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The Protocols - a Neocon Manifesto

by Simon Jones

Dissident Voice

August 21, 2003

I have to confess. The outrageous in-your-face behavior of the neocons finally got to me ­as Armageddon approaches, after seeing more and more references to it (albeit usually wacky), I recently downloaded the Protocols of the Elders of Zion . Guiltily, mind you, as if it were Mein Kampf or porno. I bet you haven’t dared (or bothered) to read it.

So what is this best-selling political tract of the 20th century, the reading of which carried the death penalty in Stalinist Russia, lauded by the likes of Henry Ford and Winston Churchill, and then loudly condemned for the past 60 years since it was briefly declared an anti-Semitic forgery (in a Swiss court in 1935 overturned by the Appeals Court in 1937)?

The bile aside, it is in fact a series of 24 mostly articulate, well-argued lectures outlining a plan for world capitalist domination, with sharp political and social analysis, lots of Machiavelli and a Marxian sophistication in its understanding of capitalism and historical processes. Briefly, it outlines a plan of world conquest by first establishing world government by consent. As with any brilliant political analysis, it has been denounced, dismissed, misinterpreted and banned. And made very good use of by those lusting for world power.

What immediately struck me was that with a little dusting off, abridging and updating, it could easily be the handbook of the neocons. With the wonders of modern computers, you can download a free copy from the Internet, cleanse it of anti-Semitism by replacing "fellow Jews" with "neocons" and make sense of what’s happening in the world today.

Mysterious origins? Not really

Though its origins are still unknown, it was clearly inspired by the French revolution and its aftermath, the then-popular Masonic order, and most of all the nascent 19th century Zionist movement. All that we know is that it was written in France and brought to Russia, supposedly in 1884. It first appeared in print in St Petersburg in 1903, but reached the West only after the Russian revolution. It caused an immediate sensation, originally crudely interpreted as foretelling the Bolshevik revolution as the crucial link in a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. As such, it was admired by the likes of Churchill and Ford, both confirmed anti-communists and anti-Semites.

True, it has the prescience to allow for an anti-capitalist revolution on the way to its final goal, but there’s nothing even vaguely socialist in it. It’s firmly founded on a plan for capitalist domination through Jewish control of international finance and just happened to appear at the very moment of the founding of the Zionist movement, with its goal of establishing as soon as possible a Jewish state in Palestine, backed by powerful worldwide Ashkenazy Jewish economic interests.

It's as if an especially ruthless and well-read 19th c Zionist, inspired by the Rothschilds and other great Jewish financiers of the time, wrote it or most of it, as I am sure is the case. Really, it reads as if it were written by the Jungian shadow of the likes of Zionism's founder, Theodore Herzl, or any of Israel's notables from Ben Gurion to Ariel Sharon. Its anti-goyim callousness certainly indicate it was not written for public consumption, and after Hitler, it was relegated to the Forbidden Shelf in ALL libraries along with Mein Kampf and naked bottoms. But it is very hard to believe that it is a spoof or a mere provocation, as it is just too impressive in detail and understanding of the logic of late 19th c capitalism.

Did Hitler read it? I bet the Nazis read it carefully. They certainly followed much of its advice, from how to use the press, to how to manipulate both politicians and the masses in consolidating their political hold. It's also clear why destruction of the Jews became Hitler's tragic obsession. His New World Order (NWO) would have to exclude a group even remotely connected with such a scheme for world domination. As the neocons warn today: “You are either with us or against us.”

Many paths - but they all lead to Rome

The trouble with the Protocols is that it has been interpreted since it was published to suit the prejudices of the moment. In pre-revolutionary Russia, it provided fuel for the already widespread Russian anti-Semitism. In post-WWI Europe and America, it provided fuel against the Russian revolution. In the post-WWII world, it became the Bible of American isolationists and racists who see the poor UN as the dreaded “World Government,” backed by the Soviet Union and 3rd world revolutions. Now it is read by Muslims as proof of the conspiracy by US imperialism to destroy them.

