Protocol 13 ～ Dialogue 12

Wed Oct 8, 2025

2nd September

The Achilles Heel of liberal democracies is its irrational foundation on the human as a rational actor. That hardly surprises anybody today.

The central issue is, however, that once we reached the summit of rationality — merely one of many peaks on the mountain of human reality — we could hardly look down into the misty abyss below us and seriously consider descending again.

Any regress would invalidate the entire political system we had founded. Otherwise we should be calling ourselves progressed while treating our citizens like cattle.

While the liberally inclined theorist tried to fortify the structures, the floodgates flung open to nationalism, romanticism and movements of all kinds bringing a frothing ocean of dubious reasonings, that were to be respected nevertheless, or else we would face the most dangerous prospect: Backsliding into contempt for human nature.

The Machiavelli of the Dialogue takes the lead over the Protocols in exploiting our human nature, while the Protocols has one of its regular mood swings during which the plebeian hordes are laid out as savages unable to think.

3rd September

Psychology of fear and presenting dissidents as opposing the entire society, the people’s will. These are the tools used by Machiavelli’s despot so far. They go a long way.

Personal dissatisfaction will not be a source of opposition. You do not personally represent a higher moral ground, you are just disgruntled. Unless you have a criminal disposition this is not worth risking anything for, and especially not in a society where, once you move outside the safe circles, there will be a long way down to rock bottom.

Rivalling as a politician will lead to a lot of dead ends in the rigged parliamentary system. Your chances of supplanting the reigning king are slim, as his face is on the billboards and on the paper bills. Those around you like the regent for his decency and resolve to tackle the problems your nation faces.

Back in the times of trouble, you remember how armed soldiers used to stand guard on every corner, and it felt like hell on earth. God, how you could walk up to any soldier there and spit in his face for the insolence his presence represented against decent people. That was the army, not the president. It grew out of a civil war, but over a decade, the president managed to calm things down and he got rid of them.

Does it sound a bit too much like Tea With Mussolini?

That at least is the alchemy of old school despotism. Fear is only one little ingredient. Fear can push people a little further along an already established path, but the despot must have already won their hearts through some other means.

Lonely individuals, who no longer have any means of coalescing to one large voice, will by and large not stand on the brake while everybody else is busy rebuilding their country and making it rise from the ruins again.

As Montesquieu keeps reminding us: What, then, about a society where people have grown accustomed to liberal and political rights?

You will need something much much stronger.

4th September.

The singular most useful aspect of cultural warfare is that the human psyche can only encompass so much of it. It is the perfect insulator against initiative.

Dialogue 12

● Secretly control three layers of papers using court injunctions. ● Rank 1: Pro government, tasked with taking the government’s side in all public questions. ● Rank 2: Centred around the lukewarm citizens. ● Rank 3: The opposition, which can raise trouble, but never attack on an ideological level. ● Trial balloons. ● The press is the tool to excite or lull minds. ● Newspapers in the provinces are more important than in the cities. ● Be fuzzy in explanation, so all can be claimed afterwards. ● Maintain a great spectacle of progress and industry. ● Trick people to discuss politically irrelevant matters in the most debased fashion.

Finally it is time to peer into the next century.

Not for the last three centuries have anybody ever witnesses nature. We witness words. Whatever the wanderer saw on his lonely walks in the forest, it was lost when Goethe wrote homages to Nature as a new religion, as something beseeching communion with the spark of nature that is us.

The labyrinths we navigate and the mirror walls we gaze at, are written by us enveloped in a constant struggle.

Open a new chapter:

Dialogue 12 Subtext
Machiavelli: […] In the parliamentary countries, governments almost always perish due to the press; so, I foresee the possibility of neutralizing the press by the press itself. Since it is as great a force as journalism, do you know what my government will be? It will be journalistic, it will be journalism incarnate. … Making it even more by the people.
[…]
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. … Because most people side with the majority unless they have time to investigate the context.
[…] 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.

Let’s be honest: Most skilled writers can make an adequate stew of the few ingredients available, enough to at least sound convincing to anyone with an open mind, which is the absolute majority.

