9th June
With each day I am more and more inclined to believe that the Protocols were written by someone with an aristocratic upbringing.
Through it runs a system of understanding, of grasping, that fits oddly with the mental image of window-smashers. The document is a game on words in a world of political games. It is a game toying with all the contemporary games within games at once. In that sense the Protocols is a modernist text.
Sentence by sentence it transfers some defensive position of the aristocracy onto the reader and in the process converts it to an offensive attitude targeting a third and unrelated group — scapegoating, but humorously and skilfully executed. Not to be taken seriously, of course, except for the Pogroms.
It is too levelheaded to could have been written by unintelligent racist vandals. It radiates surplus energy. Someone got something off their chest, that’s for sure.
A popular suggestion that makes sense is that it was contrived as a plot by a cynical government to direct attention away from internal affairs and imperialistic warfare — scapegoating, applied with cynicism.
A professional author? Likely too.
Tentatively, however, I will stick with the theory of one or several aristocrats or close friends of such in tandem with a good writer. Why? Because below the layer of anger over a lost system flows an undercurrent of actual lamentation of the corruption of the order of the world.
Frankly, also because I have known such a character. He had a good heart but his noble disposition brought him in constant conflict with his surroundings. In the end the friction and struggle for survival in a world, from which he was effectively ousted, grew intolerable, and he too succumbed to paranoia, producing theories and accusations not unlike those in the Protocols. His brain was constantly guessing at the motives behind the events in the world today. The quintessential manoeuvre of a paranoid person.
9th June — afternoon
Yesterday I discovered an article by a certain Walter Laqueur in Mosaic online magazine which described how most theories about the authorship of the Protocols amounted mostly to speculative guesswork. It voiced some of the same doubts I myself feel towards the question of origins.
Translation
I have to make a note on the translation though. Choice of words can make a huge difference, amplifying completely different aspects. A prominent example is the word used by these hypothetical Jews when referring to the non-Jews falling under their spell.
- The translation of Sergei Nilus uses “Gentiles”.
- Laqueur’s translation uses “Goyim” .
- An American translation I came across, used “Goyim cattle”.
The last two emanates the tendency in translation to employ literary devices expressing feverish shrieks of disdain on behalf of these fictitious Jews towards non-Jews. It amplifies the picture of depravity and moral sickness.
It also removes attention from the political content of the Protocols.
I could very well imagine the harsher expressions to be the actual words and emphasis used in the German versions of the Protocols.
For a member of the Nazi party, seeing Jews portrayed infected with wretched hate as a consequence of their own defective character traits, fits their Nazi world view perfectly.
It certainly does not fit the ideological subtext, which is busy uncovering weaknesses in liberal democracy in a skilful manner.
Further, to a Nazi party member, the political contents of the Protocols does not smell distasteful.
To the rest of humanity, the political content most certainly should be disturbing. The essence is invariably this:
All the values we hold high, are artificially crafted, worthless gimmicks that appears to be of unparalleled importance, but in reality is nothing but smoke screen effects. Our strongest gaze cannot penetrate the thick layer of bureaucracy and interest groups in and around government.
Freedom, liberty, equality? Well, we got you all riled up there, didn’t we?
Division of powers, executive, judiciary, legislative? Silly you, for believing that you could separate the functions of government. All you achieved was a dysfunctional lump called government. From now on, your divided institutions will seek to reunite with the lost powers. Judges will adjudicate on politically sensitive matters, executives will interfere with legislation or propose their own. Legislative assemblies will impeach presidents to control policy.
Democracy, free choice? Perfect, then we can manipulate you using mass media and citizen participation to keep to motivated to serve our purposes.
Free markets? You are effectively given the reins of the country over to businessmen and bankers. Moral corruption is the result.
Science, enlightenment? Yes, peasants, put your faith in something above your own head. Replace us, the noblemen, with whatever theory grabs the world today.
9th June — evening
The message of the Protocols is not:
“The Jews are to blame”
… but …
“The Jews are to blame for swaying our trust and loyalty away from those better than the masses. From God, Tsar and noblemen”.
10th June
Comparing Walter Laqueur’s reaction to the content with my own reaction, I note that he as expected repeats the global mantra: “Exposed repeatedly as itself a monstrosity — an outright forgery and fraud”.
It means: The purpose of the Protocols is to slander the Jews using all possible means and blame them for all ailments.
Most essayists will concur here. I have decided not to. Be that on my conscience.
I agree that the document has had devastating consequences for advancing antisemitism. I also agree that it certainly injects a Jewish cabal into all levels of society.
