27th August
Let’s talk about ways of signifying.
The author of the Protocols made a little manoeuvre: He replaced Machiavelli’s “I” with “we”, and threw in Montesquieu’s “I” too from time to time.
Result: We are confronted with the voice of the Legio. It is an “it”, a “council”.
I am still doubting that Golovinski himself acts according to his conceptualisation.
If asked if the Jews were behind the changes in world outlook today, he would without hesitation answer “Damn right!”
Then a pause and then “The Jews and all the liberal Masonic lodges and those socialists.”
Which brings me to the central element: His writings are too schizophrenic to support a Jews only narrative. He is attacking a way of thinking, and he is trying to pin it on the Jews, out of stern conviction, but even their collective face cannot host the cacophonous legion of a million newspaper articles by a million authors all participating in new waves, the tidal wave of which Golovinski is fighting against.
The writing style again and again bespeaks this.
28th August
Continuing my thought from yesterday.
Protocol 12 opens with the same words as Dialogue 11:
DIALOGUE 11:
“Liberty is the right to do what the laws permit.” I can easily accommodate myself to this definition
PROTOCOL 12:
“Liberty is the right of doing what is permitted by law.” Such a definition of this word will be useful to us in this way
The shift is noticable.
Joly’s Machiavelli thinks like a (singular and human) despot. His words are the words of a human being.
Golovinski’s Jewish council is a personification of how we all behave today: We use democracy to the extent of our abilities. Well, some of us do. We “work the system”, we “use the democratic institutions”.
These are our own words, seen written by numerous newspaper journalists in countless articles, bottled up and labelled “Jew”.
I don’t doubt for a second that Golovinski meant “the Jews” and not “a personification of …”. But let me take his daily routine apart for a while. If he throws down his newspaper in exasperated agony over “yet another idiot who thinks Nicholas II must cave in an establish a State Duma. It’s the damn Jews who spread this nonsense!”, then it becomes clearer why the mimicry of the polemic milieu sounds like our world but is attributed to Jews.
That also better explains the many outbursts in the Protocols against seemingly standard practice even in our modern society.
29th August
Protocol 12 seems to cover Dialogue 11 and part of Dialogue 12.
I had to read ahead a little bit. Something seems to take off in the twelfth Dialogue and I want to take my time to examine it closely next week.
One thing that to me seems necessary to mention: For the first time since the beginning of this comparison, Joly rises like a colossus. There were times when I could not tell if I was reading the Dialogue or the Protocols. This was how devious Machiavelli came across.
It really starts in earnest in Dialogue 12. I think this whole experiment is becoming increasingly more interesting each day.
Newspapers, books and pamphlets
The theme for today is the press and publishing.
Once again we are reminded that the main difference between the mutual accusations of the Dialogue and the Protocols are “the dictator did it” versus “the people did it”. Well, the people who managed to gain control over society, and technically speaking, “the Jews”, which is certainly how history received the book.
That difference becomes apparent in almost every instance, resulting in what I have referred to before as old versus new school despotism. Despotism by a despot, and democratic despotism.
Society is always controlled by prejudice (according to the pessimism of both of these books). It only becomes a matter of who feeds prejudices to the public. A despot or a powerful clique.
In the matter of journalism, one notices that the Dialogue’s old school dictator must resort to threats of imprisonment and heavy fines.
The secret tyranny of the Protocols talks of fines too, but in most circumstances relies on simple division of power and declining intellectual performance in the population.
I have long felt that the “gentiles” are really the mob, the plebs, us, the stupid middle class. And the “Jewish” contempt for us is really the aristocratic distaste for the uncultivated habits in the pigsty. Golovinski’s joke is that he puts the words of one group in the mouth of another.
30th August
Even though yesterday I called the methods employed in the Dialogue “old school”, analysing them can required quite a substantial arsenal of disciplines.
What is the psychology of criminal prosecution, of knowing that transgressing the law on a given matter will elicit a dangerous response, even if we do it out of conscience? We can deliberate with ourselves for hours on the matter weighing consequences with conscience. Depending on our ideological involvement with the institution setting forth these laws, we can succumb to a level of devotion (“our guy will do the right thing”) or perhaps cow in fear (“someone stronger than me will have to shoulder the responsibility”).
The matter ties into the question of whether we stay on the right side of the law for fear of punishment and public shaming or out of an understanding of the existential tenets of the legislature.
