their activities.
28. The abstraction of freedom has enabled us
to persuade the mob in all countries that their government is nothing
but the steward of the people who are the owners of the country, and
that the steward may be replaced like a worn-out glove.
29. It is this possibility
of replacing the representatives of the people which has placed at
our disposal, and, as it were, given us the power of
appointment.
Protocol No. 2
1. It is indispensable for
our purpose that wars, so far as possible, should not result in
territorial gains: war will thus be brought on to the economic
ground, where the nations will not fail to perceive in the assistance
we give the strength of our predominance, and this state of things
will put both sides at the mercy of our international AGENTUR; which
possesses millions of eyes ever on the watch and unhampered by any
limitations whatsoever. Our international rights will then wipe out
national rights, in the proper sense of right, and will rule the
nations precisely as the civil law of States rules the relations of
their subjects among themselves.
2. The administrators, whom
we shall choose from among the public, with strict regard to their
capacities for servile obedience, will not be persons trained in the
arts of government, and will therefore easily become pawns in our
game in the hands of men of learning and genius who will be their
advisers, specialists bred and reared from early childhood to rule
the affairs of the whole world. As is well known to you, these
specialists of ours have been drawing to fit them for rule the
information they need from our political plans from the lessons of
history, from observations made of the events of every moment as it
passes. The GOYIM are not guided by practical use of unprejudiced
historical observation, but by theoretical routine without any
critical regard for consequent results. We need not, therefore, take
any account of them - let them amuse themselves until the hour
strikes, or live on hopes of new forms of enterprising pastime, or on
the memories of all they have enjoyed. For them let that play the
principal part which we have persuaded them to accept as the dictates
of science (theory). It is with this object in view that we are
constantly, by means of our press, arousing a blind confidence in
these theories. The intellectuals of the GOYIM will puff themselves
up with their knowledge and without any logical verification of them
will put into effect all the information available from science,
which our AGENTUR specialists have cunningly pieced together for the
purpose of educating their minds in the direction we want.
DESTRUCTIVE EDUCATION
3. Do not suppose for a
moment that these statements are empty words: think carefully of the
successes we arranged for Darwinism, Marxism, Nietzsche-ism. To us
Jews, at any rate, it should be plain to see what a disintegrating
importance these directives have had upon the minds of the GOYIM.
4. It is indispensable for
us to take account of the thoughts, characters, tendencies of the
nations in order to avoid making slips in the political and in the
direction of administrative affairs. The triumph of our system of
which the component parts of the machinery may be variously disposed
according to the temperament of the peoples met on our way, will fail
of success if the practical application of it be not based upon a
summing up of the lessons of the past in the light of the present.
5. In the hands of the
States of to-day there is a great force that creates the movement of
thought in the people, and that is the Press. The part played by the
Press is to keep pointing our requirements supposed to be
indispensable, to give voice to the complaints of the people, to
express and to create discontent. It is in the Press that the triumph
of freedom of speech finds its incarnation. But the GOYIM States have
not known how to make use of this force; and it has fallen into our
hands. Through the Press we have gained the power to influence while
remaining ourselves in the shade; thanks to the Press we have got the
GOLD in our hands, notwithstanding that we have had to gather it out
of the oceans of blood and tears. But it has paid us, though we have
sacrificed many of our people. Each victim on our side is worth in
the sight of God a thousand GOYIM.
PROTOCOL No. 3
1. To-day I may tell you
that our goal is now only a few steps off. There remains a small
space to cross and the whole long path we have trodden is ready now
to close its cycle of the Symbolic Snake, by which we symbolize our
people. When this ring closes, all the States of Europe will be
locked in its coil as in a powerful vice.
2. The constitution scales
of these days will shortly break down, for we have established them
with a certain lack of accurate balance in order that they may
oscillate incessantly until they wear through the pivot on which they
turn. The GOYIM are under the impression that they have welded them
sufficiently strong and they have all along kept on expecting that
the scales would come into equilibrium. But the pivots - the kings on
their thrones - are hemmed in by their representatives, who play the
fool, distraught with their own uncontrolled and irresponsible power.
This power they owe to the terror which has been breathed into the
palaces. As they have no means of getting at their people, into their
very midst, the kings on their thrones are no longer able to come to
terms with them and so strengthen themselves against seekers after
power. We have made a gulf between the far-seeing Sovereign Power and
the blind force of the people so that both have lost all meaning, for
like the blind man and his stick, both are powerless apart.