I disagree that it is the purpose of the document. Even the passage Laqueur quoted speaks against this very description. I have included some of the preceding lines to keep context
| From Protocol 10 (Sergei Nilus’) translation | |
|---|---|
| All these institutions have divided among themselves all functions of government, that is to say, administrative, legislative, and executive powers. And their functions have become similar to those of the divers separate organs of the human body. | (Not quoted by Laqueur) When aristocrats ruled, legislature, executive, administration was fused and working. |
| If we injure any part of the government machinery, the state will fall sick as a human body and will die. | Dividing power makes it susceptible to attack and infestation. |
| When we injected the poison of liberalism into the organism of the state its political complexion changed; the states became infected with a mortal illness, that is, decomposition of the blood. There remains only to await the end of their agonies. Liberalism gave birth to constitutional governments, which took the place of autocracy — the only wholesome form of government for the Gentiles. | Once the plebs got hands on power, the rot set in. Common people think they want freedom, but all they need is faith in the Monarch. |
| Constitution, as you know for yourselves, is nothing more than a school for dissensions, disagreements, quarrels, and useless party agitations; in brief, it is the school of everything that weakens the efficiency of the government. The tribune, as well as the Press, has tended to make the rulers inactive and weak, thus rendering them useless and superfluous, and for this reason they were deposed in many countries. | Plebeians know how to quarrel at the inn. They don’t understand government. Autocrats are removed not due to faults of their own. People should be ruled and not interfere. |
| Then the institution of a republican era became possible; and then, in the place of the sovereign, we put a caricature of the same in the person of a president, whom we chose from the mob from among our creatures and our slaves. Thus we laid the mine which we have placed under the Gentiles, or rather under the Gentile nations. In the near future we will make the president a responsible person. |
Constitutional monarchy at least had a real regent. Republics have a clown president rising through ranks of docile idiots who are blind to the actual machinations of power. |
| Then we will have no scruples in boldly applying the plans, for which our own “dummy” will be responsible. What does it matter to us if the ranks of place-hunters become weak, if confusions arise from the fact that a president cannot be found — confusions which will definitely disorganise the country? | In democracies, presidents tend to be rag dolls controlled by finance and organisations. |
| In order to achieve these results, we will prearrange for the election of such presidents, whose past record is marked with some “Panama” scandal or other shady hidden transaction. A president of such a kind will be a faithful executor of our plans, as he will fear denouncement, and will be under the influence of the fear which always possesses a man who has attained power and is anxious to retain the privileges and honours associated with his high office. The House of Representatives will elect, protect, and screen the president; but we will deprive this House of its power of introducing and altering laws. | A president from the common people is vain, weak, controllable. He cares what people think about him and is thus not worthy of power. |
| This power we will give to the responsible president, who will be a mere puppet in our hands. In that case the power of the president will become a target exposed to various attacks, but we will give him means of defence in his right of appeal to the people above the heads of the representatives of the nation, that is to say, direct to the people, who are our blind slaves — the majority of the mob. | Defects in the liberal institutions include: Executive’s ability to propose laws, disempowerment of representatives and control of the body politic through mass media. Political knowledge is essential in decision making. Representatives can learn it, voters will never. |
[— — —Parts skipped — — —] |
[here the story changes to focus on martial law, which is a corollary to the next parts Walter Laqueur quotes] |
| Moreover he will annul laws in cases when we consider this to be desirable. He will also have the right to propose new temporary laws and even modifications in the constitutional work of the government, using as a motive for so doing the exigencies of the welfare of the country. | Defects in liberal constitutions: Electorate looses control in times of crisis. |
| Such measures will enable us to gradually withdraw any rights and indulgences that we may have been forced to grant when we first assumed power. Such indulgences we will have to introduce in the constitution of govern- ments in order to conceal the gradual abolition of all constitutional rights, when the time comes to change all existing governments for our autocracy. | History since the Enlightenment or the French Revolution may look like the people gaining their freedom, but be warned: In reality, the people are fooled to leave one ruler for another, more nebulous one. Under pressure, government will slowly erode liberal freedoms once given, citing excuses that the ordinary citizen cannot argue against. His own protection. |
This is the passage quoted by Laqueur. He then explains:
Clearly, all of this elaborate and sophisticated-sounding ratiocination, of whose intricacy I’ve been able to convey the merest hint, is the work of an extremely fertile imagination
And that’s about it for the political content. Like most commentators — from professors to journalists — he latches on to what we immediately notice as visible: The antisemitism.