If someone we voted in starts to slowly drift away from our preference, a breach is unavoidable. Raising the stakes can postpone that breach. Thus the despot can play on the emotions quite overtly by exploiting our lingering sympathies.
Dialogue 11
● Reining in journalism and book publishing. ● Journalism: Disliked by public: Low ethics. ● Require authorisation to establish newspapers and change editors. ● Tax newspapers. ● Attack them in courts. ● Punish “false” news, meaning suppress all political reporting from assemblies etc. ● Move their income over to news. Demand 100% certainty on news too. Result: They buckle or face criminal charges. ● Reporters criticising from abroad: Punish smuggling in pamphlets. ● Control the central news distribution channel. ● Books: Taxed if under 300 pages. ● Political agitations are less than 300 pages, so they suffer. ● Large books are impossible to read anyway. ● The publishing industry will break.
I will be more sparse in my selection of passages from now on, as long as the coherence in each chapter is present.
| Dialogue 11 | Subtext |
|---|---|
Machiavelli: […] in the majority of parliamentary countries, the press has the talent of making itself hated, because it is always in the service of violent, egotistical and exclusive passions; because it disparages fixed opinions, because it is venal, because it is unjust, because it is without generosity or patriotism; finally and especially, because you will never make the great masses of the people understand what purpose it serves. |
The press does not represent the people’s value system. |
Montesquieu argues classically about the importance of the press in a democracy.
| Dialogue 11 | Subtext |
|---|---|
Montesquieu: […] It quite simply hinders arbitrariness in the exercise of power; it forces one to govern constitutionally; it constrains the trustees of public authority to honesty, modesty and respect for oneself and others.Finally, to summarize it all in a phrase, the press gives to anyone who is oppressed the means of complaining and being heard. One can forgive much of an institution that – despite so much abuse – necessarily renders so many services. |
The truth can always be dug out. There is a truth. |
Where does this impression of the press hail from? We always field the argument, but why? Even in the case of investigative journalism, it ends up being closer to movie scripting than to rational exposition of the truth.
The problem is that those concepts – the truth, the government’s secrets, the heroic journalist working alone – are ingredients in a story. “The truth” plays a role as literary device. Like poison, it implicitly is a threat, and why? Because of the seedy nature of those fighting the truth. In effect, any knowledge that ends up threatening some ordinary city council plan (such as the digits in the project’s bank accounts) immediately gain notoriety as “the truth” that the evildoers are toiling to suppress.
It is a trope, invoked for the reader’s amusement. Nothing else.
There is nothing wrong with shining a light on the dark corners of society… no, I just did it myself. Again: Shining a light on the dark corners other clusters of our society inhabited by subcultures unknown to us, as long as we accept the same light shone on us by others.
Machiavelli’s turn.
Journalism
| Dialogue 11 | Subtext |
|---|---|
Machiavelli: I would decree that, in the future, no newspaper could be founded without the authorization of the government; right there the development of the evil would be stopped, because you can easily imagine that the newspapers that would be authorized would only be organs devoted to the government. |
Authorisation is not just a formality but a political instrument. |
| Montesquieu: […] the spirit of a newspaper changes with changes among its editors. How would you set aside an editorial group hostile to your power? | |
Machiavelli: […] the government’s authorization is necessary for all changes among the editors in chief or managers of the newspaper. |
In this chapter about the press, there are many cases where one wonders how well we would score.
It is common knowledge that in our past century, the level of faith shown towards a journalist by an insider confidant depends on the journalist’s behaviour. Even in our liberal society, politicians can freeze out whole newspapers.
The tactic is probably just as effective as in Louis Bonaparte’s time.
| Dialogue 11 | Subtext |
|---|---|
| Montesquieu: But the older newspapers, which remain enemies of your government and whose editors have not changed, will speak of this. | |
Machiavelli: I would strike all current and future newspapers with fiscal measures that would jam up all the publicity enterprises as appropriate; […] The industry of the press would soon be so expensive, thanks to the elevation of taxes, that one will only indulge in it hesitantly. |
|
Montesquieu: The remedy is insufficient because the political parties have no regard for money. |
|
Machiavelli: Be calm: I have what will shut their mouths; here come the repressive measures. There are States in Europe where one refers to a jury one’s knowledge of offenses committed by the press. I do not know a more deplorable measure than this, because it can agitate public opinion with respect to the least nonsense written by a journalist. Offenses committed by the press have such an elastic character – the writer can disguise his attacks in such varied and subtle forms – that it is not even possible to refer the knowledge of such offenses to the courts. The courts will always remain armed -- this goes without saying -- but the repressive everyday weapons must be in the hands of the administration. |
Even Machiavelli despises that you can take a paper to court over gray zone complaints. |
The news industry is easy to target on their revenue. No real surprises there.
