The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Why Are They Believed?


AUTHOR’S NOTE
I have researched extensively The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and, as such, already have numerous works uploaded to the Wiki. In order to understand the context, I have taken the liberty of transcribing my previous work here. In SECTION I, I give information about what The Protocols are; in SECTION II I determine that they are a conspiracy theory according to Coady’s guidelines; in SECTION III I conclude that we should not believe The Protocols based on Dentith’s guidelines. In SECTION IV I introduce my thesis and briefly summarize four papers published in a sociological/philosophical journal in order to support my claim. In SECTION V I conclude that my thesis has been met.
The only edits that have been made to my previous work (SECTIONS I-III) are for ease of reading. If the reader wishes to skip ahead to new content, they should go to SECTION IV.

SECTION I
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, also known as The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, The Protocols of Zion, and The Protocols are a set of alleged transcriptions of a secret Jewish meeting that was held to discuss the Jews' plan for world domination. They were first published in completion in Russia in 1903 and 1905 and are, according to Norman Cohn in his introduction to Herman Bernstein's book The Truth About "The Protocols of Zion", "a notorious fabrication". Not only is there no evidential basis for this meeting had happened, but large parts of The Protocols are also plagiarized from Maurice Joly's work entitled Le dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu (The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu), which was originally published in 1864.
Despite multiple articles pointing out the fallacies and comparing the plagiarisms of The Protocols, including an exposé series published on the 16th, 17th, and 18th days of August 1921 in The London Times by a Mr. Philip P. Graves, many international and local governments used The Protocols to advance what they thought of "The Jewish World Conspiracy". This article will explain The Protocols role in advancing this conspiracy theory, as well as what the conspiracy theory actually says. Unless otherwise stated, all cited information comes from Bernstein's book The Truth About "The Protocols of Zion": A Complete Exposure.
The Jewish World Conspiracy essentially states that the Jewish people want to establish and have been succeeding in establishing complete control of the world. This conspiracy is so all-encompassing that to even attempt to cover it in a single essay or entry would be inappropriate. As such, when I am referring to the "Jewish World Conspiracy", please note that I am only referring to the parts of it as established in the protocols.
There were twenty-four meetings at the First Zionist Congress held in Basel, Switzerland, in 1894. In these meetings, "Jews and Freemasons were said to have made plans to disrupt Christian civilization and erect a world state under their joint rule." The methods that were and would be used to do so would be freemasonry (of course) and socialism (also equated with Communism and Bolshevism in The Protocols).
The protocols, while initially being published in Russia, were eventually distributed internationally with French, German, English, and American editions proving to be popular reads.

SECTION II
For the purposes of this entry, I will be using Coady's definition of a conspiracy theory. Coady asserts that,
“A conspiracy theory is a proposed explanation of a historical event, in which conspiracy (i.e., agents acting secretly in concert) has a significant causal role. Furthermore, the conspiracy postulated by the proposed explanation must be a conspiracy to bring about the historical event which it purports to explain. Finally, the proposed explanation must conflict with an ‘official’ explanation of the same historical event.”
Let’s analyze The Protocols according to each parameter.
An Explanation This parameter is the one that covers the most breadth. First, we need to determine if The Protocols is “a proposed explanation of a historical event”. The Jewish World Conspiracy as established within The Protocols was used by Hitler to explain WWI and the Great Depression as well as to justify his plunging the world into WWII. As such, I would say that this condition to the condition is well-met.
Second, we need to determine if secrecy had a “significant causal role” to play in these alleged historical events. It is more difficult to ascertain whether or not this condition is met because Coady does not define parameters for the secrecy condition. What role does intent play? Does it play any at all? If so, then then it could be argued that the secrecy condition is still satisfied. If not, then this would render the rest of this paper useless.
Historical Event Is the secret meeting of Jews at the Congress of Zion the cause of these historical events? That is, are the events that are supposed to have occurred as a result of this explained by the meeting itself?
Well, according to the conspiracy, yes. It was in this meeting that Jews discussed their plans for world domination. Hitler’s theory uses The Protocols to explain WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII, as stated in the previous section.
Confliction With the Official Account This parameter poses similar issues to the secrecy conditions, as Coady does not tell us what should be the official story, only what could be. For the purposes of this entry, however, I am going to say that the official source is the Academy.
The Academy’s position concerning these events is that 1) WWI was, in part, spearheaded by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Black Hand, a Serbian insurrectionist group, and the subsequent declaration of war on Serbia by Austria-Hungary; 2) the Great Depression was a result of the 1929 Stock Market crash, which was, in turn, the result of disastrous, international economic treaties; and, 3)WWII was ultimately caused by Hitler’s invasion of Poland, which was in, turn, caused by his unjustified hatred of the Jewish people.
This conspiracy theory certainly runs counter to this claim, as it purports that the Jewish people were/are responsible for these events. Thus, this condition is satisfied.
Conclusion Therefore, while it would be imprudent of me to say definitely whether or not the conspiracy theory thoroughly satisfies Coady’s definition of conspiracy theory as his secrecy condition is too vague, I can, with confidence, state that, if his secrecy condition is met, then the Jewish World Conspiracy as set forth in The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion is, a conspiracy theory.

