PROTOCOLS OF THE MEETINGS
OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION
1. ....Putting aside fine phrases we shall speak of the
significance of each thought: by comparisons and deductions we shall throw
light upon surrounding facts.
2. What I am about to set forth, then, is our system from
the two points of view, that of ourselves and that of the GOYIM [i.e.,
non-Jews].
3. It must be noted that men with bad instincts are more
in number than the good, and therefore the best results in governing them
are attained by violence and terrorisation, and not by academic discussions.
Every man aims at power, everyone would like to become a dictator if only he
could, and rare indeed are the men who would not be willing to sacrifice the
welfare of all for the sake of securing their own welfare.
4. What has restrained the beasts of prey who are called
men? What has served for their guidance hitherto?
5. In the beginnings of the structure of society, they
were subjected to brutal and blind force; afterwards - to Law, which is the
same force, only disguised. I draw the conclusion that by the law of nature,
right lies in force.
6. Political freedom is an idea but not a fact. This idea
one must know how to apply whenever it appears necessary with this bait of
an idea to attract the masses of the people to one's party for the purpose
of crushing another who is in authority. This task is rendered easier if the
opponent has himself been infected with the idea of freedom, SO-CALLED
LIBERALISM, and, for the sake of an idea, is willing to yield some of his
power. It is precisely here that the triumph of our theory appears; the
slackened reins of government are immediately, by the law of life, caught up
and gathered together by a new hand, because the blind might of the nation
cannot for one single day exist without guidance, and the new authority
merely fits into the place of the old already weakened by liberalism.
GOLD
7. In our day the power which has replaced that of the
rulers who were liberal is the power of Gold. Time was when Faith ruled. The
idea of freedom is impossible of realization because no one knows how to use
it with moderation. It is enough to hand over a people to self-government
for a certain length of time for that people to be turned into a
disorganized mob. From that moment on we get internecine strife which soon
develops into battles between classes, in the midst of which States burn
down and their importance is reduced to that of a heap of ashes.
8. Whether a State exhausts itself in its own convulsions,
whether its internal discord brings it under the power of external foes - in
any case it can be accounted irretrievably lost: IT IS IN OUR POWER. The
despotism of Capital, which is entirely in our hands, reaches out to it a
straw that the State, willy-nilly, must take hold of: if not - it goes to
the bottom.
9. Should anyone of a liberal mind say that such
reflections as the above are immoral, I would put the following questions:
If every State has two foes and if in regard to the external foe it is
allowed and not considered immoral to use every manner and art of conflict,
as for example to keep the enemy in ignorance of plans of attack and defense,
to attack him by night or in superior numbers, then in what way can the same
means in regard to a worse foe, the destroyer of the structure of society
and the commonweal, be called immoral and not permissible?
10. Is it possible for any sound logical mind to hope with
any success to guide crowds by the aid of reasonable counsels and arguments,
when any objection or contradiction, senseless though it may be, can be made
and when such objection may find more favor with the people, whose powers of
reasoning are superficial? Men in masses and the men of the masses, being
guided solely by petty passions, paltry beliefs, traditions and sentimental
theorems, fall a prey to party dissension, which hinders any kind of
agreement even on the basis of a perfectly reasonable argument. Every
resolution of a crowd depends upon a chance or packed majority, which, in
its ignorance of political secrets, puts forth some ridiculous resolution
that lays in the administration a seed of anarchy.
11. The political has nothing in common with the moral.
The ruler who is governed by the moral is not a skilled politician, and is
therefore unstable on his throne. He who wishes to rule must have recourse
both to cunning and to make-believe. Great national qualities, like
frankness and honesty, are vices in politics, for they bring down rulers
from their thrones more effectively and more certainly than the most
powerful enemy. Such qualities must be the attributes of the kingdoms of the
GOYIM, but we must in no wise be guided by them.
RIGHT IS MIGHT
12. Our right lies in force. The word "right" is an
abstract thought and proved by nothing. The word means no more than: Give
me what I want in order that thereby I may have a proof that I am stronger
than you.
13. Where does right begin? Where does it end?
14. In any State in which there is a bad organization of
authority, an impersonality of laws and of the rulers who have lost their
personality amid the flood of rights ever multiplying out of liberalism, I
find a new right - to attack by the right of the strong, and to scatter to
the winds all existing forces of order and regulation, to reconstruct all
institutions and to become the sovereign lord of those who have left to us
the rights of their power by laying them down voluntarily in their
liberalism.
15. Our power in the present tottering condition of all
forms of power will be more invincible than any other, because it will
remain invisible until the moment when it has gained such strength that no
cunning can any longer undermine it.
16. Out of the temporary evil we are now compelled to
commit will emerge the good of an unshakable rule, which will restore the
regular course of the machinery of the national life, brought to naught by
liberalism. The result justifies the means. Let us, however, in our plans,
direct our attention not so much to what is good and moral as to what is
necessary and useful.
17. Before us is a plan in which is laid down
strategically the line from which we cannot deviate without running the risk
of seeing the labor of many centuries brought to naught.