It becomes interesting when the very weapons that were meant to be in the hands of the defenceless citizens, e.g. the ombudsman, can threaten to become a tool in the most powerful elite’s hands.
To me it seems there is a long road ahead of the despot on the ascendancy. Many wills to subdue, embedded in institutions that, as Montesquieu argues, are very accustomed to not being told. A board of appeal that is used to examine officials will harbour a lot of people who will need to be trampled very hard if they are not even to write in the papers. Machiavelli would have to strike many places at once (which he seems aware of) to set all these interlocking mechanisms out of order at once.
Keeping the news industry on its toes using the ombudsman as a threat will probably serve Machiavelli’s purpose. Imagining that happening today is not easy, though. Most newspapers have lawyers at hand for these purposes, but if the justice system becomes unpredictable too, as Machiavelli threatens, then likely it will affect decisions.
I still consider this atmosphere of danger a kind of old school despotism.
He provides an example of the quiet pistol aimed at the industry’s temples:
| Dialogue 11 | Subtext |
|---|---|
I would not limit myself to them, because such people are like the heads of the Hydra of Lerne; when one cuts off 10, 50 return. It would principally be the newspapers, as publicity enterprises, that I would attack. I would simply speak to them in a language such as this: |
|
“I could have suppressed you all, but I did not; I could still do so, I have left you alive, but it goes without saying that this is conditional, provided you do not hinder my progress or discredit my power. I do not want to have to put you on trial all the time, nor to ceaselessly amend the laws so as to repress your infractions; I can no longer have an army of censors tasked with examining tonight what you will publish tomorrow. You have pens, write; but remember this well: I reserve for myself and my agents the right to judge when and if I am attacked. A matter of subtleties. When you attack me, I will feel it and you will also feel it; in such cases, I will take justice into my own hands, not right away, because I want to put some thought into it; I will warn you once, twice; upon the third time, I will suppress you.” |
Note: agents… he is starting to speak Golovinski’s language! |
| […] | |
Two condemnations in one year would incontestably cause the suppression of the newspaper. I would not stop there; I would say to the newspapers in a decree or law: “Reduced to the narrowest circumspection in what concerns you, do not hope to agitate public opinion through commentaries on the debates in my chambers; I forbid you from making report about them, I even forbid you from reporting on judicial debates about matters concerning the press. No longer count on impressing the public’s mind with so-called news that comes from abroad; I will punish false news with criminal punishments, whether they are published in good or bad faith." |
“Fake news” has always been a nice label. True/false “fact-finding” is the soft power version. |
Montesquieu: This appears to be a little harsh, because, finally, the newspapers – no longer being able to engage in political appreciation without running the greatest risks – would only be able to survive by [publishing] the news. But when a newspaper did publish some news, it appears to me that it would be quite difficult for it to claim veracity, because most often it could not guarantee it, and when it could be morally sure of the truth, it would lack the material proof. |
|
| Machiavelli: One would think twice before troubling public opinion: this is what would be necessary. |
It is this threat to punish any news outlet for accidentally or wilfully not getting their facts straight, that raises the stake to the highest degree.
As the foreword by Not Bored mentioned, these systems were already in place when Louis Bonaparte took over. Whether he used them or not I cannot ascertain.
Journalism from abroad
After this comes a discussion on whether those journalists come move to neighbouring countries.
The essence is that Machiavelli assumes his own country is far superior to the smaller neighbours, which allows him to handle it using simple diplomatic pressure and money.
| Dialogue 11 | Subtext |
|---|---|
The small States that border my frontiers would be trembling, I swear to you. I would make them pass laws that would prosecute their own nationals in case of attacks upon my government through the press or otherwise. |
|
How does foreign news arrive? Through a small number of agencies that centralize the information […]. So, one would have to be able to bribe these agencies and, from then on, they would only provide news that was controlled by the government. |
The logic of the latter part is that a newspaper (or indeed any company) operates within a larger (likely private) organism of bodies. If he can gain control over such bodies, the newspapers are really held at their jugular, and possibly without even knowing it!
Books
Lastly they discuss books and polemic treatises.