SECTION III
As evidenced above, The Protocols have been used to justify the most heinous anti-Semitic attacks in history: one needs only to look at the Holocaust to see The Protocols’ devastating effects. For most people, there is no ethical or moral warrant to believe in the Jewish World Conspiracy. Furthermore, there is no epistemic warrant, but why is there no such warrant? To answer this question, I shall begin by briefly going over the outline provided by Matthew R.X. Dentith on what is a conspiracy theory, and then I shall go into Dentith’s qualifications for the epistemic warrant in believing a conspiracy theory.
Conspiracy Theory According to Dentith According to Dentith, there are three conditions that a theory must meet in order to be classified as a conspiracy theory: “first, there must be a group of people with a set plan; second, there must be steps that are taken by said ‘group’ in order to minimize the awareness of the public; third, the proposed conspiracy theory must meet some ‘goal’ of the group. Most importantly, Dentith states that the ‘three conditions are both individually necessary and jointly sufficient’”. So as not to bog down the bulk of this paper with unnecessary information, I will only briefly go over these conditions.
Conspiracy Condition The Jewish World Conspiracy as set forth in The Protocols consists of a group of people (the Jews) desiring to meet some end (world domination). As such, this condition is satisfied.
Secrecy Condition Second, are the conspirators trying to keep this plan secret? While there is no way to know, we can safely assume that they are, as it would be extremely detrimental to their goals to do so otherwise, so I would say that, logically, this condition is satisfied.
Goal Condition Finally, do the conspirators desire some end? In this case, the conspirators do desire “some end”: world domination. Now, it is important to mention that Dentith only says that they must desire some end; that is, their end does not have to be achieved in order for this condition to be met. Therefore, whether or not any end has been achieved is irrelevant in satisfying the requirements of this condition.
Having met all of these guidelines, we can safely assume that the theory put forth in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a conspiracy theory according to Dentith.
Should we Believe It? Dentith’s Guidelines (With the Guest Appearance of Buenting & Taylor!) Dentith does not give any guidelines on whether or not we are warranted in believing a conspiracy theory by definition; rather, he encourages readers to take a particularist view, and judge each conspiracy by its own merits (or, in this case, detriments). Dentith references a paper by Buenting and Taylor on fortuitous data, and in it they define the particularist and generalist views more succinctly. Buenting and Taylor argue that we must look at the evidence that supports each theory in order to decide if we have some epistemic warrant in believing said “theory”. So, let’s look at the “evidence” in The Protocols and weigh it against the official story.
My Evaluation of the “Evidence” As evidence, what kind of warrant, if any, do The Protocols offer in believing The Jewish World Conspiracy? Absolutely none. The Protocols are nothing but a fraud; significant sections are often taken word-for-word, line-for-line, paragraph-for-paragraph from Le dialogue by Maurice Joly; Le dialogue was itself published in Brussels, Belgium in 1864, thirty-nine years before the first edition of The Protocols was published in 1903 in Russia.
Furthermore, the circumstances of the meeting are directly inspired by the discredited German novelist Hermann Goedsche’s novel To Sedan.
According to Herman Bernstein in his novel The Truth About "The Protocols of Zion": A Complete Exposure:
[T]here appeared a chapter [in To Sedan] entitled “The Jewish Cemetery in Prague and the Council of Representatives of the Twelve Tribes of Israel,” in which he [Goedsche] described a secret centennial midnight meeting of the representatives of the twelve tribes of Israel in the ancient cemetery in Prague … for the purpose of reporting what had happened to the Jewish people during the past century and of elaborating plans for the next century. (p. 21)
When comparing this to the official story, which for the purposes of this paper I am defining as that which is set forth by academia, it becomes glaringly obvious that there is no such evidence that could ever support the Jewish World Conspiracy Theory. Every single event that the Jews are said to cause has a much better, well-documented explanation. WWI was not caused by Jewish revolutionaries; it was caused by the assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary Franz Ferdinand by the Serbian insurrectionist Gavrilo Princip. The Great Depression was not orchestrated by a secret group of Jewish bankers; it was the result of multiple bad investments and an inflated economy. Hitler’s justification for plunging the world into WWII on the basis of the “Jewish menace” has no basis in reality; he was an evil, racist man with a power complex looking for a scapegoat.
Thus, because The Protocols are nothing more than a set of plagiarized accounts of a fictional event, the Jewish World Conspiracy has absolutely no epistemic warrant whatsoever.