We bookmark articles of all persuasions promising to come back later, when we have better time, to analyse its arguments. Until then, we accept living in a state of confusion as to who to believe.

Equipped with the poorest means of intellectual self defence, we buckle.

One meagre tool is this: “They can’t all be right, so someone must be lying”. A useless sentence which adds almost nothing in the way of analytical powers.

These days fact-checkers blossomed up everywhere like it was an honest career. The damage done to the population is immense. Ninety-nine percent of our knowledge is useless outside the frame of reference it belongs to. And yet, we compare bits and pieces from different universes in the battle to raise the singular most important banner in modern history: True (or rather, False).

But I digress.

Time to organise the competing voices in the great theatre:

Dialogue 12 Subtext
I would divide into three or four categories the papers devoted to my power.
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 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.
It is [third rank] 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.
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. Effect: The word is not spread, it is isolated.
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. One would be of my party without knowing it. Those who believe they speak their language would [actually] be speaking mine; 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.

What is real? Always a good question to pose. Is it a sham when a politician inspired by ideas of free debate establishes television channels where all opinions can confront each other? We watch and are mightily impressed by all the well articulated opinions and think “God, I’m glad we live in a democracy!”

What is the base that must never be touched?

Once you start to wonder if anybody has pulled off something like Napoleon III, you feel like a conspiracy theorist.

The whirlpool

Now, time for the million dollar question: It is advanced despotism, when the king secretly organises these layers himself. “Yes.” Is it then also despotism, if these layers organise themselves in such a way?

“Of course not!”

Then what should we do with the inescapable conclusion that seen from the street level, there is no way to discern between the two situations. The psychological effect would be the same.

Thus: Society can be organised like a despotism and subdue us as if in a despotism, but without being one.

That is the real problem that is brought about by the very hypothetical possibility that the society we live in is synthetic, made by secret orchestrations.

“Ah, but note: In Joly’s version, those are not real oppositional newspapers. They never really attack the foundation.”

No, and there is no doubt he added that because even Joly could not imagine the existence of a self-propelled sodium-potassium pump inside society driving despotic systems into being.

Golovinski could, but only if we perform one dangerous substitution: The Jewish conspiracy is… our present political consensus. It hardly surprises anybody today that there were no Jewish conspiracy after all.

We have conspired against our own humanity by wanting this society that we live in.

Conversely, we could be said to have adapted to the democratic harsh discipline limiting the scope of possible reality.

Joly writes:

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.

One way is through the legislative and authoritarian measures already mentioned. But who knows, perhaps Joly has no idea how Louis Bonaparte managed this trick, if indeed he even did.

Montesquieu asks:

Dialogue 12 Subtext
Montesquieu: Are these realizable ideas or phantasmagoria? This gives me vertigo.
Machiavelli: Mind your head, because you are not at the end.
Montesquieu: I only asked you how you could direct and rally all these militias of publicity that are clandestinity hired by your government.
Machiavelli: This would only be a matter of organization, you must understand; for example, I would institute – under the heading of the Department of Printing and the Press -- a center of common action at which one could seek the password and from which the signal would come. 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. “CIA”
[…] neither the bases nor the principles of my government would be attacked by the newspapers of which I speak; they would only make a polemic of skirmishes, a dynastic opposition within the narrowest limits.

The translator cleverly identifies the Department of Printing and Press as a kind of CIA. The comparison is apt. The CIA is also shrouded in a mystique of extra-judicial lethal powers, deeply ideologically entrenched and supposedly meant to be politically impartial and, well, 100% in favour of the American system. In other words, it appears to support all domestic denominations while preserving the base of the American power structure.