Seen from a today’s perspective, the discussion may seem superfluous as we usually consider the book to be dead.
| Dialogue 11 | Subtext |
|---|---|
Machiavelli: This subject preoccupies me less, because in an era in which journalism has been so prodigiously extended, one hardly ever reads books. |
Really, “social journalism” as a gossip medium. |
Neglecting them is unwise, and he should be wary about it. I do believe that books did and do play a transforming role far outshining any past or present medium. Why? Because only in books can analyses and dissections of a sufficient scale be carried out which will penetrate deep enough into the foundation of any regime.
The same recipe: Taxes and draconic measures for even small errors.
Small books (less than 200-300 pages) which typically are written by polemical authors, will be taxed heavier.
| Dialogue 11 | Subtext |
|---|---|
Machiavelli: […] I would obligate those who would want to pursue the professions of printer, publisher or bookseller to be provided with a license, that is to say, an authorization that the government could always revoke, either directly or through legal decisions. |
|
Montesquieu: But then these businesses would be kinds of public functionaries. The instruments of thought would become the instruments of power! |
Oh dear! How unforeseen. |
I would impose the weight of the seal upon the books that were not of a certain number of pages. For example, a book that was not two hundred, three hundred pages long would not be a book, but only a pamphlet. |
|
[…] on one side, through the use of taxes, I would rarefy the cloud of short writings that are like journalistic annexes; on the other, I would force those who want to avoid the seal to devote themselves to long and expensive compositions that would hardly sell or would only be read with difficulty. |
Imagine the bookshops were full of mammoth bricks of densely written dry theory. The sales would plummet.
| Dialogue 11 | Subtext |
|---|---|
Today, there are only a few poor devils who have the conscience to make books; they would renounce them. The bureau of internal revenue would discourage literary vanity, and penal law would disarm the printer itself, because I would make the publisher and the printer criminally responsible for the contents of the books they publish. |
|
| It would be necessary that, if there were writers who dared to write books against the government, they could not find anyone to print them. | |
| The effects of this salutary intimidation would indirectly re-establish a censorship that the government could not exercise on its own, because of the discredit into which this preventive measure has fallen. | The idea as that the government would not be connected as the source of this oppression. |
Before bringing new works to light, the printers and publishers would consult, they would inform each other, they would only produce the books that were demanded of them. In this manner, the government would always be informed in a useful fashion of the publications that were being prepared against it; it would preemptively seize them when it judged this to be appropriate and it would refer their authors to the courts. |
From a sociological perspective I am not sure about the veracity of these claims. Would it not become cultural memes transferred mouth to mouth that the government was the real source of the disappearance of books and the decline of journalism?
31st August
Protocol 12 straddles the boundary between Dialogue 11 and Dialogue 12.
I noticed a few days ago how Joly suddenly accelerated on the Machiavellian scale. When we get to Dialogue 12, often I will not be able to spot whether I am reading Joly or Golovinski.
Protocol 12
● Taxes and fines on journalism and book industry. ● By and large follows the scheme set forth by the Dialogue.
The Protocols are in their usual mood. Montesquieu’s unceasing recommendation for a liberal society are always regurgitated into an unflattering reminder of our own cultural debasement.
Again, he accomplishes that by changing a few words here and there.
In essence the starkest difference remains the irony that comes from taking a plot designed for this triple: (Political theorist + despot + mob) and reuse the same plot in this triple: (Secret council + puppet demagogue + senseless mob).
I seem to spend a lot of time matching paragraphs one-to-one, cutting the texts apart and searching for matching content.
As previously stated, I am not sure I learn a lot about antisemitism right now.