SECTION IV

I have established that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are a conspiracy theory and that no one should believe them. Following WWII, many Nazis fled Germany and settled in South America; some Nazi scientists were even offered jobs in America under a new identity. To this day, Germany remains deeply ashamed of its Nazi past, and many world citizens detest Nazis and the theory of the “Jewish Menace.” Nonetheless, in recent years there has been a rise in anti-Semitic attacks, from the Nazi Rally in Charlottesville, the U.S.A. to synagogue bombings internationally to desecrating the headstones of Holocaust survivors in France. Why, then, do people continue to believe in this conspiracy theory? Why, given all of the evidence to the contrary and all of the moral arguments against it, do people still believe in the Jewish menace as set forth in The Protocols? I argue that conspiracy theorists who target marginalized group(s) as the conspirator(s) in their conspiracy theory do so for a multitude of reasons: (1)a tendency to believe in political extremes and (2) projection (If I was in their shoes, I would do XYZ, therefore, they must be doing XYZ .) There have been many papers published on the socio-psychological aspects of conspiracy theorists, and I summarize four of them below.

Douglas and Sutton In their article, “Does It Take One to Know One? Endorsement of Conspiracy Theories is Influenced by Personal Willingness to Conspire” Keren M. Douglas and Robbie M. Sutton conducted two studies. In the first study, a pool of 189 undergraduate students were asked seventeen questions and asked to rate on a scale from one (strongly disagree) to six (strongly agree); the students were then put on a scale that correlated to their beliefs in conspiracy theories. The results of this study showed a positive correlation between Machiavellianism and belief in conspiracy theories.
In their second study, Douglas and Sutton “directly manipulated participants’ perception of their own personal morality.” (p. 547) They called this “the moral prime condition.” The results showed that the moral prime did not mediate the participants’ willingness to conspire. The conclusion from these two studies was that those who have laxer moral personalities, and therefore are more likely to engage in conspiratorial activity, tend to believe more that conspiratorial activity is taking place around them.