Dialogue 12 Subtext
Montesquieu: And what advantage would you find in this?
Machiavelli: You question is quite ingenuous. The result, already considerable, would be to have it said by the greatest number of people: “But you see that one is free, that under this regime one can speak [freely], that the regime is unjustly attacked, that instead of repressing – which it could do – it suffers, it tolerates.” “This government is at least of us, if not outright by us.”
Another, no less important result would be to provoke observations such as this: “See the point at which the bases of this government, its principles, are respected by all of us; here are newspapers that allow themselves the greatest freedoms of speech, but they never attack the established institutions. It is necessary that these institutions are beyond the injustices of the passions, because the very enemies of the government cannot help themselves from rendering homage to them.” We are all liberalists, from king to citizen.
[…]
With the help of the occult devotion of these public papers, […] 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; War fever, public witch-hunts, …
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;
I would solicit opinions about certain resolutions, I could reject or retain them, I would always have my finger on the pulsations, which would reflect – without knowing it – my personal impressions and they would sometimes be astonished at being so constantly in agreement with their sovereign. One would then say that I have the popular sensibility, that there is a secret and mysterious sympathy that unites me with the movements of my people.

Oddly enough, it is like the effect is quite the opposite. What sitting government had ever had the benefit of the doubt? Doubt is usually converted to scepticism. Nobody wants to look gullible, so for good measure we assume an “I-see-through-you” posture.

But that is only a specific culture, not a systemic procedure. Even that can be manipulated.

Who knows, perhaps we all self-identify as political cynics, but in reality we have been manipulated into a position of faux cynicism without ever being even close to attacking the power base.

Montesquieu agrees with me that the whole setup sounds rather dubious. Machiavelli is confident, and he turns his attention to how the majority of people living in rural areas would not contest anything, and is not influenced by aforementioned sceptical culture:

Dialogue 12 Subtext
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. They gain nothing by betraying them, because for the most part they have more or less shameful secrets.
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.
What would it matter if, in the capital, a certain world could be up-to-date concerning the artifices of my journalism? It would be in the provinces that the greatest part of its influence would be felt. There I would always have the temperature of public opinion that would be necessary for me, and each of my blows would surely hit home. The provincial press in its entirety would belong to me, because neither contradiction nor discussion would be possible there; from the administrative center in which I would be seated, one would regularly transmit to the governor of each province the order to make the newspapers speak in this or that way, so well that – at any given time, all over the country – great impetus would be felt, even before the capital suspects it. You see that public opinion in the capital would not preoccupy me. It would, when necessary, lag behind the external movement that would envelop it, if need be, unknown to it.

One can only guess at the level of hysteria felt by Golovinski when he saw the press called Freemasons.

As to the essential debates, he holds no fear: The despot would participate on an equal footing with all participants.

The government plans to counter argue in the papers: “You have advanced such and such a fact, but it was not accurate;

A humble, decent and open way to go about it. Only the government control the newspapers and make sure nobody answers. It would look like his arguments were irrefutable.

Elasticity

Dialogue 12 Subtext
Machiavelli: I would obligate the newspapers to welcome at the top of their columns the corrections that the government would communicate to them; government agents would pass to them notes in which one would say to them categorically: "You have advanced such and such a fact, but it was not accurate; you are permitted to make such and such a criticism, [but] you have been unjust, you have been improper, you were wrong, you must say so." As you can see, this would be an honest and open censure.
Montesquieu: To which one could not reply, of course.
Machiavelli: Obviously not: the discussion would be closed.

If one should indulge in this analysis for a second, I would say that the key ingredient was that the president himself are quite willing to participate in debate.

Would people not simply “be aware” that the game was rigged? The question has real merit. Often there are a lot of public secrets in circulation, but not seldom are wrong. So there is no clear relation between rumour and reality.

Dialogue 12 Subtext
So, each one of my newspapers, following its [respective] nuance, would strive to persuade each party that the resolution that one has reached favors it the most. What would not be inscribed in the official document would, instead, be published as an interpretation; what would only be indicated [in the document] would be rendered more overtly by the official newspapers; the democratic and revolutionary newspapers would cry the news from the rooftops; and while one would dispute it, while one would make the most diverse interpretations of my actions, my government could respond to one and all: "You are deceived about my intentions, you have read my declarations poorly; I have never wanted to say this or that."
[…] The essential would be to never place myself in contradiction with myself.

Improbable? It happens more often than we think. Because we are already living in a sphere of conjecture, our grasp is professionally loosened beforehand. Nobody listens to a politician’s speeches anymore, unless you want to carry a stigma of useful idiot. We are being exercised by the media to have someone else explain what someone is saying (like I am doing this very moment to any poor soul who finds these notes in the future). We live through journalistic criticism, not through our own (mis)conceptions.

