The History of a Lie: "the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion"

Chapter Two

THE STORY FROM WHICH THE PROTOCOLS WERE FABRICATED

Essence of "Protocols" Was German Fiction of "Sir John Retcliffe"--Who Was "Retcliffe"?--His Infamous Record--His Bloodcurdling Story--The Meeting in the Cemetery--An Avowed Myth--Meeting Every Hundred Years Attended by "Representatives of the Twelve Tribes of Israel"--The "Son of the Accursed" Also Attends and Provides Comic Interludes 16

Chapter Three

FICTION FORGED INTO "FACT"

The Lie in its Second Stage--The Tale Becomes "Fact"--The "Rabbi's" Speech--Its Authenticity Vouched for by "Retcliffe"--An Illuminating Footnote--A Dedication to The Russian "Black Hundreds"--The Imaginary "Speech" Bears Witness to Authenticity of "Protocols," Themselves Based on "Speech"--Three Stages of the Lie 43

Chapter Four

THE RUSSIAN SPONSORS OF THE FORGERY

Nilus on the Protocols--Only "the God-Anointed Tsar of Russia" Can Save the World--Passages from Nilus Omitted by Translators--On Tolstoy--On the Emancipation of Women--On the "Sanhedrin" and "its Faithful Ally, England" 55

Chapter Five

FORGERS DISAGREE

The Butmi Protocols--"Representatives of Zion" Not to be Confounded with "Zionists"--Butmi Contradicts Nilus--Plan for World Conquest Conceived 929 B. C. E.--The "Symbolic Snake"--Universal Suffrage a Jewish Device--Every Jew Familiar with Plot 59

Chapter Six

THE BLACK HUNDREDS, THEIR DUPES AND CRIMES

Russia in 1905--The Unsuccessful Revolution--The Reaction and the Reactionaries--Lutostansky and His Work--The "Symbolic Snake" According to Lutostansky--Who Plagiarized?--Lutostansky on the English People--Are the English the "Lost Tribes"?--How the Protocols Were "Doctored" by Butmi--Conclusion 63

Chapter One

THE MYSTERIOUS PROTOCOLS

The Lie of a Jewish World Conspiracy--Is There a Jewish Conspiracy?--Anonymous Accusations--The Mysterious "Protocols" of Sergei Nilus--How did "Nilus" Secure Them?--Contradictory Explanations--Who is "Nilus"?--How his Sponsors Disagree--What Russian Publicists Say.

Is there a Jewish conspiracy against the world or is there a conspiracy against the Jews? What are the so-called "Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion?" Who is "the Russian mystic," Sergius Nilus, the sponsor of the Protocols? What forces are behind the anti-Jewish propaganda that is international in scope and that seeks at this time to spread all over the world the poison of prejudice and hatred against the Jews, reviving long-exploded mediaeval legends?

Many Americans have asked these questions ever since the publication of "The Cause of the World Unrest," "The Protocols and World Revolution," "The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion," and the anti-Jewish articles in Henry Ford's Dearborn Independent.

In 1919 a translation of extracts from what purports to be a book by one Sergius Nilus was published in Germany. During 1920 a translation was published in England under the name of "The Jewish Peril," and under various titles, in different versions, it was reproduced in the United States, France, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and even Japan. The Japanese edition is in the Russian language. In all these books "the Russian mystic," Sergius Nilus, is given as the sponsor of a number of secret "documents" by which it is intended to show that the Jews are responsible for all the ills that have already befallen the world and that are still to come.

The method is simple. Was there a revolution in Russia? Blame the Jews. Was there a revolution in Germany? Blame the Jews. Who made the French Revolution? The Jews. Who caused the World War? The Jews. Who profited by the war? The Jews. Is there anywhere an industrial crisis? The Jews are, of course, the cause of it. Has the World War brought forth Bolshevism? The Jews are naturally the fathers of it. First the Jews engineered the war, and then they pulled the strings behind the scenes of the Peace Conference. They secured special privileges at the Peace Table, because, according to the Protocols, they control the gold of the world, the press of the world, the rulers of the world. And if, as a result of the World War, millions of Jews have suffered untold agonies, persecution, starvation, and pogroms, it is no doubt only part of their deep-laid plot to gain control of the world for Zion through poverty and suffering!