Swami et al. In Viren Swami’s and et al.’s work, “Analytic Thinking Reduces Belief in Conspiracy Theories”, they conducted four studies of a representative sample of the British population. The studies concluded that conspiratorial thinking was heavily correlated with lower analytical thinking skills.

van Prooijen et al. In their work entitled “Political Extremism Predicts Belief in Conspiracy Theories”, Jan-Willem van Prooijen et al. In Study 1, 207 U.S. participants were asked varying questions about the financial crisis. The participants assessed their own views on a scale of one to seven, with one being equal to extremely left-wing and seven being equal to extremely right-wing. They also “ assessed the 20-item paranoia scale by Fenigstein and Vanable (1992), which measures how paranoid people are about others trying to harm them personally.” (p. 571)
Study 2 was broken into two parts: 2a and 2b. Both of these studies were independent and used a sample of the Dutch electorate in order to identify the correlation between political extremism and belief in conspiracy theories. The members of the electorate were asked to identify the probability of a range of conspiracy theories. Study 2a consisted of asking the members of the electorate to identify the probability of six different conspiracy theories. The conclusion of Study 2a found that “[b]elief in simple political solutions mediates the relation between political ideology and conspiracy beliefs among participants at both extremes, but not among participants in the political centre.” (p. 574) Study 2b used a different national sample and asked the same questions. The results of 2a were replicated.
Study 3 was conducted in order to rule out any other possible alternative explanations for the results of the other studies. A questionnaire was sent out via email to 268 participants in which the participants were asked to identify their own political leanings and the probability of nine different conspiracy theories. They were also asked to identify their attitudes towards sixteen different non-ideological objects, such as different food and items. The results of study 3 again reiterated the connection between political extremism and conspiratorial beliefs; there was no correlation between political extremism and non-ideological attitudes.
The overall findings of this study concluded that there was a strong, positive correlation between extremism on both sides of the political spectrum and belief in conspiracy theories.

Overall, the results of these findings supported my thesis well. It should be noted that I did not account for analytic thinking earlier because, as I was writing this paper, I had just begun reading Swami’s work. Therefore, my thesis now has three main tenets: Projection, low analytical thinking skills, and political extremism all lend themselves to beliefs in conspiracy theories.

SECTION V
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is the culmination of millennia of anti-Semitism that stretches back before the time of Christ. In the very beginning, the Jewish people were persecuted for their radical belief in monotheism, as they only believe in one God. During the birth of the Papacy, the Synagogue and the Church were both vying for pagan converts; in order to secure more converts, the Church began spreading rumors of the Jewish people consorting with the Devil and practicing magic.
During the Middle Ages of Europe, Judaism was associated with mysticism and paganism, as the Jewish people were naturally isolated due to their history of persecution; however, this isolation only furthered the peasants of the Middle Ages belief in the Jewish people as supernatural beings. This persecution of the Jews led them to sequester themselves further into their own communities.
During the European Enlightenment, Jewish people were often confined to very poor, segregated areas called “Ghettos.” After the fall of the French monarchy, many Jewish people moved into the cities of France in order to rent out property, as they were still forbidden by law to own land. This led to the further belief among the peasants that the Jews were money-mongering ne’er do-wells.
It was this culmination of millennia of anti-Semitism and bigotry that culminated in the publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1903. Although they were proven false in an exposé series published in August 1921 in the London Times, The Protocols were still treated as fact because they fed into a millennia-old hatred of the Jewish people. This, combined with the neo-Nazi’s political extremism, low-level analytical thinking skills, and projection has led to a resurgence of anti-Semitic thought.

Bibliography
4. Bernstein, Herman. The Truth About “The Protocols of Zion”: A Complete Exposure. Reprint of the 1935 edition. KTAV Publishing House, Inc. 1971.
5. Douglas, Karen M. and Robbie M. Sutton. “Does It Take One to Know One? Endorsement of Conspiracy Theories is Influenced by Personal Willingness to Conspire.” British Journal of Social Psychology. No. 50, pp. 544-552. 2011.
6. Swami, Viren, et al. “Analytic Thinking Reduces Belief in Conspiracy Theories.” Cognition. 133. pp. 572-585 (2014) Web. <www.elsevier.com/locate/COGNIT>
7. van Prooijen, Jan Willem, et al. “Political Extremism Predicts Belief in Conspiracy Theories.” Social Psychological and Personality Science. vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 570-578. 2015. Web. DOI: 10.1177/1948550614567356.
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