William Guy Carr's Fourteen Points about the Protocols of Zion
As I pointed out in a recent article (1) the noted author on conspiracies William Guy Carr lists - in his book 'The Red Fog over America' - fourteen points about the Protocols of Zion to justify his reliance on them as the cornerstone of his thesis on the Illuminati. As I have explained in a different article (2) Carr does not regard the jews as the problem, but rather holds that the Protocols of Zion were altered by the Illuminati - whose plans they really are - to deflect blame onto the jews so as to cause them to fall into the hands of either their Bolshevik or Zionist agents due to the resulting anti-jewish feeling and persecution.
Carr utilizes the Protocols in all his books on the Illuminati as the touchstone of his understanding of the activities and plans of this group. So, it is obviously import to address the claims that he makes in relation to them and to find out just how valid they are in order to ascertain the intellectual validity of Carr's ideas.
Now I should point out that most of Carr's points are contingent on his dating of the Protocols as having been acquired in 1900 even though this is incorrect even by the internal evidence (for the example the mention of the assassination of US President William McKinley in 1901) which dates the Protocols text to not earlier than 1902. Once we have disposed of that particular claim - as I have done elsewhere - (3) then the bottom drops out of Carr's argument, but in case of doubters I believe I should deal with the rest of Carr's claims about the Protocols here so as to be through.
Now in point one Carr trots out the age-old argument that the Protocols to be forgery must have had an original to copy and thus they cannot have been forgery because according to anti-Protocols writers they were invented from whole cloth. (4) This is unfortunately semantics: the point of the claim of forgery - which emanates from Philip Graves and Lucien Wolf as well as to a lesser extent from Louis Brandeis - is that the Protocols are alleged to be a jewish master plan to take over the world and the mission statement of a specific organisation.
If it could be proved that the Protocols were not from a jewish hand - which the originators of the forgery claim believed it could (although their 'evidence' has long been discarded) - (5) and instead was - as Carr himself believed them to be - a text written by others to implicate the jews in such a plot or as a cover for their own plot: then - because we have a party trying to pass of a document of their own as that of another party - that is clearly forgery.
Carr's argument on this point is extremely curious precisely because the forgery argument should to him be regarded as positive proof of the Protocols being a Freemasonic/Illuminati document as points six, seven and eight argue that the jews were simply set-up by the Illuminati adding references to jews into the text of their own plan. (6)
That Carr simply reacts to the common claim of forgery - levelled at the Protocols by their detractors - is symptomatic of his lack of critical ability in dealing with his sources and framing his arguments as he has simply reacted to the most common argument against the Protocols by denying it as opposed to conceding it - as we might expect him to do - and then countering that it was a forgery but a Freemasonic/Illuminati forgery designed to cause people to hate the jews as he clarifies in points six, seven and eight.
In point two Carr introduces his anonymous 'friend in - or who had been part of - British Military Intelligence' which I have argued elsewhere was a probably a literary foil of Carr's for presenting conjectural arguments sans hard evidence. (7) He also makes the error of suggesting that the Protocols were translated (from French) by Sergei Nilus: (8) who didn't - as far as I am aware - read French let alone have sufficient fluency in the language to accurately translate so intricate a document. Here Carr is confusing Nilus with Justine Glinka who was fluent in French and was the supposed vehicle by which the Protocols reached the attention of the Russian authorities.
This once again indicates Carr's rather elementary confusion about different elements in the Protocols back story even though he professes to have read Nesta Webster's series of articles about the Protocols 'The Jewish Peril' (which he also seems to have weirdly attributed to Sergei Nilus) (9) as well as Elizabeth Fry's 'Waters Flowing Eastwards' both of which cover the issue of how the Protocols allegedly came into Russian hands via Glinka from a leading jewish figure of the Grand Orient Masonic Lodge in Paris.
He seems to credit Nilus as being the key figure in the diffusion of the Protocols, which is only half-right and as I have pointed out elsewhere Nilus' role was mainly in changing them, making them fit his Christian ideas and also removing a lot of elements of Jewishness - such as the Old Testament references - from the text.