3. In order to incite
seekers after power to a misuse of power we have set all forces in
opposition one to another, breaking up their liberal tendencies
towards independence. To this end we have stirred up every form of
enterprise, we have armed all parties, we have set up authority as a
target for every ambition. Of States we have made gladiatorial arenas
where a lot of confused issues contend .... A little more, and
disorders and bankruptcy will be universal ....
4. Babblers, inexhaustible,
have turned into oratorical contests the sittings of Parliament and
Administrative Boards. Bold journalists and unscrupulous pamphleteers
daily fall upon executive officials. Abuses of power will put the
final touch in preparing all institutions for their overthrow and
everything will fly skyward under the blows of the maddened mob.
POVERTY OUR WEAPON
5. All people are chained
down to heavy toil by poverty more firmly than ever. They were
chained by slavery and serfdom; from these, one way and another, they
might free themselves. These could be settled with, but from want
they will never get away. We have included in the constitution such
rights as to the masses appear fictitious and not actual rights. All
these so-called "Peoples Rights" can exist only in idea, an idea
which can never be realized in practical life. What is it to the
proletariat laborer, bowed double over his heavy toil, crushed by his
lot in life, if talkers get the right to babble, if journalists get
the right to scribble any nonsense side by side with good stuff, once
the proletariat has no other profit out of the constitution save only
those pitiful crumbs which we fling them from our table in return for
their voting in favor of what we dictate, in favor of the men we
place in power, the servants of our AGENTUR ... Republican rights for
a poor man are no more than a bitter piece of irony, for the
necessity he is under of toiling almost all day gives him no present
use of them, but the other hand robs him of all guarantee of regular
and certain earnings by making him dependent on strikes by his
comrades or lockouts by his masters.
WE SUPPORT COMMUNISM
6. The people, under our
guidance, have annihilated the aristocracy, who were their one and
only defense and foster- mother for the sake of their own advantage
which is inseparably bound up with the well-being of the people.
Nowadays, with the destruction of the aristocracy, the people have
fallen into the grips of merciless money-grinding scoundrels who have
laid a pitiless and cruel yoke upon the necks of the workers.
7. We appear on the scene
as alleged saviours of the worker from this oppression when we
propose to him to enter the ranks of our fighting forces -
Socialists, Anarchists, Communists - to whom we always give support
in accordance with an alleged brotherly rule (of the solidarity of
all humanity) of our SOCIAL MASONRY. The aristocracy, which enjoyed
by law the labor of the workers, was interested in seeing that the
workers were well fed, healthy, and strong. We are interested in just
the opposite - in the diminution, the KILLING OUT OF THE GOYIM. Our
power is in the chronic shortness of food and physical weakness of
the worker because by all that this implies he is made the slave of
our will, and he will not find in his own authorities either strength
or energy to set against our will. Hunger creates the right of
capital to rule the worker more surely than it was given to the
aristocracy by the legal authority of kings.
8. By want and the envy and
hatred which it engenders we shall move the mobs and with their hands
we shall wipe out all those who hinder us on our way.
9. WHEN THE HOUR STRIKES
FOR OUR SOVEREIGN LORD OF ALL THE WORLD TO BE CROWNED IT IS THESE
SAME HANDS WHICH WILL SWEEP AWAY EVERYTHING THAT MIGHT BE A HINDRANCE
THERETO. (The Biblical "Anti-Christ?")
10. The GOYIM have lost the
habit of thinking unless prompted by the suggestions of our
specialists. Therefore they do not see the urgent necessity of what
we, when our kingdom comes, shall adopt at once, namely this, that IT
IS ESSENTIAL TO TEACH IN NATIONAL SCHOOLS ONE SIMPLE, TRUE PIECE OF
KNOWLEDGE, THE BASIS OF ALL KNOWLEDGE - THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE
STRUCTURE OF HUMAN LIFE, OF SOCIAL EXISTENCE, WHICH REQUIRES DIVISION
OF LABOR, AND, CONSEQUENTLY, THE DIVISION OF MEN INTO CLASSES AND
CONDITIONS. It is essential for all to know that OWING TO DIFFERENCE
IN THE OBJECTS OF HUMAN ACTIVITY THERE CANNOT BE ANY EQUALITY, that
he, who by any act of his compromises a whole class, cannot be
equally responsible before the law with him who affects no one but
only his own honor. The true knowledge of the structure of society,
into the secrets of which we do not admit the GOYIM, would
demonstrate to all men that the positions and work must be kept
within a certain circle, that they may not become a source of human
suffering, arising from an education which does not correspond with
the work which individuals are called upon to do. After a thorough
study of this knowledge, the peoples will voluntarily submit to
authority and accept such position as is appointed them in the State.
