8th June

Something nags me.

I dug into the history of antisemitism to remove my focus from the Nazis, and quickly stumbled upon the old Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Briefly, the document seems to have been invented in a turbulent Russia, perhaps around 1902-03. It circulated in the ultra-conservative circles, some say as an unserious document at first. Shrouded in mystery, it was published by a Sergei Nilus in Russia in 1905.

Purporting to be the result of a leak from a circuit of Jewish wise elders who for some reason found it necessary to regularly meet and reiterate their plans of taking over the world.

Ever since then, the world has speculated about who wrote it. Some say the Tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana, some say The Black Hundred. The Black Hundred was the name of a violent pro-czarist, antisemitic / ultra-conservative group in the fragmented Russia before, during and after the Russian Revolution.

It spread to Europe where of course rampant antisemitic groups picked it up and translated it into various languages.

Surprisingly, its thought matter is so virulent that even today, it is accompanied by all sorts of warnings before reading it.

In some ways it is like an unfunny version of the Monty Python killing joke: If you tell it, you are severely chastised and warned that someone else will die because of the poison you took unprotected.

Some background

I decided to look into the matter. As a historical text, it is confusing.

The document falls in the genre of “found footage”: Someone has come in possession of a secret journal leaked from the inside of a vast organisation (or according to other accounts, a secret meeting was unwittingly overheard by a journalist who transcribed it and handed it over to Sergei Nilus). Plans are revealed and detailed by high ranking Jews to other high ranking Jews.

It is a story logic which we are often willing to accept in movies and novels, and indeed, scholars today lean towards thinking that one such novel was used as a template, if not several.

Peering back in time from today, we look at it from a purely antisemitic perspective:

1. It claims that Jews operate through a central, global organ where a strategy is concocted, which permeates every government and organisation in the world that matters.
2. The perennial floating claim: Jews have a plan, they have friends all over and due to their high prevalence in academic circles and media, control our thoughts. Likewise they control government and finance again due to great involvement in central bodies (noticeable as clergy or “deep state”, a position which apparently yields much greater power than we can possibly imagine).
3. These accusations levelled against Jews are so contagious that unless we arrive pre-bunked as Ursula von der Leyen would say, we will become infected and start to see Jewish conspiracies everywhere, soon forming violent antisemitic gangs on the streets.
4. People can understand Fake or Real, but according to this pre-bunking mentality, not Faked Real. Nothing is more dangerous (it would seem) than an author refusing to place his text into a truth-fiction spectrum, so we know what to think before encountering it.

This view shines through in the various translations I was able to dig up. Most translations emphasise use of words like Goyim to conjure the image of hateful Jews lustfully seeking to inflict pain on the world. Perhaps it is, but for now, I stick with an obscure translation of Sergei Nilus’ own book. It makes it easier to see the actual ideas expressed.

We call it a hoax, but that is of course to protect ourselves. It is a piece of artistic social engineering. Like the Blair Witch Project or the (somewhat overstated) The War of the Worlds radio play panic.

The authors took what they could from other books and political pamphlets. Its plagiarism was quickly discovered in 1920 by New York Times. It paraphrased or directly borrowed from older political texts.

Frankly, there is a chance it started as one of those things that — to a racist — simply feels better to write than it does for others to read.

By other accounts, it is professionally written by either the secret police (fitting with tsar Nicholas II’s attitude towards Jews) or a professional writer commissioned for the purpose.

Its opening words are fit for a dime novel.

Structure of fear

Why is it that we fear something as weak as a simple document? Because its effects takes place beyond our self-perception as rational actors. It can present itself as a humorous parody (which is why the translators errs when imbuing the text with frustrated anger), and insert itself like all racism as an “unserious” contribution to our colloquial everyday behaviour, which is oddly enough picked up by everybody.

An untruth that starts as a joke, grows big as a joke until one day through historical circumstances (and a little help from its friends) it is brought to collision with the common reality of yesterday and its proponents prove ready to defend it with violence. “This is our reality!”

World view as a badge, a banner you can hold up over your heads, an excuse for confrontation and an armour against those we are aiming to confront.

We fear the effect, because any idea can manoeuvre inside the skulls of whole populations without resistance. Marxism was an antidote: Suddenly not all social ideas made sense anymore. Some failed the test. We cannot embrace Marxism anymore, because of our political beliefs. We are left with ridicule and scorn as our only means of protection.

We fear the effect, because to deal with it, we must relinquish the notion that we have a self that acts. If you go to work every day, it is tempting to proclaim loudly that “I work hard”.