Another problem is that there have been many variations on the theme of the NWO ever since the collapse of the Roman Empire. The French revolution and Napoleonic conquests, the Masonic lodges, imperial Germany and England all have had their own NWO fantasy. The Russian revolution was the most radical attempt at a NWO, and even can be distinguished for the large number of Jews who took part, but despite the fact that the Protocols was first published in Russia and strictly banned during the Soviet period, the Soviet experiment was not even remotely the final World Government of the Protocols , as it was anti-capitalist in its essence.

The red herring in it is of course 'Jewish', which is supposed to refer to a race. The Jews referred to in the Protocols are the European Ashkenazy Jews, who had been traditionally usurers and who were in the 19th century becoming increasing wealthy and part of the mainstream European culture. From them sprang the Zionists, who transformed a religion where God is to bring them to the 'promised land' someday into an active plan to seize Palestine based on their growing international economic and financial might. So it is this group that is the real inspiration behind the Protocols and not some amorphous Jewish RACE. Think of the authors as the neocons of the day. For by the 19th century, usury was the norm, and the rapid spread of capitalism meant that the Western world effectively became Jewish, as Marx put it, and adopted the Jewish idea of success.

Yet another problem. It is loudly dismissed as a forgery. Hello? It was anonymous, so how can it be a forgery. Who forged what? No wonder the Swiss Appeals Court threw the case out. In that case we can dismiss the Bible as a forgery. And who cares who wrote the Psalms anyway? They stand on their own merits, as does the Protocols stripped of a few provocative phrases here and there, which could have been slipped in by anyone.

You may well protest: “The Protocols attributes the conscious machinations of Jews to be behind all historical developments. I don’t believe the Zionists are either so powerful, or so far-sighted.” In answer: It’s not necessary for our actions to be premeditated. The logic of world capitalism sweeps us along, whether we like it or not. Some players are more conscious (and ruthless) than others. They become the Herzls, the Wolfowitzes, the Sharons. The rest of us get swept along, either yielding to, or fighting the current: the Bushes and the Schwartzeneggers or the goyim. The Protocols (or its original, if it is indeed a forgery) was inspired by the new economic system sweeping the world, and composed by the 19th century equivalent of the neocons. It hasn’t played itself out yet, just as capitalism hasn’t played itself out. We ignore it at our peril.

Arise, ye prisoners of starvation?

Contrast the Zionist movement with the other great attempt at a NWO from the 19th century on -- the world socialist movement. It is far weaker, split by nationalism and hundreds of ideological splinters, and motivated by social justice, a far less competitive motivation that money, wealth and power-for-its-own-sake. The Protocols is quite clear about this: "Our triumph has been rendered easier by the fact that in our relations with the men whom we wanted we have always worked upon the most sensitive chords of the human mind, upon the cash account, upon the cupidity, upon the insatiability for material needs of man: and each one of these human weaknesses, taken alone, is sufficient to paralyze initiative, for it hands over the will of men to the disposition of him who has bought their activities.” (I)

There is no fear of the dangerous effective of democracy: ”The abstraction of freedom has enabled us to persuade the mob in all countries that their government is nothing but the steward of the people who are the owners of the country, and that the steward may be replaced like a worn-out glove. It is this possibility of replacing the representatives of the people which has placed them at our disposal, and, as it were, given us the power of appointment." (I)

Socialism never had a chance against this corrosive Machiavellianism, though, just in case, the Protocols had a plan: "The hour strikes when, not for the sake of attaining the good, not even to win wealth, but solely out of hatred towards the privileged, the lower classes of the goyim will follow our lead against our rivals for power, the intellectuals of the goyim." (IV) This is the only reference to the use of a revolt of the masses, which was seized upon to associate the Protocols with the Russian revolution. Rather slim pickings, and it reveals the strategy is to undermine the “intellectuals of the goyim”, i.e., the socialist opposition to world capitalism.

On the contrary, the Russian revolution seemed to really shake the very foundations of the plan for world capitalist domination. Curiously in its first 30 years the SU had the Zionists split. Why? Well, no doubt partly because many rank-and-file Zionists were socialist by persuasion, truly wanted the SU to succeed and hoped for a socialist Israel as a bonus (Herzl's utopian novel depicts a socialist Israel). But for the Zionist fanatics of the Protocols , their fence-sitting was because achieving their own state was the main priority, and required the support of both the communist and capitalist camps.

