The Protocols of Zion: Myth, Libel and Fact

The Real History of the Most Controversial Anti-Semitic Document of All Time

Possibly the most controversial area in the whole of the study of anti-Semitism and the charges that it makes against the jews is the study of what has come to be called 'The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion'. Before I began writing this article I did - in fact - hesitate for a few minutes to think about whether I should write a preliminary defence of them on the basis of the multitude of studies of this small inflammatory book that have appeared or not.

However as much as I consider myself to be in the anti-Semitic agnostic tradition on the Protocols - with people like Joseph Goebbels, Arthur Keith Chesterton, Revilo Oliver and William Pierce - I do think there is actually a good case for arguing that the Protocols are not as 'absurd' and 'intellectually stupid' as angry academic jews with an axe to grind - like Stephen Eric Bronner - (1) argue.

I would point out that while I don't consider the Protocols to be the 'key to world events' - which as Chesterton pointed out is an intellectually lunatic position (2) and is fodder for the likes of Bronner and Ben-Itto - I do think there is now a reasonable case to put forward for the document's original authenticity and also that it was actually meant to be a 'world plan' of a sort, but that the original document was subsequently mutilated and redacted by its later publishers - particularly the infamous Russian mystic Sergei Nilus - as well as being badly translated (3) which has led to a plethora of denunciations of the Protocols as fake based on alleged and actual problems with the text.

I will here reiterate that this is merely a preliminary essay to a book length defence of the Protocols that I am now in the process of publishing as well as that this is a written indication of some of my conclusions as of this moment as stated in my 2012 radio appearance with Deanna Spingola. (4)

To make this article easier to read and refer to back to I have opted to split up each part of the case into its own self-contained section.

Now - as Revilo Oliver declared- forward to the abyss!

The Many Lives of the Protocols of Zion

One of the many myths that circulates about the Protocols of Zion is that the text we have reached us fully formed and has not been altered in transmission: this is true both of anti-Semitic (5) and philo-Semitic work (6) on the subject. Even the attempt of the famous jewish cartoonist Will Eisner - which included a foreword and afterword from authors on the subject (Eco and Bronner respectively) - did nothing to disabuse the notion of this complete transmission and repeated the myth - (7) in spite of citing specialist works by authors such as Cohn and de Michelis who have written extensively on the formation of the Protocols - as well as the century old conspiracy theory that the Okhrana office (the Tsarist secret political police) in Paris had deliberately forged the text to induce Tsar Nicholas II into a belief in a mass jewish plot against his throne, (8) which incidentally he didn't actually need any help in believing. (9)

Now as I have stated this idea of a 'complete transmission' is a myth as we know of numerous differences between the editions, but a detailed linguistic and textual analysis of this has only been attempted recently by de Michelis. (10) I here summarise the transmission into chronological format correcting Levy's erroneous version (11) that is based on the a priori assumption of the truth of the theory of the Okhrana office in Paris being the originator of the Protocols based directly on Cohn's oversubscribed argument on this point, which the CIA's historical analysis of Paris Okhrana's operations notably criticises by simple omission (in spite the fame and age of the hypothesis). (12)

The chronology of the Protocols of Zion should read thus: (13)

Late 1901/1902: Original document discovered/written/created. Mikhail Menshikov mentions the existence of the Protocols in 'Novoe Vremya' ('The New Times') in April 1902.

1903: Publication of original Protocols in 'Znamia' ('The Banner') by Pavel Krushevan in a series of seven instalments beginning in September.

1904: Partial republication in the third edition of Ljutostansky's 'Talmud I everi' (cleared for publication by censor on the 3rd November 1903), this includes the first suggestion of a link to Zionism.

1905: Sergei Nilus publishes a longer and heavily edited version of the Protocols as an appendix to his book about the coming of the Anti-Christ: 'Velikoe v Malom' ('The Great in the Small') in addition to three anonymous editions which are shorter than Krushevan's original that date from this time. Introduction of Freemasonry into - and the removal of Old Testament references from - the text.

1906: Georgi Butmi de Kacman publishes a different version of the Protocols as an appendix to the third edition of his book 'Vragi Roda Chevlovecheskago' ('Enemies of the Human Race') (preface is dated 5th December 1905).

1907: Georgi Butmi de Kacman publishes a slightly re-edited version of the Protocols as an appendix to the fourth edition of his book 'Vragi Roda Chevlovecheskago' ('Enemies of the Human Race').

1911: Sergei Nilus re-publishes his book 'Velikoe v Malom' ('The Great in the Small') in a second edition: no substantial change to the Protocols text.

1912: Sergei Nilus re-publishes his book 'Velikoe v Malom' ('The Great in the Small') in a third edition: no substantial change to the Protocols text.

1917: Sergei Nilus re-publishes his book 'Velikoe v Malom' ('The Great in the Small') in a fourth edition: a substantial change to the Protocols text and the beginning of the attribution of the Protocols to Theodor Herzl.

This chronology clearly demonstrates two key issues:

Firstly, that the first mention of the Protocols occurs early in 1902, while the first text we have of the document itself comes from 1903 as well as how the Protocols began to be redacted and added to as early as late 1903/early 1904 and how they continued to be added to and changed.

Secondly that the edition that is popularly reproduced comes from the fourth edition of Sergei Nilus (in 1917) and which has been subsequently revised in some quarters by the use of the first edition of 1905.

This thus informs us that contrary to the received popular wisdom on both sides of the argument: we are in fact dealing - in terms of the common version - with a composite document that has been changed by different authors until a 'definitive' version (of the document and its origins) happened to be created largely by the accident of Ludwig Mueller von Hausen (whose nom de plume was Gottfried zum Beek) having brought it back to Germany and publishing it there – allegedly - through the Thule Society. (14)

Now clearly, we are faced with a problem in the orthodox account of the Protocols once we recognise that we are dealing with different traditions and versions of the same document, because many key arguments against the Protocols - such as the Joly plagiarism assertion and the internal 'contradictions'/'absurdities' - lose much - and indeed frequently all - of their explanatory power.

You might ask why is that?

Well, put simply if we are dealing with a complete transmission of the original document then we can reasonably place it under the analytical microscope to see how it holds up to sceptical scrutiny. However, we cannot place that document under the analytical microscope if we do not know or cannot use its original form precisely because if we are not dealing with the original then we are only dealing with an edited or changed edition of that document: so, we cannot criticise - let alone disregard - the original document because we have analysed a substantially altered later version of it.

Instead, the process must necessarily be to reconstruct and/or obtain a copy of the original document so that we can work with that as otherwise we are dealing in inconsistent intellectual propositions in terms of trying to negate the issue of edition and text in attacking the original by a later version (rather like trying to analyse a wolf by analysing a breed of dog instead).

Some might object here and argue that what anti-Semites use is this later edition and while that is indeed true: (15) it is an invalid argument in so far as it is arguing that because anti-Semites - as well as critics of the jews in general - have incorrectly used the later edited text to try to explain world events. (16) It is thus fine for jews to use that same text to 'disprove' the original document in spite of their tacit (and sometimes even open) acknowledgement - by citing work which informs them in detail of this problem - that the document they are actually attacking is not that original document.

This attitude is thoroughly intellectually dishonest and is personified in the work by Alex Grobman who uses Cohn to 'prove' that the 'primary author' of the Protocols was Matthieu Golovinsky (a journalist somewhat linked to the Paris office of the Okhrana) while not mentioning the issue of multiple editions: (17) instead Grobman appears to be using the 'primary author' notion to imply the age old plagiarism and anti-jewish conspiracy meme that actually pre-dates any evidence at all that would suggested such a theory. (18)

We therefore have to conclude that because the original document is not the one that is actually being criticised - especially as most start from Nilus' 1905 edition which contains a significant number of major variations - in nearly all literature on the Protocols: we cannot admit any argument for or against the Protocols' authenticity without clarification of what the original text actually said.

We can demonstrate the futility of criticism based on these later editions by pointing out several major issues with using later versions of the Protocols as Cohn's study and the many who have followed him do. (19)

To wit:

A) The text of the Nilus edition is significantly longer when compared to the Krushevan edition. (20)

B) The amount of allegedly 'plagiarised' material (as a percentage of the total) substantially increases in later editions, but the most notable jump is from the Krushevan edition to the Nilus edition. (21)

C) There are Old Testament references and quotes in the Krushevan edition that are simply omitted in the Nilus edition. (22)

D) There is no mention of Freemasons in the Krushevan edition, but these are numerous in the Nilus edition. (23)

E) The Krushevan edition is not divided into Protocols while the Nilus edition is. (24)

F) The Krushevan edition contains numerous Ukranianisms and clarifying sentences that the Nilus edition omits. (25)

We can see therefore the significant problems of using the Nilus text as a basis for 'debunking' the Protocols of Zion as Jacobs and Weitzmann have tried to do (26) in the tradition of earlier jewish partisans like Segel (27) and Bernstein. (28) Therefore, we can suggest that any attempt to 'debunk' or confirm the Protocols based on the existent translations cannot be correct as there is as yet no foreign language translation of de Michelis' Russian language reconstruction (or a peer review of that reconstruction).

We can further assert that the details of the Krushevan edition of 1903 suggest to us that the 'explanation' for origins of the Protocols in offices of the Paris Okhrana is thrown into deep doubt as de Michelis has beautifully demonstrated. (29) I cannot however concur with de Michelis overly respectful treatment of the 'Paris Okhrana' hypothesis precisely because it pre-dates any evidence to suggest it (30) (a tantalizing suggestion - which de Michelis has overlooked - of which is found in Bernstein's introduction to the memoirs of Mendel Beilis) (31) and also bases itself on three testimonies all of which we have significant reasons for doubting the veracity of. (32)

The Problem of Paris

That the Protocols of Zion originate from Paris has been the central element of the myth that surrounds them in so far as it purports to explain where they have come from (33) and also why they are important (as Paris was at this time a major centre of jewish life in Europe). (34) This explanation has been utilized by both sides of the debate, which are best described by juxtaposing them into two different majority propositions:

Philo-Semites and jews portray the alleged events of Paris - dating them to between 1894 and 1897 - as being when an anti-Semitic conspiracy by the Station Chief of the Paris Okhrana Peter Rachkovsky decided to try to gain favour in the Russian court for their views by 'uncovering' a document forged by an exiled Russian journalist named Matthieu Golovinsky that proved beyond doubt the truth of the contention that there was a jewish conspiracy against Russia. (35) This was however not circulated at court for reasons that are not made clear by this theory's proponents let alone suggesting reasonable evidence for their case other than 'coincidence' and the detective principle of cui bono (who benefits).

Anti-Semites - as well as some anti-Zionists who maintain a strong anti-Zionist line - (36) portray the events of Paris - dating them to between 1894 and 1897 - as being when either a jewish double-agent - Schorst or Efron - (37) for the Okhrana infiltrated and stole the Protocols from a Masonic Lodge in Paris in 1894/1895 or the First Zionist Congress of 1897 (it is sometimes suggested that they were stolen from Herzl's private belongings) or a long-time Russian expatriate in Paris - Madame Justine Glinka - (38) stole them from a jew of her acquaintance. These were alternatively either transmitted to Russia where they were promptly filed and/or brought back to Russia by Major Alexander Sukhotin who then had them published through the auspices of General Stepanov and Sergei Nilus on his return. (39)

Both these versions of events - established by three very different witnesses (two for the former and one for the later) - seem to point to a French - and more particularly a Parisian - origin for the Protocols: don't they?

The problem with this is actually deceptively simple in so far as we are dealing with three witnesses who unfortunately don't seem to know anything about the document that they are talking about. They contradict each other, produce impossible timelines and appear sometime after the Protocols have become famous in addition to having in each case easy to discern motivations for claiming to be an 'unknowing witness' (to use de Michelis' terminology).

The first witness we need to interrogate is the most famous of all Protocols witnesses - as it is from her that the anti-Protocols timeline is derived - Princess Catherine Radziwill. Radziwill was a rather eccentric Polish princess, author of numerous books before, during and after the Bolshevik revolution, an obsessive-compulsive and also an occasional white-collar criminal. (40)

Radziwll claims that she saw either the edition of Ljutostansky or Nilus - which we can discern from her dating - in 1904 or 1905 in the offices of the Paris Okhrana and she names Rachkovsky and Golovinsky as being the principal architects. (41) However, as Burcev pointed in 'La Tribune Juive' in 1921: she wasn't in Paris at the time! (42)

Some following Cohn try to negate this chronological issue by asserting that Radziwill was simply mistaken years after the fact and try to buttress this by pointing out that both Radziwill and du Chayla say they saw a document on yellowish paper, with an ink stain and different handwriting. (43) This is indeed true, but such a coincidence between two witnesses who differ on all other details cannot be admitted for the simple reason that we have no proof they even saw the document in the first place other than their say so.

Besides the description - as others have to my knowledge have failed to note - is not very specific: it is very general and as such could have easily been conceived of independently and been just a happy coincidence for Protocols 'debunkers' like Lucien Wolf: who was already championing the idea of anti-Semitic conspiratorial origin of the Protocols from the Paris Okhrana before there was any actual evidence for it. (44)

In addition we have to remember that Radziwill does not have a good character - she was after all a convicted criminal and an obsessive-compulsive - and that as much as some may want to believe her testimony as it confirms their pet theory; we cannot hold her to be anything but a dubious source at best. After all the question must be: why did she wait so late to 'remember' all that she did and why could she recall such general details of yellowish paper, ink stains and different handwriting but then get the year she allegedly saw it out by a decade?

Now what if Radziwill is somehow telling the truth and she saw an edition of the Protocols (which she identifies as either the 1904 or 1905 edition) in the office of the Paris Okhrana?

Now we know she was unaware of the 1903 publication, and this therefore puts pay to the notion of her having seen an original copy, but at the same time it is also quite reasonable to suggest that she saw the Ljutostansky or Nilus edition: especially when we remember that Ljutostansky's work was actually a source book on anti-jewish literature and was frequently published with updates. This would neatly explain Radziwill's claim without disregarding it and also answering the issue of how Radziwill knew that the document she generally describes was the Protocols (as the Protocols title and linkage to Zionism - which she mentions - had now come into use).

Thus, even if we wish to admit Radziwill it is obvious that she is not a reliable source and that her testimony can be explained in a more plausible alternative scenario that to my knowledge has not been explored by any author on the Protocols.

