About "The Protocols of The Learned Elders of Zion" In a sentence it is a fraud, a forgery. Based upon an earlier anti-semitic tract even it appeared over 10 years previous to the "meeting" it claims to document. It was apparently written by some members of the secret police force working for the czar, in the late 19th century. See the text below for details. -//- This is quoted from _Holy Blood, Holy Grail_, written by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. It is THEIR theory, not mine. There were esoteric, powerful enclaves surrounding the Czars of Russia long before Rasputin. During the 1890s and 1900s one such enclave formed around an individual known as Monsieur Phillipe and his mentor, a French esotericist named Papus. Their enclave was opposed by other powerful interests--the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, for example, who was intent on installing her own favorite close to the throne. One of her favorites was a contemptible individual known as Sergei Nilus. Sometime around 1903 Nilus presented a highly controversial document to the Czar--a document that supposedly bore witness to a dangerous conspiracy. The Czar declared the document to be an outrageous fabrication and ordered all copies of it to be destroyed. Nilus was banished from the court in disgrace. Of course the document--or at any rate, a copy of it--survived. In 1903 it was serialized in a newspaper but failed to attract any interest. In 1905 it was published again--this time as an appendix to a book by a distinguished mystical philosopher, Vladimir Soloviov. At this point it began to attract attention. The document in question was a tract, or more strictly speaking, a purported social and political program, It has appeared under a variety of slightly differing titles, the most common of which is _The Protocols of the Elders of Sion__ The Protocols allegedly issued from specific Jewish sources. And for a great many anti-Semites at the time they were convincing proof of an "international Jewish conspiracy." In 1919, for example, they were distributed to troops of the White Russian army--and these troops, during the next two years, massacred some sixty thousand Jews who were held responsible for the 1917 Revolution. By 1919, the Protocols were also being circulated by Alfred Rosenberg, later the chief racial theorist and propagandist for the national Socialist Party in Germany. In _Mein Kampf_ Hitler uses the Protocols to fuel his own fanatical prejudices, and he is said to have believed unquestioningly in their authenticity. In England the Protocols were immediately accorded credence by the Morning Post. Even the Times, in 1921, took them seriously and only later admitted its error. Expert today concur--and rightly so we concluded--that the Protocols, at least in their present form, are a vicious and insidious forgery. Nevertheless, they are still being circulated--in Latin America, in Spain, even in Britain--as anti-Semetic propaganda. The Protocols propound an outline, a blueprint for nothing less than total world domination. On first reading, they would seem to be the Machiavellian program--a kind of interoffice memo, so to speak--for a group of individuals determined to impose a new world order, with themselves as supreme despots. The text advocates a many-tentacled hydra-headed conspiracy dedicated to disorder and anarchy, to toppling certain existing regimes, infiltrating Freemasonry and other such organizations, and eventually seizing absolute control of the Western World's social, political, and economic institutions. And the anonymous authors of the Protocols declare explicitly that they have "stage-managed" whole peoples "according to a political plan which no one has guessed at in the course of many centuries." When they were first publicized, the Protocols were alleged to have been composed at an international Judaic congress that convened in Basle in 1897. This allegation has long since been disproved. The earliest copies of the Protocols, for example, are known to have been written in French--and the 1897 congress in Basle did not include a single French delegate. Moreover, a copy of the Protocols is known to have been in circulation as early as 1884--a full 13 years before the Basle congress met. The 1884 copy surfaced in the hands of a member of a Masonic lodge--the same lodge of which Papus was a member and subsequently Grand Master. Moreover, it was in this same lodge that the tradition of Ormus had first appeared--the legendary Egyptian sage wgo amalgamated pagan and Christian mysteries and founded the Rose-Croix. Modern scholars have established that in fact the Protocols, in their published form, are based at least in part on a satirical work written and printer in Geneva in 1864. The work was composed as an attack on Napoleon III by a man named Maurice Joly, who was subsequently imprisoned. Joly is said to have been a member of the Rose-Croix order. It can thus be proved that the Protocols did not issue from the Judaic congress at Basle in 1897. That being so, the obvious question is whence they did issue. Modern scholars have dismissed them as a total forgery, a whollly spurious document concocted by anti-Semitic interests intent on discrediting Judaism. At the same time, they contain a number of enigmatic references tha are clearly not Judaic. They are so clearly not Judaic that they cannot plausibly have been fabricated by a forger. No anti-Semitic forger with even a modicum of intelligence would possibly have concocted such references in order to discredit Judaism, for no one would believe those references to be of Judaic origin. For instance, the text of the Protocols ends with a single statement, "Signed by the representatives of Sion of the 33rd Degree." Why would an anti-Semitic forger have made up such a statement? Why would he not have attempted to incriminate all Jews rather than just a few--the few who consititute the "33rd Degree"? Why would he not declare that the document was signed by, say, the representatives of teh international Judaic congress? In fact, the "representatives of Sion of the 33rd degree" would hardly seem to refer to anything in Judaism at all, or to any "international jewish conspiracy." If anything, it would seem to refer to something specifically Masonic. The Protocols contain other even more flagrant anomolies. The text speaks repeatedly of the advent of a "Masonic kingdom" and of a "King of the blood of Sion" who wil preside over this "Masonic kingdom." It asserts that the future king will be of "the dynastic roots of King David." It affirms that "the King of the Jews will be the real Pope" and "the patriarch of an international church." And it concludes in a most cryptic fashion, "Certain members of the seed of David will prepare the kings and their heirs... Only the King and the three who stood sponsor for him will know what is coming." As an expression of Judaic thought, real or fabricated, such statements are blatantly absurd. Since biblical times no king has figured in Judaic tradition, and the very principle of kingship has become utterly irrelevant. The concept of a king would have been as meaningless to Jews in 1897 as it would be to Jews today; and no forger can have been ignorant of this fact. Indeed, the references quoted would appear to be more Christian than Judaic. For the last two millennia the only "king of the Jews" has been Jesus himself--and Jesus, according to the Gospels, was of the "dynastic roots of King David." If one is fabricating a document and ascribing it to a Jewish conspiracy, why include such patently Christan echoes? Why speak of so specifically and uniquely Christian a concept as a Pope? Why speak of an "international church" rather than an international synogogue or temple? The conclusion drawn by the authors of _Holy Blood, Holy Grail_ is: There was an original text on which the published version of the Protocols was based. The original text was not a forgery. It had nothing to do with Judiasm or an "international Jewish conspiracy." It issued, rather, from some Masonic organization or Masonically oriented secret society that incorporated the word "Sion." The original text may well have included a program for gaining power, for infiltrating Freemasonry, for controlling social, political, and economic institutions. Such a program would have been perfectly in keeping with the secret societies of the Renaissance. Nilus brought this document to the attention of the Czar with the purpose of discrediting the enclave of Papus and Monsieur Phillipe, doctoring the language before he did. When this failed, he saw it as a means to foster anti-Semitism. References: Cohn, _Warrant for Genocide_ Bernstein, _Truth about the "Protocols"_