All it takes to confuse us is to change the channel. Who is to say that pundit number one got the interpretation right? Perhaps pundit number two is closer. The president denies one interpretation and does not comment on another.

And surely just listening is out of the question. Such political naiveté would reap ridicule beyond comprehension.

I can’t help noticing the strange fade from Joly to Golovinski to us.

Machiavelli’s despot wins because he can reason from a lofty position and clamp down in dissent using legitimate means. He is controls the legislature.

Now say the despot is no more, and the people’s assemblies once again are sovereign legislators. They do what we do: Create bills allowing authorities to label and sanction foreign information and disinformation campaigns based on dubious criteria.

Golovinski laughs at the resulting people’s despotism, the foul and putrified result of having base fools for politicians.

What is a narrative? Cohesion!

How easy it is to imagine a weak narrative purported by the government being expunged and deliberated over in every canteen, every cafe, every circle. We see or saw through Putin, Saddam, Gaddafi, all of them. We see through the Republicans or the Democrats. But we never see through a civilisation’s mythos, its self-understanding based on a cultural criteria of completeness.

Dialogue 12 Subtext
Thus, I would like the diverse phases of my politics to be presented as the development of a unique thought that is connected to an unchanging goal. Each foreseen or unforeseen event would be a wisely provided result; the digressions of direction would only be different faces of the same question, the diverse routes would lead to the same goal, the variable means would be part of a self-same solution pursued through obstacles without respite. The most recent event would be presented as the logical conclusion of all the others.

Cohesion. Journalists can attack what protrudes from a smooth surface, but not penetrate any crystalline wall, for the simple reason that his or her only ability is to present something as decrepit and sickly in the face of the people. Something has to stand out.

No cheering? No journalist with a weekly sacrifice on the alter of the people’s court.

The spectacle

What excites me about the translation I found are the people translating it. I know too little about the Situationist movement, but I need to read one of the important books, Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle.

All I have are my ears and eyes for now.

As long as we keep admiring human progress and the development of welfare, any talk of oppression seems ill placed.

Dialogue 12 Subtext
I would not forget that I live in an era in which believes oneself able to resolve all of society's problems through industry, in an era in which one ceaselessly occupies oneself with the improvement of the lot of the working classes. I would be very devoted to such questions, which are a very fortunate distraction from the preoccupations of domestic politics.

Swaths of worker bees would engulf society and rebuild everything. Joly here thinks of Haussmannization. Pinpointing anything that reshape the entire conversation in terms of progress and wheels of capitalism will accomplish the same thing.

Dialogue 12 Subtext
Among the southern peoples [of Europe], it would be necessary for the governments to appear ceaselessly occupied; the masses consent to be inactive, but on the condition that those who govern them provide them with the spectacle of an incessant activity, a kind of fever; that they constantly attract their eyes with novelties, surprises and dramatic turns of events;
I would make – in matters of commerce, industry, the arts and even administration – studies of all kinds of projects, plans, arrangements, changes, revisions and improvements, the effects of which would be covered in the press by the voices of the most numerous and most fertile publicists.
I would leave your theoreticians, your utopianists and your most passionate declaimers with nothing to invent, nothing to publish, nothing to say.
The well-being of the people would be the unique and invariable object of my public confidences. Welfare versus political activism.
one would not cease to entertain the great principles of modern rights, the great problems that agitate humanity. The most enthusiastic and the most universal liberalism would breathe in my writings.
The `people do not love atheistic governments; so, in my communications with the public, I would never fail to place my actions under invocations of the Divinity, thereby skillfully associating my own star with that of the country.

This miracle of rejuvenation will contribute to keeping everyone’s eyes on the results, not on the means to the goal. Once the conversation is permanently on material aspects, he is safe from trouble stirring in small cells.