Are governments just to the Jews, giving them equal rights? Then it is obvious that Jews are either at the head of such governments or are hidden behind the present rulers. If the Jews cannot exert sufficient influence over the rulers themselves, there are Jewesses in high places, through whom the cause of Zion is served--and all this is done by the Jews with but one aim in view--to dominate the world, to become its autocratic masters, to break down the moral power of Christendom and set up Israel as "the despot" over the peoples of the earth. According to the Protocols, all this is engineered with the aid and through the instrumentality of the Freemasons.

The propagandists everywhere, in Germany, England, France, the Scandinavian countries, Japan and the United States, basing all their arguments on the "Protocols" vouched for by "the Russian mystic" Sergius Nilus, see in the present chaotic conditions the absolute fulfillment of the prophecies outlined by the so-called "Wise Men of Zion" years ago. The propagandists are violent and vicious, foaming at their mouths, appealing to the basest passions, insinuating, accusing, pointing their fingers at "the source of all evil"--at the Jews who constitute but a fraction of one per cent of the world's population, and who are in Europe to-day, after the close of the World War, more wretched and miserable than ever before,--persecuted, hounded and starved.

What are these mysterious Protocols? How did they come to "the Russian mystic" who revealed them in 1905, and which have now been exhumed from obscurity for the purpose of enlightening the world, and which point to the Jews as the cause of all unrest, chaos and confusion?

Nilus, "the Russian mystic," is credited with several versions of how he had secured the Protocols, and his stories flatly contradict one another. In 1905 he said that the Protocols were given to him by a prominent Russian conservative whose name he did not mention, and who in turn had received them from an unnamed woman who had stolen them from "one of the most influential leaders of Freemasonry at the close of a secret meeting of the initiated in France." Then, several years later, Nilus wrote that his friend himself had stolen the Protocols from "the headquarters of the Society of Zion in France." Several years afterwards, in a new edition of his book, Nilus said that the "Protocols" came from Switzerland and not from France. This time he named his Russian conservative friend, Sukhotin, who had died in the meantime. He added that the Protocols were not Jewish-Masonic but Zionist documents secretly read at the Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897.

Then followed a new edition of the Nilus book bearing the date of 1917. A translation of this edition has recently appeared in this country, containing a brand-new explanation as to how the Protocols were rescued and given to the world. This explanation is taken from the German version published in Charlottenburg. The introduction to that edition says that the Protocols, having been read from day to day at the Basle Congress, were sent as read to Frankfort on the Main. The disclosure of them came through the infidelity of the messenger.

The 1917 edition is published with a prologue and an epilogue, like a drama, which indeed it is, with all the ingredients of melodrama--a villain, a mysterious woman, a Grand Duke, a conspiracy to destroy the world, and a saint--Nilus, who convicts himself in his own writings of falsification in the giving of these various accounts of how the Protocols came into his possession.

Nothing is known of Sergius Nilus. Russian standard reference books and encyclopedias contain no mention of his name.

The anonymous American editor of the Nilus book gives the following information about Nilus:

"Serge Nilus, in the 1905 edition of whose book was first published the Zionist Protocols, was, as he states, born in the year 1862, of Russian parents holding liberal opinions. His family was fairly well known in Moscow, for its members were educated people who were firm in their allegiance to the Tsar and the Greek Church. On one side he is said to have been connected by marriage with the nobility of the Baltic provinces. Nilus himself was graduated from the University of Moscow and early entered the civil service, obtaining a small appointment in the law courts. Later, he received a post under the Procurator of a provincial court in the Caucasus. Finally, tiring of the law, he went to the Government of Orel, where he was a landowner and a noble. His spiritual life had been tumultuous and full of trouble, and finally he entered the Troitsky-Sergevsky Monastery near Moscow. 'In answer to his appeal for pardon, Saint Sergei, stern and angry, appeared to him twice in a vision. He left the Monastery a converted man.'

"From 1905 until the present, little is known of his activities. Articles are said to have appeared from time to time in the Russian press from his pen. A returning traveller from Siberia in August, 1919, was positive in his statement that Nilus was in Irkutsk in June of that year. Whether his final fate was that of Admiral Kolchak is not known."

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