Read Online Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History by David Aaronovitch - Free Book Online
Authors: David Aaronovitch
Tags: General, Social Science, History, Conspiracies, World, Historiography, Civilization, Conspiracy Theories, Popular Culture, Conspiracies - History, .verified
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The implication of this racial identification was spelled out a little later by Gottfried zur Beek in the preface to his 1923 edition. Joly/Joel “is in fact a precursor of the Elders of Zion,” he wrote, “and affords us an excellent look into the art of Jewish conspiracy.” 26 In other words, though the Dialogues might have seemed to be about Napoleon III, coming from a Jew they were actually a revelation of Jewish thinking—thinking that would later become the Protocols . Another German Protocols supporter, Count Ernst zu Reventlow, added the twist that it was perhaps the elders who were plagiarists, with Herzl himself raiding the Dialogues for his speeches to the First Zionist Congress—though it has to be said that this theory does rather reduce the demonic potency of the Protocols , with the image of the supreme rulers of the world borrowing entire phrases from obscure French books.
In 1924, even the Moses Joel theory was exploded when, by chance, a Parisian legal journal published shortened biographies of past members of the profession. Included were excerpts from a lost autobiography of Maurice Joly himself, written in the 1870s. This showed that Joly, far from being Jewish, came from a strict Catholic family with links to the rural nobility. It even included a copy of his baptismal certificate from the church register, complete with the name of the presiding priest.
This discovery, however, did nothing to change the opinion of the man who was to become the most important and active supporter of the Protocols . After the abortive Nazi putsch in Munich in 1923, Adolf Hitler was imprisoned in the Landsberg fortress to serve an absurdly short sentence for armed insurrection. There he wrote his apocalyptic manifesto Mein Kampf . His attitude toward the Protocols is worth quoting at length.
The extent to which the whole existence of the people is based on a continual lie is shown in an incomparable manner in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , which the Jews hate so tremendously. The Frankfurter Zeitung is forever moaning to the people that they are supposed to be a forgery; which is the surest proof that they are genuine. What many Jews do perhaps unconsciously is here consciously exposed. But that is not what matters . . . What matters is that they uncover, with really horrifying reliability, the nature and activity of the Jewish people, and expose them in their inner logic and their final aims. But reality provides the best commentary. Whoever examines the historical development of the last hundred years from the standpoint of the book will at once understand why the Jewish press makes such an uproar. For once this book becomes generally familiar to a people, the Jewish menace can be regarded as already vanquished. 27
The argument is undefeatable: the Protocols confirm what I believe and what I think I see around me, therefore they are true in the most important sense, even if they themselves are forgeries. Furthermore, whether they are forgeries or not does not matter; because they confirm what we see around us, they will help people better understand what is going on. As Henry Ford had suggested, they fitted in the past, they fitted now.
Ford himself recanted in 1927. As early as January 1921, there had been loud voices raised in Christian communities against rising anti-Semitism. The writer John Spargo got up a petition urging Americans to “strike at this un-American and un-Christian agitation.” Former presidents Woodrow Wilson and William Howard Taft signed, as did luminaries such as W. E. B. Du Bois, William Jennings Bryan, Clarence Darrow, and the poet Robert Frost. Under pressure, Ford issued a statement saying he was deeply mortified that his newspaper should have been used for the propagation of “gross forgeries.” He asked forgiveness of the Jewish community “for the harm I have unintentionally committed.” And he demanded of those people abroad who were reprinting The International
The implication of this racial identification was spelled out a little later by Gottfried zur Beek in the preface to his 1923 edition. Joly/Joel “is in fact a precursor of the Elders of Zion,” he wrote, “and affords us an excellent look into the art of Jewish conspiracy.” 26 In other words, though the Dialogues might have seemed to be about Napoleon III, coming from a Jew they were actually a revelation of Jewish thinking—thinking that would later become the Protocols . Another German Protocols supporter, Count Ernst zu Reventlow, added the twist that it was perhaps the elders who were plagiarists, with Herzl himself raiding the Dialogues for his speeches to the First Zionist Congress—though it has to be said that this theory does rather reduce the demonic potency of the Protocols , with the image of the supreme rulers of the world borrowing entire phrases from obscure French books.
In 1924, even the Moses Joel theory was exploded when, by chance, a Parisian legal journal published shortened biographies of past members of the profession. Included were excerpts from a lost autobiography of Maurice Joly himself, written in the 1870s. This showed that Joly, far from being Jewish, came from a strict Catholic family with links to the rural nobility. It even included a copy of his baptismal certificate from the church register, complete with the name of the presiding priest.
This discovery, however, did nothing to change the opinion of the man who was to become the most important and active supporter of the Protocols . After the abortive Nazi putsch in Munich in 1923, Adolf Hitler was imprisoned in the Landsberg fortress to serve an absurdly short sentence for armed insurrection. There he wrote his apocalyptic manifesto Mein Kampf . His attitude toward the Protocols is worth quoting at length.
The extent to which the whole existence of the people is based on a continual lie is shown in an incomparable manner in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , which the Jews hate so tremendously. The Frankfurter Zeitung is forever moaning to the people that they are supposed to be a forgery; which is the surest proof that they are genuine. What many Jews do perhaps unconsciously is here consciously exposed. But that is not what matters . . . What matters is that they uncover, with really horrifying reliability, the nature and activity of the Jewish people, and expose them in their inner logic and their final aims. But reality provides the best commentary. Whoever examines the historical development of the last hundred years from the standpoint of the book will at once understand why the Jewish press makes such an uproar. For once this book becomes generally familiar to a people, the Jewish menace can be regarded as already vanquished. 27
The argument is undefeatable: the Protocols confirm what I believe and what I think I see around me, therefore they are true in the most important sense, even if they themselves are forgeries. Furthermore, whether they are forgeries or not does not matter; because they confirm what we see around us, they will help people better understand what is going on. As Henry Ford had suggested, they fitted in the past, they fitted now.
Ford himself recanted in 1927. As early as January 1921, there had been loud voices raised in Christian communities against rising anti-Semitism. The writer John Spargo got up a petition urging Americans to “strike at this un-American and un-Christian agitation.” Former presidents Woodrow Wilson and William Howard Taft signed, as did luminaries such as W. E. B. Du Bois, William Jennings Bryan, Clarence Darrow, and the poet Robert Frost. Under pressure, Ford issued a statement saying he was deeply mortified that his newspaper should have been used for the propagation of “gross forgeries.” He asked forgiveness of the Jewish community “for the harm I have unintentionally committed.” And he demanded of those people abroad who were reprinting The International
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