Journalism
| Protocol 12 | Subtext | Dialogue 11 |
|---|---|---|
The word liberty, which can be interpreted in divers ways, we will define thus: "Liberty is the right of doing what is permitted by law." Such a definition of this word will be useful to us in this way, that it will rest with us to say where there shall be liberty and where there may not, and for the simple reason that law will permit only what is desirable to us. |
[…] the word “liberty” is one to which one attaches many diverse meanings. One says that in your work one can read the following proposition: "Liberty is the right to do what the laws permit." I can easily accommodate myself to this definition […] |
|
With the Press we will deal in the following manner: What is the part played by the Press at the present time? It serves to rouse in the people furious passions or sometimes egoistic party disputes, which may be necessary for our purpose. It is often empty, unjust, false, and most people do not in the least understand its exact purposes. We will harness it and will guide it with firm reins, we will also have to gain control of all other publishing firms. |
Machiavelli : Because in the majority of parliamentary countries, the press has the talent of making itself hated, because it is always in the service of violent, egotistical and exclusive passions; because it disparages fixed opinions, because it is venal, because it is unjust, because it is without generosity or patriotism; finally and especially, because you will never make the great masses of the people understand what purpose it serves. |
|
It would be of no use for us to control the newspaper press, if we were still to remain exposed to the attacks of pamphlets and books. |
Machiavelli: […] but you will understand marvelously well that it would not be worth the difficulty of escaping from journalistic attacks if one still had to remain exposed to those of the book. |
|
We will turn the, at present, expensive production of publication into a profitable resource to our government by introducing a special stamp duty, and by forcing publishers and typographers to pay us a deposit, in order to guarantee our government from any kind of assaults on the part of the press. |
Protocols: Make a buck in the process. | I would strike all current and future newspapers with fiscal measures that would jam up all the publicity enterprises as appropriate; I would subject the political papers to what today you call the seal and the surety bond. The industry of the press would soon be so expensive, thanks to the elevation of taxes, that one will only indulge in it hesitantly. |
Being a world government, it would not have the same issues about journalists living abroad, writing outside the country and smuggling in dissident publications, except if they came from another planet.
Golovinski adapts to the circumstances. One gets the impression that when it comes to the cesspool of public debate, he is adamantly opinionated. His low opinion of democratic debate shines through, not to mention his conviction that it is all staged by someone.
| Protocol 12 | Subtext | Dialogue 11 |
|---|---|---|
In case of an attack, we will impose fines right and left. Such measures as stamps, deposits, and fines will be a large source of income to the government. Certainly party papers would not mind paying heavy fines, but, |
||
after a second serious attack on us, we would suppress them altogether. No one will be able with impunity to touch the prestige of our political infallibility. For closing down publications we will give the following pretext: The publication, which is being Suppressed excites, we will say, public opinion without any ground or foundation. |
The Protocols always appeals to the most base instincts | Two condemnations in one year would incontestably cause the suppression of the newspaper. |
But I would ask you to bear in mind that amongst the aggressive publications will be those which have been instituted by us for this purpose, But they will only attack such points in our policy as we intend changing. |
Addition: Government can print too. | |
No piece of information will reach society without passing through our control. This we are attaining even at the present time by the fact that all news is received by a few agencies, in which it is centralised from all parts of the world. |
Machiavelli: I would not want my kingdom agitated by the noise that comes from abroad. How does foreign news arrive? Through a small number of agencies that centralize the information that is transmitted to them from the four corners of the globe. |
|
When we attain power these agencies will belong to us entirely and will only publish such news as we choose to allow. |
So, one would have to be able to bribe these agencies and, from then on, they would only provide news that was controlled by the government. |
|
If under the present conditions we have managed to gain control of the Gentile society to such an extent that it surveys the world’s affairs through the coloured glasses which we put over its eyes; if even now there exists no impediment to hinder our access to state secrets, as they are called by the stupidity of the Gentiles, what will be our position, when we shall be officially recognised as rulers of the world, in the person of our world-governing Emperor? |
Nothing added, I would say, except for the last paragraph which is a baffling one. I have no idea why he put it there.
Where Machiavelli suggests purely to “stimulate” the press as it is, the Protocols flaunt plans of directly controlling the process of indoctrination by indoctrination. Later the Dialogue will mention printing their own papers too.
I think both Joly and Golovinski are well aware of the necessity to not suppress but overproduce ideas.
| Protocol 12 | Subtext | Dialogue 11 |
|---|---|---|
Let us return to the future of the press. Anybody desiring to become an editor, librarian, or printer, will be compelled to obtain a certificate and licence, which, in case of disobedience, would be withdrawn. |
You ask me how I would neutralize a hostile group of editors. […] I would add that the government's authorization is necessary for all changes among the editors in chief or managers of the newspaper. |
|
The canals, through which human thought finds its expression, will by these means be delivered into the hands of our government, which will use the same as an educational organ, and will thus prevent the public from being drawn astray by idealising "progress" and liberalism. Who of us does not know that this fantastic blessing is a straight road to utopia, from which have sprung anarchy and hatred towards authority? |
Massive shot of conservatism … | |
This is for the simple reason that "progress" or rather the idea of liberal progress, gave the people different ideas of emancipation, without setting any limit to it. All so-called liberals are anarchists, if not in their action, certainly by ideas. Each one of them runs after the phantom of liberty, thinking that he can do whatever he wishes, that is to say, falling into a state of anarchy in the opposition which he offers for the mere sake of opposition. |
… continued … |
I find the last freewheeling on colourful conservative wheels quite amusing and revealing as to his real objective with writing the Protocols.
