7th September
Antisemitisms (plural) should never be equated. And it should never be reduced to a manipulable concept that you can throw into a discussion.
I spent a bit of time once again reading on the long history of antisemitism without becoming much wiser. Here is my main grudge against the fruitless discussion on the matter we have:
Without a strong theory about human psychology if not cultural psychology, all we can say is that some people do something that others interpret as being against the Jews.
Who then is to say what the mechanisms were that spawned antisemitism in the first place? Everybody and their mother can now have their own theory and all attempts at rectifying the problem are doomed to fail. Me and my neighbour could be antisemitic right now and we wouldn’t know it.
Golovinski has his theory: The mob are blood thirsty, evil-minded, pettish beasts that wallow in hate and base behaviour.
Catherine the Great wanted to give Jews in the newly acquired parts of Poland more equal footing, but feared the consequences. Beyond the Pale of Settlement the Jews were allowed to live in a very few towns. According to my older history book, the reason was rather to protect the Jews from the surrounding people. Cossacks (descendants of runaway serfs) attacked Jews regularly. Charles III of Spain and Pombal in Portugal attempted to stifle the Spanish Inquisition in burning Jews on the stake. The Inquisition in turn seemed sluggish compared to the blood thirst of the commoners.
The scant reading I have done so far indicates that it is the unprivileged people who regularly erupts into bouts of unruliness and instigate massacres, unless the authorities in advance can dampen the hysteria by a few symbolic executions (compared to a thousand dead in a pogrom).
Perhaps my history books are too old, remnants from en era before a new look upon history dawned, but to me it seems that we need to think twice before we, the people, commence any argument with a claim that we are not antisemitists. In a bygone age, we were the monsters that the monarch had to control lest we should tear apart Jews on a regular basis.
Perhaps not, but onus is on us. We have to convince any Golovinski that we are not the monsters. Perhaps anger comes from being unprivileged to the point that you cannot even control your own life. Pogroms seem to have vanished from present day democracies.
As an act of irony, Golovinski demonstrates Joly’s Machiavelli’s principle that the despot should always appeal to the basest of feelings. The whole of the Protocols is such an appeal. I can only imagine that he also thinks in the same way, which, as an involuntary act of irony, makes him a member of the selfsame proverbial mob.
8th September
Once again I need to remind myself not to shrug off the incendiary effect the Protocols had in Germany. While historians do say that the leading people in the Party used it merely to stoke the flames of the less educated voters as it was known to be “a fake” [in quotes because it is rather a reverse spin on the conclusions of the original story], nevertheless it meshes well with a more hazy notion that the Jews by their mere presence diluted the German spirit.
When I compare with conspiracy theories today, I see that I should exercise caution when disregarding that aspect. I can easily see how Golovinski is having fun taking every serious accusation against a non-democratic despot and turn it on its head by pointing out that the cures invented by liberalism is, in an upside down foreign universe, the very disease that the cure should fix.
9th September
There really is no doubt that the Protocols are written as a joke. The translators nailed it head on when they wrote that Golovinski perhaps were thinking:
Let’s give them something to laugh about, something that shows that we know how to joke around, too: let’s use Joly to make “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
Every plan the Dialogue puts in the mouth of the anti-liberal despot with the purpose of manipulating gullible liberalists, Golovinski turns inside out with an equally cleft tongue. If Machiavelli encourages free talk on religion (only to dissuade people from talking politics by having them fight over inconsequential matters), the Conspiracy will encourage free talk on commerce (only to dissuade people from talking religious mystic insights above our pay grade).
Perhaps this comes from the metaphysical system of Golovinski. To us and Joly, thought systems are the core matter, that is, ideologies. To the religious conservatives, ideologies are deceptive at best, a lethal trap at worst.
To us, ideologies can clash, and their encounter will be felt across the globe.
To Golovinski, only religions can clash. Ideologies are rivers of mud, a deluge of nonsense that swallows everything of sense.
Protocol 14
● Only one religion allowed. ● Propagandise against the obsolete and dangerous liberal ways. ● Implement a better regime and show how liberalism has failed to give people a better life in peace.
Protocol 14 continues to utilise parts of Dialogue 12. Today will be brief as I have already gone through Dialogue 12 last week.
Usually he tries to change the direction of some undercurrent in Joly’s book. As usual, the Protocols appear to be a patchwork of newspaper headlines (and frankly probably is quilted together from such sources, to add to its fundamental point that rule-by-the-press results in utter confusion).
The Mosaic religion
Riding on an antisemitic wave peak, the narrator kicks off hitting the religious strings. He describes how he cannot tolerate other religions in a manner similar to how the political despot in the Dialogue cannot tolerate any competing party or doctrine.
| Protocol 14 | Subtext | Dialogue |
|---|---|---|
When we establish ourselves as lords of the earth, we will not tolerate any other religion except that of our own, namely, a religion recognising God alone, with whom our fate is bound by His election of us and by Whom also the fate of the world is determined. |
Contrast with the Dialogue where the despot urges religious freedom as it has no political implications. | 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. |
For this reason we must destroy all professions of faith. If the temporary result of this is to produce atheists, it will not interfere with our object, but will act as an example to those generations to come, who will listen to our teaching on the religion of Moses which, by its resolute and well-considered doctrine, committed to us the duty of subduing all nations under our feet. |
Religion in the Protocols play the same role as political opponents in the Dialogue. | |
By doing this we shall also lay stress on the mystic truths of the Mosaic teachings on which, we shall say, is based all its educative power. |
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It may not be obvious, but to my eye, the two texts make the same transition in principle. Political opposition is strangled and the people develop an indolence that makes them uninterested in anything but superficial politics. That is the Dialogue. Religious opposition is strangled and the people turn into atheists uninterested in anything but entertainment and commerce. That is the Protocols. One shouldn’t always look for verbatim similarities.