And as for the softer versions of socialism which have surfaced occasionally in the West, their headway has always been kept well in check, and social democratic reforms were rolled back very easily after the collapse of the SU, via the tactics envisaged in the Protocols . So the plan of the Protocols should not be confused with the many variations on a socialist/ communist NWO.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em

The Protocols also lauds "the successes we arranged for Darwinism, Marxism, Nietzscheism." (II) Why promote such radicals? Because of the "disintegrating importance these directives have had upon the minds of the goyim." Just how central to Marx’s success these Zionists were is debatable.

But it's become clear to me that Zionists have penetrated and tried to control all the NWO fantasies, from left to right, to further their own cause. It is not surprise then that they have been at the center of the present neocon insurgency from the start. And as for the EU-as-NWO, Sharon even suggested Israel should join the EU since ‘we share common ideals’. In spite of Israel’s loathing for the UN, it is at the very heart of THAT beleaguered, clumsy organization too (with a stake in hand just in case, it can be argued). It has recently been revealed that Zionists are even involved with extreme right anti-Semitic movements in Europe and with the creation of Hamas. After all, anti-Semitism is the Zionist’s best defense. "The Jewish group has thrived on oppression and on the antagonism it has forever met in the world." (Albert Einstein, Collier's Magazine, November 26, 1938)

True, anti-Semitism got out of control under Hitler and it even looked like it was touch-and-go for a while for the Ashkenazy Jews of Europe, but fascism was in turn destroyed by a capitalist-communist alliance, with Zionists at its heart, as the Protocols so brilliantly foretold: "For a time perhaps we might be successfully dealt with by a coalition of the goyim of all the world: but from this danger we are secured by the discord existing among them whose roots are so deeply seated that they can never now be plucked up." (VI) Divide and rule!

The Holocaust gave the fanatical Zionists their long-sought state, which allowed them to discard any socialist pretensions and nurture the capitalist-Zionist alliance essential to the goal of world domination. The defining moment is perhaps the triumph of the neocons under Reagan in the 1980s. The Zionists had consolidated their hold on American foreign policy under Democrat Carter, and were ready to make the alliance official under Republican Reagan. It is at this point that the very term Zionist and even Jew can be discarded. As I have argued elsewhere, ‘We are all Jews now.’ (http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles4/Jones_Palestine.htm) And with the Bush coup in 2000, we all (for the present at least) have become neocons (or goyim). As the opposition grows weaker, with the shield of the Holocaust at the ready, the neocon-Zionist alliance has begun to act more and more brazenly to consolidate its hold on the world and destroy the last meaningful resistance - the Islamic world.

The ultimate trump card

Not only was the Holocaust and the way to defeat it foreseen in the Protocols , but, like the anti-Semitism that gave rise to it, it has been turned into the ultimate defense of the Zionist cause. A kind of perverse win-win situation for the Zionists.

It transformed important anti-Semites into Judeophiles overnight. While Churchill was an enthusiastic reader of the Protocols before WWII, he became an enthusiastic supporter of the foundation of Israel after, and shifted his anti-Semitism onto the Arabs. Stalin, also a confirmed anti-Semite, provided the key vote at the UN to approve the foundation of Israel and supplied crucial arms via Czechoslovakia to the beleaguered state, foolishly thinking he could ultimately manipulate. Ha, ha! Finally it became the linchpin in consolidating today’s neocon-Zionist alliance, and a brilliant defense for all manner of Zionist crimes: “We can do anything to defend ourselves after the Holocaust!”

The icing on the cake is the impressive Holocaust museum which blends in tastefully with the Lincoln and Washington memorials in the heart of Washington, D.C. (Note: There is no museum to the Holocaust against the native peoples or the blacks.)

A crack in the wall?

While ‘Old Europe’ has made some noises about this lethal NWO, the governments are nonetheless beholden to it, and can do little but try to carve a slightly bigger piece of the pie. No, the only meaningful remaining resistance to the neocon-Zionist NWO is the as yet unbrainwashed goyim of the world - the peace movement and the Islamic world, strange bedfellows at best.

