The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Protocols of the (Learned) Elders of Zion is one of many titles given to a text purporting to describe a plan to achieve global domination by the Jewish people. Following its first public publication in 1903 in the Russian Empire, numerous independent investigations have repeatedly proved the writing to be a hoax; notably, a series of articles printed in The Times in 1921 revealed that much of the material was directly plagiarized from earlier works of political satire unrelated to Jews. Nevertheless, some people continue to view it as factual, especially in parts of the world where antisemitism, anti-Judaism, or anti-Zionism are widespread. It is frequently quoted and reprinted by anti-Semites, and is sometimes used as evidence of Jewish conspiracy, especially in the Middle East.
Elements of the Protocols were plagiarized from Joly's fictional Dialogue in Hell, a thinly veiled attack on the political ambitions of Napoleon III, who, represented by the non-Jewish character Machiavelli, plots to rule the world. Joly, a monarchist and legitimist, was imprisoned in France for 15 months as a direct result of his book's publication. Scholars have noted the irony that Dialogue in Hell was itself a plagiarism, at least in part, of a novel by Eugène Sue, Les Mystères du Peuple (1849–56).
Identifiable phrases from Joly constitute 4% of the first half of the first edition, and 12% of the second half; later editions, including most translations, have longer quotes from Joly.
Philip Graves brought this plagiarism to light in a series of articles in The Times in 1921, the first published evidence that the Protocols was not an authentic document.
As fiction in the genre of literature, the tract was further analyzed by Umberto Eco in his novel Foucault's Pendulum in 1988 (English translation in 1989), in 1994 in chapter 6, "Fictional Protocols", of his Six Walks in the Fictional Woods and in his 2010 novel The Prague Cemetery.
See also
- Antisemitism in the Russian Empire
- Antisemitism in the Russian Federation
- Antisemitism in the Soviet Union
- Pertinent concepts
- Black propaganda
- Hate speech
- List of conspiracy theories
- Psychological projection
- World government
- New World Order (conspiracy theory)
- Individuals
- Related or similar texts
- A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century
- The permanent instruction of the Alta Vendita
- Tanaka Memorial
- Protocols of Zion (film)
- Hamas Covenant
- The Cemetery of Prague
- Memoirs of Mr. Hempher, The British Spy to the Middle East
