The Marx, Darwin and Nietzsche Passage in the Protocols of Zion
It has come to my attention recently that I may not have covered a particular issue to do with the infamous Protocols of Zion specifically enough as people who have cited my work on the Protocols have never-the-less missed one of the side points I made in my original article.
That issue is very simple: in Protocol 2 (in the Nilus edition of the Protocols) there appears a passage which claims that Darwin, Marx and Nietzsche were jewish and/or Masonic agents.
For completeness I quote the passage from the normal Protocols text:
'Do not suppose for a moment that these statements are empty words: think carefully of the successes we arranged for Darwinism, Marxism and Nietzscheism. To us Jews, at any rate, it should be plain to see what a disintegrating importance these directives have had upon the minds of the goyim.' (1)
This is a passage that is massively problematic for proponents of the Protocols of Zion being at least a semi-truthful narrative of jewish ideas and intentions and/or as an intellectual methodology for understanding the jewish history and behavioural trends in the future. Conversely it is also one of the most common and rhetorically most powerful anti-Protocols arguments and it is frequently used to put proponents of the Protocols in a Catch 22.
Either they suggest with the Protocols Darwin, Marx and Nietzsche were jewish/Masonic agents (Marx is possible, but Darwin and Nietzsche are not) or the Protocols are textually incorrect: thus placing them at the intellectual mercy of the anti-Protocols debunker.
The problem for the anti-Protocols debunkers using this passage however is rather fundamental and actually informs us that they - ironically enough - tend to be ignorant of the scholarly literature around the Protocols (i.e., that they likely have an external reason to simple scholarship and intellectual reasoning to be arguing the anti-Protocols case).
That problem is fairly simple.
This passage doesn't form part of the original Protocols and is one of many additions to the text by the Christian mystic: Sergei Nilus. Where the Darwin, Marx and Nietzsche assertion comes from is obvious if we quote the original text of Pavlov Krushevan's serialised first edition of the Protocols.
To wit:
'The intellectuals [the “goyim”] are proud of their knowledge without logical verification, and put into practice all the notions dealing with science, written by our agents with the intention of forming the minds in ways that will prove useful (the translator remembers the successes of Darwinism, of Marxism, of Nietzscheianism and the other unproven doctrines).' (2)
From this original text it is clear that the Darwin, Marx and Nietzsche quotation is nothing to do with the Protocols text itself: rather simply being an addition by Krushevan to illustrate the point being made by the original text, which Nilus has then worked into the text of the Protocols.
This then makes sense of what we call 'the translators note' and explains why this quotation has been often used to - in my opinion incorrectly - situate the origin of the Protocols in a non-jewish Russian nationalist context as that is precisely where the translators note comes from!
However, because this is not actually part of the Protocols and only Krushevan's interjection of his suggestion as to who and what the text is talking about: we can see that it cannot be used as part of the Protocols itself.
Thus, necessarily the Darwin, Marx and Nietzsche statement cannot be used to 'debunk' the Protocols, because it simply isn't part of the original Protocols!
References
(1) Protocols of Zion, 2002/2003 Historical Review Press Edition, p. 28
(2) Cesare de Michelis, 2004, 'The Non-Existent Manuscripts: A Study of the Sages of Zion', 1st Edition, University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, p. 88