In the present state of knowledge and the direction we have given to
its development of the people, blindly believing things in print -
cherishes - thanks to promptings intended to mislead and to its own
ignorance - a blind hatred towards all conditions which it considers
above itself, for it has no understanding of the meaning of class and
condition.
JEWS WILL BE SAFE
11. THIS HATRED WILL BE
STILL FURTHER MAGNIFIED BY THE EFFECTS of an ECONOMIC CRISES, which
will stop dealing on the exchanges and bring industry to a
standstill. We shall create by all the secret subterranean methods
open to us and with the aid of gold, which is all in our hands, A
UNIVERSAL ECONOMIC CRISES WHEREBY WE SHALL THROW UPON THE STREETS
WHOLE MOBS OF WORKERS SIMULTANEOUSLY IN ALL THE COUNTRIES OF EUROPE.
These mobs will rush delightedly to shed the blood of those whom, in
the simplicity of their ignorance, they have envied from their
cradles, and whose property they will then be able to loot.
12 "OURS" THEY WILL NOT
TOUCH, BECAUSE THE MOMENT OF ATTACK WILL BE KNOWN TO US AND WE SHALL
TAKE MEASURES TO PROTECT OUR OWN.
13. We have demonstrated
that progress will bring all the GOYIM to the sovereignty of reason.
Our despotism will be precisely that; for it will know how, by wise
severities, to pacificate all unrest, to cauterize liberalism out of
all institutions.
14. When the populace has
seen that all sorts of concessions and indulgences are yielded it, in
the same name of freedom it has imagined itself to be sovereign lord
and has stormed its way to power, but, naturally like every other
blind man, it has come upon a host of stumbling blocks. IT HAS RUSHED
TO FIND A GUIDE, IT HAS NEVER HAD THE SENSE TO RETURN TO THE FORMER
STATE and it has laid down its plenipotentiary powers at OUR feet.
Remember the French Revolution, to which it was we who gave the name
of "Great": the secrets of its preparations are well known to us for
it was wholly the work of our hands.
15 Ever since that time we
have been leading the peoples from one disenchantment to another, so
that in the end they should turn also from us in favor of that
KING-DESPOT OF THE BLOOD OF ZION, WHOM WE ARE PREPARING FOR THE
WORLD.
16. At the present day we
are, as an international force, invincible, because if attacked by
some we are supported by other States. It is the bottomless rascality
of the GOYIM peoples, who crawl on their bellies to force, but are
merciless towards weakness, unsparing to faults and indulgent to
crimes, unwilling to bear the contradictions of a free social system
but patient unto martyrdom under the violence of a bold despotism -
it is those qualities which are aiding us to independence. From the
premier- dictators of the present day, the GOYIM peoples suffer
patiently and bear such abuses as for the least of them they would
have beheaded twenty kings.
17. What is the explanation
of this phenomenon, this curious inconsequence of the masses of the
peoples in their attitude towards what would appear to be events ofsame order?
18. It is explained by the
fact that these dictators whisper to the peoples through their agents
that through these abuses they are inflicting injury on the States
with the highest purpose - to secure the welfare of the peoples, the
international brotherhood of them all, their solidarity and equality
of rights. Naturally they do not tell the peoples that this
unification must be accomplished only under our sovereign
rule.
19. And thus the people
condemn the upright and acquit the guilty, persuaded ever more and
more that it can do whatsoever it wishes. Thanks to this state of
things, the people are destroying every kind of stability and
creating disorders at every step.
20. The word "freedom"
brings out the communities of men to fight against every kind of
force, against every kind of authority even against God and the laws
of nature. For this reason we, when we come into our kingdom, shall
have to erase this word from the lexicon of life as implying a
principle of brute force which turns mobs into bloodthirsty
beasts.
21. These beasts, it is
true, fall asleep again every time when they have drunk their fill of
blood, and at such time can easily be riveted into their chains. But
if they be not given blood they will not sleep and continue to
struggle
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