Reviews for Warrant for Genocide: Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

The average rating for Warrant for Genocide: Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-01-11 00:00:00 Jeremy East Quite a challenging read as there is a lot to take in, with a lot of different personalities involved, in the very convoluted history of this pernicious forgery which was used to justify such terrible persecution of the Jews. I had heard of this document as being a fake produced by the Tsar's secret police before the Russian Revolution as a tool of oppression against the Jews, which was then taken up and used by various anti-Semitic groups, the most heinous being the Nazis, but was not aware of the full ramifications, the international basis of the forgery's acceptance and the context of similar documents from which it arose. Very broadly, modern anti-Semitism, as opposed to the Medieval persecution of the Jews, which had been based on the biblical context in which they were blamed for the crucifixion of Christ and which viewed Jews as devil worshippers etc, arose out of the growing discomfort with modern life among the populations of various countries including France, Russia and Germany (but many others) as they transformed into modern societies. To many traditionalists in such countries, the Jews were identified with modernity, city living, modern "vices", etc whereas the concentration of Jews in cities were due to various historical reasons. These prejudices ignored the wide variation among Jews, with some still of an Orthodox religion, some of a more progressive Judaism and some of no faith or having converted to Christianity. At one time, the prejudices had focused on the Jews' religion and only viewed those who followed Judaism as Jews, but there came to be an idea of a Jewish "race" with certain inherent tendencies, all negative ones. Meanwhile, due to the poor living conditions in many industrialising nations, and the prejudice against them, some Jews were drawn to Communism. This later led to them being identified with Communism/Bolshevism, by the Nazis in particular, and held to blame for the Russian Revolution and other Communist-inspired events. The first instruments of modern anti-Semitism were documents written after the French Revolution, initially blaming it on machinations of the Freemasons. Before long, however, this switched the blame to the Jews, who were deemed to control the Freemasons and use them as a front (ironically, as the author shows, since the Freemasons themselves were broadly anti-Semitic at the time). One influential work was a novel written by a mid 19th century German author which included a chapter in which the hero spies on a gathering of Jews at night in a cemetery in which they report to Lucifer the progress they have made in suborning Gentile society and bringing about various wars, revolutions, economical difficulties and so on. This chapter was later published as if it was non fiction under the title of "The Rabbi's Speech" and became a best seller. It was an influential precursor to the protocols. The Tsar's secret police had an office in Paris - the Russian aristocracy divided their time between France and Russia - and its head was notorious for many forgeries which aided the propaganda purposes of the Russian state, so was probably the originator of the protocols. The author pins down its writing to a few years in the 1890s from references to politicians and events in France at that time. It was recognised quite early on that the bulk of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as it came to be known, was plagiarised from a French work which had nothing whatsoever to do with the Jews but had been written as a dialogue between Machiavelli and another personality, discussing the despotic behaviour of Napoleon III. Whole chunks were lifted and became the protocols, with additions which reflected the prejudices against Jews and served the interests of the Russian state. In an appendix the author compares English translations of this original document against chunks of the protocols, showing just how similar the lines of argument are, and in another appendix has some English translations of some of the most important additional passages. The forgery, purporting to be the master plan of the Jews for a worldwide conspiracy against all nations - a conspiracy which was rapidly coming to its completion - was soon translated into Russian and published in Russia in various newspapers etc, where it was used as a justification for pogroms. The author follows the very torturous route by which this occurred, with many personalities involved. It was then taken up by a mystic called Nilus who for a time was attached to the Russian court where mystics were entertained by the Tsar and Tsaritsa (Tsarina is an incorrect English term as the author explains) and who had written a book. He became a wholehearted believer and added a copy to the third edition of his book. This caused a sensation, and the "Protocols" was soon published in its own right, becoming a best seller. When the Russian Revolution took place and the "White" Russians, opponents of the Communists and anti-Semites, were defeated, their officers were offered places on the trains back to German with the retreating German army, and some became prominent publishers of the protocols in German translations. These were best sellers. Eventually the document was translated into many languages and disseminated worldwide, not only in the form of books, but also as cheap pamphlets, which were often given away, and it was also serialised in many newspapers. Even Henry Ford in America published a best selling copy of it after serialising it in his newspaper, though he was later made to retract it due to lawsuits brought by Jewish organisations. Despite those who came forward, showing that the document was a complete forgery, partly plagiarised from the earlier French work, other so-called scholars wrote defences of it, and otherwise sensible people became wholehearted believers, with the most keen being among the middle class and among university students. The document was subsequently drawn upon heavily by the Nazis, becoming a set text in schools and later used to justify the increasing persecution of Jews in Germany and other European countries. The sad tale of this document, which was used to justify pogroms and eventually mass murder, is also a salutary one. In the modern age, we are accustomed to the dissemination of false information on social media, but this book shows how earlier ages were also credulous. Perfectly reasonable people, often well educated, believed wholeheartedly in this concoction. Others knew it was a fake but seized upon it for reasons of expediency, deriving income, prestige and power from it, and in some cases finding opportunities to indulge their sadistic urges. Some, such as Goebbels, started off fully aware that it was a piece of propaganda, but ended up believing in its lies. A sobering read and I have only deducted one star from a full rating because the book does dart about in the timeline here and there and is a bit hard to follow in places, and I don't really believe in his Freudian based explanation for anti-Semitism as I think it is more a case of 'the Other' as in the tribal 'us and them' phenomena. But a solid 4 star read.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-01-08 00:00:00 Todd Cannan A fine bit of research, showing the origins of the infamous "Protocols" in a forgery concocted by the Imperial Russian Secret Police, working out of its Paris branch, with material plagiarized from a book written to criticize France's Napoleon III, who had been dethroned 3 decades before. The book also points out the terrifying history of the Protocols. Not only did they motivate Russian pogroms against the Jews and the Nazi Holocaust, but they are still credulously read, distributed, and studied throughout the world, by American skinheads and Middle Eastern dictators.