A Lie and a Libel: The History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a potent forgery alleging a Jewish plot to run the world, has proved durable since its turn-of-the-century fabrication by Russian police; this book offers welcome background, context and refutation. The main section is the 1926 effort by Segel, a German Jewish journalist, to expose the fraud; he shows how the infamous text was plagiarized from trash fiction, Machiavelli's speeches and a political satire. . . . Levy adds much in his comprehensive introduction. Unlike most anti-Semitic works, he notes, this has no national context or identity. Thus it has served multiple purposes for different audiences; it was not only publicized by the Nazis, but it also remains influential in the Arab world and eastern Europe and among American right-wingers and black nationalists."-Publishers Weekly. A strange and repugnant mystery of the twentieth century is the durability of the Protocols, despite repeated exposure as a forgery. Binjamin W. Segel's work was the first full explanation of the shadowy sources for this virulent group libel. Richard S. Levy now adds an examination of the history of the Protocols since its original publication and describes its continuing psychological appeal and political function in the modern world. Richard S. Levy is an associate professor of history at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He is the editor of Antisemitism in the Modern World: An Anthology of Texts. |
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anti anti-Jewish Antichrist antisemitic antisemitic political appeared audience authenticity Basel Berlin Binjamin blood Bolshevik Bolshevism Butmi Centralverein century Christian communist Dearborn Independent democratic destruction document edition educated Elders of Zion enemies Europe European evil existence force Ford's forgery France freedom Freemasons French German Goedsche's Gottfried zur Beek hand Hermann Goedsche Hitler International Jew Jewish conspiracy Jewish emancipation Jewish question Jewish world conspiracy Jewry Jews and Freemasons Joly's book Judeo-Bolshevism leaders League liberal manuscript Masonic masses Maurice Joly ment moral myth Napoleon Napoleon III Nazi newspaper Nicholas Nilus Nilus's nobility non-Jewish official Okhrana original Paris parties plagiarized plan of world pogroms principles Protocols published rabbi's speech Republic revolutionary ruin rule Russian secret societies Segel semitic Sir John Retcliffe social Soviet statecraft supposedly Theodor Fritsch Theodor Herzl tion tocols translation tsar tsarist violence Weimar Republic world conquest world empire Zionist Congress zur Beek
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Page 140 - ... (or even Christian) thinker. Their source is of small moment: the facts, the relation of cause and effect, are there; the existence of the work prior to the events foretold in it can never be brought into question, and that is enough. The first attempt at refutation appeared in 1920, entitled, The Jewish Bogey and the Forged Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, by a Jew, Lucien Wolf; it was followed by articles in the Metropolitan (New York) signed "William Hard".