The second witness we need to interrogate is Armand Alexandre de Blanquet du Chayla who is a somewhat mysterious French nobleman who spent a lot of time in Russia in early twentieth century. Now as I have above suggested by implication: du Chayla is the key piece of the puzzle in that it is he and nothing else that is used by Cohn to build his theory of the origin of the Protocols in the Paris office of the Okhrana.

Unfortunately for Cohn and the many others who argue this hypothesis du Chayla is far more problematic than even Radziwill in so far as he claims to have seen Nilus' 1905 version in 1901 when Nilus was introduced to the Russian court. The problem with that is that we definitively know that Nilus' version was published in 1905 not 1901 and that Nilus was introduced at court in 1905 not 1901. Further du Chayla's account of Nilus replacing another mystic - one Phillipe - at the Tsar's court places the incident definitively in 1905. (45)

Among other things du Chayla reproduces an account of the travels of Nilus going to Germany - commonly vapidly attributed following Cohn to a 'lapse of memory' - (46) in late 1918 to early 1919 is actually the account of Nilus' son. (47) This is all dubious enough given the fact that du Chayla is supposed to corroborate Radziwill and this scale of divergence and general inaccuracy is simply unacceptable in sources central to an already speculative theory.

However, there is another problem with du Chayla in that he seems to have been an agent of the Soviet Union at least as early as 1919 when he was expelled from the Crimea by General Wrangel for being a Bolshevik agent (48) and the only reason he was not summarily shot was because he was a French citizen. (49) Given the centrality of du Chayla's testimony and the work done by Soviet archivists (as well as the pro-Bolshevik jewish author Alexander Tager) to try and find proof for it: (50) it is quite likely - as de Michelis concludes - that du Chayla had been 'put up' to his Protocols testimony by the USSR's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (he was accused of working for Georgi Chicherin the head of this ministry at the time by General Wrangel). (51)

In case the reader thinks that I am here suggesting that du Chayla's story regarding Nilus is made from whole cloth: we do know that du Chayla did know Nilus for a time, (52) but the fact that du Chayla makes his mistakes in and around the Protocols as well as that he waited till 1921 to come forward with his testimony (and also singularly implausible story of how he came to 'notice' the Protocols and write his testimony [suggesting that he had been directed towards the rapidly selling Protocolss]) point to a Soviet involvement in 'debunking' the Protocols . (53)

Then we have to conclude that not only is du Chayla dishonest, but in fact we can establish with a reasonable level of certainty that he is acting in the interests of a government trying to manipulate the Protocols and later the Bern trial with misinformation directed against the forces of radical right, which we know was Soviet policy at this time. (54)

We also know of a parallel usage by Soviet propagandists of manipulating events such as this to suit their propagandistic needs of the moment, (55) which again suggests; although detailed research is still required, that we are dealing here with a Soviet propaganda ploy and not a serious witness for the Protocols being forgery.

A fact which largely discredits the Bern Trial of 1934 as an argument precisely because du Chayla is the central 'witness' that links the Protocols to the Russian Okhrana after Radziwill's testimony was judged by the court to be heavily flawed.

The third witness we need to interrogate is the only anti-jewish one that we have: General Philip Stepanov. Stepanov offered pivotal; although flawed testimony, that an anonymous lady (Madame Justine Glinka) (56) received the Protocols from a jew (alternatively Efron or Schorst) who then passed them to a retired Russian major named Alexander Sukhotin (57) who then passed them on to Stepanov who published them independently in 1897. (58) Normally such a wild sequence of events would be quickly dismissed if Nilus had not independently confirmed that he received his copy from a retired Russian major named Sukhotin. (59)

De Michelis clearly identifies that here we find numerous issues with chronology as in the first instance: we have no evidence other than that reported by Henri Rollin of an actual edition of the Protocols before 1903 and even then, we certainly do not have a copy of them. De Michelis' suggestion that we identify the Stepanov edition with one of those produced in 1905 is a sensible one given that Stepanov contradicts every other known source we have in regard to an alleged French origin in so far as he dates them as being published before the first Zionist Congress in that same year.

This contradicts the Zionist origin of the Protocols that was attached by Ljutostansky and Nilus to them: indeed, I would argue that because Stepanov's testimony comes from 1927; (60) it is not unreasonable to suggest a cross-pollination of his testimony from the later attribution of the Protocols by Nilus to Herzl in 1897, which was then popularly supported by Mueller von Hausen and Fritsch among others. I will also note that although we have circumstantial evidence of the origin from Sukhotin we should bear in mind that we have no evidence - and indeed good evidence against - the transmission from Glinka. (61)

That evidence is fairly simple: we know Glinka was fluent in French and Russian, so why then would she write Russian with Ukrainianisms that we have innumerable examples of in the original Krushevan edition of the Protocols from 1903? As Glinka was not from the Ukraine: the evidence is very much against her having been the conduit for the Protocols let alone the fact that she is usually alleged to be the French to Russian translator of them. (62)

In spite of these problems and contradictions within contradictions that Stepanov's testimony causes in our chronology: Rollin has pointed out that Stepanov quite unintentionally gives us the origin of the legends of Rachkovsky's involvement in so far as he had been made a Superintendent of Police in 1905 and as such seems to have been involved in spreading the Protocols but not in creating them. (63)

This then gives us some idea of the mythologizing process behind the theories regarding the origins of the Protocols of Zion as it gives us the basis of most anti-jewish (64) and pro-jewish (65) arguments for locating that origin in Paris.

As we can see these three pieces of witness testimony are weak and/or dubious sources for a Parisian origin of the Protocols and indeed the strongest of the three – Stepanov - contradicts nearly all the interpretations as to origins that are given in the literature. It is clear then that without these witnesses we cannot have a French origin of the Protocols.

However, before we leave the problem of a Parisian origin: it is important to explain the absurdity of locating the origins of the Protocols of Zion in the Paris office of the Okhrana.

The problem for the 'anti-Semitic conspiracy from the Paris Okhrana' argument is a fairly elementary one in so far as it tries to make a complex internal political situation into a simple one of anti-Semites and jews. It reduces two factions who were actively conspiring against each other (the pan-Slavists and the pan-Russians [the latter is a more jingoistic and extreme variant of the former]) to obtain power and influence into two factions that were working hand in hand to help each other politically so they could blame the jews when in fact they were bitterly fighting each other in a power struggle. (66)

I would propose that this is the reason why when you read the literature on the Paris Okhrana: one notices a distinct lack of belief (through lack of mention) of the well-known theory as to the origins of the Protocols of Zion in that same organisation. I suspect that while the authors on the Okhrana don't disbelieve it: they also don't believe it as it goes contrary to their knowledge of the Okhrana's internal politics, which could in turn destroy the most popular and most viable thesis against the authenticity of the Protocols as a document (and therefore open them up to potentially being genuine).

The fact that Rachkovsky's involvement has now been established by Rollin to be later in the history of the Protocols (i.e., in 1905 not in 1894-1897) explains why his name came up in the witness testimony as he would have been associated with Nilus at about the same time, we know du Chayla was.

As du Chayla would have likely known of Rachkovsky's status as the former head of the Okhrana operation in Paris and also of Rachkovsky's involvement in distributing them in 1905. We may propose that du Chayla simply put two pieces of information from his time with Nilus together to create a plausible story as he knew Rachkovsky had been in Paris at the head of the Okhrana there but would not have known when he had returned which he dated to several years before he met Nilus to create plausible linkage in the Protocols story.

There I think we have the origin of the story of the Protocols in the Paris Okhrana: a myth created on a mistaken assumption by a witness who was serving as an agent for the Soviet Union and whose words fitted into early debunks of the Protocols at this time, which has allowed the origin of the Protocols in the Paris Okhrana to become an accepted theory albeit; as I have outlined, one that has little to no substance to it whatsoever evidentially.

The Satirical Origins of the Protocols?

The inevitable question on the reader's mind; after having removed the evidence for a French and more specifically Parisian origin for the Protocols is: where do they come from then?

Well, the simplest answer is in fact the right one: the Russian Empire. We can see this in so far as we do not have a copy of the original Protocols from 1903 or before in any other language but Russian.

After all, if there is no French original - as de Michilis rightly asserts - (67) then all that is left is a document that came out of Russia in 1903 and was first mentioned in April of 1902. If we understand this then we realise that the question of the authenticity of the Protocols is actually thrown wide open again (rather than being simply a minority theory), as here we have a document whose alleged back-story we know to be very likely false and whose origins are in the country it was supposed to be particularly plotting against.

Now I don't doubt some will - and indeed some have- seized on this revelation to argue that the Protocols is a 'crude anti-Semitic hoax' originating from Russia at a time of great upheaval and insecurity. (68) Now the problem with that argument is quite fundamental in that it assumes that because the Protocols are now revealed to come from the Russian Empire not France and/or Paris; they are ispo facto a hoax.

There is no reason for drawing such a quick and I would say illogical conclusion for the simple reason that no longer is the Protocols ascribed to the First Zionist Congress or to a theft from a Masonic Lodge in Paris, but rather to a country where jews were openly organising propaganda and revolts against the government and more particularly were as a group solidly against it. (69)

This means then that the theory that a jewish origin of the Protocols is actually just as simple as a solution - if we use the logical principle of Occam's Razor - as an anti-Semitic origin of the Protocols. This then removes some of the most rhetorically effective arguments against the Protocols by placing them not as a Masonic or an international Zionist document, but rather as a local document to the Russian Empire, which both explains the document's focus on Russia and also some of its very Russian characteristics that have long been used to attack it. (70)

Now if we factor in that the original Krushevan edition of the Protocols in 1903 had numerous Ukrainianisms within it: we can with de Michelis link the Protocols to either the Ukraine or the Ukrainian diaspora. (71) This again might be used as evidence of a 'crude anti-Semitic hoax' but I think it is important to understand that this particular time in Ukrainian history is the right time and right place for a conspiratorial document of this kind for both theories of a jewish or anti-jewish origin of the Protocols. Precisely because this is a time when feelings against the jews were running high, there had been recent local pogroms against the jews for real and imagined offences (72) and there was a strong undercurrent of both Zionist and Marxist radicalism in the jewish community itself. (73)

It was a time of change and flux: when moderate solutions were out, and radical solutions were in.

This was the ideal time for a Protocols-type document to be created by either jews or their opponents.

De Michelis, for example, tacitly recognises this problem for the anti-Protocols argument when he seems to be in an internal contradiction himself: he wants to argue the Protocols are an anti-Semitic hoax from the Ukrainian diaspora, (74) but he also knows that much of his case is speculative and that he has severe problems putting a person's name or organisation's name to the origin of the Protocols. So as a stopgap measure, he claims that Cohn's theory of the origin of the Protocols being from the Paris office of the Okhrana is actually an 'evidence-based theory' (75) while having just demonstrated that it actually isn't one. (76) After all, on the back of the same logic he uses to defend Cohn he would have to concede that Fry's theory of Asher Ginzberg (pen name Ahad Ha'am) being intimately involved was similarly 'evidence-based' which he is loath to do.

De Michelis' argument is based on the idea that because we know that Menshikov, Krushevan and Butmi were all associated with each other and did have contacts in the Ukraine: (77) that it must have been one of their contacts who wrote it, which would - to be intellectually equitable - account for a lot of the evidence, but I would point out that it doesn't account for several issues that de Michelis has overlooked.

Firstly, de Michelis ignores the problem of why the Ukrainianisms were kept in a document that was published in a Russian newspaper and why they were then edited out in 1904. The problem there is that if this was a Ukrainian anti-jewish writer who had written a 'satire' on Zionism - which is what de Michelis argues it was - (78) for 'Znamia' then why did Krushevan not edit them out as was the usual journalistic practice? After all they are not integral to the document itself: so why leave them in and make the 'Learned Elders' into proverbial country bumpkins (thus disrupting the satirical intent)?

I point to this particularly because de Michelis' suggested developmental chronology hinges on the unpolished nature of the Protocols and the fact that they were originally intended to be a satire - based on a somewhat trite reading of Menshikov's article of April 1902 - which is made nonsense of when we understand that the 1903 version of the Protocols does not include any 'in the know' references to them as a satire and as such we are forced to ask the fundamental question of why keep such obvious problems for a reader (i.e., Ukrainianisms would not have been pleasant or easy reading for most Russians) in a document merely meant as a 'satire'?

De Michelis ignores this and instead focuses on the alleged connections between Menshikov's article - which he suggests is an 'in the know' wink that could be read as such by others (but offers no meaningful substantiation of this allegation) - (79) and the Krushevan's original 1903 edition of the Protocols. This is obviously problematic as it entails reading Menshikov's article from a priori conclusion in that if you read it as an article believing it to be a coded message of a sort in order to agree with the conclusion: rather than taking a more literal reading of Menshikov as indicating that he has knowledge of a jewish secret document that might shed insight into what is going on. This is I think a more accurate reading of Menshikov's article and does not require reading too deeply into what Menshikov is saying without any evidence to support such an overly-complex interpretation.

Secondly one has to wonder why - if a Ukrainian friend of Menshikov's and Krushevan's wrote the Protocols - it appeared under Krushevan's name rather than their own or perhaps more appositely: why did the Protocols appear with a commentary from Krushevan rather than the original Ukrainian author?

The problem here is central to de Michelis' argument in that if we have a Ukrainian anti-jewish author writing the Protocols: why do we not know who they were and why they originally wrote them? De Michelis' theory of it originally being a 'satire' cannot hold precisely because it assumes intimate collaboration between three different parties on a single document over; presumably, nearly two years (which he has insufficient evidence for) and that it is 'satire' seems manifestly unknown to Krushevan whose commentary on the Protocols is predicated on their authenticity.

Also we have Butmi - an editor of the Protocols himself three years later - to contend with in so far as de Michelis' asserts he was part of the same circle as the said Ukrainian, Menshikov and Krushevan, but then offers no reasoning as to why Butmi would not have known that the Protocols were not genuine when he included them in the third edition of his book 'Vragi Roda Chevlovecheskago' as piece of evidence to support his case.

This then leads us onto the third problem with de Michelis' proposition in so far as it is manifestly absurd as it necessarily implies that these men - who let’s not forget knew each other - were either deliberately propounding a 'satire' as a real document (i.e., they were being malicious) or they were taken in a 'crude hoax' (i.e., they were being foolish). De Michelis has no actual evidence for either suggestion, but makes them anyway and seems to believe that they are inherently valid because the Protocols are - in De Michelis' characterisation of Jouin's argument - a 'true forgery'. (80)

In essence then de Michelis commits the cardinal intellectual sin of assuming the Protocols are fake a priori - although I am sure he would argue that this has been 'proven' by the alleged 'plagiarism' - (81) and that this therefore in typical circular logic means that anti-Semitic Russians and/or Ukrainians must have written them. De Michelis is effectively saying then that because he knows the Protocols are fake, we know that they are fakes and have to focus on who wrote them!