However, Carr also credits the Protocols of being a 'plan dates back to the earliest days of the human race' (10) on no stated evidence. This cannot be so since I have pointed the Protocols make explicit references to political events from 1901 and also the ideas implicit in the text reflect the preoccupations of a turn-of-the-century mind not those of say the Egyptians, Greeks let alone the jews of antiquity.
At best the Protocols reflect a plan for the twentieth century, and beyond which was conceived of at the turn of that century: nothing more than that. The reason for this is that we have no evidence for them being of a greater antiquity than that.
Carr then - after claiming they date back to the beginning of human history - asserts that they must be part of the 'plan of Lucifer' and are the product of 'angels or supernatural beings, who oppose Jehovah, the benevolent God of Justice.' (11)
This is the key to a lot of Carr's thought in that his conspiracy is so massive and so wide in its historical scope that only a supernatural mind can possibly have conceived and operated it for this period of time: hence his focus on the power of the devil as the only agency that he - as a devout Christian - could admit as existing and have the necessary intelligence and rationale for enacting such a scheme.
However, we should stress here that Carr has made several huge logical jumps here on no evidence at all in that he has gone from the Protocols being a material document to their being an evil plan since the beginning of human history (hence a material document originating from a supernatural mind) to them being the specific construct of the 'bad God' (Lucifer/the Devil) of his Christian world view.
Point three has little to do with the Protocols as Carr introduces the Illuminati into the equation and claims that the freak lightning bolt that killed their courier in Ratisbon in 1785 and the resulting discovery of their conspiracy caused the 'Illuminati much concern'. (12) This is illogical again on Carr's part as how can a conspiracy directed by Satan himself be particularly bothered about a courier carrying incriminating documents being accidentally killed given that Satan could just incinerate them with a wave of his cloven hoof or at least cause the documents not to be discovered until such time as he could get another of his human agents into the area to pick them up.
Thus, we see a huge problem with Carr's use of a supernatural agency as said supernatural agency which runs a huge conspiracy then promptly goes and lets important documents fall into the hands of its erstwhile enemies. The supernatural agency runs a perfect conspiracy only to forget to do the basics and let random people like Carr run around supposedly bleating to all and sundry about its inner-most objectives and operations.
It doesn't sound like a very clever devil now: does it?
Or are we to suppose the intricate schemes of the devil are positively amateurish even after several millennia of practice?
No: I don't think so.
Carr also reveals his indebtedness to Nesta Webster's works 'Secret Societies and Subversive Movements', 'The French Revolution' and 'World Revolution' although he shows little sign of having read her other books such as 'The Surrender of an Empire', 'The Socialist Network' and 'Boche and Bolshevik' but does mention 'The Jewish Peril' although he thinks - as above stated - that Sergei Nilus was the author and not Webster.
This is important to note precisely because without Webster then Carr's entire thesis would not have come into being as he selectively draws ideas from Webster, but without any of Webster's mastery of the source documentation and the - then extant - secondary literature in English, French and German. This especially so as Webster was the one to draw the parallel between what the Protocols text (i.e., that heavily edited by Nilus) said and what the published documents of the Illuminati from 1785 said. (13)
Carr did not draw his conclusion about the association of the Protocols with the Illuminati from a study of the source literature, but rather from his having read the three texts of Webster's that I have above suggested that he consulted (and even then, I am giving Carr the benefit of the doubt as her 'The French Revolution' is an outside possibility in my view).