Where Joly fields liberalism as a mask worn by the despot yielding the exact opposite of what liberalism should have produced, Golovinski launches a biting attack on liberalism as fodder for cattle.
Note how the Protocols and the Dialogue are not in disagreement. Only where Machiavelli chooses to be devious and preserve the dream of liberalism to his own benefit, the Protocols defiles the liberal dream as a dead end, in much the same manner as we today scorn socialism as a fallen contender.
| Protocol 14 | Subtext | Dialogue 12 |
|---|---|---|
Then, on every possible occasion we will publish articles, in which we will compare our beneficial rule with that of the past. The state of blessedness and peace which will then exist, in spite of its having been brought about by centuries of disturbance, will also serve to illustrate the benevolence of our new rule. |
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. |
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| The mistakes made by the Gentiles in their administration will be demonstrated by us in the most vivid colours. | It would be very important to highlight the faults of those who preceded me, to show that I have known how to avoid them. |
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We will start such a feeling of disgust towards the former régime that the nations will prefer a state of peace in a condition of enslavement, to the rights of the much-lauded liberty, which has so cruelly tortured them and drained from them the very source of human existence, and to which they were really only instigated by a crowd of adventurers who knew not what they did. |
… Versus … | The most enthusiastic and the most universal liberalism would breathe in my writings. |
Again I need to emphasise this: Anybody focussing on the Protocols’ antisemitism without any further qualifiers, needs to think hard about the strange if not tranquil declarations just delivered.
I know that Golovinski applies colours to Joly’s words, but those colours are not random. Can anybody really deny that at his heart burns a conviction that liberalism is a monster no less cold than the cold monster of Napoleon III?
A joke? Perhaps. Maybe I fail to notice the same irony in those passages that is noticeable present in the paragraphs where he twists Joly’s words.
It continues:
| Protocol 14 | Subtext | Dialogue 12 |
|---|---|---|
Useless changes of government, to which we have been prompting the Gentiles and by this means undermining their state edifice, will by that time have so worried the nations that they will prefer to endure anything from us out of fear of having to return to the turmoils and misfortunes which they will have gone through. |
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We will draw special attention to the historical mistakes of the Gentile Governments, by which they tormented humanity for so many centuries in their lack of understanding anything that regards true welfare of human life and in their search for fantastic plans of social welfare. |
It would be very important to highlight the faults of those who preceded me, to show that I have known how to avoid them. One would thus harbor against the regimes that my power has succeeded a kind of antipathy, even aversion, which will become as irreparable as an expiation. |
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For the Gentiles have not noticed that their plans, instead of improving the relations of man to man, have only made them worse and worse. And these relations are the very foundations of human existence. The whole force of our principles and measures will be in the fact that they will be explained by us as being in bright contrast to the broken-down régime of former social conditions. |
In case it isn’t obvious: The Jewish narrator is in the last paragraph carrying Golovinski’s own words.
We reject the proposition. Our human relations have improved over the decades, not worsened. Maybe we are even right about that.
They say that Trump is making progress in negotiating a deal between Hamas and Israel. How did he manage that, when the preceding administration failed despite their liberal respect for human values? By flagrant disregard of the respect that liberal rights demand. He bullies and cajoles both sides step by step, and so do his henchmen.
The lesson? Either it is that true leaders don’t give a flying toss about feelings of injustice and respect for individuals, because that respect would obstruct their ability to herd the cattle out of harms way. Or it is that the Montesquieu’s of the world will win and in the end Trump’s efforts are thrown on the bonfire and peace breaks down, because no true peace can prevail unless all members of both countries have been converted to boring, peaceful home-gardening liberals.
I am exaggerating of course, but the question is of relevance. Hiding the coercive hand behind a CIA won’t change the fact that despotic monster prevailed.
| Protocol 14 | Subtext | Dialogue 12 |
|---|---|---|
Our philosophers will expose all the disadvantages of Gentile religions, but no one will ever judge our religion from its true point of view, because nobody will ever have a thorough knowledge of it except our own people, who will never venture to unveil its mysteries. |
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In the so-considered leading countries, we have circulated an insane, dirty and disgusting literature. |
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. […] This plague-ridden literature, the course of which one could not stop, |
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For a short time after the recognition of our rule, we shall continue to encourage the prevalence of such a literature, in order that it should the more pointedly mark the contrast of the teachings which we will issue from our exalted position. |
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. |
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Our learned men, who were educated for the purpose of leading the Gentiles, will make speeches, draw up plans, sketch notes and write articles, by means of which we will influence men’s minds, inclining them towards that knowledge and those ideas which will suit us. |
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. |
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For arguments sake, I will from time to time consider how the Protocols might appear to some poor soul who really believes they are for real.
While brimful of condescending statements, what would the reader do with those where the Jews plans to take over to facilitate a better society? Yes, indeed one in which we are all gentile cattle, as opposed to feudalism, where we are all political cattle. Well fed and protected from our neighbours. Not mindless, but adequately under-informed that it fits our natural primitive intelligence.
The Protocols play around as well.
The condescending parts inflicts their own wounds. If it is true that most of the movements and ideas we have believed in lately are made up for other purposes, then what protection do we have? Slaughtering the Jews will not make us smarter. We are apparently inherently stupid. We believed the theory because they made sense. Then we are informed by someone with fedora and glasses that those theories are circulated to deceive us. Then what? They no longer make sense?
It’s just a game.
PARADISE LOST