18. In order to elaborate satisfactory forms of action it
is necessary to have regard to the rascality, the slackness, the instability
of the mob, its lack of capacity to understand and respect the conditions of
its own life, or its own welfare. It must be understood that the might of a
mob is blind, senseless and un-reasoning force ever at the mercy of a
suggestion from any side. The blind cannot lead the blind without bringing
them into the abyss; consequently, members of the mob, upstarts from the
people even though they should be as a genius for wisdom, yet having no
understanding of the political, cannot come forward as leaders of the mob
without bringing the whole nation to ruin.
19. Only one trained from childhood for independent rule
can have understanding of the words that can be made up of the political
alphabet.
20. A people left to itself, i.e., to upstarts from its
midst, brings itself to ruin by party dissensions excited by the pursuit of
power and honors and the disorders arising therefrom. Is it possible for the
masses of the people calmly and without petty jealousies to form judgment,
to deal with the affairs of the country, which cannot be mixed up with
personal interest? Can they defend themselves from an external foe? It is
unthinkable; for a plan broken up into as many parts as there are heads in
the mob, loses all homogeneity, and thereby becomes unintelligible and
impossible of execution.
WE ARE DESPOTS
21. It is only with a despotic ruler that plans can be
elaborated extensively and clearly in such a way as to distribute the whole
properly among the several parts of the machinery of the State: from this
the conclusion is inevitable that a satisfactory form of government for any
country is one that concentrates in the hands of one responsible person.
Without an absolute despotism there can be no existence for civilization
which is carried on not by the masses but by their guide, whosoever that
person may be. The mob is savage, and displays its savagery at every
opportunity. The moment the mob seizes freedom in its hands it quickly turns
to anarchy, which in itself is the highest degree of savagery.
22. Behold the alcoholic animals, bemused with drink, the
right to an immoderate use of which comes along with freedom. It is not for
us and ours to walk that road. The peoples of the GOYIM are bemused with
alcoholic liquors; their youth has grown stupid on classicism and from early
immorality, into which it has been inducted by our special agents - by
tutors, lackeys, governesses in the houses of the wealthy, by clerks and
others, by our women in the places of dissipation frequented by the GOYIM.
In the number of these last I count also the so-called "society ladies,"
voluntary followers of the others in corruption and luxury.
23. Our countersign is - Force and Make-believe. Only
force conquers in political affairs, especially if it be concealed in the
talents essential to statesmen. Violence must be the principle, and cunning
and make-believe the rule for governments which do not want to lay down
their crowns at the feet of agents of some new power. This evil is the one
and only means to attain the end, the good. Therefore we must not stop at
bribery, deceit and treachery when they should serve towards the attainment
of our end. In politics one must know how to seize the property of others
without hesitation if by it we secure submission and sovereignty.
24. Our State, marching along the path of peaceful
conquest, has the right to replace the horrors of war by less noticeable and
more satisfactory sentences of death, necessary to maintain the terror which
tends to produce blind submission. Just but merciless severity is the
greatest factor of strength in the State: not only for the sake of gain but
also in the name of duty, for the sake of victory, we must keep to the
programme of violence and make-believe. The doctrine of squaring accounts is
precisely as strong as the means of which it makes use. Therefore it is not
so much by the means themselves as by the doctrine of severity that we shall
triumph and bring all governments into subjection to our super-government.
It is enough for them to know that we are too merciless for all disobedience
to cease.
WE SHALL END LIBERTY
25. Far back in ancient times we were the first to cry
among the masses of the people the words "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,"
words many times repeated since these days by stupid poll-parrots who, from
all sides around, flew down upon these baits and with them carried away the
well-being of the world, true freedom of the individual, formerly so well
guarded against the pressure of the mob. The would-be wise men of the GOYIM,
the intellectuals, could not make anything out of the uttered words in their
abstractedness; did not see that in nature there is no equality, cannot be
freedom: that Nature herself has established inequality of minds, of
characters, and capacities, just as immutably as she has established
subordination to her laws: never stopped to think that the mob is a blind
thing, that upstarts elected from among it to bear rule are, in regard to
the political, the same blind men as the mob itself, that the adept, though
he be a fool, can yet rule, whereas the non-adept, even if he were a genius,
understands nothing in the political - to all those things the GOYIM paid no
regard; yet all the time it was based upon these things that dynastic rule
rested: the father passed on to the son a knowledge of the course of
political affairs in such wise that none should know it but members of the
dynasty and none could betray it to the governed. As time went on, the
meaning of the dynastic transference of the true position of affairs in the
political was lost, and this aided the success of our cause.
26. In all corners of the earth the words "Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity," brought to our ranks, thanks to our blind agents,
whole legions who bore our banners with enthusiasm. And all the time these
words were canker-worms at work boring into the well-being of the GOYIM,
putting an end everywhere to peace, quiet, solidarity and destroying all the
foundations of the GOY States. As you will see later, this helped us to our
triumph: it gave us the possibility, among other things, of getting into our
hands the master card - the destruction of the privileges, or in other words
of the very existence of the aristocracy of the GOYIM, that class which was
the only defense peoples and countries had against us. On the ruins of the
natural and genealogical aristocracy of the GOYIM we have set up the
aristocracy of our educated class headed by the aristocracy of money. The
qualifications for this aristocracy we have established in wealth, which is
dependent upon us, and in knowledge, for which our learned elders provide
the motive force.
27. 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.
28. 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.
29. It is this possibility of replacing the
representatives of the people which has placed at our disposal, and, as it
were, given us the power of appointment.
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