De Michelis' argument is then intellectually absurd and as such needs to be discarded. I would also note in passing that because de Michelis well-knows that the 'alleged plagiarisms' are problematic (as they usually refer to the later Nilus and not the original Krushevan edition) and that the Protocols likely originally come from the Russian Empire not France: he is trying to - as he puts it - 'square the circle' for another anti-Semitic conspiratorial origin rather than re-opening the question of the authenticity of the Protocols as his evidence and analysis otherwise require.

This is - to use a metaphor - de Michelis' guilty little secret of course as having destroyed nearly a century of anti-Protocols literature and arguments he likely well realises that the authenticity of the Protocols is now once again arguable and thus he has done something that few to my mind could possibly do: give the Protocols of Zion a new lease of life. Hence de Michelis' almost habitual attempt to attribute them to anti-Semites rather than even consider any kind of jewish authorship, which incidentally other Protocols scholars such as Begunov and Rollin have.

Fourthly de Michelis spectacularly fails to admit context into his theory - although he does mention it in passing - as to the origin of the Protocols: this is very important for understanding any historical event and particularly one so controversial as the origin of the Protocols. That the Protocols were written and then appeared at a time of instability and flux in the world as well as in the Russian Empire is central to understanding what the Protocols are, who potentially wrote them and also why they had an increasing amount of explanatory power.

If we admit the fact that the jews were a very active element of this instability and flux (particularly in the Russian Empire): then it indicates that there is no reason for a simple ascription of the Protocols to anti-jewish authorship, because jewish authors were similarly looking for solutions to the jewish question and could just have easily come under the influence of then current ideas about Masons and secret conspiratorial societies being the way to change things (much as Trotsky did at about the same time I might add).

Also, it is not outside of the realms of possibility that jews may have copied ideas from anti-Semitic authors and incorporated them into their own strategic vision. Much as we know that the Protocols mirrors Herzl's 'Der Judenstaat', (82) which according to both Cohn's and de Michelis' models is part of an inexplicable mass plagiarist methodology. Can we not then turn this round and suggest that the inverse is also possible in that the 'plagiarisms' - when they cannot be ascribed to later additions and redactions - could be seen as the transmission of ideas from anti-jewish authors to jewish ones (in much the same conceptual process as the hypothesized transmission of Mithraic festivals and ideas into early Christianity in the Roman Empire)? Or as de Michelis himself puts it - (83) following Segel - (84) anti-Semites have tended to use the Protocols as a blueprint for how they themselves should operate: so why could not the jews do the same with anti-Semitic literature prior to the Protocols?

This example illustrates that it is perfectly possible for two warring groups to actually use each other's ideas in modified form and as such it is perfectly feasible that this what we could be looking at here: jews having read anti-jewish texts, imbibing some of the ideas and transliterating them into a document of their own. Thus, we can see that we do not need to automatically ascribe the authorship of the Protocols to anti-Semites and can easily show that the jews are just as viable candidates for having written them.

Having thus dealt with de Michelis' argument of a Russian/Ukrainian 'satirical' origin for the Protocols: we can finally begin the process of outlining what the probable origins of the Protocols are.

The Zionist Protocols

Theodor Fritsch famously called the Protocols 'Die Zionistischen Protokolle' echoing Ludwig Mueller von Hausen's estimate of them based upon the theory as to their originating from Theodor Herzl in the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897. (85) Now this in contrast to popular myths circulated about the Protocols actually has a basis in fact in so far as numerous passages of the Protocols have been noted to potentially derive - or in terminology the literature likes to use 'plagiarise' - from Theodor Herzl's 'Der Judenstaat'.

I take issue with Taguieff's conclusion (86) that because Herzl's mentions of the jews are 'positive' in 'Der Judenstaat' and the Protocols turn these into 'negative' references; we cannot ascribe a Zionist origin to the Protocols. My issue with this is quite simple: in so far as Taguieff does not recognise the extent of the additions and redactions from the text and concentrates on the Nilus edition more than he does the Krushevan edition. Thus, his focus is somewhat distorted and his study needs to be revised in the light of de Michelis' analysis of the transmission of the Protocols before it can be seriously considered. (87)

In addition to this I would argue that assigning the subjective label of positivity and negativity in regard to the Protocols is rather misleading in so far as it removes the Protocols from their context. As if the Protocols were based on a Zionist document - which de Michelis styles document Q (equals the German term 'Quelle' or literally 'Source') - and that the Krushevan edition is a redaction of this original (as de Michelis asserts) then we are seeing the sense of the original document being redacted to fit Krushevan's worldview. (88) This necessarily means that the published edition would have a switch in its positivity in that it is summarising and quoting an original document in a negative form by changing the context in which something is said.

To give an example of this process in the inverse (i.e., an anti-Semitic comment becoming a jewish comment) what I have termed the Goldwin Smith quotation will serve.

Where the original quote from Goldwin Smith is: (89)

'The Jew alone regards his race as superior to humanity and looks forward not to its ultimate union with other races, but to its triumph over them all and to its final ascendancy under the leadership of a tribal Messiah.'

Which was modified and transmitted by one anti-jewish tradition as:

'Listen to the Jew, Goldwin Smith, Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, October 1881, “We regard our race as superior to humanity, and look forward not to its ultimate union with other races, but its triumph over them.”'

And then modified to:

'We Jews regard our race as superior to all humanity, and look forward, not to its ultimate union with other races, but to its triumph over them.

Goldwin Smith, Jewish Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, October, 1981'

It is clear here that with a few words having been changed; an original quotation's outlook on its subject - specifically jews - can be changed to the inverse of what it was previously: this is particularly true if we are dealing with something of an open tradition; like Russian anti-jewish circles of this time, which did edit documents to make them fit their ideas better. (90)

We also need to remember that if we are dealing with an open tradition with multiple additions and redactions as well as no clear source of the original text: then we cannot use normal methods of textual criticism - such as those used by Taguieff - precisely because we may well be dealing with substantially modified ideas and quotes that mean the complete opposite of how they were originally intended.

Therefore I would argue that the fact that the Protocols contains near direct quotes from Herzl's 'Der Judenstaat' as opposed to the alleged paraphrasing of Joly is actually evidence that we are here dealing with something that originally appeared in the source for the Krushevan edition as opposed to text that was later arguably added to the Protocols.

If this is indeed true, then we need to realise that this does raise the very real possibility that the source of the Protocols is a document that derives from Zionism: since as de Michelis has correctly pointed out 'Der Judenstaat' envisions a dictatorial/autocratic type of jewish government and that Herzl's transition to thinking in terms of a 'democratic' jewish state only occurs later in his novel 'Altneuland'. (91)

Now while it is indeed possible that anti-Semites used Herzl's 'Der Judenstaat' to give credence to their alleged forgery: it is unclear as to why they would go to the trouble of copying out direct quotes from it and then paraphrasing Joly's 'Dialogues' as well as the numerous works that have been alleged to have been plagiarised to create the Protocols (which - as Bolton rightly observes - actually demolishes the whole 'plagiarism' argument on the grounds of common sense). (92)

It just doesn't follow that a 'satire' or 'forgery' would be quite so illogical as to plagiarise one source directly and then steal lots of other quotes from additional sources (some jewish and some not) that would then be paraphrased when the 'satire' or 'forgery' would be more effective if it simply quoted these sources as being examples of what it has achieved (a-la the original 'translators note' concerning Darwin, Nietzsche and Marx, which Nilus then added into the text of the Protocols). Also why did they only plagiarise Herzl and why not other jewish Zionist sources that we know they had access to?

We can see then the problems for the anti-Protocols arguments simply multiply when we ask awkward pertinent questions about the conclusions that they have reached from their study of what we know about the Protocols.

Thus, because the Protocols quotes Herzl's 'Der Judenstaat' directly and paraphrases all its other 'plagiarisms' we can see that Herzl's 'Der Judenstaat' was likely part of the source document for the Protocols and that therefore it was either some kind of anti-Semitic dissertation linking ideas on power-politics and Zionism together or it is a jewish document likely of Zionist origin.

The former is plausible, but we have no actual evidence - circumstantial or otherwise - to suggest that it is the case (other than the wishful thinking of the anti-Protocols side of the debate), but in the latter case we have circumstantial evidence to point to such a conclusion.

That evidence we can derive from the context in which the Protocols came to light as we can accurately date the origin of the Protocols to between late 1901 and early 1903 given the references to world events (such as the assassination of President McKinley in 1901). (93) This combined with the Ukrainianisms in the Krushevan edition gives us a very specific locale and time period: late 1901 to early 1903 in the general area of and/or close to the Ukraine.

Now the Ukraine at this time was a tinderbox of conflict between revolutionary jewish movements - both Zionist and Marxist - and anti-jewish movements associated with anti-jewish Ukrainian nationalists or the famous 'Black Hundreds' (who actually opposed each other as well). This means we have a situation where radical political and intellectual programs are likely to have been put forward and adopted: as well as a climate of 'learning from your enemies' where anti-jewish ideas would have filtered into jewish thought and vice versa.

Then on 6th and 7th April 1903 we have the famous Khisinev pogrom (next to the Ukraine and now in Moldova) that was conducted by locals against the jewish population on the charge of the jews having ritually murdered a young Christian boy in a town slightly to the north and poisoning a Christian girl in a jewish hospital. This violent rising of the Russian workers and peasants against the jews was egged on and pushed further by a widely-read local newspaper entitled 'The Bessarabian' whose publisher and leading light just so happened to be Pavel Krushevan: the first publisher of the Protocols. (94)

Now we know quite a lot about the Kishinev pogrom and that it was close to a major centre of Zionist activity – the city of Odessa - (95) where Vladimir Jabotinsky gives his first lecture on his extreme Zionist variant Revisionist Zionism on 7th April 1903 after hearing about the pogrom. (96) We know that for example a large number of jewish Torah scrolls were desecrated and that the pogromists took a large quantity of money, goods and objects from the jews during the pogrom itself. (97)

Now with a direct connection to the first editor of the Protocols, a major centre of the Zionist movement in the Russian Empire (where extreme variants - like Revisionist Zionism - were forming) and that we know objects of importance to jews were either damaged or taken. We can make a rather revolutionary suggestion: the source document that the Krushevan edition was based on was actually taken from the Khisinev pogrom and that it was some kind of Zionist document or local plan.

This is not quite so outlandish as it might at first sound given that we know of several supporting facts for just such a source origin.

The first is all that I have just stated and in particular the proximity to Odessa - which as I have stated was a major centre of the Zionist movement - and the singular use of direct quotes from Herzl's 'Der Judenstaat'.

The second is that in September 1902 there was the 'Pan-Russian Zionist Congress' in Minsk, which included moderate as well as extreme Zionists from all over the Ukraine and the southern Russian Empire. (98) This would have meant that there was a drive to write down various ideas and concepts for discussion, which at a Zionist conference would have included heavy quotation of Herzl, which explains the direct quotes as opposed to the paraphrasing that is otherwise used.

The third is that Krushevan - as the celebrated local publisher and a well-known critic of the jews - would have been the first port of call for any pogromist who had found something they considered to be important but did not want to hang on to as at that time the authorities - who considered the pogrom an international embarrassment (although jews have consistently claimed it was an anti-Semitic conspiracy by the central government) - were actively prosecuting those involved. (99)

It is thus reasonable that they would have given the incriminating evidence to Krushevan who could then spirit it away to friends like Menshikov and Butmi: outside of the sphere of the official investigation by the authorities from Odessa which was then being conducted.

The fourth is that Krushevan would have had to publish the Procotocls away from the Ukraine and Bessarabia: precisely because of this official investigation which was focused on his role as an instigator of the pogrom locally and as such it would have aroused an official investigation if he had come forward with the source document for the Protocols at this stage which would have inevitably led to his being put on trial for complicity in the pogrom as well as the trial of his human source for similar charges as well as theft. (100)

We should remember here that each of the twenty-two pogromists brought to trial in relation to the Kishinev pogrom were charged separately (rather than as a group) and would stand trial not as a group, but as separate individuals: this would allow further charges to be easily brought by the ensuing investigation. (101) One that I might add would almost inevitably result in the conviction and punishment of Krushevan and his human source for stealing such a document from the jews irrespective of the document's contents.

That means in effect that if Krushevan published the source document from which the Protocols comes it would have meant certain punishment as it is unlikely that Krushevan did not know of the substantial diplomatic pressure being placed on the Russian Empire by the United States - at the behest of a jewish minority (102) that was growing in power and was already utilizing the scare tactics they later adopted (as a group) of exploiting gentile innocents to bolster and front their causes - which he would have interpreted as part of a jewish attempt to revenge itself on him and others associated with the Kishinev pogrom as well as the 1903 Gomel pogrom in Belarus, (103) which occurred at about the same time as the Protocols were published in 'Znamia'. (104)

'Znamia' was located outside the jurisdiction of the court of Odessa (published as it was in Petrograd) and to legally attack Krushevan the court of Odessa would need to go through the higher levels of the Russian government from which Krushevan could expect - as a patriotic anti-jewish publisher - an amount of the legal protection that would be more difficult to exercise locally in a major centre of jewish influence in the Russian Empire: Odessa.

If we bear this in mind we can see that we have a fairly good circumstantial case (and we must bear in mind that any case assigning an original source for the Protocols is inevitably based on circumstantial evidence and/or is speculative) for assigning the source document for the Protocols to a local jewish group or individual - that was likely associated with Zionist thought - and that this source document was then transmitted through another one of Krushevan's publishing channels out of concern for the well-being of his source and/or himself.

Such an origin for the Protocols also neatly explains several problematic issues that are difficult to explain from a conventional perspective all at once.

To wit: (105)

A) The 'open tradition' of the document and why several individuals (notably Krushevan, Nilus and Butmi) - if we follow de Michelis' reconstruction - seem to give us several different versions of the same basic text. If the document's providence was unclear when it reached them then it explains why they both believed but rephrased the document to meet their own ideological needs and priorities.

In essence our three editors knew of the original source document and because its providence was unclear - only deriving as 'something recovered' from the jews (a-la Krushevan's original commentary) - they sought to utilize it by adding to and redacting it to fit the type of jewish conspiracy they argued in their work was a reality. Hence Krushevan's note about the supposed Masonic origins (which are not in the actual text), Nilus' removal of the Old Testament references and insertion of Masons into the text in addition to Butmi's playing up of the age of the conspiracy (using specifically Orthodox Christian dating) and downplaying a Zionist role in it.