In point four Carr seeks to connect the loss of the Illuminati courier at Ratisbon in 1785 with the appearance of the Protocols of Zion in the early twentieth century on the logic that the Illuminati had learned from their mistake (although why Lucifer made such an elementary error is not considered). So, their agents decided to frame the 'Jewish revolutionary movement in Russia' with their plan - of which certain 'words and phrases' were changed so as to implicate the jews - and cause people to believe that the Protocols were a plot 'in accordance with the policy of Political Zionism as advocated by Herzl in 1897.' (14)
This is tangled and confused at best as if the Illuminati wanted to frame somebody: why put their own plan into their erstwhile enemies’ hands with but a few phrases changed? This makes little sense precisely because in the first instance there is no reason to give your enemies your actual plan with nothing but the protagonist changed (as surely someone - or some people - will figure it out much as Carr believed he had done) and in the second because if you wanted to make the world believe in a plot by the jews then why not forge something a little more explicit and with direct involvement from the figures involved rather than coded and veiled references?
After all, if you can put names to the jewish conspiracy and you are a supernatural entity with preternatural intelligence then isn't it better to manipulate your target into doing your work for you (thus making your forgery seem all the more real) as opposed to using documents with doubtful providence to possibly make your case for you.
We can thus see that once again introducing a supernatural entity into the equation in order to explain the longevity and diabolical cunning behind the conspiracy is actually a double-edged sword as said supernatural entity looks rather like a bumbling amateur in conspiratorial behaviour in the mistakes it makes while at the same time allegedly being a master conspirator able to understand and predict the basest desires of men to enable their timely exploitation by their conspiracy: the 'World Revolutionary Movement' (WRM).
Also, one has to ask: why the jews as the scapegoat?
Why not other notable popular enemies of the moment such as the Freemasons exclusively (which take a significant back seat to the jews as Illuminati agents in spite of their alleged centrality to the Illuminati conspiracy outlined in points nine and ten) or perhaps occultists (as Edith Starr Miller aka Lady Queenborough postulated) or even the good old-fashioned Jesuit conspiracy that - then as now - retains a small but fanatical following of adherents usually coming from a devout Protestant milieu?
Carr simply doesn't explain this as he moves on to point five when he blames the jews - whether justly or unjustly I cannot venture an opinion currently - for the Spanish-American War of 1898 as well as the Russo-Japanese war of 1904. This latter war was allegedly started in order to weaken Russia so that the revolution of 1905 - sometimes called the Bolshevik revolution in miniature given that it was through the 1905 revolution that a little-known jew called Leon Trotsky rose to prominence in the revolutionary movement in Russia - could succeed: however the infernal conspiracy bungled once again and failed in its diabolical plan despite having the devil himself directing their actions.
This is naturally brushed aside and ignored by Carr in spite of its disastrous consequences for his 'Luciferian plot' precisely because of the constant amateurish failures of the devil.
We should also note here that Carr does correctly identify that the jews controlled the Cuban sugar industry as well as African diamond mines and gold fields at the turn of the twentieth century, but he never - in spite of seeming to have begun to do so - explains why the jews were the chosen scapegoats of the Illuminati although claiming this had been 'decided' by the Illuminati as far back as 1893. (15)
I would conjecture that the reason Carr decided the Illuminati chose the jews was precisely because jewish influence was obvious and well-documented at the time at which he was forming his views (the 1920s and 1930s) as well as being a constant that he could point to in order to show the power of the Illuminati while also removing the jews from blame by claiming they were merely the Illuminati's (and thus the devil's) 'Pawns in the Game'.
Carr moves on in point six to claim that the jews were unjustly blamed by the Illuminati for the Protocols allegedly creating a 'new wave of anti-Semitism in Russia and France', which in turn meant that the 'real problem' - the Illuminati conspirators - went undetected (except by Carr apparently).
Thus Carr - as I have pointed out elsewhere - (16) seeks to remove the jews from blame and place them in the role as the principal victim of the conspiracy as opposed to being the main conspiratorial element.
In point seven Carr introduces the supposedly 'modified' Protocols (so as to implicate the jews) into the hands of Sergei Nilus who he claims was an 'outstanding Russian whose character and reputation were beyond reproach.' (17)
As much as I differ with that description of Nilus - who I view as an intellectual criminal for his modifications to and de-judification of the Protocols text - I will let it stand as it goes beyond the scope of his article to discuss his character flaws and intellectual immorality.
