Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] ALIVE AND WELL! 743premodern philosophy” (25), but even more important, for that self-perceivedvictim of modernity, the Protocols provided him with “a clearlydefined enemy—the Jews—and permission to wipe that enemy out” (28).Charles Strozier, on the other hand, ramping up the conversation, sees thosewho accept the validity of the Protocols to be paranoiacs for whom thepotential for (increasing) violence against Jews (and others in other contexts)is always just around the corner. Johannes Heil interprets the Protocolsas the continuing legacy of Middle Ages conspiratorial thinking framedby a Christian context, and posits four elements of similarity (60-63), whileat the same time stressing differences as well (64-66), foremost amongthem the lessening control of thinking by organized Christianity. MichaelHagemeister, perhaps for the first time in English, provides readers withsolid information regarding the primary Russian apocalyptic expositor ofthe Protocols, Sergei Nilus. David Redles reminds us that “the German versionof the Protocols would reach thirty-nine editions by 1939, and continuesto be a source of anti-Semitic propaganda to this day” (114).Intriguingly and perversely, the Protocols would wend their way to Japan,as David Goodman notes—the negative result of anti-Christian and antiforeignprejudices, and “positively” in tribute to the supposed power andeconomic acumen of the Jews of the West. That the Protocols have beenequally refracted for their own purposes in texts and reflected in editorialcartoons by the Palestinian Authority, as Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crookpainfully reveal, comes as no surprise to any reader given the current climate.Michael Barkun even presents an “alien outer space” component,replete with antisemitic overtones, which would be otherwise laughable lestone forget that included among the paranoiacs and apocalyptics are thosewho take such manifestations seriously and are not outside the circle ofviolence. Other fine contributions include those of Jeffrey Woolf, JeffreyMehlman, Deborah Lipstadt, and Chip Berlet.Somewhat strangely, perhaps, is Stephen Bronner’s contribution,which moves from Europe to the Middle East and rightly so, but veers a bitoff course regarding a negative discussion and critique of Israel’s governmentaland military policies regarding the Palestinians, and which occasionsa concluding response, again from Landes. (Katz, however, isstrangely silent on this whole matter, and he himself, given his own erudition,has no additional contribution other than the co-written Introduction.)Finally, the threads that tie these fine essays together are those of paranoiaand apocalyptic-millennial thinking taken to extremes. In so doing, theyprovide other researchers with much food for thought and potential directionsfor future and substantive work.