This also accounts for why Krushevan's edition is likely the closest to the original source of the Protocols in so far as it retains much of the structure of a series of drafted policy ideas and ideological priorities (hence the numbering system [a-la 'Protocols'] of self-contained but linked ideas), which include the Ukrainianisms because that is how the original text had been drafted and Krushevan simply published the document as he received it with a few alternations (suggested by cross-referencing against the specific language used by the Nilus and Butmi editions).

B) The contradictory explanations given by Nilus for the origin of the Protocols and his receiving a copy of them; likely a copy of the source document, from an ex-Major Sukhotin which is also mentioned by General Stepanov, and which is the one difficult point of the 'Paris origin' testimony to explain. This would potentially explain why Nilus contradicts himself in that he says he received the Protocols in either 1901 or 1905 as he is thinking of when first published his predictions of a jewish anti-Christ (1901) and when he received his copy of the source document that later became central to his vision of this jewish anti-Christ (1905). It also neatly explains - if we suppose that Stepanov is somewhat correct - why he also mentions an ex-Major called Sukhotin in that this individual was helping disseminate the source document of the Protocols to interested parties and also explains Rachkovsky's involvement in doing precisely the same thing in 1905.

C) The idea of a Zionist origin - noted by Ljutostansky in 1904 (although as stated in fact written in late 1903) - is thus vindicated as Ljutostansky was ideologically close, but not directly associated with Krushevan and could easily have found out (as he was a major compiler of material against the jews) that Krushevan's original was a Zionist publication.

This also explains why in later versions Nilus was convinced that the Protocols was a Zionist document stolen from France, while Butmi though that it was in fact a Masonic document: precisely because while both had received information of the tradition of its being something to do with Zionism: Nilus had integrated this into his world-view of a coming jewish anti-Christ while Butmi insisted on seeing in it a Judeo-Masonic plot against Russia which was in tune with what his associate Krushevan had originally thought.

D) The confusion about the alleged French origin of the Protocols. In that the idea propounded by Krushevan in his commentary alleged that the Protocols were a jewish document linked to the Freemasons - in spite of the presence of no such indicators in the original text - (that was then followed by Butmi) in addition to Ljutostansky's and Nilus' argument (which I take as representative of what Major Sukhotin told Nilus [which then Nilus then later enlarged on to include Theodor Herzl]) that it was a Zionist document recovered from the jews.

This then gives us the origin for why Radziwill, du Chayla and Stepanov, all give us three very different accounts of origins the Protocols and why they do not match up in terms of detail: in that all three of them are recounting very different versions of the origin of the Protocols that they were told separately.

These were a series of stories that were created by blending some of the truth into them (the theft and involvement of the local Russian police [who were in favour of Kishinev]) (106) but using a bigger canvas (to broaden the meaning and appeal of the Protocols [as an international Zionist or Masonic agenda is a very different beast to a local Zionist extremist's proposals] and distract attention away from their origin in southern Russia) to remove Krushevan from having to explain where he had acquired them and thus directly admitting complicity in the illegal acts of the Kishinev pogromists (and avoiding a prison sentence). (107)

E) Also, we can then explain Menshikov's reference to a Protocols style document existing in April 1902, which he may have heard of in relation to the 'Pan-Russian Zionist Congress' already mentioned and would explain both his belief in the possibility of such a document existing as well as his scepticism about whether it could in fact be found. It may also explain Menshikov's later disbelief of the Protocols precisely because he did not believe such a document could have been captured and it is unlikely that Krushevan would have told him the true origin of such a document. (108)

Thus, we can see that if we remove the myths and legends surrounding the Protocols and then place them in their historical context using what we know about them: we can actually narrow down what the source for the Protocols originally was. To wit a jewish document recovered from Kishinev by pogromists and then given to Krushevan who then published it outside the jurisdiction of the court of Odessa, which was looking for a way to prosecute him (and for which the Protocols would have been suitable ammunition) and which is the reason why de Michelis rightly suspects the document to have come from pogromist circles (although he concludes that it was a smear on the jews in contrast to my own opposing conclusion). (109)

Having thus located the Protocols in the Zionist milieu of the southern Russia Empire we can move on to the other most common attack on the Protocols: that of the charge of plagiarism, which we need to address and explain in the light of its near universal use on the anti-Protocols side of the debate.

One Thousand and One Plagiarisms

Possibly the most common theme trotted out by the anti-Protocols camp is the alleged plagiarism of the Protocols from Maurice Joly and Hermann Goedesche (writing under the pseudonym Sir John Retcliffe): so much so that it features in every academic and popular treatise on the subject of the Protocols with the most through treatment of it being Cohn who reproduces quotation against quotation in an effort to demonstrate this is the case. (110) This is - it is frequently held - the most definitive of all anti-Protocols arguments: (111) in part because the origin of the Protocols will always be speculative pending any future discovery of any or all of the substantial pieces of the intellectual puzzle of their origins.

Now this oft-cited idea is actually a selective misstatement of the case against the Protocols that has been extensively discussed in the literature on the subject.

Firstly, a large number of the quotes that Cohn identifies are from the Nilus edition of 1905 and not from the Krushevan edition of 1903. (112) Further to this we have alleged plagiarisms being added and redacted from the text by later editions (including Nilus), but on balance the amount of allegedly plagiarised material from Joly is substantially lower in the 1903 Krushevan edition than in the 1905 Nilus edition. (113)

Secondly the Joly claim is the second accusation - not the first - of plagiarism that was made against the Protocols: the first is claimed in relation to Hermann Goedesche's 1868 novel 'Biarritz'. (114) This charge was in fact taken up before the alleged Joly plagiarism was exposed by Philip Graves of the London Times (whose editor Henry Wickham-Steed was a believer in the authenticity of the Protocols) and represents a problem to the anti-Protocols argument in that it shows a desperate international jewish community looking to invent arguments against the Protocols, which suggests that we need to be particularly careful of the 'plagiarism' charge from the outset precisely because it was politicised by the jews themselves before they had evidence to argue it cogently. (115)

Thirdly the Joly text is only the best-known text of many that the Protocols have been claimed to knowingly plagiarise and/or borrow from. I have already mentioned Goedesche's 'Biarritz', but in addition we have Eugene Sue's 'The Wandering Jew' and 'The Mysteries of Paris', Alexandre Dumas' 'Marquis de Sade', Houston Stewart Chamberlain's 'The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century' and 'The Jews', Edouard Drumont's 'Jewish France', Osman Bey's 'The Conquest of the World by the Jews' and 'The Talmud and the Jews', Benjamin Disraeli's 'Coningsby', Jacob Brafmann's 'The Book of the Kahal', Nicolo Machiavelli's 'The Prince' and Abbe Barruel's 'History of Jacobinism', which accounts for those many readers will have heard of. (116)

Fourthly - as de Michelis points out - the only text to be more-or-less directly quoted rather than paraphrased is Theodor Herzl's 'Der Judenstaat', (117) which is again not something you are usually told in the popular literature on the Protocols. (118)

This then gives us a very different picture of the whole plagiarism argument in that we are being told by a multitude of authors on the Protocols that the author or authors of the Protocols sat down and plagiarised a large number of different contemporary and classic texts to create the Protocols, which then proves the Protocols to be a fraud. We should remind ourselves once again that the number of borrowings and what is borrowed differs significantly between the Krushevan edition of 1903 and the Nilus edition of 1905. (119)

So, to simplify the picture that the anti-Protocols camp is painting for us: we have an anti-Semitic author who is either trying to defame the jews and/or writing a satire about Zionism. Who then decides the best way to achieve this is to paraphrase a large amount of material from a multitude of different works: some novels, some exposes written by jews, some anti-jewish treatises, some works of political philosophy and one anti-Freemasonry treatise.

But hang on a moment: why would the author of the Protocols do this when they could just as simply innovate from their own style of writing, based on their own theories and just crib a few ideas - as opposed to plagiarising/paraphrasing whole passages - from a book or two they had read?

In addition to this - again to simplify the picture presented by the anti-Protocols camp - they would have us believe that not only did one author (Krushevan) paraphrase (well sorry they like to incorrectly call it plagiarism with all the emotional ideas that concept evokes in readers) a large number of different works, but also that a later editor (Nilus) used the same works in addition to several new ones to add to the Protocols!

We thus end up with a case of logical fiddlesticks from the anti-Protocols camp in that their textual and literary criticism has actually landed up in their presenting not only a rather illogical series of events as logical, but also showing up the fact that they are being... for lack of a better term... very stupid.

The origin of this case of logical fiddlesticks from the anti-Protocols camp can be located in one of the lesser-known problems of textual and linguistic analysis in that if a scholar looks at a text long enough, he can find any number of paraphrases, plagiarisms and literary borrowings. This is caused - as Allegro has noted in relation to Biblical Criticism - (120) by there being a finite range of expression in any language and that therefore natural parallels - particularly when two documents are talking of similar issues - are going to happen (i.e., what we may call 'parallel textual evolution'). Not taking into account principles such as these leads to all sorts of strange theories - based on largely invented linguistic parallels - such as Jesus taking his ideas from Buddhism, most of Renan's famous parallels between Mithraism and Christianity not to mention a large chunk of Kabbalistic numerology-based mysticism.

We can use this simple principle of parallel textual evolution to remove all but three of the alleged plagiarisms/borrowings on the grounds of there being few textual parallels and that there is no 'system' to the alleged plagiarism/borrowing.

These are:

A) Hermann Goedesche's 'Biarritz'

B) Maurice Joly's 'The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu'

C) Theodor Herzl's 'The Jewish State'

However, before we move on to discuss these in turn it is important to provide the reader with an example of the alleged plagiarisms/borrowings that we have dismissed and briefly explain why we have dismissed them using the example as a short case study.

The simple example of Chabry's 1897 'L'Accaparement monétaire et l'indépendance économique’ and the 20th Protocol will serve to make my point.

The mirror texts provided are as follows.

Chabry:

'The feudal lords of international finance protect this monopoly [of loans] as a sword of Damocles suspended over the peoples.' (121)

20th Protocol (de Michelis says 19th): (122)

'The loans hang like a sword of Damocles over the heads of the governed.'

This looks similar, doesn't it?

Now let’s remove the translator's (in this case de Michelis') interpolation as to the meaning from Chabry and we get:

'The feudal lords of international finance protect this monopoly as a sword of Damocles suspended over the peoples.'

Now it is clear that this isn't quite as close as we've taken out the interpolation to suggest meaning, which makes the translation look a lot closer to the original text that it does without it.

We can note that there is no use or reference to 'feudal lords' and 'international finance' in the Protocols. In addition I would note that Chabry's original uses the context of 'the peoples' to mean the peoples of the world ('peuples du monde'), which is markedly dissimilar from the idea of 'the governed' ('les gens gouvernés') as on the one hand Chabry - in the context of the twenty-four page pamphlet this is from - is telling us that 'international finance' could use their loan-capital monopoly to get rid of problem and on the other the Protocols are telling us and that the Learned Elders will use their loan-capital monopoly to get rid of problematic goyim.

What is important here is the intent and usage of the concept: in so far as they are similar, but at the same time markedly different. If we understand this then the plagiarism theory (and indeed I suspect this was the meanings for discerning the textual parallel) largely rests on the metaphor 'sword of Damocles' - as otherwise it is normal enough French and Russian right-wing assertion for the time (bemoaning the power of Mammon over the world etc) - which unfortunately for the anti-Protocols camp is equally a common metaphor connected with the insecurity of tyrants. A metaphor that could equally come out of Thomas Hobbes for example!

To demonstrate this, we can point out that President John F. Kennedy could - on the anti-Protocols camp's logic - be said to be 'plagiarising' the Protocols or Chabry when he expressed the idea that:

'Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness.' (123)

We can thus see when the metaphor of the 'sword of Damocles' is used it almost always is expressed in a similar way to Chabry or the Protocols. This then demonstrates that what we are dealing with is not 'plagiarism' or even paraphrasing, but rather a common convergence of language and a literary reference point (i.e., parallel textual evolution).

In addition to this I should note that the relevant part of the 20th Protocol in the 1920 English translation (i.e., Nilus 1905 and 1917) reads as follows:

'Loans hang like a sword of Damocles over the heads of rulers, who, instead of taking from their subjects a temporary tax, come begging with outstretched palm of our bankers.'

Even if you assume that 'over the heads of rulers' is a later mistranslation/interpolation of/for 'over the governed' then it is clear that the passages are actually quite different and bear only a misleading superficial similarity in terms of their metaphor and subject.

No wonder the anti-Protocols camp won't cite the entire passage!

Thus, we can see with a little bit of prodding the plagiarism allegations begin to come apart at the seams.

Having thus disposed of a large portion of the anti-Protocols argument on the issue of the alleged 'plagiarisms' we can move onto the two central and frequently repeated claims: namely that the Protocols include a large number of plagiarisms/borrowing from Goedesche's 'Biarritz' and Joly's 'Dialogues'.

An important introductory comment that should be made is in-line with what Myers has pointed out (124) in so far as that in this type of document the use - or rather paraphrasing - of another document is not proof against or for the document's authenticity, while in contrast a direct quote may be potentially taken as evidence for or against.

Traditionally it is presumed - following Graves (125) and Bernstein - (126) that parallels of this kind actually 'disprove' the Protocol's originating from the jews in any way, shape or form. The logical response to that is a simple one: how so?

We can examine this with a simple thought experiment as follows:

If we have a series of minutes from an important strategic meeting of one company that make their way via surreptitious means to a rival company, but that same series of minutes is partly expressed using a series of paraphrases and metaphors from a popular business book that the author of the original minutes had recently read and been impressed by. Does that therefore mean that the minutes of the meeting concerned are invalid and not what they profess to be because terms had been paraphrased/plagiarised from that popular business book?

No: of course not.

The idea that plagiarism/paraphrasing from Joly invalidates the Protocols is essentially a tautology. As the argument of Protocols being a forgery from Joly ipso facto assumes it is made up, because it may contain paraphrases/plagiarisms from another non-cited source without explaining why the use of such paraphrases/plagiarisms from such a source makes the document itself false in any way.

Having removed this common, but nonsensical argument from consideration we can move onto the case of Goedesche's novel 'Biarritz' and its relationship to the Protocols.