Moving on we should note that Carr dresses Nilus up in the guise of the unknowing accomplice of the Illuminati in that he fully believed that the Protocols were a captured jewish plan for world domination. The point of this distribution - according to points six and eight - was to cause feelings against the jews to run high: if this was the case then the devil and his Illuminati elite made another amateurish mistake given that the Protocols did not have a high circulation even in Russia until 1917-1918.
As this is a key element of Carr's separation of the Illuminati from the jews we also need to bring up the claims made in point eight into the equation as well. In order to make sense of the totality of Carr's argument in that he claims the outbreak of anti-Semitism in France (already mentioned in point six) in 1905 (his reference is obscure but is probably in relation to the last battles between philo-Semites and anti-Semites around the Dreyfus trial which Carr mentions in point eight) as a result of the Protocols being circulated there and thus 'achieved the conspiracy's objectives'.
This is absolute poppycock on Carr's part I am afraid in that the Protocols were not distributed outside of Russian till they were published by Ludwig Mueller von Hausen (aka 'Gottfried zum Beek') with the assistance of veteran anti-Semite Theodor Fritsch in 1919. (18) So, they could not have influenced French anti-Semitic feeling in 1905 and in Russia they were but one anti-jewish document among many. (19)
Carr's errors come ultimately from his confused understanding of the back story of the Protocols of Zion and his unfortunate assumption that because Justine Glinka allegedly removed the documents from the Grand Orient Lodge in 1900 and were translated into Russia then there must have then been a French version of them circulating.
Essentially Carr's whole theory is thrown into disrepute because he simply didn't consult what researchers of the time: who had engaged heavily with the source documentation and secondary literature on the Protocols had to say about that back story, which - had he done so - would have at least warned him that it would be difficult to nail one’s self to one particular version of events without detailed analysis (which he does not perform).
I should note once again that Carr refers to the 1905 Russian revolution as if that revolution had been successful as it clearly was not even in terms of causing the jews to be hated more: all that happened was that it polarized Russia against its erstwhile allies the British and the French. It served little purpose in any 'revolutionary scheme' of things other than to cause the Russian authorities to crack down further on subversive left-wing groups which often had sizeable jewish contingents in their ranks.
Points nine and ten we can more or less merge together as while long: they have little of importance to tell us other than Carr believed that the so-called 'Council of Thirty-One' ruled the Grand Orient Lodge of France was the central council of the Illuminati, that most of these men were the hardcore agents of the Illuminati conspiracy and that they were all capitalist internationalists. (20)
This - Carr alleges - he discovered through unnamed 'informants' and was given names of these members (which he doesn't disclose), but once again Carr's introduction of a supernatural element into the equation in order to explain the longevity and preternatural intelligence of the conspiratorial elements that he is describing is his downfall. Given that if the devil was himself the master of the Illuminati: then surely, he would know that Carr was on to him and take steps to deal with him (which Carr believes he did but inexplicably kept failing in spite of being at least a demi-god).
Also, how on earth would a relative obscurity like Carr suddenly be able to divine the satanic plot more or less alone, but the world be ignorant?
Hmmm... one wonders.
Anyway, we should note that in spite of Carr's explicit placing of the Illuminati elite among the leaders of Freemasonry: Freemasonry itself plays a very minor role in Carr's actual theories which focus far more on the activities of communists and jews than Freemasons. It is almost as if Carr is introducing the Freemasonic element into the equation because he feels he has to in order to make it fit with his confused conception of the back story of the Protocols of Zion, but doesn't actually believe it himself as he is frankly unable to point to much subversive activity or leading roles taken in the then current revolutionary movements by Freemasons (he inexplicably doesn't mention the alleged role of Freemasonry in the creation of the 133 day jewish-led reign of terror of Bela Kuhn that is otherwise known as the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919), but he could point to jews being so hence his use of jewish power as being merely a proxy of Illuminati power.