Antisemitic usage in Germany aside, there is just no brushing away these outbursts of purely spiteful sentiments against ideologies that have precious little to do with being Jewish.
If the pressure systems were organised in such a way that the more liberal we became, the more the Jews ended up suffering, then by god, our culpability …!
Books
The whole section on books are rather similar as well.
| Protocol 12 | Subtext | Dialogue 11 |
|---|---|---|
| Let us now discuss the press [misprint? It is “books”]. | ||
We will tax it in the same manner as the newspaper press — that is to say, by means of excise stamps and deposits. But on books of less than 300 pages we will place a tax twice as heavy. |
I would extend to books the seals that were to be placed on newspapers or, rather, I would impose the weight of the seal upon the books that were not of a certain number of pages. For example, a book that was not two hundred, three hundred pages long would not be a book, but only a pamphlet. |
|
| These short books we will classify as pamphlets in order to diminish the publication of periodicals, which constitute the most virulent form of printed poison. | on one side, through the use of taxes, I would rarefy the cloud of short writings that are like journalistic annexes; on the other, I would force those who want to avoid the seal to devote themselves to long and expensive compositions that would hardly sell or would only be read with difficulty. | |
These measures will also compel writers to publish such long works that they will be little read by the public, and chiefly so on account of their high price. |
[…] I would force those who want to avoid the seal to devote themselves to long and expensive compositions that would hardly sell or would only be read with difficulty.Today, there are only a few poor devils who have the conscience to make books; they would renounce them. |
|
We ourselves will publish cheap works in order to educate and set the mind of the public in the direction that we desire. |
Note! | |
Taxation will bring about a reduction in the writing of aimless leisure literature, and the fact that they are responsible before the law will place authors in our hands. |
The bureau of internal revenue would discourage literary vanity, and penal law would disarm the printer itself, because I would make the publisher and the printer criminally responsible for the contents of the books they publish. |
|
No one desirous of attacking us with his pen would find a publisher. |
It would be necessary that, if there were writers who dared to write books against the government, they could not find anyone to print them. |
|
Before printing any kind of work, the publisher or printer will have to apply to the authorities for a permit to publish the said work. Thus we shall know beforehand of any conspiracy against us, and we shall be able to knock it on the head by anticipating the plot and publishing an explanation. |
Before bringing new works to light, the printers and publishers would consult, they would inform each other, they would only produce the books that were demanded of them. In this manner, the government would always be informed in a useful fashion of the publications that were being prepared against it; it would preemptively seize them when it judged this to be appropriate and it would refer their authors to the courts. |
At this point, we straddle to Protocol 12.
Organisation of dissension.
I will say more on the three-rank system when I get to that Dialogue. It makes for a very interesting reading.
| Protocol 12 | Subtext | Dialogue 12 |
|---|---|---|
Literature and journalism are the two most important educational powers; for this reason our government will buy up the greater number of periodicals. By these means we shall neutralise the bad influence of the private press and obtain an enormous influence over the human mind. If we were to allow ten private periodicals we should ourselves start thirty, and so forth. |
DIAL: Both pro and con newspapers are subjugated but private. PROT: “Their” papers versus “our” papers. |
Machiavelli: It would take much less fresh imagination than you might think. I would count the number of newspapers that represent what you would call the opposition. If there were 10 for the opposition, I would have 20 for the government; if there were 20, I would have 40; if there were 40, I would have 80. This is how – you will now understand – I would make use of the faculty that I reserved for myself of authorizing the creation of new political papers. |
But the public must not have the slightest suspicion of these measures, therefore all periodicals published by us will seem to be of contradictory views and opinions, thus inspiring confidence and presenting an attractive appearance to our unsuspecting enemies, who will thus fall into our trap and will be disarmed. |
PROT: We are the instigators of chaos and confusion. | it is necessary that the public masses do not suspect this tactic; the arrangement would fail and public opinion would detach itself from the newspapers that openly defend my politics. |
| I would divide into three or four categories the papers devoted to my power. | ||
In the front row we will place the official press. It will always be on guard in defence of our interests and therefore its influence on the public will be comparatively insignificant. |
In the first rank, I would place a certain number of newspapers whose tone would be frankly official and which – at every turn – would defend my actions to the limit. These would not be, let me tell you, the ones that would have the most influence on public opinion. |
|
In the second row we will place the semiofficial press, the duty of which will be to attract the indifferent and lukewarm. |
In the second rank, I would place another phalanx of newspapers whose character would no longer be official and whose mission would be to rally to my power the masses of lukewarm or indifferent people who accept without scruple what exists, but do not go beyond their political religion. |
|
In the third row we will place what will purport to be our opposition, which in one of its publications will appear to be our adversary. Our real enemies will take this opposition into their confidence and will let us see their cards. |