Hermann Goedesche - a mid-to-late 19th century editor of the conservative Prussian daily 'Kreuzzeitung' - was a noted German author of fiction and poetry under the pseudonym of Sir John Retcliffe. Segel, for example, tries to style the origin of this having been to lend 'authority' to his work, (127) but I would argue that Goedesche's novels are more in a revolutionary conservative strain (taking a controversially strong anti-jewish stand for example) and that his position as editor of the influential 'Kreuzzeitung' was authority enough if he wished to invoke it. Also, one is forced question what unstated 'authority' a writer of poetry and fiction is supposed to derive from being an English diplomat in Segel's view?

Regardless of this: one of Goedesche's novel's 'Biarritz' - from 1868 - contains a short chapter titled 'In the Jewish Cemetery of Prague' which was then republished in anti-jewish circles under the title 'The Rabbi's Speech'. (128) 'The Rabbi's Speech' then took on a life of its own and was assumed to be an actual - rather than a fictional - report of a gathering of the princes (meaning leaders) of the twelve tribes of Israel to whom the leader of the group Rabbi Simon ben Yehudah gives a speech of not dissimilar general - but not specific - content to some of the later editions of the Protocols - notably to Butmi's 1906 edition - about the primarily economic methods the jews are using to take over the world.

This transformation from fiction to fact may have in fact been intended by Goedesche as he published a shorter and heavily revised version of the chapter 'In the Jewish Cemetery of Prague' in 1881 in the French periodical 'Le Contemporain' (alongside several other strong broadsides against the activities of the jews in Russia). (129) This version - as Bronner correctly points out - was revised to make it seem more like an actual speech rather than a work of fiction: (130) although I am not convinced that Goedesche actually intended it this way, but rather as a reworking of a popular chapter in one of his works. Given that the novel concerned ('Biarritz') had already been independently translated into Russian - for example - (131) it makes perfect commercial sense for Goedesche to publish a new version of the popular story in a popular right-wing periodical in France where anti-jewish sentiment was on the rise. (132)

Segel (133) and Wolf (134) claim that 'The Rabbi's Speech' is plagiarised by the Protocols - echoing the related expose's by Joseph Stanjek and Otto Friedrich - but base their argument on Mueller von Hausen's introduction to his 1919 German edition of the Protocols 'Die Geheimnisse der Weisen von Zion' ['The Secrets of the Elders of Zion'] not the actual text itself!

'The Rabbi's Speech' is in fact only adduced by Mueller von Hausen as evidence for the authenticity of the Protocols, but crucially not part of the document itself. Segel and Wolf however misrepresent this and claim that the Protocols themselves are 'debunked' by their alleged connection to Goedesche's 'Biarritz'. (135) In fact, if you look at the passages reproduced by Segel from Stanjek and Friedrich then one can clearly see if one compares them to the article by Goedesche in 'Le Contemporain' that in spite the different language: they are almost identical.

Therefore, what Segel and Wolf claim is that the Protocols are 'debunked' by an inserted piece of evidence in the introduction to Mueller von Hausen's translation, which they then proceed to claim is 'plagiarised' when in fact it is simply a piece of fiction that was shortened and slightly restyled by the original author for popular consumption in a French periodical. It is thus little wonder that 'The Rabbi's Speech' and the chapter from 'Biarritz' are almost identical!

We can thus begin to see that the idea that the Protocols 'plagiarise' Goedesche's 'Biarritz' is and has been admitted as incorrect by modern anti-Protocols authorities. That said the anti-Protocols camp haven't abandoned this argument entirely and have modified their opinion to the idea that Goedesche's 'The Rabbi's Speech' somehow acted as a 'prototype' for the Protocols, but then again I would point out that this is a case of parallel textual evolution precisely as they don't reflect or mirror Krushevan's 1903 or Nilus' 1905 editions in any way (even though Krushevan had published it in 'The Bessarabian' in 1903), (136) but only really enter the equation as an appendix to Butmi's 1906 edition. (137)

Ben-Itto, for example, asserts that 'The Rabbi's Speech' 'presages' the Protocols, (138) while Rollin thinks it gives us the 'framework' for the 'adaptation' of the Protocols from Joly's work. (139) The problem with both views is that they look at the Protocols in an intellectual vacuum in so far as they forget that the ideas propounded by 'The Rabbi's Speech' were not only common but near universal among the followers and thinkers of the anti-Semitic European right-wing at this time. One need only read Drumont's 'La France Juive' and Henri Roger Gougenot de Mousseaux's 'Le Juif, le judaisme et la judaisation des peuples chretiens' to see the same assertions made in a very similar way! (140)

As to Rollin's specific argument that 'The Rabbi's Speech' serves as a methodological framework for the Protocols - correctly doubted by de Michelis - we can easily remove this from contention by pointing out that Goedesche was never actually plagiarised/paraphrased by any author associated with the Protocols in relation to them. So how could Goedesche possibly have served as a template for the Protocols?

Or put another more explicit way: if critics of jews routinely argued that the jews were seeking to rule the world via a conspiracy against gentiles. How then can we assert a line of 'inspiration' from Goedesche when there are so many other likelier candidates for such 'inspiration' available: most notably the work of the renegade jew Jacob Brafmann which was published in Wilno in 1868 (the same year as Goedesche's 'Biarritz') and was an instant best-seller in Russian anti-jewish circles. (141)

In fact, Goedesche's name only seems to have come up as a candidate for being the textual origin of the Protocols, because of this early misidentification by both Stanjek and Friedrich of 'Biarritz' being the Rosetta stone of the Protocols based on Mueller von Hausen's introduction to the Protocols, which included 'The Rabbi's Speech'.

Thus we can again see that what has happened here is the accumulation of mistake upon mistake in the anti-Protocols camp, which has now reached the point of absurdly trying to single out Goedesche's text - from a large and well-attested pack of contemporary works just like it - because of this early theory and not because it is; per se, an origin for alleged 'plagiarised' passages in the Protocols.

Having dealt and disposed with the problem of the alleged quotations from Goedesche: we can move on to the sine qua non of the anti-Protocols case: the alleged plagiarism of Maurice Joly's 'Dialogue'. In order to understand this claim, we need to understand the context in which the claim came to light as well as what we know about Maurice Joly.

Maurice Joly was a left-wing French Republican lawyer and writer who was stridently against Napoleon III of France: so much so that in 1864 he published the 'Dialogue' in Geneva and Brussels. The work was then unsuccessfully smuggled into France by friends and associates: who were promptly arrested and interrogated. Joly's left-wing friends predictably gave him up to save their own skins and the man himself was arrested (not before he had written published another political attack on Napoleon III published as his 1865 'Caesar'). Hauled before a judge Joly then received the sentence of 15 months in prison for his subversive pamphlet on the 25th April 1865.

After he got out of prison Joly continued to write and publish an autobiography in 1870 (as well as joining the 'French resistance' against Napoleon III) and with the downfall of that monarch in 1871 as a direct result of the loss of the Franco-Prussian war. Joly began to publish openly on political subjects again with a book on French Republican politics in 1872. However, Joly had begun to grow disillusioned, was fighting a legal battle against a one-time friend Monsieur Grevy and on July 14th 1878 he was found dead in his apartment: the cause of death being attributed to suicide. (142)

All well and good you might say, but even in Joly's life we have two issues that we need to consider before we move on.

Firstly, we have the allegation - made by Lord Alfred Douglas in 'Plain English' in 1921 - that Maurice Joly was a jew who was born with the name: Moses Joel. (143) Douglas cited various unnamed sources for his assertion, but never told or wrote to anyone to my knowledge about who or what these were. A similar claim was made at the Bern Trial by one of the German luminaries on the Protocols Colonel Ulrich Fleischhauer (of 'Welt-Dienst' fame) who asserted that Maurice Joly was originally called 'Joseph Levy' but once again produced no actual evidence of this claim. (144)

That said however the prosecution in the Bern Trial did in fact do the defence a rather large favour when they sought to disprove Fleischhauer by producing Joly's baptismal certificate which was dated 1829, which didn't match with Joly's claim of having been born in 1833 in his autobiography. (145) This could have been used to argue - although it wasn't at the time - that Joly's recollection of events was doubtful and would have thus enabled the defence to throw a large amount of doubt on the prosecution's case.

Unfortunately, we also have to contend with the fact that in his autobiography - published in 1870 - Joly actually states that he had a French father and an Italian mother: not mentioning any change of name, anything to do with Judaism and/or gave any indication of being anything other than what he claimed to be. (146) We also have to bear in mind that the discrepancy is the wrong way for a jew converting to Christianity (i.e., the baptism is earlier than the claimed birth year rather than the baptism being several years later) and as such we have to dismiss this evidence as not being suggestive in any way of a jewish origin for Joly.

Now because of the fact that we have no actual evidence that Joly was anything other what he professed to be: we have to dismiss this notion of Joly being a jew.

Secondly, we have the allegation that Joly plagiarised a lot of his material from a work 'Macchiavel, Montesquieu, Rousseau' ('Macchiavel' is a transliteration of 'Machiavelli') by one Jakob Venedy (actually Jacob Venedey) who is claimed to have been a jew, a freemason, a communist and a friend of Karl Marx. (147)

With these I am going to work slightly backward in that we do know that Venedey was a left-wing - as opposed to a patriotic - socialist who fought on - but not at - the side as Marx and Engels in the revolutionary year of 1848 in Germany. As to him being a communist - i.e., a follower of Karl Marx - this is very unlikely in so far as Venedey died in 1871 (the year of the Paris commune) and although Marx had published the first volume of his 'Das Kapital' in 1867: it was not till after he died that he came to be regarded through the industry and agency of Engels a 'great' socialist thinker. (148)

It is thus rather doubtful that Venedey was a communist as now normally understood, but it is possible that he could have been a supporter of the communards given that he spent a large amount of time in Paris (this time a centre of revolutionary thought) as well as France in general and was politically left-wing. We can thus reasonably speculate that Venedey was at the very least familiar with the doctrines and ideas of the philosophers of the communards - like Babeuf, Saint Just and Proudhon - and would have likely been - as an ideological fellow traveller - supportive of their revolutionary ideas and general program.

As such then it is possible that Venedey knew Marx, but I know of no instances or examples of correspondence to or mention of Venedey in any published or archive collection of Marx's voluminous correspondence. As Marx was a serial letter writer and used any connection; however obscure, to try to elicit money to pay for his various habits in addition to having an aristocratic wife, several young children and a servant to feed and clothe. (149) We can say that although it is possible that Venedey knew Marx it is highly unlikely this was the case as Marx left no paper trail of it and nor do he or Engels mention Venedey as far as I am aware, which would have been the case had Marx and Venedey known each other and especially so if the two were friends as is alleged.

That Venedey was a Freemason I have been able to find no evidence for other than the much later assertion that he was associated with a Paris lodge named 'Bauhütte' (lit. 'Masonic/Workers Hut'). (150) Other than the fact that the Bauhütte claim could easily refer to the German craft guilds that had existed since the medieval epoch: the term 'Bauhütte' does not come into existence till 1816 when Goethe innovated it in his book of that year: 'Kunst und Alterthum am Rhein und Mayn'. (151) I cannot find any contemporary or detailed reference to such an organisation existing in Paris at the time (Fry refers to a periodical of the same name which I have not been able to locate a copy of) and not least to Venedey having been a Freemason himself.

Further - and perhaps most alarmingly - there does not appear to be any actual evidence other than later blind assertion and rumour that Venedey was himself jewish. It seems we have a case here - as Peter Myers has observed - (152) of an individual being labelled as a jew who seems to have not been and then claimed as being a 'Learned Elder'. (153)

This hasty claim seems to also be at the root of the claim that Venedey's book 'Macchiavel, Montesquieu, Rousseau' was plagiarised by Maurice Joly. Although I have not as yet made a detailed comparison between the 'Dialogue' and 'Macchiavel, Montesquieu, Rousseau' some key points stand out to me as suggesting this was a hasty improvisation in the pro-Protocols camp.

Firstly, is the difference of language in that in spite of its title 'Macchiavel, Montesquieu, Rousseau' was only to my knowledge published in German (in 1850 by Franz Duncker in Berlin) as opposed to Joly's 'Dialogue' which was published in French in Geneva and Brussels. Now it is of course possible to plagiarise from different language works, but it is very difficult - due to the linguistic difficulties of translation - to do so accurately. That suggests that even if the Vishnu quote from the Protocols that has been traced to Joly is in Venedey's work (154) then it wouldn't likely read the same way due to the translation and would thus be very difficult to track back and prove as a 'plagiarism'.

That said you could style this as a clever piece of plagiarism on Joly's part (as we know he did actually plagiarise whole pages of work from Eugene Sue for example) (155) but the problem with that is that we do not know if Joly could read or speak German - let alone fluently - and as such it is difficult at best to imagine him plagiarising a German language work for reasons unknown to us.

Secondly the originator of the Venedey plagiarism claim seems to have superficially connected the title of the first volume (there are two) of Venedey's book, which is 'Macchiavel und Montesquieu', and assumed that this is a dialogue. In fact, as the title of the second volume 'Rousseau' makes clear: it is actually just a left-wing philosophical reflection on three important authors in the then contemporary philosophical canon. The work itself is not a dialogue in the vein of the Protocols and could not have served as a model for Joly's 'Dialogue' as de Michelis rightly points out. (156)

Thirdly Venedy arrives late on the scene - in 1931 no less - (157) as a defence of the Protocols by including Joly as plagiarist of an alleged freemasonic jewish communist then it serves to neutralise the superficially powerful Joly 'plagiarism' claims and indeed enlist them into the arsenal of the pro-Protocols camp.

Thus, we can say in summary that Venedey wasn't a communist, didn't know Karl Marx, doesn't seem to have been jewish or a Freemason either. We also can be fairly sure that Venedey's 'Macchiavel, Montesquieu, Rousseau' did not serve as a template or inspiration for Joly's 'Dialogue'.

By contrast to the legend of Joly's plagiarism of Venedey: the pro-Protocols camp is on much stronger ground when we come to the origins of the Joly plagiarism claim. This is typified in the fact that the argument originates from Philip Graves who claims to have met a White Russian landowner ('Mr. X') who had had connections to the Okhrana in Constantinople in 1921 who then told him that he knew it was plagiarism from a rare old French book; Joly's 'Dialogue' and provided Graves with a copy to check the passages himself. (158)

Now there are several things that are very wrong with the picture that Graves provides - although nearly every author on the Protocols has unquestioningly believed him - one of which is found in the lack of an actual identity to give to this mysterious 'White Russian landowner' per the pseudonym of 'Mr. X'. This faceless man has been tentatively identified using Graves' description as one Mihail Raslovlev who was in Constantinople at about this time. (159)

Now the obvious question that needs to be asked but which to my knowledge hasn't is: why did Graves cover up the identity of his informant given that there was no authority that would go after 'Mr. X' any more as the Okhrana had ceased to exist and the anti-jewish governments of the 1930s were yet to come into power?

