The Snake Eating It’s Own Tail: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as presented in Behold a Pale Horse pp. 318-319

Protocol 19

I learned awhile back that when you have an editor you don’t have to do everything. You can, just not. As the writer, my job is to put the things on the page. As the editor the job is to clean up that mess. I do not know if I’m allowed to show notes I get from my editor, so I won’t, but I’ll say this–most of the notes are about word choice and phrasing. It’s very rarely about the content. When it is about content, it’s almost always that I need to take stuff out, not because I’m wrong (though that does happen), but mostly because what I’ve said isn’t needed. When I teach my writing students, I tell them something similar, most of the time the writing is bad because it’s too long not too short. They’ve been trying to make a five page report five pages for all of high school and here I am trying to teach them that if I say 1000 words, 800 will do if you’ve made your point. 

The point of that ironic introduction is that Protocol 19 doesn’t need to be here. We are, of course, setting aside the fact that this book would be better off never having existed, but Protocol 19 is a strange one. It’s very short, it is only four paragraphs long and its recommendation is one that actually makes sense, which is why we are supposed to hate it. Remember the point of the entire book is to have the reader despise the advice given–like universal education and workers’ rights. Here the elder is going to recommend tolerating criticisms of the government. 

Another interesting thing about this protocol is that it’s laid out in a very understandable format. First the elder sets out the problem in the first paragraph which I will quote in full:

 “If we do not permit any independent dabbling in the political we shall on the other hand encourage every kind of report or petition with proposals for the government to examine into all kinds of projects for the amelioration of the condition of the people; this will reveal to us the defects or else the fantasies of our subjects, to which we shall respond either by accomplishing them or by a wise rebutment to prove the short-sidedness of one who judges wrongly.”

As the author sees it, the problem is not that people complain about the government; the problem is that the government tries to censor the complaints. When it permits no publication of them, they spring up anyway and often in extreme form, so you might as well let them complain. The advice here is surprisingly reasonable, because a point being made is that there can be legitimate problems that need fixing or they will respond with a wise rebuttal to the problem. 

The advice here is to suppress the complaints but to tolerate them; the simple reason for this comes in the form of a labored metaphor that the author wants to force, “Sedition-mongering is nothing more than the yapping of a lap-dog at an elephant.” 

The lap-dog can be made happy by showing the immensity of the thing that it yaps at. When its allowed to complain it will feel addressed and then wag its tail that something listened. Let’s say the individual’s complaint is that the streetlights constantly go out and they take to the public square to find out why. What good is it to suppress the complaint? This is a trite example but unless the complaint borders on direct and specific calls for sedition.

If this is the case then the cabal will relegate political crime to the same category as “thieving, murder, and every kind of abominable and filthy crime.” 

The goal, I believe is to eliminate the creation of martyrs. Though I do not think that this is reasonable. The cabal can call political sedition whatever it wants, it can classify it in whatever category it wants, but that isn’t going to matter to the public. They’ll still know that Johnny was arrested for sedition, and even if it’s the same level of crime as sexual depravity (which I think is what is being hinted at) that label isn’t going to stick. The Elder is not saying that they would lie about the charge either, just classify it differently. Part of me gets this. If you make it a special crime the accused is now a special criminal. You don’t want to turn them into William Wallaces or Ned Kellys; but common criminals as they dangle from the noose. I will repeat, I do not think it will be successful, but I do understand what they are driving at. 

The final paragraph is very odd. The elder claims that it is very important that the goyim do not figure out this secret, which is why political martyrs are advertised and spoken about in history books. The last paragraph is an addition that tries to explain why we here stories about all of these political martyrs. This is the answer to the “how come we can’t see pictures of the edge” question for the flat earthers. The explanation here is very weak–they want the goyim to act seditiously because then they can imprison them; but that doesn’t make sense if we consider the conspiracy in total. We wouldn’t want any of these political martyrs ever because there are no goyim governments that our outside of the Cabal’s control.

I was confused enough that I consulted the “Dialogues in Hell” work (end of Dialogue 17), and this last paragraph isn’t there. I was, not surprised. When we consider the conspiracy that this book alleges–the largest problem from a world building perspective is that the Protocols acts as though the plan is both unfolding and already complete. The last paragraph is an attempt to bridge the divide. If the plan were complete then we should not hear of the political martyrs, but we do, so what’s the solution? The solution is to claim that the plan is also that we do hear of them to trick us regular folk into becoming martyrs so that they can identify and imprison them in the courts that they already control. The author is trying to have it both ways–identify a coming conspiracy that only makes sense if the conspiracy is already here. 

In the original Machiavelli is describing a plan he would put into place, but our author is incapable of doing this while also trying to claim that the Jews are responsible for the current state of society. Ultimately this a reminder that no one is supposed to be reading this book carefully, we’re just supposed to skim it and get mad.