Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2009] DEFEAT, RAGE, AND JEW HATRED 115
power of The Protocols as a propaganda tool:
The great importance of the Protocols lies in its permitting antisemites to
reach beyond their traditional circles and find a large international audience,
a process that continues to this day. The forgery poisoned public
life wherever it appeared; it was “self-generating; a blueprint that
migrated from one conspiracy to another.” The book’s vagueness—
almost no names, dates, or issues are specified—has been one key to this
wide-ranging success. The purportedly Jewish authorship also helps to
make the book more convincing. Its embrace of contradiction—that to
advance, Jews use all tools available, including capitalism and communism,
philo-Semitism and antisemitism, democracy and tyranny—made it
possible for the Protocols to reach out to all: rich and poor, Right and
Left, Christian and Muslim, American and Japanese. 69
The fundamental objective of The Protocols was to depict the Jews—not
just Zionists, but all Jews—as the clandestine enemy of all humanity and
therefore the legitimate target of all attempts to eliminate them. This in
itself was an incitement to genocide. For example, Joseph Goebbels
reported a conversation about The Protocols with Hitler on May 13, 1943,
in which Hitler expressed the conviction that “the Protocols were absolutely
genuine” and drew the conclusion that “Es bleibt also den Modernen Völkern
nichts anderes übriges, als die Juden auszurotten” (“There is therefore
no other recourse left for modern nations except to exterminate the Jew”). 70
In the twenty-first century, The Protocols have again been put in the
service of a radical assault on Jews, Judaism, and the State of Israel
throughout the Arab and Muslim world, this time on satellite TV and the
internet. The subtext remains the same: Jews, Judaism, and Israel must be
destroyed. On November 6, 2002, at the beginning of the holy month of
Ramadan, Egyptian State Television Channel 2, Dream TV (a privately
owned Egyptian satellite network), Abu Dhabi TV, Hizbullah’s al-Manar
TV, Yemen TV, and others, all began screening “Horseman Without a
Horse,” a 41-episode “historical” series covering the Middle East from
1850 to 1948. The entire series emphasizes The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion as “proof” of an alleged Jewish plot to dominate and enslave the world
at length by Peter Haas, The Nazi Ethic (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988). Fortress
Press is the publishing house of the American Lutheran Church.
69. Daniel Pipes, Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It
Comes From (New York: The Free Press - Simon & Schuster), 85.
70. Louis P. Lochner, ed. and trans., The Goebbels Diaries 1942-1943 (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1948), 377. The date of the entry is May 13, 1943.
German text in Elke Fröhlich, volume 2 of Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels
(München: K. G. Saur, 1993), pt. 8, 287 (accessed May 13, 1943).