16th November
Some days ago I speculated on how wildly off track I could easily have proven to be, if someone handed me proof that the Protocols were written before the Dialogue.
The point is that a simple change in our expectations will have enormous consequences for our future understanding.
In lieu of that, I would have to either be damn certain that the historical circumstances are correct, or I would have to imagine many scenarios for the text to exist in.
Interpretation’s biggest challenge: Context
Throwing out ideas in that regard:
What if the Protocols were written by… a Jew? A German nationalist? In 1920? In 1850? What if Matvei Golovinski was not the author at all?
A better example: If someone told me that the author was not a pro-tsarist writer. Rather he was of a conservative strain which favoured freedom from monarchical authority.
Such a proposition would completely flip the sign on almost everything. When the Protocols used the Jewish voice to formulate a program of oppression, it would really mean “the Jews are just as bad as the aristocracy”.
When the Jewish voice expressed veiled admiration for their better counterpart in history - the aristocracy - it would really mean “see how both the Jews and the aristocracy purport to be better than us and still dream of power over us”.
It would be much closer to a liberal text, and it would certainly be twice as antisemitic as I have first thought.
17th November
Continuing yesterday’s thought on interpretation and its difficulties, and looking at how grossly wrong The International Jew got the Protocols, there is a clear pattern manifesting itself:
Interpretation: A danger
If the interpreter thinks that a paragraph was genuinely written from scratch by the author, she is forced to attribute that independent piece of thinking as something the author needed to express himself.
If it later turns out that the paragraph in question was indeed pilfered from another source and humorously twisted a little bit, the previous interpretation now loses a major keystone: The author’s intention was misread. He was not in the process of pondering on his own inner thoughts, but in a shallow process of just mingling sentences.
I put enormous weight on the paragraphs where Golovinski seems to write off-script because I cannot find a similar passage in the Dialogue. But I also know that people claim there are other sources than just the Dialogue. It could be one of them.
I have mentally tried to reread some of those essential passages, and imagine it later turned out to be another passage in Joly’s text, such as a one from another chapter. It completely deflates the first interpretation.
And vice versa, of course.
Nevertheless, I slightly lean towards a belief that statistics is on my side. There are so many cases where this picture emerges of pro-tsarist propaganda spin on a liberal text, that I think the case can be argued. There are even a few where there can be almost no doubt, such as an interjected single paragraph between two consecutive original source paragraphs.
Matvei Golovinski (or whoever wrote it) seems to have something on his heart.
18th November
The Protocols is a Rorschach test.
It lets you imagine a consistent picture and provides you with the combustible materials for the subsequent fires of conviction.
Any interpretation is tentative at best and should be handled with the utmost care.
19th November
I need to get back to the Protocols.
20th November
Last Protocol I went through Protocol 15, which largely corresponded with Dialogue 13. However, the latter part seemed to be without equivalent in neither Dialogue 13 nor the subsequent ones. I looked ahead a little.
But today’s Protocol 16 squarely matches with one section of Dialogue 16.
I may have to go back and see what happened to Dialogue 14 and 15 later.
Dialogue 14 is about using the court of cassation to modify interpretation of the laws, which is another way to put legislature under government control.
Dialogue 15 is about manipulating and using the voting mechanism to retain control.
Dialogue 16 is partly about eduction, and so is Protocol 16.
Protocol 16
● State nominates all teachers. ● No political education (only for a select crowd). ● Political knowledge messes with our heads. ● Less history, more focus on learning unselfishness. ● Per-caste curriculum. Keep classes apart.
The universities
| Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, Ch. 16 | Subtext | Dialogue 16, p. 98 |
|---|---|---|
| With the object of destroying any kind of collective enterprise, other than our own, we will annihilate collective work in its initial stage | Concerning the University, the current order of things is satisfactory to me. You are indeed not unaware that the great bodies of education are no longer organized as they once were. One assures me that, almost everywhere, they have lost their autonomy and are now only public services supported by the State. |
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— that is to say, we will transform the universities and reconstruct them according to our own plans. |
The conspiracy |
Golovinski reminds us that the Jews are in control: They will transform the blah blah blah.