So, the question remains: why cover up the identity of the informant?

You could argue that this was to protect 'Mr. X's' reputation in the right-wing White Russian circles, which would view such an activity as akin to treason especially for the money that Graves promised. However, this assumes that 'Mr. X' had much to lose by being known as an informer to White Russian émigrés in Constantinople.

The logical question to this dilemma is again: why?

We could suggest - not unreasonably - that it was to avoid losing his friends and social connections, but then by betraying an alleged 'secret' then 'Mr. X' had already shown he had no real interest in loyalty to those he pretended to agree with on a social and political level. So why was he so interested in keeping in with his social and political circle, while willingly betraying an alleged 'secret'?

Well, the obvious if controversial answer is that 'Mr. X' was actually a White Russian émigré who worked for the Cheka in an international capacity to keep an eye on what the White Russian émigrés were planning, which we know of numerous former monarchist émigrés doing. (160) However - like the sudden remembrances of du Chayla - I think we are dealing here with a Bolshevik method of trying to discredit their White Russian enemies who used the Protocols of Zion - with the massive controversy that was raging around them in Europe in addition to their popularity - as a highly-effective propaganda weapon against the newly created Soviet Union. (161)

Now as the Cheka could not attack the Protocols directly by planting stories via sympathisers and fellow travellers without the risk of it being attacked as a Soviet plot to discredit the Protocols: they hit upon a simple and highly effective alternative. Invite a reporter for the paper that was respectable institution (i.e., believable) but also one that believed in the Protocols (i.e. no reason to suspect a Soviet source) - for which 'The Times' of London was easily the best candidate - and then give them the alleged 'plagiarism' information plus a copy of the book in question (so they could see for themselves and were thus likely to print the claim).

This sounds somewhat fantastic: doesn't it?

However, there is one strange detail of the meeting with 'Mr. X' that is very difficult to explain if we simply assume he was motivated by money: he left after giving the information to Graves without taking the money that Graves had there for him and didn't actually ask for it at the time. (162) Now if 'Mr. X' had been motivated by financial difficulties: would he not upon Graves' crediting the alleged 'plagiarism' immediately ask for the money that was the ostensible reason for his coming forward?

That 'Mr. X' left suggests to us that the money was not the principal reason for 'Mr. X's' revelation and that leaves us with two explanations to consider: that 'Mr. X' was estranged from his former acquaintances and friends in the White Russian émigré movement, or that 'Mr. X' was involved in this event at the behest of a strongly anti-Protocols third party. That 'Mr. X' was not estranged from his friends and acquaintances in the White Russian émigré movement we can see from the use of the pseudonym as 'Mr. X' to protect his identity when there were no physical threats to his life by coming forward.

That then leaves us with other possibility: that 'Mr. X' was working at the behest of a strongly anti-Protocols third party. The most obvious candidate for this is the Soviet Union who were strongly involved in opposing anti-Semitism at this time and also - as we have seen - were actively involved in trying to eliminate the Protocols as late as 1934-1935 at the Bern Trial. In addition to this we have a huge over-representation of jews in the Russian Communist party apparatus at this time, which again serves to suggest that what we are dealing with here is a very successful Soviet information dissemination operation. (163)

If we understand this then it leads us nicely onto the second issue with 'Mr. X's' story and one that has also not been sufficiently explored by the Protocols literature on both sides of the debate: why 'Mr. X' knew about the alleged 'plagiarism'. The problem with that of course is we simply don't know as Graves doesn't tell us, but implies that it is something to do with the Okhrana by pointing out that 'Mr. X' claimed to have received the information from an ex-officer in that organisation. (164)

This fits nicely with Cohn's theory of the origin of the Protocols being the Paris Okhrana: in that it is conceivable that it could have come through organisational gossip and so forth. However Cohn's speculative theory is untenable because there is no actual evidence for it and quite a lot against it.

So then how did 'Mr. X' know about the similarities to Joly's 'Dialogue'?

The answer actually brings us onto the third issue with 'Mr. X's' testimony. To wit: that 'Mr. X' claimed that Joly's 'Dialogue' was an 'obscure French book' (165) when in fact in its Russian translation it was actually quite well-known: far more so than in the original French. (166) Now if 'Mr. X' was the man he claimed to be - then he would understood that the book itself was common in Russian right-wing circles at the time - but if 'Mr. X' was not from that milieu originally then it is precisely the sort of obscure detail that he wouldn't know.

That then suggests that 'Mr. X' was likely from the Russian left-wing not the Russian right-wing (assuming of course that Graves would have realised if 'Mr. X' was not actually Russian): i.e., he was an agent of the Cheka. However, the information that 'Mr. X' gave could have very easily been spotted in the Nilus edition, because two to three Protocols are very close to the text of the 'Dialogue'. (167)

This then suggests that someone familiar with the 'Dialogue' in its Russian translation; note not the original French, noticed one or more similarities between the texts when they read the Protocols, which would have then caused that individual to compare them. This information then found its way - probably through a monarchist turn-coat - to the Soviet secret police - the Cheka - who then sought to use it - via the delivery method I have elucidated - to eliminate a powerful weapon that the White Russian émigrés were using against the Soviet Union as well as enabling them to combat local anti-Semitism more effectively (i.e., citing the testimony of a respected external anti-Communist source).

If we understand this then it shows that while it doesn't necessarily impact the existence of alleged 'plagiarisms' in the Protocols from Joly's 'Dialogue': it does give us a very different picture of the battles that were going on around the Protocols at this time. It wasn't a time of battles between ‘truth' and 'fantasy', but rather a brutal geopolitical battle between jews and their critics. The decisive factor in this phase of the struggle was the Soviet Union's intervention to help an increasingly desperate jewish community and because of the way that they aided them: it has been unrecognised till now.

Having thus dealt with the two areas which provide context to the Joly 'plagiarism' claim: we can begin survey the claim itself. Before we do this however, we should remind ourselves of two pertinent facts:

A) That the amount of 'plagiarism' from Joly's 'Dialogue' differs substantially from the Krushevan edition of 1903 and the Nilus edition of 1905.

B) That there is a limited range of expression in any language, which can easily give rise to convergences on metaphors and examples especially if written at a similar time and in a similar (or the same) cultural context. And we should bear in mind that the principal method used by the anti-Protocols camp is to look at the metaphors and examples used for comparison.

We should also state that - as Peter Myers has pointed out - the traditional calculation (by Bernstein and Cohn) of the amount of text the Protocols take from Joly is unrepresentative in that it is not - as Cohn states - two-fifths but rather one-sixth of the text. (168) Or put another way: the Joly passages comprise 16.45 percent of the Protocols, but again we should remember as above that a large quantity of this material is itself a later edition to the Protocols by Nilus. (169)

De Michelis calculates the percentage of 'plagiarism' from Joly as 4 percent of the text across Protocols 1 to 11 and across 12-22 as 8 percent. (170) This compares to Cohn's claim of 40 percent and Bernstein's claim of 16.45 percent. This discrepancy can be explained by the authors examining different texts as Cohn looked at the Nilus edition as did Bernstein, but they came to two very different conclusions and I would suggest that Cohn is actually trying to maximise the percentage of the text that can be attributed to Joly's 'Dialogue' (to fit his thesis of an anti-Semitic conspiracy in Paris using Joly's book) while Bernstein is ironically (as he was a more outspoken opponent of anti-Semitism than Cohn) the more accurate.

De Michelis' notice of the difference can actually be explained simply - as he himself acknowledges - by looking at the fact that the Protocols were originally explicitly divided into two parts in the Krushevan edition. The first section (Protocols 1-11) was stated to have no 'cuts' from the text by the editor (Krushevan) while the second section (Protocols 12-22) was stated to have 'cuts' from the original text. (171) This suggests that whatever original document that Krushevan had he had inserted and removed some parts of the text, which may suggest - as we know Krushevan had commented on Joly's 'Dialogue' in 'The Bessarabian' in 1903 - that Krushevan may have unintentionally dressed up a small part of the Protocols with a book he had recently read and commented on.

This is quite a common practice - as Myers correctly observes - as one frequently uses earlier articles and what one has recently read to style ones thought. (172) Thus the lack of other styles in Krushevan's 1903 edition other than work from Herzl and Joly actually points to the Protocols originally being an authentic document as the inclusion of Joly we can explain by the cuts, but the inclusion of near direct quotes from Herzl is very difficult to explain other than to suggest that Krushevan had read it recently (which has already been removed from contention above).

Even de Michelis has pointed out that the Joly 'plagiarism' argument is at best indirect evidence precisely because the text is not used consistently throughout the Protocols and while Protocol 8 is almost word for word: Protocol 14 barely has anything reminiscent of Joly in it at all. (173) That suggests to us that the Joly plagiarism claim is not nearly as solid as many anti-Protocols scholars assume it is.

For the sake of simplicity, I will take the three examples cited by the Wikipedia article (174) (the author of which has simply copied these parallel passages and references without attribution from Graves assuming incorrectly a consistency of argument over nearly a century of debate), (175) which is many people's first point of reference on this subject. To wit:

From Joly's 12th Dialogue:

'Like the god Vishnu, my press will have a hundred arms, and these arms will give their hands to all the different shades of opinion throughout the country.'

Is compared to Protocol 12:

'These newspapers, like the Indian god Vishnu, will be possessed of hundreds of hands, each of which will be feeling the pulse of varying public opinion.'

And

From Joly 17th Dialogue:

'Now I understand the figure of the god Vishnu; you have a hundred arms like the Indian idol, and each of your fingers touches a spring.'

Is compared to Protocol 17

'Our Government will be an apologia of the Hindu god Vishnu. Each of our hundred hands will hold one spring of the social machinery of the State.'

It is logical to stop here and examine this claim of similarity, which is based singly on the use of the image of Vishnu to explain a point. This is usually considered to be damning, but I disagree on the simple grounds that if one is going to explain the organisation of a massive conspiracy with lots of different elements working at apparent odds with each other. Then there are few neutral let alone positive methods of explanation while there are several negative ones. We should notice here that the author of the Protocols does not use the common anti-jewish motif of the many-armed octopus - ironically used as artwork on the cover of many editions of the Protocols - which would have been more in-line with a 'satirical' origin of the Protocols and also anti-jewish thought in general.

Vishnu as such is actually a very good motif to use as it explains the policy without attaching negative characteristics to it, but as such it is one of the few such metaphors that could have been used. If I am honest I myself find it difficult to think of any way of explaining the policy of either the Protocols or Joly's pseudo-Machiavelli metaphorically without using either an octopus or Vishnu.

We may further observe that in Dialogue 12 and Protocol 12 the metaphor actually means something different in so far as Joly's pseudo-Machiavelli is saying that his press will fight each other at the explicit direction of the central power. While in Protocol 12 the meaning is quite different in that the Learned Elders are not actively directing the press, but rather using their control in a more passive way and only intervene - through their agents - when as they say the 'pulse quickens' to prevent threats to their own power and program.

It is true there is a strong similarity between parts of the passages and the context in which they are presented, but the text is not nearly as close as is usually portrayed: particularly as Joly's pseudo-Machiavelli is talking about assigning one 'dedicated organ' (i.e., a single newspaper) only to each position where-as the Protocols speak directly of newspapers and publishing in general placing no limit on the scale of their media system or suggesting that there is need for control of these newspapers to be active or centralised in any way.

As such then we can see that the Joly and Protocols comparison on this quote is actually not as close as Graves, Bernstein and Cohn think: as the quote differs substantially in what the object of such control is and how it is to be achieved. The only thing that is similar in part is the phrasing, which conforms to de Michelis' view of an indirect origin for these paraphrases.

With Dialogue 17 and Protocol 17 we have a similar situation with the metaphor of Vishnu again being used however this time the Dialogue and the Protocol do match each other far more closely than in Dialogue 12 and Protocol 12. In particular the use of word 'apologue' (lit. 'account') in the original text of Joly's 'Dialogue', which has been changed into 'apologia' (lit. 'speaking in defence') in the Protocols. This occurs before the Vishnu metaphor, which cannot be coincidence precisely because it is so unusual an expression to use and combined with the commentary on the use of the police after both the Dialogue and the Protocols suggests that one comes the other.

That said there are some discrepancies: the Protocols actually divorces itself from the use of the 'official police' preferring to use a network of informers (possibly a reference to the jews in the Pale of Settlement) that will comprise one third of the population to spy on the other two thirds, while the Dialogue states that pseudo-Machiavelli would increase the network of police to about half the population as a 'vast institution' so that no one in the other half of the population would be able to move without central government's knowledge.

Thus, we can see that once again there is a similarity - although this time it is clear that the Protocols is a paraphrase of Joly - but that the meaning is quite different. This is reinforced by the 'apologue' and 'apologia' discrepancy in so far as whoever wrote the Protocols did not understand the subtle difference in meaning: a fact that seems to my mind to strengthen the case for a jewish origin precisely because the jews of Russia would not have been very familiar with Greek work - where-as Christians such as Krushevan would have been - and would easily have transliterated the meaning from a term they had not heard of 'apologue' and replaced it into a term they had 'apologia' (hence the absurdity of 'apologia for the Hindu god Vishnu' which makes no logical sense what-so-ever).

Thus, we can see that in spite of the literary paraphrase of Joly the point of the argument made by the Protocols is neither debunked as part of an actual program or demonstrated that it comes from anti-Semites. Indeed, as stated we can even see in the mistakes in the paraphrasing potential evidence for jewish involvement.

The last of the examples cited by Wikipedia is from Joly's 20th Dialogue and proceeds thus:

'How are loans made? By the issue of bonds entailing on the Government the obligation to pay interest proportionate to the capital it has been paid. Thus, if a loan is at 5 percent, the State, after 20 years, has paid out a sum equal to the borrowed capital. When 40 years have expired it has paid double, after 60 years triple: yet it remains debtor for the entire capital sum.'

Is compared to Protocol 20:

'A loan is an issue of Government paper which entails an obligation to pay interest amounting to a percentage of the total sum of the borrowed money. If a loan is at 5 percent, then in 20 years the Government would have unnecessarily paid out a sum equal to that of the loan in order to cover the percentage. In 40 years it will have paid twice; and in 60 thrice that amount, but the loan will still remain as an unpaid debt.'

