Conspiracy Theories: “The Protocols”

 By Darren Taylor
SooNews.ca, September 4, 2006

One of the ugliest and most hateful conspiracy theories centres around the claim that the Jewish people control the world. One of the more notorious examples of anti-Semitism is in the form of a book entitled The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. What is fascinating to note is that any individual or society that has embraced anti-Semitism has paid dearly for it.

The biblical view is that God’s wrath has and will fall upon those who hate the people he chose to reveal His ways to—the Jews. I’ll take a look at that toward the end of this article. But first, The Protocols.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is fiction. To put it bluntly, it is a pile of rubbish. Among anti-Semites however, the Protocols book remains a big hit, especially in Europe, the Middle East, North America and even in the Far East. What is odd is that the publication did not originate as anti-Semitic in nature. Its roots can be traced to a book written by a French clergyman named Abbe Baruel, who condemned shadowy, secretive Freemasonry as the force behind the violent French Revolution of the late 1700s; but Jews were not mentioned in his book.

In 1806 Baruel received a letter from a Florence man, J.B. Simonini, who claimed to have pretended to be Jewish and infiltrated a Jewish sect in Italy. This sect, Simonini claimed, started Freemasonry, had infiltrated Christendom and planned to arrange the election of a Jewish Pope.

“The Jewish Conspiracy” resurfaced in 1871 in a novel written by Hermann Goedsche, a Prussian postal worker. The novel described how that once every 100 years, Jewish men who traced their ancestry to the original twelve tribes of Israel met in a graveyard to plot Jewish control of the world. The book, though a work of fiction, was accepted as fact by some in Russia and France and copies of it circulated among anti-Semites in those countries.

The actual Protocols of the Elders of Zion then surfaced in Russia in the late 1800s. It plagiarized Goedsche’s novel and mixed it with a French anti-Napoleon III pamphlet, written in 1865. Completely fictional, the Protocols book was 24 chapters and 1200 pages long. In it, an “Elder of Zion” clearly spells out international Jewry’s plot to take over the world. It called for the stirring up of agitation and worldwide revolution in which Gentiles (non-Jews) would rise up against their political leaders.                       
The Jews would then move in and restore order (and subjugate the Gentile peoples) with promises of a welfare state, controlled by big government, which promised full employment, higher taxation of the rich, education for all—none of which the Jews were actually prepared to deliver, the Elder wrote, but rather intended as a perpetual carrot on a stick to control the Gentiles.

The Protocols were published in Russia in 1903 under the last Tsar, Nicholas II, who reigned from 1894 to 1917. Its publication fuelled hysteria among anti-Semites in Russia, leading to pogroms against Jews in the early 20th century. In one pogrom, 300 Jews were killed in Odessa Despite his efforts to blame Russian revolutionary activity on the Jews, Nicholas II lost his throne and his life.

American car manufacturer Henry Ford launched, in 1920, the Dearborn Independent newspaper, to specifically publish The Protocols and other anti-Jewish literature. The Nazis, not surprisingly, embraced The Protocols as truth. In 1944 the German Propaganda Ministry declared “If it were possible to checkmate the 300 secret Jewish kings who rule the world, the peoples of this earth would at last find their peace.”

Wherever The Protocols surfaced, the book was used to justify a specific country’s anti-Semitic element’s hatred of Jews. In Tsarist Russia, the revolutionaries were Jews. In Germany, the Jews were responsible for her defeat in World War I, and led to Hitler’s “revenge” against the Jews during World War II. In Henry Ford’s mind, America’s rise of labour unions, a massive influx of immigrants and bigger government were all Jewish “schemes.”

The biblical view is that God chose the nation of Israel to be the people through whom Jesus Christ would be born – the Savior, the Messiah. God first promised the Messiah after Adam and Eve’s fall into sin. God later gave His assurance that the Messiah would come from the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the fathers of the Jewish people. Jesus Christ is the ultimate reason why God chose Israel to be His chosen people. Jesus Christ had to come from some nation of people, and God chose Israel.

God also chose Israel to go and spread the message of God’s ways, to teach the rest of the world about Him. All but two of the Bible’s 66 books are written by Jewish authors. Israel was to be a nation of priests, prophets, and missionaries to the world. 
God’s intent was for Israel to be a distinct people, a nation of people that pointed others to God and His promised provision of a Redeemer, Messiah, and Savior. For the most part, Israel failed in this task. However, God’s ultimate purpose for Israel, that of bringing for the Messiah and Savior, was fulfilled perfectly in the Person of Jesus Christ.

Despite the failings of the Jewish people to recognize Christ as the Saviour and Messiah when He came—most of them rejected and crucified Him—and despite the fact God has allowed the Jewish people to experience periods of great suffering as a result, He has also blessed them and allowed them to not only survive, but prosper as a people and Israel as a nation.

“I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.” (Genesis 12:3) While The Protocols of The Elders of Zion is falsehood, and while it is every individual’s choice to believe or disbelieve the Bible, there can be no doubt that every nation that has treated its Jewish population well has prospered, while every nation that has abused its Jewish population has suffered.

Consider Egypt.

In the glory days of ancient Egypt, that country was the envy of the world. Her wealth, military might, agriculture and architecture were unequalled. But the Egyptians enslaved the Jewish people. This continued for 400 years. But finally, within a matter of weeks, locusts destroyed Egypt’s agriculture and the Jewish people were delivered, eventually arriving in the promised land of  Today, Egypt is, despite having signed a peace treaty with the modern, revived state of Israel, still an anti-Israeli nation, and still a backward nation, relying on tourists and their money to come and view the ruins of their ancient past.

Jews suffered under the Babylonian Empire, Alexander The Great, and Rome. Every one of these empires crumbled. Approximately 6 million Jews died in Hitler’s Holocaust. By 1945, Germany was in ruins, occupied by foreign armies, and for decades was a divided country, one half of it living under Soviet tyranny.                                                                                  

Many African nations (Niger, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Chad and others) have suffered famine and drought. Each one of them had severed diplomatic ties with Israel. Britain treated its Jews well under Queen Victoria in the 1800s. Under her rule, Britain grew continually in power. What went wrong?

During World War I, British naval guns were running short of gun powder. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of The Admiralty, sought the help of a brilliant Jewish scientist—Chaim Weizmann–for help.

Weizmann produced 30,000 tons of synthetic acetone to enable the British to manufacture cordite gun powder. All Weizmann asked for in return for his services was a homeland for his people. Despite assurances of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the British, upon taking control of Palestine from the Turks, partitioned the land to favour Palestine’s Arab population.

In the late 1930s, as Hitler’s war against the Jews began to escalate, Jews pleaded for permission to enter Palestine. The British ignored their pleas. The Jews finally got their homeland in May 1948, long after the 1917 Balfour Declaration and after horrible suffering at the hands of the Nazis.

The Second World War finished Britain as an empire, its economy a laughing stock for decades and now, despite a revived economy and a renewal in prestige on the world stage, Britain is a puppet of George Bush. In the Gulf War of 1991, Saddam Hussein hit Israel with SCUD missiles. Though his trial drags on, just like the current war in Iraq, Saddam is now removed from power, his days as a despot over.

What lies in store for Russia, Iran and other states that have rattled their sabers against Israel? “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.”

©2006 Soonews.ca