Since I am on the subject of interpretations:
- It means just that: The (damn) Jews are constantly plotting to take over the world. This is TIJ’s position.
- Following the Montesquieu/Machiavelli dynamic (clean/perverted spectrum of rule) and applying it to the Jew/aristocracy spectrum, it says that the aristocracy really would like to rein in the educational system. At least it reveals an animosity to the world of theory that festers on young minds.
A certain degree of animosity towards the corrosive effect of education certainly escapes the author in the following paragraphs. But again, the Protocols is a Rorschach test.
| Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, Ch. 16 | Subtext | Dialogue 16, p. 98 |
|---|---|---|
The heads of the universities and their professors will be specially prepared by means of elaborate secret programmes of action, in which they will be instructed and from which they will not be able to deviate with impunity. |
Prot: An undisclosed program. Dia: A program supported by punishment. | Thus, as I have told you more than once, the State would be the prince; the moral direction of the public establishments would be in his hands; it would be his agents who inspire the minds of the young. |
They will be very carefully nominated and will be entirely dependent on the Government. |
Both the leaders and the members of the teaching bodies of all level would be named by the government; they would be tied to it; they would depend on it. If there remained – here or there – a few traces of independent organization in some public school or Academy, it would be easy to lead it back to a common center of unity and direction. This would be a matter of a regulation or even a simple ministerial decree. |
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We will exclude from our syllabus all teachings of civil law, as well as of any other political subject. |
Nevertheless, I must not abandon this subject without telling you that I regard it as very important that, in the teaching of law, studies of constitutional politics would be prohibited. |
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Only a few men from among the initiated will be selected for their conspicuous abilities, in order to be taught these sciences. |
The conspiracy: Special topics only for the elite. |
So there will be useful education, like in the Dialogue, but no political education, also like in the Dialogue.
And then the omnipresent “we will” that The International Jew thrives on.
| Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, Ch. 16 | Subtext | Dialogue 16, p. 98 |
|---|---|---|
Universities will not be allowed to turn out into the world green young men with ideas on new constitutional reforms, as though these were comedies or tragedies, or who concern themselves with political questions, of which even their fathers had no understanding. |
I do not want the young people who are at the conclusion of their studies to be carelessly occupied with politics. To get mixed up in writing constitutions at the age of 18 is to prepare a tragedy. Such instruction could only falsify the ideas of the young people and prematurely initiate them into matters that surpass the limits of their reason. |
Joly’s wording wins… a warning to the young against getting mixed up in “writing constitutions” at 18. Sound advice!
Notice the Protocols: “of which even their father had no understanding”. Strewn all over the place are the references to inherited position in society for all classes.
This point is worth stressing. While even in the most radical interpretation such as the oral tradition of the Jewish Sanhedrin, inheritance only plays a role for the ruling elite. Not for the gentiles.
For now I keep my main interpretation on the table.
| Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, Ch. 16 | Subtext | Dialogue 16, p. 98 |
|---|---|---|
A wrong acquaintance of politics among a mass of people is the source of Utopian ideas and makes them into bad subjects. This you can see for yourselves from the educational system of the Gentiles. |
It is with badly digested, badly understood notions that one prepares fake statesmen, utopians whose temerity of spirit will later be translated into temerity of action. |
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We had to introduce all these principles into their educational system, in order that we might as successfully destroy their social structure as we have done. |
The conspiracy. | |
When we are in power we will remove from educational programmes all subjects which might upset the brains of youth and will make obedient children out of them, who will love their ruler and recognise in his person the main pillar of peace and of public welfare. |
It will be necessary that the generations that are born under my reign are raised with respect for established institutions and with love for the prince. |
Returning to the subject of interpretation, the last sentence is a great puzzle. Love thy prince, yes, but pillar of peace and public welfare? How demonic!
Listing the various candidates:
- The International Jew is right: This is written by a Sanhedrin Jew plotting to take over the world, and the speech is purely internal. In that case, they are completely benevolent. Their aim is at stripping away Gentile power to save the world from disaster and bring it back to peace and public welfare.