Now here we have a very clear case of a good and simple example being used by the Protocols from the Joly text in the figures used for the calculation of the loan. However, this is as far it goes in as is demonstrated by actually quoting the context of both statements.

Joly's 20th Dialogue:

'It is here that I wanted to lead you. It is certain that few governments do not have the necessity of resorting to loans; but it is also certain that they are obligated to use them with discretion; they do not know how -- without involving immorality and danger -- to burden the generations to come with loads that are exorbitant and disproportionate to probable resources. How are loans made? By the issuance of securities that contain obligations on the part of the government to pay sums proportionate to the capital that is deposited with it. If the loan is at 5 percent, for example, the State -- at the end of 20 years -- must pay a sum equal to the loaned capital; at the end of 40 years, a double sum; at the end of 60 years, a triple sum, and yet it still remains a debtor for the totality of that capital. One can add that, if the State indefinitely increases its debts, without doing anything to diminish them, it will be brought to the impossibility of borrowing any more capital or bankruptcy. Such results are easy to grasp: there is no country in which every person would not understand them. The modern States have also wanted to set necessary limitations on the growth of taxes. To this purpose, they have imagined what one has called the system of amortization, which is an arrangement truly admirable for the simplicity and the practical method of its execution. One creates a special fund, of which the capitalized resources are intended for the permanent redemption of the public debt through successive fractions, with the result that, every time the State borrows, it must endow the amortization fund with a certain amount of capital intended to wipe out the new debts in a given period of time. You will see that this method of limitation is indirect and that this it its power. By means of the amortization, the nation says to its government: "You will borrow if you are forced to, but you must still preoccupy yourself with meeting the new obligations that you incur in my name. When one is ceaselessly obligated to amortize, one will look twice before borrowing. If you regularly amortize, I will allow your loans to pass."'

In comparison to Protocol 20:

'Every kind of loan proves infirmity in the State and a want of understanding of the rights of the State. Loans hang like a sword of Damocles over the heads of rulers, who, instead of taking from their subject by a temporary tax, come begging with outstretched palm of our bankers. Foreign loans are leeches which there is no possibility of removing from the body of the State until they fall of themselves or the State flings them off. But the goy States do not tear them off: they go on in persisting in putting more onto themselves so that they must inevitably perish, drained by voluntary blood-letting.

What also indeed is, in substance, a loan, especially a foreign loan? A loan is – an issue of government bills of exchange containing a percentage obligation commensurate to the sum of the loan capital. If the loan bears a charge of 5 percent, then in 20 years the State vainly pays away in interest a sum equal to the loan borrowed, in 40 years it is paying a double sum, in sixty thrice, and all the while the debt remains a debt unpaid.

From this calculation it is obvious that with any form of taxation per head the State is bailing out the last coppers of the poor taxpayers in order to settle accounts with wealthy foreigners, from whom it has borrowed money instead of collecting these coppers for its own needs without the additional interest.'

We can see from putting the two sections side-by-side that the parallel is actually quite minimal and is limited to talking about a similar subject and the use of the simple example given by the Dialogue in the Protocols. So, while it is clear that the Protocols have used the Dialogue as an aid in composition: they are not 'plagiarising' or even paraphrasing it. They are merely taking an example as a benchmark in good expression.

I should add that one sees such example-based benchmarking throughout the Dialogue and Protocol comparisons such as in Dialogue 13's use of the expression 'tigers have souls of sheep, heads full of wind' and Protocol 15's 'tigers in appearance have the souls of sheep and the wind blows through their heads'. There isn't a parallel in either passages in terms of meaning, but rather the same metaphor or example is used to explain a point.

Sharp-eyed readers will also have noticed the expression 'sword of Damocles' that was covered earlier - which is alleged to come from Chabry - and offers further evidence of the absurdity of the 'plagiarism' argument levelled at the Protocols in that we are supposed to believe that the author or authors of the Protocols decided to combine two different 'plagiarisms' from two very different works together and to have done it consistently.

This underlies my point about the simple lack of common sense in the anti-Protocols camp and how their seeing 'plagiarism' everywhere has actually undermined their own central 'plagiarism' argument by dragging it into absurdity.

Thus, we can see that the claim that the Protocol's is a 'plagiarism' of Joly is actually something of a toothless tiger itself as its central argument is based on the idea that the Protocols is merely a repeat of Joly's Dialogue and offers nothing substantial to it. However, as we can see from working through Wikipedia's three examples: not only is this not the case, but when subjected to point for point comparison the Dialogue and the Protocols are substantially different if sometimes convergent on examples and metaphors.

If we bear in mind that all three of these examples are from the second section of Krushevan's 1903 edition (the most 'plagiarised' part with 8 percent of the text allegedly coming from Joly's 'Dialogue') then we can see just how weak the anti-Protocols case is in that they are ignoring nearly all the text to focus their attention on selective examples of convergence.

I would add that while this does not remove the fact that Joly's 'Dialogue' has been used it is not a case of 'plagiarism' but rather as a simple benchmark aid to the composition, which proves very little other than that the author must have been aware of Joly's work. For which we can remove Krushevan from contention for being the author of the Protocols because of the Ukrainianisms in the original text which he did not write with.

The third and final issue around the alleged 'plagiarism' of the Protocols is one that I have mentioned several times previously: the use of near-direct quotes from Herzl's 'Der Judenstaat' in the Protocols.

Thus, Herzl talks of his view that:

'Only repression reawakens in us the sense of belonging to our lineage, the antisemites also work for us. They only have to continue along their path, and the desire of the Jews to emigrate will awaken where it is yet to be, and will be reinforced where it is already present.' (176)

That statement is then condensed by the Protocols to something of exactly the same meaning but said in much fewer words in the Krushevan edition of 1903. To wit that: 'antisemitism is necessary to guide our younger brothers.' (177)

The sting is taken out of this statement by Nilus who modifies it to:

'Throughout all Europe, and by means of relations with Europe, in other continents also, we must create ferments, discords and hostility.' (178)

It is clear from these words that the Protocols is expressing a central Zionist idea in so far as an increase in anti-jewish sentiment that judges who is jewish by biology - not only by religious confession (i.e., anti-Semitism as opposed to anti-Judaism) - is presumed to create jews who do not want to assimilate with gentiles (in-line with the more traditional forms of Judaism). This then serves the purpose of the Learned Elders by separating the jews from the gentiles and preventing intermarriage, which was and is a perpetual worry and perceived bane for Zionists everywhere.

In addition to this we have a short quote from the prophet Nehemiah with a short commentary used in the original Krushevan 1903 edition of the Protocols to support this claim:

'“You have given them kingdoms and peoples”: not in Canaan alone, but in the whole world.' (179)

This is clearly a Zionist theme in so far as it echoes the importance of Palestine to the jews (hence the Yom Kippur invocation 'Next Year in Jerusalem') and also Herzl's own distinguishing demand that it be Palestine or nothing, which is stated as follows:

'Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home. The very name of Palestine would attract our people with a force of marvellous potency.' (180)

Thus, we have a focus on regaining Palestine, which we should remember that jews had attached no real name to as of yet and Canaan was as good as Zion, Israel and Judah which were inevitably being discussed and bandied around. This is then followed by Herzl's startling assertions that:

'If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake to regulate the whole finances of Turkey. We should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. We should as a neutral State remain in contact with all Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence.' (181)

What Herzl is in effect could be read as stating here is that if the jews were to be allowed to create a jewish state in Palestine then the jews will run the state and administration of Turkey (i.e., implied by the phrase 'undertake to regulate the whole finances of Turkey'), which can be compared to Protocol 4 in Nilus:

'Thus, all the nations will be swallowed up in the pursuit of gold and in the race for it will not take note of their common foe.'

This passage also could be linked to the idea of the centrality of jews to the world in Herzl's 'Der Judenstaat' in so far as Herzl places jews as a 'neutral' country between East and West who are tacitly assumed to be in eternal conflict with each other (hence Herzl's statement about an 'outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism'). That which 'guarantees' the existence of the jews could also be read not as geography, but also as the jewish commercial, social and religious networks which for so long have indisputably existed in Europe. (182)

Herzl's next statement that:

'The sanctuaries of Christendom would be safeguarded by assigning to them an extra-territorial status such as is well-known to the law of nations. We should form a guard of honour about these sanctuaries, answering for the fulfilment of this duty with our existence. This guard of honour would be the great symbol of the solution of the Jewish question after eighteen centuries of Jewish suffering.' (183)

Could similarly be interpreted in the light of Protocol 17 in Nilus:

'The King of the Jews will be the real Pope of the Universe, the patriarch of an international Church.

But, in the meantime, while we are re-educating youth in new traditional religions and afterwards in ours, we shall not overtly lay a finger on existing churches, but we shall fight them by criticism calculated to produce schism.'

This could be suggested to be policy derived from what Herzl has said in 'Der Judenstaat' in particular because the comments have been prefigured by a discussion of how the jews would step in acting like the defenders and mediators between warring nations, which closely parallels Herzl's own qualifier to this statement about Christianity that the jews would act as a neutral broker between East and West.

Now in effect what Herzl could be re ad as saying is that with the control of the 'sanctuaries of Christianity' then jews will gain control of powerful bargaining chip with countries that are actually or nominally Christian in so far as the 'sanctuaries' mean nothing to the jews, but do mean something to their enemies so access to them can be held to ransom for certain ideological changes in Christian belief in addition to nations behaving to an extent.

As such then we can see that even so quick a comparison of Herzl's 'Der Judenstaat' to the Protocols in either the Krushevan or Nilus edition throws up some remarkable concordances and even some near-direct quotations between them. Some much so in fact that one anti-Protocols scholar has felt the need to address this in detail. (184)

Thus, we can see that of the works that are claimed to have been used to create the Protocols: only two have any solid basis to them. These two are Joly's 'Dialogue' and Herzl's 'Der Judenstaat'. The former acts as source for good expressions and to a point some of the structure of the Protocols, but not nearly to the extent normally claimed. While Herzl's 'Der Judenstaat' in contrast contributes a number of near-direct quotations in addition to a significant part of the general and specific thrust of the political philosophy and policies put forward in the Protocols.

It is then beholden onto to us to conclude that the Protocols - in spite of huge amount of the odium that has been heaped on them - do actually have a more solid basis in fact than is claimed by the anti-Protocols camp.

Ain't it Dead Yet?

One of the more memorable questions that frequently rears its head in discussions about the Protocols is the problem of why the Protocols have persisted in their career after apparently so many 'authoritative debunks'. Eco offers a representative sample of such thinking when he charges that such beliefs are limited only to those who want to believe and those who are irrational (i.e., those who will not be swayed by on point rational argument). (185)

The issue with that kind of thinking is that it assumes that the theory of the moment on a given subject is the only rational one, while any and all others that disagree with that (outside of a narrow spectrum) are ipso facto irrational. This is rather intellectually incestuous in so far as it permits only a few interpretations and doesn't account for the possibility that there may be external factors at play (such as intellectual and cultural fashions or political/social norms and forms) which can and do influence the 'rational conclusions' that researchers and scholars hold forth.

Nor does it account for the fact that the anti-Protocols camp's 'rational arguments' are as much conspiracy theories as the pro-Protocols camp's 'irrational argument' with the former actually having less evidence than the latter. Indeed, it would not be going too far to assert that the only reason that the anti-Protocols camp's arguments are considered more 'rational' is because they don't blame the jews (the proverbial saints) but rather blame the anti-Semites (the proverbial sinners). Thus, fitting into the current intellectual philo-Semitic intellectual cosmos as opposed to standing four-square against it.

Unfortunately for the anti-Protocols camps: the only criterion for the rationality of a given argument is derived from whether it is supported by the totality of the evidence and as we have seen very few anti-Protocols (or pro-Protocols ones for that matter) take into account the totality of the evidence in the case of the Protocols. As my own work here is only a beginning of a much larger project: I cannot and will not claim to have done what my fellows are in the main yet to do. However, I can hope to produce something to rival de Michelis' work on the pro-Protocols side of the fence in spite of my continuing to be an agnostic on the authenticity of the Protocols.

So, to paraphrase Grobman's words on this subject: the Protocols ain't dead yet.

References

(1) Stephen Eric Bronner, 2003, 'A Rumor about the Jews: Antisemitism, Conspiracy, and the Protocols of Zion', 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York, pp. 5; 39; 56-57; 62; 72; 77; 122; 126

(2) Arthur Keith Chesterton, 1961, 'The Learned Elders and the BBC', 1st Edition, Britons: London, pp. 3-4

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

(4) See http://republicbroadcasting.org/?page_id=109 to listen to the show concerned ('Spingola Speaks' [25/05/2012]).

(5) Kerry Bolton, 2003, 'The Protocols of Zion in Context', 1st Edition, Renaissance Press: Paraparaumu Beach, pp. 10-11; Herbert Pitlik, 1999, 'Die “Protokolle” der Weisen von Zion aus der Sicht nach 100 Jahren', 1st Edition, Edition Secret News: Vienna, pp. 7-8

(6) Bronner, Op. Cit., pp. 74-80

(7) Will Eisner, 2005, 'The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of Elders of Zion', 1st Edition, W. W. Norton: New York, pp. 53-60

(8) Ibid., pp. 62-64; also see Robert Wistrich, 2010, 'A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad', 1st Edition, Random House: New York, p. 28; Hadassa Ben-Itto, 2005, 'The Lie That Wouldn't Die: The Protocols of Zion', 1st Edition, Valentine Mitchell: London, pp. 80-83, for other examples.

(9) Erich Haberer, 2004, 'Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth Century Russia', 2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, pp. 189-190 ; Reginald Zelnik, 1997, 'Revolutionary Russia', p. 206 in Gregory Freeze (Ed.), 1997, 'Russia: A History', 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York

(10) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 2

(11) Binjamin Segel, Richard Levy (Trans. and Ed.), 1995, 'A Lie and A Libel: The History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion', 1st Edition, University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, p. xi

(12) Rita Kroenbitter, n.d. (1993?), 'Paris Okhrana 1885-1905', (https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/okhrana-the-paris-operations-of-the-russian-imperial-police/art1.pdf ) in Ben Fischer, 1997, 'Okhrana: The Paris Operation of the Russian Imperial Police', History Staff Center for the Study of Intelligence (https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/okhrana-the-paris-operations-of-the-russian-imperial-police/5474-1.html)

(13) I have adapted this chronology based on de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 171; I do not concur with him that Nilus should not viewed as a kind of 'editor' of the Protocols as Norman Cohn (2006, 'Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion', 2nd Edition, Serif: London, p. 179) has argued as it is clear that Nilus' text and the context in which Nilus placed it has informed nearly all interpretations for and against the Protocols since.