In the course of point eleven Carr also manages to contradict his other major book on his conjectured 'Illuminati conspiracy' 'Pawns in the Game' when he asserts that the Illuminati are all internationalists and are loyal to no country or nation-state. (21) However, in 'Pawns in the Game' Carr argues that there are two warring elements within the Illuminati: the 'Aryan War Lords' (represented by the NSDAP and the Axis Powers) and the 'International Money Barons' (represented by the international capitalists of the Rothschild dynasty and the international socialists of Karl Marx). (22) This then eventually lead to war with the 'International Money Barons' being victorious.
However, the fact that there is not one but two Illuminatis contradicts Carr's central proposition in that there is unified satanic plot to gain control of the material world and all its souls in order to create Lucifer's kingdom on the earth. You could unify this by adding the supernatural element as Carr did, but this in turns creates another problem in that why would a supernatural intelligence - which must per force be preternatural in its abilities in order to conceive or and conduct such a conspiracy in the first place - do something as overly complex as use two competing ideological systems against each other when it would be far more effective - not to mention far less straining - to run a conspiracy with a single party and combine it with diabolical cunning to manipulate the world into creating said Lucifer's kingdom on earth.
Point twelve is one of the more ludicrous in that tries to (badly) argue that the term 'goyim' in the Protocols text means 'cattle' - which it doesn't except in allegorical terms the concept refers more the animalistic-state of non-jews in that they have lesser souls than jews as are thus as animals (hence the linguistic derivation from the Hebrew for 'soulless beings') - but that this suddenly means 'all people of all races'. (23)
This is also obviously nonsense as the term 'goyim' is specific to jews in being a pejorative reference to non-jews and cannot be read as anything but that. Carr however disagrees but doesn't actually offer a substantial reason why it should be interpreted as being an 'Illuminati derogatory term' for the unenlightened layman.
Point thirteen is of no consequence as it is just Carr elucidating - correctly from Nilus' text as it happens - that the Protocols state that the agents of the jews (or in Carr's case the Illuminati) can be both jewish and non-jewish. This doesn't impact or prove Carr's ideas about the Protocols or the alleged Illuminati conspiracy in the slightest and is really an irrelevant side note as is point fourteen which is (briefly) discussing the fact that the Protocols do not refer merely to some active politicians and intellectuals, but rather the global body politic.
Having thus discussed and addressed all of Carr's fourteen points we can summarize that Carr's idea of an 'Illuminati conspiracy' based on the Protocols of Zion being a captured 'Illuminati document' have little factual basis or intellectual consistency and are quite probably - to be frank - the product of what I can only politely term a devout Christian mind to whom the devil was more real than God.
References
(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/william-guy-carr-and-the-protocols
(2) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/william-guy-carr-anti-semitism-and
(3) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/william-guy-carr-and-the-protocols
(4) William Guy Carr, 1962, 'The Red Fog over America', 3rd Edition, Britons: London, p. 3
(5) 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, pp. 46-55
(6) Carr, 'Red Fog', Op. Cit., p. 4
(7) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/william-guy-carr-and-the-protocols
(8) Carr, 'Red Fog', Op. Cit., p. 3
(9) Ibid., p. 4
(10) Ibid., p. 3
(11) Ibid.
(12) Ibid.
(13) Nesta Webster, 1994, 'World Revolution: The Plot Against Civilisation', 7th Edition, Omni: Palmdale, pp. 288-289
(14) Carr, 'Red Fog', Op. Cit., pp. 3-4
(15) Ibid., p. 4
(16) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/william-guy-carr-anti-semitism-and
(17) Carr, 'Red Fog', Op. Cit., p. 4
(18) de Michelis, Op. Cit., p. 2
(19) Ibid.
(20) Carr, 'Red Fog', Op. Cit., pp. 4-5
(21) Ibid., p. 6
(22) William Guy Carr, 1958, 'Pawns in the Game', 3rd Edition, Federation of Christian Laymen: Ontario, pp. 4-6
(23) Carr, 'Red Fog', Op. Cit., p. 7