- My interpretation: This is written by Golovinski, a pro-tsarist propagandist with antisemitic prejudices which are present, but not central to his program (unlike the Black Hundreds in Russia). In that case, the reflection from the actual tsar and his role in leading the country to peace, can clearly be seen. It fits with my prejudices about how an aristocrat might think.
- The text is primarily antisemitic and meant to provoke liberal-slanted minds. In that case, the statement is a provocation because it proposes to strip our liberal rights over any kind of fancy idea. The Jews are just as bad as the aristocracy, which we cleverly beheaded.
- It is a mindless rewording of Joly’s similar sentence aiming at the students’ love for their prince. No doubt the very repetition of Joly’s version takes the sting completely out of it. Well, almost. Joly’s prince wants the children’s love to satisfy his power-hungry nature. Golovinski’s council repeatedly returns to the theme of peace and prosperity. Perhaps I am jaded by knowing someone with a lineage from the old aristocracy, but I do see the vestiges of an archaic value system.
| Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, Ch. 16 | Subtext | Dialogue 16, p. 98 |
|---|---|---|
Instead of classics and the study of ancient history, which contains more bad examples than good, we will introduce the study of the problems of the future. |
I would also make a quite ingenuous use of my control over education: in general, I believe that it is a great wrong to neglect contemporary history in the schools. It is at least as essential to know one’s own time as that of Pericles. |
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We will erase from the memory of man, the bygone ages, which may be unpleasant to us, leaving only such facts as would show the errors of the Gentile governments in marked colours. Subjects dealing with questions of practical life, social organisation and with the dealings of one man with another, as also lectures against bad selfish examples — which are infectious and cause evil, and all other similar questions of an instinctive character will be in the forefront of our educational programme. |
I would like the history of my reign to be taught in the schools while I am still alive. This would be how a new prince enters into the hearts of a generation. |
The Protocols has “lectures against bad selfish examples – which are infectious and cause evil” and the Dialogue has “how a new prince enters into the hearts of a generation”.
They are not alike. Joly writes about a despot who wants to be the superstar of his country. It would be safe to posit that Napoleon III would heartily disagree with Joly’s interpretation of his own motives.
The Protocols write about a ruling class who seems to confess to a need for order in the world that can only come about through unselfishness in political matters.
Unless the TIJ wants to abandon their “spur to mastery” idea about the Jews of all ranks, I can’t see how those two narratives can be reconciled.
If TIJ’s worst suspicion is correct and there is a Jewish Sanhedrin, it has one purpose: Use the superior intellect of the Jews to strip away liberal freedom from the gentiles before it is too late and save the world from them. Restore order as it were to gain a harmonious and prosperous society once again.
I hardly think that is what Dearborn Independent had in mind.
Keeping castes apart
The next section about the necessity to design different curriculums for different classes seems to be without counterpart in the Dialogue. I have searched the book from end to end to no avail. I cannot locate where Joly would be talking about classes and castes in relation to education.
Furthermore, the piece is jammed in between two passages that do correspond to subsequent passages in the Dialogue.
I conclude cautiously that these are Golovinski’s own words, well aware that if I find them elsewhere, adapted from other books, then there is much less to justify my idea that they have special significance. Except of course that the author at least has taken the time to locate the sentiment given.
| Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, Ch. 16 | Subtext | Dialogue 16 |
|---|---|---|
These programmes will be specially drawn up for the different classes and castes, the education of which will be kept strictly apart. |
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It is most important to lay stress on this particular system. Each class or caste will have to be educated separately, according to its particular position and work. |
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A chance genius always has known and always will know how to penetrate into a higher caste but, for the sake of this quite exceptional occurrence, it is not expedient to mix the education of the different castes and to admit such men into higher ranks, in order that they may only occupy the places of those who are born to fill them. You know for yourselves how fatal it was for the Gentiles when they gave way to the absolutely idiotic idea of making no difference between the social classes. |
Frankly I feel that other interpreters need to invest a bit of time defending their ideas.
A very different debate is of course the political attack on liberalism’s liberty, equality and fraternity.