I notice that the political content is a contestable, but succinct critique of the liberal constitution. Reversing the reading direction, one can reconstruct a loyalist viewpoint that exposes the fault lines in the democratic machine. Even today, we talk about how civil rights are rolled back inch by inch with reference to war on terror, how money can buy the presidency, how media moguls can shape politics. Voters look towards the “strong man”, not understanding that they by nature seek the kind of ruler who cannot be compromised by persuasion. Being undiscerning beings of a lower nature, they end up voting for a Hitler or whomever appears to have the outward regalia, but in reality is just as human as themselves.
The antidote according to these people appears to be men of privilege. That the people relinquish control to their masters who are better, stronger, more fit for government than them.
The passages that Laqueur skipped concerned themselves with weaknesses of the tripartite government under martial law. It clearly seems like they are alluding to USA, but I can’t help noticing how the weaknesses pointed out came to fruition in a country much closer to Russia, culminating in Operation Barbarossa.
| Part about martial law skipped in the above | |
|---|---|
| Moreover, we will empower the president to proclaim martial law. We will explain this prerogative by the fact that the president, being head of the army, must have the same under his command for the protection of the new republican constitution, which protection is his duty as its responsible representative. | Martial law is the gaping hole in liberal theory which is an illusionary theory. |
| Of course, under such conditions, the key of the inner position will be in our hands, and none other than ourselves will control legislation. | In times of crisis, control always return to few hands, rarely held accountable. Advisers, think tanks etc. |
| Moreover, when we introduce the new republican constitution, we will, under pretext of state secrecy, deprive the house of its right of questioning the desirability of measures taken by the Government. | Information labelled top secret is only disseminated to a few outside the executive branch. |
| By this new constitution we will also reduce the number of the representatives of the nation to a minimum, thus also reducing an equivalent number of political passions, and passion for politics. | As distance between voters and the complex committee system grows, the electorate looses connection with politics at large. |
| If, in spite of this, they should become recalcitrant, we will abolish the remaining representatives by appealing to the nation. It will be the President’s prerogative to appoint the chairman and vice-chairman of the house of representatives and of the senate. In place of continuous sessions of parliaments we will institute sessions of a few months’ duration. | Not the US. Hitler did something like this. |
| Moreover, the president, as head of the executive power, will have the right to convene or dissolve parliament and, in case of dissolution, to defer the convocation of a new parliament. But, in order that the president should not be held responsible for the consequences of these, strictly speaking, illegal acts, before our plans have matured, we will persuade the Ministers and other high administrative officials, who surround the president, to circumvent his orders by issuing instructions of their own and thus compel them to bear the responsibility instead of the President. This function we would especially recommend to be allotted to the senate, to the council of state, or to the cabinet, but not to individuals. Under our guidance the President will interpret laws, which might be understood in several ways. | Control high ranking officials through a theoretical consensus dominated by reports and intelligence which cannot be counterbalanced due to resource limits. Without qualified second opinions, generals and president must act on what it presented to them. |
Germany went that route in only a few decades. The Emperor’s sovereignty and autocracy came to an end, following a period of a few decades with a dysfunctional government.
As NSDAP rose in popularity, it won and tilted the boat completely. Once Hitler was chancellor, he curtailed government to a point where it was practically eliminated through the Enabling Act of 1933.
10th June — Evening
How does the escalation in pogroms and antisemitism in the decades around the turn of the 19th century in Russia fit with this notion of an aristocratic viewpoint? Unless aristocrats are just as racist as everybody else.
Perhaps a key part is how contempt for the lower classes is built into the nobleman’s world. If indeed it is so. On this account I speculate wildly.
Peasants who choose not to die in battle are despicable creatures. Even worse, an entire ethnic group who choose to be merchants and bankers are despicable as a race, by their blood.
Could that be the explanation?
Or was the whole document just a clever way to rally a wily population around something simple? That would be the first question to answer: Is some hidden group of Okhrana deputies feeding lies about a hidden group of Jews feeding lies to the public?
Going with the Okhrana theory, the Protocols on a political level are also thought provoking. Why?
Because they overtly state that the Achilles heel of liberal democracy is the disturbing easiness with which the public opinion as well as politicians can be manipulated, all the while — in the very process of stating this — accomplishing the very same.
Sleight of hand. While everybody looks at the Jews, the manipulators — who are also loyalists and hence adverse to parliamentarism — pervert the self same process. A warning coming into fruition by the warning itself.
It all rests on the simple fact that the institutional world we live in is opaque. We cannot peer through even a few layers of county clerks and their superiors, let alone have any idea what lies behind whomever we vote for.
Distrust is useless. Even an acute liberal awareness that checks and balances are needed for transparency, that very awareness makes us trust the checks and balances. And when we trust, forces that are all but blind can sink their hook into our minds and control us from an unseen position.