Dialogue 12 Subtext
I would like that, at every instant, one compares the actions of my rule with those of past governments. This would be the best manner of making my good deeds evident and of promoting the recognition that they merit.
Not only would I give to a certain number of newspapers the missions of ceaselessly exalting the glory of my reign and putting upon governments other than mine the responsibility for European politics, but I would also like a great deal of these published praises to be mere echoes of foreign papers, of which one would reproduce the articles -- true or false -- that render brilliant homage to my own politics. In addition, I would have in foreign countries newspapers that I have bought, the support of which would be all the efficacious if I could give them an oppositional color in several details.

Modification of safety valves would be required to redirect people’s endless need for critique somewhere else.

Why struggle to argue, when you can let people run amuck in lowly, filthy mean attacks on everything of value. You would emerge all the more powerful on top.

Dialogue 12 Subtext
My principles, ideas and acts would be represented with the halo of youth, with the prestige of the new rights in opposition to the decrepitude and irrelevance of the old institutions. I am not unaware that it would be necessary for the public’s mental valves that intellectual activity – driven back on one point – could surge forth somewhere else. This is why I would not fear to throw the nation into all the theoretical and practical speculations about the industrial regime.
Beyond politics, moreover, I will say to you that I would be a very good prince, that I would let philosophical and religious questions be debated in complete peace. In matters of religion, the doctrine of free inquiry has become a kind of monomania. One should not thwart this tendency; one could not do so without danger. In the most advanced European countries, the invention of the printing press ended up giving birth to crazy, furious, frightening and almost unclean literature: a great evil. So, it is sad to say it, but it would almost be sufficient to not hinder it, so that this rage to write -- which possesses your parliamentary countries -- is practically satisfied.
This plague-ridden literature, the course of which one could not stop, and the platitudes of the writers and politicians who would possess journalism, would not fail to form a repulsive contrast with the dignity of the language that will descend from the steps of the throne with the lively and colorful dialectic that one would have the care to apply to all the manifestations of power. You will now understand why I have wanted to surround the prince with a swarm of publicists, administrators, lawyers, men of business and juris-consults, who would be essential to the redaction of the [vast] quantity of essential communications of which I have spoken to you, and of which the impression on the public’s mind would always be very strong.

Joly can let his Machiavelli lavish insults on the press like a Golovinski on a bad day. Liberal or conservative, all can agree that the press fulfils the role as subverter of the people.

5th September

Protocol 13

Still slightly misaligned with the Dialogue, the Protocols seizes the opportunity to emphasise its mantra that you have to be born to rule a country, and that liberalism and any progressivism is the source of the people’s own abatement.

Several times the author seems to add his own prejudices. He likes to entertain with statements like …

Protocol 13 Subtext Dialogue 12
The need of daily bread will force the Gentiles to hold their tongues and to remain our humble servants.. Those of the Gentiles whom we may be employing in our press will, under orders from us, discuss facts to which it would not be desirable that we should especially refer in our official gazette. And, whilst all manner of discussions and disputes are thus taking place, we will pass the laws which we need and will place them before the public as an accomplished fact. This point is seen elsewhere in the Dialogue
No one will dare to demand that what has been decided on should be repealed, more especially as we will make it appear as if it were our intention to help progress. Then the press will draw the attention of the public away by new propositions (you know for yourselves that we have always taught the populace to seek new emotions). Brainless political adventurers will hasten to discuss the new problems, such people who even nowadays do not understand what they are talking about.
Political problems are not meant to be understood by ordinary people; they can only be comprehended, as I have said before, by rulers who have been directing affairs for many centuries. From all this you may conclude that, when we shall defer to public opinion, we shall do so in order to ease the working of our machinery. Spoken like a true Jew… or?
You can also perceive that we seek approval for the various questions not by deeds, but by words. It would be more a question of reconciling words than actions.
We continually assert that, in all our measures, we are guided by the hope and certainty of serving the common welfare. The well-being of the people would be the unique and invariable object of my public confidences.

I would challenge anybody to convince me that the author is contemplating the Jews once again. So few of his statements make fully sense under that pretext.

His anger has our name written all over it. Anybody from the present day who meets the author will be pointed out as Jew, unless we forsake our liberal and socialist attitudes and shamefully abandon the right to own land and apologise to our lord and master for a century of disorder in his country.

