Peter Hess’ Hilariously Incorrect Claims about the Protocols of Zion

Over at Inverse Peter Hess has written a typical article touching on the Protocols of Zion which showcases the Colonel Blimp mentality of pseudo-sceptics. (1)

To wit:

‘Of course, anti-Semitism isn’t new, and neither is the notion of a globalist conspiracy. A 1903 book titled The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a seminal piece of anti-Semitic propaganda.’

This is as true as far as it goes, but it is worth noting that the first mention and description of the Protocols was not in 1903 but 1902, but this is excusable because the text wasn’t published until 1903.

‘The Russian book, which was eventually exposed as a hoax, recounted an alleged meeting of powerful Jewish leaders as they planned world domination.’

Well no: it hasn’t been ‘exposed as a hoax’, but rather claimed to be one based upon several different versions of a common – if long debunked - conspiracy theory that the Okhrana office – the Russian secret police - in Paris decided to fake the text by plagiarising an assortment of different French books.

‘The retraction, of course, never got as much coverage as the original story,’

We don’t even know who originally wrote the Protocols and there has never been ‘a retraction’.

Well unless you count Philip Graves’ 1921 pamphlet alleging that a ‘Mr. X.’ gave him ‘the secret of the plagiarism’ of the Protocols in Istanbul that he compared to translations of the works plagiarised in English, but was allegedly originally composed in French and was only ever published in its original form in Russian.

I guess when you are desperate: that sounds like a ‘debunk’ or a ‘retraction’.

Whoops: eh?

‘So while this book has long been known to be false, its messages persist. And for many, the fact that the book was exposed asa fraud could even be further proof that its contents are true.’

Except that the Protocols of Zion has never actually been ‘exposed as a fraud’. As it happens; the case that the work is a hoax or a fraud has fallen apart over the years of academic scholarship on the subject.

To give some common examples of fallacious and commonly-believed claims which ‘debunk’ the Protocols:

The Marx-Darwin-Nietzsche Quotation, which was added to the text by Sergei Nilus in 1905 and doesn’t appear in any earlier edition. (2)

The ‘Fear of Modernity’ claim based on the assertion that the Protocols text referred to Subways when this is actually an English language mis-translation of the Russian word for ‘subversion’. (3)

The ‘There are no Old Testament References’ claim when they were removed from the text by Sergei Nilus in 1905 and appear in the earlier editions. (4)

The 1001 Plagiarism Claims, which are absurd given the translations/confusion of different editions used to produce them. (5) Giving the reader a select list of works the author of the Protocols allegedly plagiarised from according to the authors that Hess is basing his claims on gives the lie to the thesis: (6)

Abbe Barruel's 'History of Jacobinism'

Osman Bey's 'The Conquest of the World by the Jews'

Osman Bey’s 'The Talmud and the Jews'

Jacob Brafmann's 'The Book of the Kahal'

Houston Stewart Chamberlain's 'The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century'

Houston Stewart Chamberlain's 'The Jews'

Benjamin Disraeli's 'Coningsby'

Edouard Drumont's 'Jewish France'

Alexandre Dumas' 'Marquis de Sade'

Hermann Goedesche's 'Biarritz’

Nicolo Machiavelli's 'The Prince'

Eugene Sue’s 'The Mysteries of Paris'

Eugene Sue's 'The Wandering Jew'

Yet most forget to mention that the most ‘plagiarised’ element of the initial text – as opposed to the later modified text - is Theodor Herzl’s ‘Der Judenstaat’. (7)

Strange that...

‘What the flat-Earth theory, the globalist theory, and all other conspiracies have in common is their basis in ideology, not in facts.’

This is a classic demonstration of the fallacy of the so-called ‘rational sceptics’ in that they don’t actually know a great deal about that which they like to prattle – the Protocols of Zion in this case- but instead like to sweep their hand in grandiose fashion like ‘the question has been settled’ and ‘they did their research’.

The reality is of course that this isn’t scepticism but rather what is called pseudo-scepticism, which is a position characterised by an ideological belief that whatever narrative is pushed by the ‘mainstream’ then it is the ipso facto truth.

In this case Hess has simply taken the hypothesis of Norman Cohn – which has been widely criticised and debunked by specialist scholars such as Cesare de Michelis, Michael Hagemeister and Pierre-Andree Taguieff, but has been often promoted as ‘da twoof’ – as gospel rather than interrogating the literature himself.

This is evident in the fact that Hess is manifestly unaware that the Cohn hypothesis is itself a poorly-evidenced conspiracy theory based upon the much earlier claims of Binjamin Segel in the 1920s about the Russian Okhrana in Paris randomly forging an ‘anti-Semitic manifesto’ and then how it accidentally snow-balled into a phenomenon (formalized by lawyers not historians at the Berne Trials of the Protocols of Zion from 1933-1935), which rather suggests that he has never read any of the several editions of Cohn’s ‘Warrant for Genocide’.

So if the debunk of a conspiracy theory is a conspiracy theory itself: then whatever is a pseudo-sceptic to do?

‘If conspiracy theories were driven by fact-based evidence, most of them would be relegated to the same historical dustbin as phrenology , the plum-pudding model of the atom, and the geocentric universe. But the persistence of, say, the flat-Earth conspiracy is proof that ideology — like an attachment to anti-Semitic ideas — is often more powerful than facts.’

Except that ‘anti-Semitic ideas’ are driven by fact-based evidence and far less by traditional biases and suspicion of ‘the Other’. The fact is that jews are significantly over-represented among the elite, openly engage in activities to influence people and policies as well as that our system has an overwhelming and unjustifiable Judeo-centric nature.

Think of it this way:

When is the last time you heard of the Holodomor compared to the Holocaust?

You see my point?

The fact is that anti-Semitism is the apogee of reason and is in the ascendant, while the intellectually moribund philo-Semitism of the chattering classes is in the doldrums.

References

(1) https://www.inverse.com/article/30763-joe-rogan-flat-earth-anti-semitism-conspiracy-globalist

(2) Cesare de Michelis, 2004, 'The Non-Existent Manuscript: A Study of the Sages of Zion', 1st Edition, University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, p. 88

(3) Ibid., pp. 92-93

(4) Ibid., p. 12

(5) Ibid., p. 8

(6) Ibid., pp. 46-47; Stephen Eric Bronner, 2003, 'A Rumor about the Jews: Antisemitism, Conspiracy, and the Protocols of Zion', 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York, p. 81

(7) De Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 48