11th June
Professor Abraham Ascher responded to Walter Laqueur’s article.
The Black Hundreds is mentioned in the lexicon as a paramilitary wing of the Union of the Russian People 1905 party headed by Alexander Dubrovin amongst others. This latter ultra-conservative loyalist party is what Abraham Ascher writes about.
He writes:
About the social composition of the party, not much can be said with certainty; apparently, it attracted the support mainly of the degraded and widely looked-down-upon sectors of the working class (the Lumpenproletariat), plus a few disgruntled members of the middle class and a small number of peasants and ordinary workers.
Yesterday I felt some doubt as to my theory. When reading this quotation, I am forced to either return to my theory or accept that the Russians have excellent polemic abilities.
Examining my own thoughts, I note that
- The critique of liberalism and socialism can be read from any contemporary 1900s book or newspaper. All it takes is a memory.
- Perverting that criticism into a Jewish conspiracy isn’t hard to do.
- Academics and newspaper journalists were quite adept at intricate polemical styles and certainly well schooled enough that they could accomplish something like this.
However, I still doubt that Dubrovin and his friends invented the political arguments.
After all, what is a loyalist? Someone who advocates returning power to another class than his own. Consequence: He cannot represent such a class himself.
Am I simply being overwhelmed at the intricacy of the Protocols? Am I just shocked that nobody in the West comments on anything but the antisemitism, which is understandable, but still surprising?
Were all the arguments ordinary and trivial to most people of the era? After all, Russia’s inhabitants have had centuries to internalise them. Did Dubrovin or Nilus or whoever assembled the Protocols really do much other than add the Jewish conspiracy theory to already well known arguments?
12th June
The members of the URP were especially impressed by the Protocols’ evident confirmation that the “elders” of international Jewry were conspiring to seize control both of their country and of Europe through a revolution carried out by Christians.
Says Abraham Ascher in the aforementioned article, and I don’t doubt him. But if so, this is the point where the document transitions from a political to a racialising phenomenon. Like in 1930s Germany, where we see a similar discontinuity between Goebbels’ political exhortations in Der Angriff and Streicher’s racial satire in Der Stürmer.
But I cannot afford to overlook the fact that racism is a self-feeding monster.
Or if it feeds, it feeds on something immaterial. If there exists unfulfilled needs that drives it, it isn’t obvious that hunger or poverty are counted amongst such needs. Racism can exist very well in 21st century rich societies. Even violent racism.
If anything, the Protocols in its political incarnation is food for racists. People who know what they think, all they need is more wood on the bonfires, graciously provided to them by the Okhrana, the URP, the Nazi Party or whatever organisation stands to gain. Cynicism? Nothing is certain.
But look at me. I approach racism like a zoologist would approach an orangutan. If I treat it as a specimen, the doors of reality will be closed to me.
On the other hand, what Ascher and similarly minded people must not forget, is that antisemitism is a systematising device, not on insight into human motivation. The people murdering Jews are not seeing Jews, they see chimeras.
Ascher believes the URP to have had influence. He says: “Although the URP did not succeed in attracting a mass following, its influence was far from negligible.”
This is one kind of historicism. He continues:
Late in December 1905, the tsar welcomed Dubrovin and 23 members of his movement at court and paid careful attention to their declarations of loyalty to the autocracy. After accepting two URP badges, he declared his agreement with their aims. “I am accountable,” he said, “for the exercise of my power [only] to God.”
His kind of historicism tells us that the URP leadership can walk up to the tsar and exert influence, or by showing him their loyalty, impress him.
Another kind of historicism would read the events as Nicholas II behaving in accordance with his aristocratic upbringing. He accepts their badges, but issues a stark reminder that nothing can stand between a regent and the almighty (except for an occasional mad monk, whose proximity to God is even greater).
Being convinced of a fundamental unaccountability goes hand in hand with aggression towards any encroachment.
Nicholas II is rumoured to have been notoriously blind towards demand for change in rulership. In the end, it cost him his life.
Whether or not Nicholas II “thought about it”, i.e. adopting the URP’s stance against Jews, is another question.
12th June — Evening
There are sections of the Protocols which sound primitive and base. There are other passages which are sophisticated and political, playing on the vulnerabilities of democracy in the shape of mass manipulation and danger of infiltration from outside. Those two seem ill fitted with each other.
I noted that the Times had connected the much older sources with almost identical passages in the Protocols. The lexicon brings examples of passages being almost identical to Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Perhaps I need to examine that text instead.
I have to keep reading. There is more work to be done here.
PARADISE LOST