The Protocols is a bunch of warnings (flying in the face of Joly’s underlying preference for freedom) against liberty.
Chief among those warnings is and remains the one about the masses being seduced and fooled. We think we have political science, but it is the irresponsible oligarchy that has us running according to their scheme.
The real question is: How does Golovinski’s warnings look a hundred years later? Did we actually do better without aristocratic rule? Our material wealth has certainly exploded, but as we remember, we are unable to invent anything but “material” products. Can we build a just society?
We think that we can, all we have to do now is to fight poverty, disease and misery. The constant and perennial fight against poverty.
On the other hand, how well did the aristocrat fare?
| Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, Ch. 16 | Subtext | Dialogue 16, p. 98 |
|---|---|---|
In order that the sovereign should gain a firm place in the hearts of his subjects it is necessary that, during his reign, the nation should be taught, both in schools as well as in public places, the importance of his activity and the benevolence of his enterprise. |
This would be how a new prince enters into the hearts of a generation. [repeated] |
The Protocols in the following section adds little compared with the Dialogue, I believe.
| Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, Ch. 16 | Subtext | Dialogue 16, p. 98 |
|---|---|---|
We will abolish every kind of private education. |
The other means that I would employ would aim at acting against free instruction, which one cannot directly proscribe. |
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On holidays, students and their parents will have the right to attend meetings in their colleges as though these were clubs. |
Montesquieu: Would you permit professors other than yours to popularize science by the same means and without diplomas, without authorization? Machiavelli: What? Would you want me to authorize clubs?Montesquieu: No. let us pass on to another subject. |
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At these meetings professors will deliver speeches, purporting to be free lectures, on questions of men’s dealings with one another, on laws and on misunderstandings which are generally the outcome of a false conception of men’s social position, … |
The universities contain [veritable] armies of professors whom one can use – outside of the classroom, in their spare time – for the propagation of good doctrines.I would have them open free courses in all the important towns; through these means would I mobilize the instruction and influence of the government. |
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… and finally they will give lessons on new philosophical theories, which have not yet been revealed to the world. These theories we will make into doctrines of faith, using them as a stepping-stone to our Faith. |
The grand conspiracy |
Golovinski constantly feels obliged to twist the words. Where Machiavelli is ironically hinting at his abuse of power, the narrator is (possibly) ironic in his depiction of the derailment of society due to our “false conception of men’s social position”.
| Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, Ch. 16 | Subtext | Dialogue 16, p. 99 |
|---|---|---|
When I have finished taking you through the whole programme and when we shall have finished discussing all our plans for the present and for the future, I will read to you the plan of that new philosophical theory. |
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We know from the experience of many centuries, that men live and are guided by ideas and that people are inspired by these ideas only by means of education, which can be given with the same result to men of all ages, but of course by various means. |
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By systematical education we shall take charge of whatever may remain of that independence of thought, of which we have been making full use for our own ends for some time past. |
Montesquieu: In other words, you would absorb, you would confiscate the very last glimmers of independent thinking for your profit. |
That “new philosophical theory” sounds interesting. I have a hunch it may look like Leninism, but let’s see.
The oddest paragraph is the final one. I had to look in two other versions of the Protocols to figure out that Bouroy was an odd translation and the other books have “Bourgeois”. I have to trust the other translators, and so I have replaced the rather odd Bouroy below with Bourgeois.
| Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, Ch. 16 | Subtext | Dialogue 16, p. 99 |
|---|---|---|
We have already established the system of subduing men’s minds by the so-called system of demonstrative education (teaching by sight), which is supposed to make the Gentiles incapable of thinking independently and so they will, like obedient animals, await the demonstration of an idea before they have grasped it. One of our best agents in France is Bourgeois: he has already introduced the new system of demonstrative education. |
If this translation of the term fits with Bourgeois, it is a solid hint that my interpretation is not half bad: Seen from the perspective of the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie brainwashes us all to concern ourselves with material issues rather than of loyalty, humbleness and so on.
Don’t forget that socialism, anarchism and liberalism are not seen as the cure against the Jewish attack. They are given as the very methods used to ensnare us.
PARADISE LOST