But there never was a self that worked, only nature finding way in and through the human animal. In a functioning society this is hidden. But in the disrupted society, the herd flocks in a different direction. Different forces, but still no “selves” doing anything.

Relinquish that wishful dream, and we can start to pick apart history in earnest.

Given the previous consideration, I would venture that the inciting moment of historical change is when the herd changes direction.

Abandoning a safe position, be it income or other essentials in life, is not something we even can do. In Freudian terms, the ego cannot act against the unconscious. Well, it can, in Freudian terms. But likely he also overestimated the role of the ego.

But if mass unemployment and civil disorder becomes widespread, a critical mass of people will experience the unsettling reality of economic uncertainty and can potentially coalesce into something dangerous.

Never underestimate the power of “Unruhe”, of anxiety for the future. Even the most meek among us will experience savage aggressive behaviour.

Without this aggression, no Holocaust. This is my current theory.

My dilemma is no different from the historian’s, though.

Wealth and surplus would seem to be the remedy. So is poverty a necessary condition to ethnic cleansing? My limited knowledge of history suggests that it isn’t.

Another thing with aggression: A bad day at the office inspires some to go home and kick the dog. But once done, the pressure has fallen, and most people usually regrets. More is at play here.

As a Black Hundred inspired text

What nags me is the overt connection it has to exactly the situation in Russia in that era, which seems to have fallen out of our focus on Jewish hate.

The “manuscript” wallows in disgust over socialism and any other strain of anti-tsarist ideology. No doubt to the typical member of a Black Hundred gang, the Jew was indeed the personification of the disease that caused the demise of their beloved tsarist regime. The fact that they are much closer to the impending fall of the tsar is plain to see. That threat looms over the tsar’s head as the people are rising in socialist, liberal and anarchist guises.

I certainly see it as a part of the antisemitic folklore. I know of reception theory, but have yet to acquire the necessary skills. However, this is a clear case where we can see the convoluted journey of a text. What the authors wrote ended up being different from what the audience in another country read.

It seems to serve multiple simultaneous purposes:

1. Connect the despair of the ordinary people to reasons, to a machinery which explains why it is and will remain that way.
2. Attribute that machinery to the Jews
3. By deduction also establish that the antithesis to that machinery will be the cure.

In other words: The Jews know how to break it, but, conversely, by negating their machinations, you end up with … (drum whirl) … the ultra conservatism of the Black Hundreds: The tsar, the aristocracy and “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality”

The fact that the author directly connects, say, extrajudicial violence to the influence of this hidden organisation, should in my view be dissected in two layers:

1. Pin all mishaps on the Jews. The same kind of “fun” some express when they rampage through the streets and shatter storefronts.
2. Use the opportunity to express the underlying anger against the actual events that caused it in the first place, e.g. “Bolsheviks breaking down the rule of law”

First attempt at decoding the language

I have decided to pick various fragments of text and reverse engineer their conclusions.

The following passages are very revealing. They smell of condescension towards the whole liberal project.

Words from the religious heartland. Raw and unadulterated attacks on liberalism, socialism and everybody else ready to dismantle the divine glue that holds the world together (as it were).

The appeal to nature, to how we were created, brought up, whose ideas and values we inherited, which higher or lower class we hail from taken together puts the whole point of the document on display. Core conservative beliefs in our social class as untouchable, only to be inherited through bonds and closed dynasties.

This is the first time I read anything a pro-monarchist had written. I must admit I am taken aback by their — perhaps naive — conviction of the protective strength of the aristocracy.

Perhaps they are just quoting from more genuine aristocratic sources. Envisioning The Black Hundreds as anything but street gangs is hard. They incited to pogroms on Jews and political violence. Perhaps the Okhrana really is the real source?

Dying words spoken by echoes of the old feudal society.

But the Black Hundreds were more of a street gang. Code of honour is probably the strongest common denominator with the aristocracy.

Once we unearth this undercurrent of yearning for a society build on affectionate commitment, the subtext becomes much clearer.

I would venture that the Protocols were more than just a finger pointed at Jews. It contains a complete catalogue of the root issues with every competing -ism present in 1903 Russia.

There are many other protocols.

But they will have to wait until tomorrow. It is odd how a single document can focus so much energy and sadly not in a constructive way.

What happened? The time had passed and gone for the conservative movement in Russia at that time. Curtain call was waiting. Jews were easy to pick on, with the help of a strong imagination, as the cause of the changes for the worse.

And from the depths of the document shines a dying belief in the old ways. Torn apart by new tendencies.

PARADISE LOST