(14) Bronner, Op. Cit., p. 113; de Michelis, Op. Cit., pp. 11-12 contradicts this however.

(15) This is the basis for Steven Jacobs, Mark Weitzmann, 2003, 'Dismantling the Big Lie: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', 1st Edition, Ktav: New York as well as Bolton's (Op. Cit., pp. 46-53) unconvincing attempt to link the Protocols directly to Judaism through the Mishnah, Gemara and Zohar (which could almost be read as an indirect reply to Jacobs and Weitzmann).

(16) Pitlik (Op. Cit., pp. 84-96) for example links them more to Freemasonry than he does to jews and then uses them to provide an intellectual framework for rationalising selected world events since 1945.

(17) Alex Grobman, 2011, 'License to Murder: The Enduring Threat of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion', 1st Edition, American-Israel Friendship League: New York, pp. 33-35

(18) For example the attribution to a gentile conspiracy against the jews before any evidence to suggest this had been discerned per Henri Rollin, 1991, 'L'Apocalypse de Notre Temps: Les Dessous de la Propagande Allemande d'apres les Documents Inedits', 2nd Edition, Editions Allia: Paris, pp. 452-454.

(19) For example Cohn's central evidential proposition of so-called 'coincidence' (i.e., magical thinking) in Cohn. Op. Cit., pp. 441-444

(20) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 6

(21) Ibid., p. 8

(22) Ibid., p. 12

(23) Ibid., pp. 11; 14 (although p. 7 points out that they were attributed by Krushevan to both jews and Masons in 1903); this removes the argument that the Protocols were originally a Masonic document with no references to jews as an argument exemplified in William Guy Carr, 1962, 'The Red Fog over America', 3rd Edition, Britons: London, pp. 1-9

(24) De Michelis, Op. Cit., pp. 7-8; 13-14

(25) Ibid, pp. 8-9

(26) Jacobs, Weitzmann, Op. Cit., p. xiii

(27) Segel, Op. Cit., pp. 98-108

(28) Herman Bernstein, 1921, 'The History of a Lie: The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion', 1st Edition, J. Ogilvie: New York, pp. 7-8

(29) de Michelis, Op. Cit., pp. 120-123

(30) Ibid., pp. 69; 120-123

(31) Mendel Beilis, 1931, 'The Story of My Sufferings' (original in Yiddish), 2nd Edition, Self-Published: New York, pp. 10-12

(32) de Michelis, Op. Cit., pp. 23-37

(33) Ibid., p. 47

(34) Pierre Birnbaum, 1996, 'The Jews of the Republic: A Political History of State Jews in France from Gambetta to Vichy', 1st Edition, Stanford University Press: Stanford, p. 2; I will note as an oddity that Birnbaum does not mention the Protocols in either the above cited work or Pierre Birnbaum, 2003, 'The Anti-Semitic Moment: A Tour of France in 1898', 1st Edition, Hill and Wang: New York in spite of the obviously important issue of their origin in France at this time.

(35) See for example Cohn, Op. Cit.; Bronner, Op. Cit., Ben-Itto, Op. Cit.

(36) See for example Israel Shamir, n.d. (2002-3?), 'The Elders of Zion and the Masters of Discourse', p. 6 in Anon., n.d. (2002-2003?), 'The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion', 1st Edition, Historical Review Press: Uckfield

(37) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 68

(38) Rollin, Op. Cit., p. 371

(39) Bolton, Op. Cit., pp. 18-19

(40) de Michelis, Op. Cit., pp. 27-28; Brian Roberts, 1969, 'Cecil Rhodes and the Princess', 1st Edition, Hamish Hamilton: London

(41) de Michelis, Op. Cit., pp. 120-121

(42) Ibid., p. 28

(43) Ibid., pp. 120-121

(44) Ibid., p. 128, n. 41; Lucien Wolf, 1921, 'The Myth of the Jewish Menace in World Affairs', 1st Edition, MacMillan: New York, pp. 2; 19

(45) de Michelis, Op. Cit., pp. 121-122

(46) Ibid., p. 27

(47) Michael Hagemeister, 1995, 'Die 'Protokolle der Weisen von Zion': Einige Bemerkungen zur Herkunfft und zur Aktuellen Rezeption', p. 157 in Erhard Hexelschneider, Manfred Neushaus, Claus Remer (Eds.), 1995, 'Russland und Europa: Historische und Kulturelle Aspekte eines Jahrhundertproblems', 1st Edition, Rosa Luxemburg-Verein: Leipzig

(48) de Michelis, Op. Cit, p. 28

(49) Ibid.

(50) Ibid., pp. 81; 85; Still the main authority on the Beilis trial: his involvement with du Chayla's testimony may be benign but it is quite possible that it was not given that it was he who forwarded documentation from Moscow to the Bern trial in 1934 in support of du Chayla's testimony.

(51) De Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 29

(52) Ibid., p. 30

(53) Ibid., p. 29

(54) Sean McMeekin, 2003, 'The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willi Muenzenberg, Moscow's Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West', 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven, pp. 263-269

(55) World Committee for the Victims of German Fascism, 1933, 'The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror and the Burning of the Reichstag', 1st Edition, Victor Gollancz: London, pp. 244-247

(56) Rollin, Op. Cit., pp. 370-371

(57) Ibid., pp. 30-35

(58) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 24

(59) Segel, Op. Cit., p. 72

(60) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 23

(61) If you directly compare Stepanov's statement against Nilus' later statement (per Segel, Op. Cit., pp. 71-72 for example) then it is clear that one is a potentially slightly confused paraphrase of the other.

(62) De Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 123

(63) Rollin, Op. Cit., pp. 482-483

(64) For example, Bolton, Op. Cit., pp. 18-19

(65) For example, Bronner, Op. Cit., pp. 79-80

(66) De Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 122

(67) Ibid., p. 26

(68) Segel, Op. Cit., pp. 114-115; Bronner, Op. Cit., p. 67

(69) Haberer, Op.Cit., pp. 168-169

(70) Segel, Op. Cit., pp. 102-105

(71) de Michelis Op. Cit., pp. 72-75

(72) Jacob Lestschinsky, 1949, 'Jewish Migrations, 1840-1946', pp. 1212-1214 in Louis Finkelstein (Ed.), 'The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion', Vol. 4, 1st Edition, Jewish Publication Society of America: Philadelphia; John Doyle Klier, Shlomo Lambroza (Eds.), 1992, 'Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York

(73) Orlando Figes, 1996, 'A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924', 1st Edition, Random House: New York, p. 82; Haberer, Op. Cit., pp. 206-209

(74) de Michelis, Op. Cit, p. 74

(75) Ibid., p. 120

(76) Ibid., pp. 121-123

(77) Ibid., pp. 72-75

(78) Ibid., pp. 80-82

(79) Ibid.

(80) Ibid., p. 110

(81) Ibid., pp. 170-180

(82) Pierre-Andree Taguieff, 1992, 'Les Protocoles des Sages de Sion', Vol. 2, 1st Edition, Editions Berg International: Paris, pp. 459-471

(83) de Michelis, Op. Cit. pp. 157-158

(84) Segel, Op. Cit., p. 106

(85) Theodor Fritsch, 1933, 'Die Zionistischen Protokolle: Das Programm der internationalen Geheimregierung', 14th Edition, Hammer-Verlag: Leipzig, pp. 2-3; 77-78

(86) Taguieff, Op. Cit., Vol. 2, pp. 470-471

(87) As Taguieff has published a second, updated edition in 2004 that I haven't had the time to study yet this is quite possible.

(88) De Michelis, Op. Cit., pp. 174-179

(89) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-lies-they-tell-about-goldwin

(90) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 6

(91) Ibid., pp. 48; 114

(92) Bolton, Op. Cit., p. 19

(93) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 63

(94) http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9350-kishinef-kishinev

(95) Steven Zipperstein, 1986, 'The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History, 1749-1881', 1st Edition, Stanford University Press: Stanford, pp. 141-149

(96) http://forward.com/articles/8544/kishinev—the-birth-of-a-century/; http://www.betar.org.uk/betaris/zeev.php

(97) http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9350-kishinef-kishinev

(98) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 76

(99) http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9350-kishinef-kishinev

(100) Ibid.

(101) Ibid.

(102) Leon Poliakov, 2003, 'The History of Anti-Semitism', Vol. 4, 2nd Edition, University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, pp. 113; 119

(103) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0007_0_07636.html

(104) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 49

(105) I have summarised all these points from de Michelis and have also previously noted the exact origin of these in his text in my foregoing notes.

(106) Poliakov, Op. Cit., p. 113

(107) De Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 80

(108) Ibid.

(109) Ibid., pp. 77; 81

(110) Cohn, Op. Cit., pp. 49-50; although concerns have been raised to the viability of this analysis per Taguieff, Op. Cit., Vol. 2, pp. 781-782

(111) Eisner, Op. Cit., p. vi

(112) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 55

(113) Ibid., p. 8

(114) Bernstein, 'The History of a Lie', Op. Cit., p. 59

(115) Wolf, Op. Cit., p. 19

(116) Bronner, Op. Cit., p. 81; de Michelis, Op. Cit., pp. 46-47

(117) Ibid., p. 48

(118) I should remark that only two anti-Protocols authors (de Michelis and Taguieff) mention this although it is very well-known and often discussed among pro-Protocols authors such as Jouin, Fritsch, Fry and Begunov.

(119) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 8

(120) John Allegro, 1964, 'The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Reappraisal', 2nd Edition, Penguin: London, p. 173

(121) A. Chabry, 1897, 'L'Accaparement monétaire et l'indépendance économique', 1st Edition, C. Poussielgue: Paris, p. 20

(122) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 52

(123) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/JFK-Speeches/Address-Before-the-General-Assembly-of-the-United-Nations-September-25-1961.aspx

(124) http://mailstar.net/toolkit.html

(125) Philip Graves, 1921, 'The Truth about “The Protocols”: A Literary Forgery', 1st Edition, Printing House: London, pp. 19-21

(126) Bernstein, 'The History of a Lie', Op. Cit., p. 71

(127) Segel, Op. Cit., p. 66

(128) Bronner, Op. Cit., pp. 82-83

(129) Ibid., p. 82

(130) Herman Bernstein, 1971, 'The Truth about “The Protocols of Zion”: A Complete Exposure', 2nd Edition, Ktav: New York, pp. 22-23

(131) de Michelis, Op. Cit., pp. 49-50

(132) Poliakov, Op. Cit., Vol. 4, pp. 36-40

(133) Segel, Op. Cit., pp. 65-66

(134) Wolf, Op. Cit., pp. 21-22

(135) Segel, Op. Cit., pp. 97-99

(136) Bronner, Op. Cit., p. 83

(137) Bernstein, 'The History of a Lie', Op. Cit., p. 59

(138) Ben-Itto, Op. Cit., p. 50

(139) Rollin, Op. Cit., p. 558

(140) Poliakov, Op. Cit., Vol. 4, pp. 34-36; Segel, Op. Cit., p. 54; Wolf, Op. Cit., pp. 6-8

(141) Poliakov, Op. Cit., Vol. 4, p. 37; Jacob Brafmann, Siegfried Passarge (Trans.), 1928, 'Das Buch vom Kahal', Vol. 1, 1st Edition, Hammer-Verlag: Leipzig, pp. v-viii

(142) Eisner, Op. Cit., pp. 10-19 gives the simplest summary of these events.

(143) de Michelis, Op. Cit., pp. 53; 60

(144) Bolton, Op. Cit., p. 34

(145) Ibid.

(146) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 53

(147) Bolton, Op. Cit., p. 34

(148) See Simon Rigby, 2007, 'Engels and the Formation of Marxism', 1st Edition, Manchester University Press: Manchester.

(149) See Heinz Frederick Peters, 1986, 'Red Jenny: A Life with Karl Marx', 1st Edition, Allen and Unwin: London.

(150) Bolton, Op. Cit., p. 34

(151) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1971, [1816], 'Kunst und Alterthum am Rhein und Mayn', 1st Edition, Peter Lang: New York, p. 575

(152) http://mailstar.net/toolkit.html

(153) Bolton, Op. Cit., p. 34

(154) http://mailstar.net/toolkit.html

(155) Umberto Eco, 1994, 'Six Walks in the Fictional Woods', 1st Edition, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, pp. 135; 172

(156) Ibid., p. 60

(157) L. Fry, 1953, 'Waters Flowing Eastwards', 4th Edition, Britons: London, pp. 96-101

(158) Graves, Op. Cit., pp. 4-5

(159) Taguieff, Op. Cit., Vol. 2, p. 196

(160) An excellent example of just this is Nikolai Skoblin who pretended to be an anti-Communist White Russian émigré but was actually an agent for the Cheka.

(161) Michael Kellogg, 2005, 'The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism 1917-1945', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, pp. 63-70

(162) Eisner, Op. Cit., p. 90

(163) For a detailed discussion of this see Lionel Kochan (Ed.), 1971, 'The Jews in Russia since 1917', 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York.

(164) Graves, Op. Cit., pp. 5-6

(165) Ibid., p. 6

(166) de Michelis, Op. Cit., pp. 52-53

(167) Ibid., p. 54

(168) http://mailstar.net/toolkit.html

(169) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 55

(170) Ibid., p. 8

(171) Ibid.

(172) http://mailstar.net/toolkit.html

(173) de Michelis, Op. Cit., pp. 54-55

(174) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion#Maurice_Joly

(175) Graves, Op. Cit., pp. 9; 13-14

(176) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 48; a different and less anti-gentile translation is available at the following address: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/herzl2d.html. I shall use this later source going forward to allow the reader to quickly judge for themselves.

(177) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 48

(178) Protocols of Zion, Historical Review Press Edition, Op. Cit., p. 41

(179) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 49

(180) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/herzl2b.html

(181) Ibid.

(182) Michael Toch, 1994, 'Jewish Migration from Germany', pp. 646-648 in Michael Toch, 2003, 'Peasants and Jews in Medieval Germany', 1st Edition, Ashgate: Burlington

(183) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/herzl2b.html

(184) Taguieff, Op. Cit., Vol. 1, pp. 161-176

(185) Eisner, Op. Cit., pp. vi-vii