Protocol 13 Subtext Dialogue 12
In order to distract overrestless people from discussing political questions, we provide them with new problems – that is to say, those of trade and commerce. Over such questions let them become as excited as they like! Beyond politics, moreover, I will say to you that I would be a very good prince, that I would let philosophical and religious questions be debated in complete peace
The masses consent to abstain and desist from what they think is political activity only if we can give them some new amusements, that is to say, commerce, which we try and make them believe is also a political question. We ourselves induced the masses to take part in politics in order to secure their support in our campaign against the Gentile governments. If it is political, it is not power politics.
In order to keep them from discovering for themselves any new line of action in politics, we will also distract them by various kinds of amusements, games, pastimes, passions, public houses, and so on. In the most advanced European countries, the invention of the printing press ended up giving birth to crazy, furious, frightening and almost unclean literature: a great evil

Where Joly’s spectacle was aimed at engulfing as many as possible active, politically aware, modern citizens, by shifting the language of relevance to building projects and progress for the country, the Protocols cannot attribute anything worthy to the aims and desires of the lesser classes.

You feed them games and bad journalism. If they want to be active, they can have their fun with commerce.

Doesn’t that sound funny? Our Western dream hero, the industrial magnate, the founder of great companies is nothing but a jester, a fool who thinks he has value.

That at least ties with an assumption that Golovinski in the Jews saw the face of capitalism. Most people seem to hold that prejudice, making it a culture war on his part at least (against an imaginary enemy).

Protocol 13 Subtext Dialogue 12
Soon we shall start advertising in the press, inviting people to enter for various competitions in all manner of enterprises, such as art, sport, etc. These new interests will definitely distract the public mind from such questions which we would have to contest with the populace.
As the people will gradually lose the gift of thinking for themselves, they will shout together with us, for the sole reason that we shall be the only members of society who will be in a position to advance new lines of thought, which lines we will advance by means of using as our tools only such persons as could not be suspected of being allied with us. Note: Everybody can get an idea, but only they can lift if up and make it a trend.
The part of liberal idealists will be definitely terminated when our government is recognised. Until then they will do us good service. For this reason we will try to direct the public mind towards every kind of fantastic theory which could appear progressive or liberal. Liberalism is a tool on par with anarchism.
It was we who, with complete success, turned the brainless heads of the Gentiles by our theories of progress towards socialism; there is not to be found a brain among the Gentiles which would perceive that in every instance, behind the word "progress" is hidden a deviation from the truth, except in such cases where this word refers to material of scientific discoveries. From a time when socialism was synonymous with progressiveness and science. Its reputation dwindled in our hemisphere since then.
For there is but one true teaching, and in it there is no room for “progress.” Progress, like a false idea, serves to conceal the truth in order that nobody should know truth besides ourselves, God’s Chosen People, whom he has elected as its guardian.

Antisemitism? Or disdain for progressivism?

The two are helplessly entangled for historical reasons I must unravel.

At least the Jews mentioned are overtly pinpointed in these later chapters. God’s Chosen People really do mean Jews.

It does not change the fact that the rest of the sentences have their crosshairs pointed at us, not the Jews.

Protocol 13 Subtext Dialogue 12
When we get into power, our orators will discuss the great problems which have been convulsing humanity in order, in the end, to bring mankind under our blessed rule.
Who will, then, suspect that all these problems were instigated by us in accordance with a political scheme which has been understood by no man for so many centuries ?

… and so on.

He is just wrapping up, that is all. The important bits have been delivered much earlier.

6th September

In lieu of my reading these previous days, I need to revisit our media landscape in the months after 22nd February 2022.

How should I treat the fact that every paper in the Western hemisphere erupted immediately in a frenzied show that went miles beyond condemnation of an invasion?

Throughout the realm could be heard a thundering propagandistic tone that was ideological to the core. We abandoned our dearest principles, freedom of speech (censuring on an IP address level) and the right to dissent.

What bugs me is that the pattern observed marvellously coincides with the Dialogue’s journalistic plan.

A few dissenting voices were eventually allowed. Until then, if you felt anything like understanding that the conflict in its core was a regional conflict, you felt like a very lonely, very unwanted voice.

What is more, no newspaper ever touched the base.

PARADISE LOST