It is in the following categories of newspapers that the most powerful levers of my power would be found. Here the official or unofficial tone would be completely lost - in appearance, of course – because the newspapers of which I speak would all be attached by the same chain to my government: a visible chain for some; an invisible one to others. |
|
All our newspapers will support different parties — aristocratic, republican, revolutionary, and even anarchical — but, of course, only so long as constitutions last. |
I would not undertake to tell you what would be their number, because I would assign a dedicated organ to each opinion, in each party; I would have an aristocratic organ in the aristocratic party, a republican organ in the republican party, a revolutionary organ in the revolutionary party, an anarchist organ – if need be – in the anarchist party. |
|
These newspapers, like the Indian god Vishnu, will be possessed of hundreds of hands, each of which will be feeling the pulse of varying public opinion. |
Like the God Vishnu, my press would have a hundred arms and these arms would place their hands upon all the nuances of opinion throughout the entire country. |
|
Nothing added, nothing taken away.
Swiftly onward …
Infiltration and central agencies
Joly impresses me. He has really picked up the pace in the middle of his book.
| Protocol 12 | Subtext | Dialogue 12 |
|---|---|---|
| When the pulse becomes quick, these hands will incline this opinion towards our cause, because a nervous subject is easily led and easily falls under any kind of influence. | ||
If any chatterers are going to imagine that they are repeating the opinion of their party newspaper, they will in reality be repeating our own opinion, or the opinion which we desire. |
One would be of my party without knowing it. Those who believe they speak their language would [actually] be speaking mine; |
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Thinking that they are following the organ of this party, they will in reality be following the flag which we will fly for them. In order that our newspaper army may carry out the spirit of this programme of appearing to support various parties, we must organise our press with great care. |
those who believe they were acting in their party would be acting in mine; those who believe they were marching under their flag would be marching under mine. |
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Under the name of Central Commission of the Press, we will organise literary meetings, at which our agents unnoticed will give the countersign and the passwords. |
The Protocls are closer to CIA than the Dialogue. | for example, I would institute – under the heading of the Department of Printing and the Press – a center of common action [Not Bored adds: “A kind of CIA”] at which one could seek the password and from which the signal would come. |
By discussing and contradicting our policy, of course always superficially, without really touching on the important parts of it, our organs will carry on feigned debates with official newspapers in order to give us an excuse for defining our plans with more accuracy than we could do in our preliminary announcements. But this, of course, only when it is to our advantage. This opposition on the part of the press will also serve the purpose of making the people believe that liberty of speech still exists. To our agents it will give an opportunity of showing that our opponents bring senseless accusations against us, being unable to find a real ground on which to refute our policy. |
One wonders what is really being discussed in Langley. | Then, for those who would only be half in on the secret of this arrangement, this center would appear to be a bizarre spectacle: one would see papers that are devoted to my government and that cry out, that cause me a crowd of troubles. |
Mind control and crowd control
Another interesting passage from Dialogue 12. I can’t wait until next week.
| Protocol 12 | Subtext | Dialogue 12 |
|---|---|---|
Such measures, which will escape the notice of public attention, will be the most successful means of guiding the public mind and of inspiring confidence in favour of our government. |
With the help of the occult devotion of these public papers, I can say that I would direct public opinion to my liking in all questions of domestic and foreign policy. |
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Thanks to these measures, we will be able to excite or calm the public mind on political questions, when it becomes necessary for us to do so; we will be able to persuade or confuse them by printing true or false news, facts or contradictions, according as it will suit our purpose. The information which we will publish will depend on the manner in which the people are at the time accepting that kind of news, and we will always take great care to feel the ground before treading on it. |
I would excite or lull minds, I would reassure or disconcert them, I would plead for and against, the true and the false. I would announce a deed and I would deny it, according to the circumstances; |
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The restrictions which, as I have said, we will impose on private publications, will enable us to make a certainty of defeating our enemies, because they will not have press organs at their disposal by means of which they could truly give full vent to their opinions. We shall not even have to make a thorough refutation of their statements.Ballons d’essai, which we will throw into the third row of our press, we will, if necessary, semi-officially refute. |
thus I would sound out public thinking, I would try out combinations, projects and sudden determinations, finally what you in France call trial balloons. I would combat my enemies to my liking without ever compromising my power, because – after having made these papers speak – I can, if need be, inflict upon them the most energetic denials; |
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I do believe that the Protocols and the Dialogue diverge a bit here at the end.