However, there are some disturbing ripples in the NWO waters. Bush/ Sharon have chosen the warpath, while the Soros branch, which includes Europe, wants a more peaceful transition. The reckless policies of the erstwhile "servile administrator" in Washington are quite possibly endangering the very economic foundation of the NWO. The Protocols foresees such chaos, though it presumes to be in control of it: "We shall soon begin to establish huge monopolies, reservoirs of colossal riches, upon which even large fortunes of the GOYIM will depend to such an extent that they will go to the bottom together with the credit of the States on the day after the political smash...." (VI)

Such a collapse of the present world financial system is not at all beyond the realm of possibility. And if it comes, it could take down the US government and the neocons with it. It is here that the PROTOCOLS begins to unravel. The Protocols assumes the corporate financial cabal controlling the world economy will be invited to take over bankrupt governments with their World Government, as indeed has been happening under the guise of IMF restructuring programs and more recently by direct invasion. But the bankrupt and invaded countries, such as Argentina, most of Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq for starters are proving to be problematic, more than the cabal can digest.

Maybe, just maybe, the neocons' gamble will trip them up before they reach the finish line and they will end up along side the despised GOYIM at the bottom. A switch to a gold dinar in the Muslim world and oil-euros for the rest would seriously endanger the NWO, as would a massive ecological disaster, natural or man-made.

The mild neocons (Soros etal) see this clearly and are scurrying to minimize collateral damage. Theirs is a strategy closer to the spirit of the Protocols - no overt wars, a careful amassing of power through education and the control of the press, no dangerous splits in the capitalist-Zionist alliance, achieving victory through financial and trade blackmail. Have a look at the Protocols yourself. It’s all there.

So, are these cowboy jackboot high jinks a momentary glitch in the triumphal march to the neocon-Zionist paradise? Will a Howard Dean, urged on by Soros, put the out-of-control steamroller back on its proper path? Or has the Protocols played itself out? Is our present apocalyptic scenario instead a crack that gives us hope of emerging from this nightmarish plot?

Rational racism?

I don't know about the Elders, the Symbolic Snake, the actual killing off of the goyim, whether the line of King David will be re-established to rule the world, the importance of the Masons, or whether the French Revolution "was wholly the work of our hands". There's surprisingly little of such bile for a work of such notoriety, and it can be easily edited out so as not to distract from the sharp analysis. Perhaps it was added by an anti-Semite as a provocation. Who knows? As for the Masons, come to think of it, the popularity of them, the Yale Skull and Bones, and other such Monty-Pythonesque groups shows a stubborn inclination by would-be GOYIM leaders to voluntarily (i.e., consciously or unconsciously) make themselves part of a world conspiracy, however idiotic.

That's not so much the problem. The major flaw behind the logic of the Protocols is its basic premise - that there is a Jewish race. There is only one race - the human race. Just have a look at Israeli society if you think there is a racial basis to Judaism. But hey! Scientists are discovering that there are genes which are responsible for skin color, that define risk-takers or those susceptible to various diseases… Maybe there’s a gene for these would-be Elders of Zion. Perhaps the NY Times will post the following soon: The Zionist-neocons now welcome to their fold those who share their lust for capitalist world domination. All those with gene DN145, please sign up here. We are all equal before Mammon. MBA schools will go crazy.

The Masonic lodges, Skull and Bones fraternities, the Jewish ‘race’ itself are just foils in this march of world capitalism, gathering in like-minded wanabes as it makes its final push for total control. It is somehow fitting that the once reviled Jew should sit one day on the world’s golden throne surrounded by his neocon minions. That is the Protocols ’ vision of the end of history. Eat your heart out Fukuyama!

Simon Jones is a Canadian freelance journalist living in Uzbekistan. He writes for Peace Magazine (Toronto) and has published pieces in Counterpunch and YellowTimes.org. He can be contacted at sj958@yahoo.com

Other Articles by Simon Jones

* Understanding Iran

* Who's Whose Proxy? Or K - Last of the Mohicans

* Just What Does Kissinger Think of the Neocons?

* Tashkent Through Gold-Tinted Lenses

* We are All Jews Now