| Protocol 12 | Subtext | Dialogue 12 |
|---|---|---|
Already there exists in French journalism a system of masonic understanding for giving countersigns. All organs of the press are tied by mutual professional secrets in the manner of the ancient oracles. Not one of its members will betray his knowledge of the secret, if such a secret has not been ordered to be made public. |
Note: Protocols mention France in particular. | You must know that journalism is a kind of Freemasonry: those who live in it are more or less attached to each other by the links of professional discretion; just like the ancient augurs, they do not easily divulge the secrets of their oracles. |
No single publisher will have the courage to betray the secret entrusted to him, the reason being that not one of them is admitted into the literary world without bearing the marks of some shady act in his past life. He would only have to show the least sign of disobedience and the mark would be immediately revealed. Whilst these marks remain known only to a few, the prestige of the journalist attracts public opinion throughout the country. The people follow and admire him. |
They gain nothing by betraying them, because for the most part they have more or less shameful secrets. |
Golovinski seems to spend a bit more time on the capital versus province dynamic than Joly.
| Protocol 12 | Subtext | Dialogue 12 |
|---|---|---|
Our plans must extend chiefly to the provinces. It is essential for us to create such ideas and inspire such opinions there as we could at any time launch on the capital by producing them as the neutral views of the provinces. |
It is quite probable, I agree, that in the center of the capital, in a certain circle of people, things would not be a mystery; but everywhere else, one would not suspect anything, and the large majority of the nation would march with the most complete confidence along the guided routes that I will have provided. |
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It is imperative for us that, before we assume power, cities should sometimes be under the influence of the opinion of the provinces — that is to say, that they should know the opinion of the majority, which will have been prearranged by us. |
It would be in the provinces that the greatest part of its influence would be felt. |
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| It is necessary for us that the capitals, at the critical psychological moment, should not have time to discuss an accomplished fact, but should accept it simply because it has been passed by a majority in the provinces. | ||
When we reach the period of the new régime — that is to say, during the transition stage to our sovereignty — we must not allow the press to publish any account of criminal cases; it will be essential that people should think that the new régime is so satisfactory that even crime has ceased. |
When there has been an extraordinary suicide, some gross financial affair that is too wormy, some misdeed by a public functionary, I would prohibit the newspapers from speaking of it. |
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| Where criminal cases occur, they must remain known only to their victim and any one who may have chanced to witness them, and to those alone. |
1st September
It is evening now on the island. My solitude had made me languish through the day without getting much work done.
In my aimlessness, I stumbled upon another translation of the Protocols (The Protocols Of The Learned Elders Of Zion Translated by Victor E. Marsden) which was published at a time where America was warming up on the whole antisemitism movement as well.
To me it illuminates the incredulity of those who remain unintegrated in modernity. They would rather believe that a ploy to deceive the world’s population is taking place than accepting that our society slowly is gaining new values and preferences through self-feeding processes.
We are the architects of our own present.
To those conspiracy champions every (brutal or otherwise) attempt to eradicate a thought is (as Joly could have told them) used to fuel the very conviction that a global scheme to blot out pockets of intellectual resistance is being executed right as we speak.
FROM THE FOREWORD OF VICTOR E. MARSDEN’S TRANSLATION
Mr. Henry Ford, in an interview published in the New York WORLD, February 17th, 1921, put the case for Nilus tersely and convincingly thus:
“The only statement I care to make about the PROTOCOLS is that they fit in with what is going on. They are sixteen years old, and they have fitted the world situation up to this time. THEY FIT IT NOW.”
Indeed they do!
Yes, they fit. Because our culture is shifting in the same direction. Is is the oceanic currents that are changing, not a conspiracy.
Understanding the flow of the oceans requires more than intuition. It requires hydrology.
Understanding the tides of men requires more than a mute dissatisfaction with the political milieu. But what exactly it is, is not in my place to say. Not yet, at least.
PARADISE LOST