Internal Inconsistency: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as Presented in Behold a Pale Horse pp. 326-328

Protocol 21

We’re still on economics, even though I was sure we’d be done with it now. This protocol deals strictly with internal loans because, according to the elder, “they have fed us with the national moneys of the goyim, but for our state there will be no foreigners, that is, nothing external.”

I understand what the elder is claiming here: that because “they” control the world, there is no outside, there is nothing to be really considered “foreign.” A country loaning to them is really just them shifting money around. However, this doesn’t gel with what they said last week when there were clear differences between the states. The seemingly permanent problem with this book’s consistency is that it wants to make the reader think that the plan is already complete but also that it can be stopped. Listen to Alex Jones now (well don’t actually do that), he’s both lost and about to win. The nonsense is the point of all of this because as long as no one is actually reading this stuff–it can be interpreted to say anything. 

The actual protocol starts on the third paragraph, “States announce that such a loan is to be concluded and open subscriptions for their own bills of exchange, that is, for their intrerest bearing paper.”

If you don’t live in this world this is the oddest way of describing a bond. 

I do want to point out that there is no context for this sentence to begin the way that it does. “Such a loan” is a strange way to begin. Setting that aside the plagiarist then describes how such things work. The state issues a bond, people begin to buy it. The people in the beginning pay less and as demand increases the price for them increases, which then covers the cost of the loan. Ok, there’s some nuance missing in this description of the bond market, but that’s the eagle-eye view of how it works. 

There’s an interesting bit here, “and there’s more money than they can do with (why then take it?).”

Who is adding the parenthesis? The plagiarist I guess, but there’s no reason to do this. Remember, this is supposed to be the instruction manual for how the conspiracy is unfolding (or has unfolded), but now the plagiarist is adding commentary. Is it Cooper? He’s not done anything so far but place this work in his larger book. The answer to the question is that they are taking in money, there is no reason to not take it. The point of the bond issue was to generate funds. 

I’ve said throughout the Protocols and Behold a Pale Horse, that this book isn’t meant to be read by anyone. It’s just supposed to rile up the blood. I never thought that my recommendation would apply o the plagiarist himself, “But when the comedy is played out there emerges the fact that a debit and an exceedingly burdensome debit has been created. For the payment of interest it becomes necessary to have recourse to new loans, which do not swallow up but only add to the capital debt.“

Just a sentence or two ago, the elder told us that they will have more money than they know what to do with; now they will have the problem of making payments back on interest? Pay attention to your own conspiracy theory, the money doesn’t matter, because the point isn’t to make money or finance a state. This is a criticism of the bond market that the elder just issued. The elder is making the criticism. 

What’s happening here is that Sergei Nilus, the plagiarist, is stealing directly from Joly’s work. What he knows is that the characters of Machiavelli and Rousseau are discussing something bad, but he doesn’t know what it is. Nilus is getting glassy eyed reading this rather long section from Joly, he knows its important, but he lacks the intelligence to do anything with it other than blame the Jews for it. If you control the globe, you don’t need to worry about whether the interest on the loan covers the debt before you issue a new loan. 

Coincidentally, although not a coincidence at all; is that this is precisely how anti-Federal Reserve Bank conspiracy theories think that money works. They’ll point to a scheme like this and claim that we need to return to the gold standard, because they think that bond issuance didn’t exist back then; which is factually incorrect, but that never stopped a conspiracy theory. 

The elder then claims that when they take over they will do away with all of this because, “we shall not allow the prestige of our power to be shaken by fluctuations of prices set upon our values, which we shall announce by law at the price which represents their full worth without any possibility of lowering or raising.” 

No. I’ve been reading your book, and you already control all of this. You claim that the loan price is being raised by artificial means, which is why their was too much money, then not enough, now the price must be fixed? Just do that in the first place since you already control the money supply. 

The elder continues on that the prices of material and industrial goods will be fixed in accordance with the view of the government’s need. Ok, fine, but that won’t work either. Money, according to Smith, is set at the price needed to feed the population, everything else stems from that. The price of goods are going to be set at the exchange rate for labor and demand. If the elder thinks he can set the price of steel at some arbitrary rate independent of both labor and demand, his secret cabal will collapse pretty quick. The Soviets tried early on to abolish money, but they quickly learned that one function of currency is that it allows the state to measure the goods which are in demand and which are not. You can set the price of turnips at 1 ruble, but if no one ever buys them they are worthless. The flow of currency allows an entity to measure that and respond accordingly. 

This protocol concludes with the Elder claiming that, “In this way all industrial undertakings will come into dependence upon us. You may imagine for yourselves what immense power we shall thereby secure for ourselves…”

Again the “…” is the author’s, which is nonsensical.

The elder is referring to a national board which will fix the prices of industrial goods. He thinks that by doing this there can be no undertakings without their permission. Which, yes, of course, we’ve already established their control over society, but this national credit institution is actually going to weaken it. This protocol has gone in so many circles that I can no longer determine what I’m supposed to hate: loans? Sure, but then also the abolition of loans? The bond market but then the new credit institution? I would love some internal consistency in not just this conspiracy theory but this protocol. The gremlin though is that Nilus doesn’t understand the real system or the fictional system so he’s defaulting to blaming both on the Jews. 

The Gold Standard: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as presented in Behold a Pale Horse pp. 322-326

Protocol 20: Part II

We are still in Protocol 20 and we are still discussing financial stuff. Last week I mentioned that this Protocol was going to shift subjects. We’re still talking money but we aren’t talking “money.” The new demon that our plagiarist concentrates on is the gold standard. 

Remember how to read this: everything the cabal recommends is what we are supposed to hate. 

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the plagiarist is in way over his head here. There is nothing in Serge Nilus’s background that would indicate he has any kind of expertise or even competence in economics. What we do know is that Nilus has some financial troubles. When people who are conspiracy theorists run into financial problems, they always run to one thing–gold. 

They love their gold because gold would have gotten them out of their troubles, but also because they understand gold. Gold is a thing you can touch. It’s pretty, it’s shiny, and if I tell you that gold is worth 2,2970/ounce (as of the moment I wrote that); you can have an idea that an ounce is this much, and that means this much money. It’s a solid, unlike say, a bank note which is worth whatever “they” say it is. The difference between 1 dollar bill and 100 dollar bill is merely what is printed on the exact same paper. Silver is worth less than gold but those two elements are entirely different things. Don’t get them started on currency exchanges or bond markets; those are all just fictions made up to make other people rich (oddly they embrace crypto which isn’t even paper). 

Remember also, that the Russian Empire is pretty broke. 

“You are aware tha the gold standard has been the ruin of the States which adopted it, for it has not been able to satisfy the demands for money, the more so that we have removed gold from circulation as far as possible.” 

The reason that conspiracy theorists love the gold standard is that they just aren’t intellectually curious enough to understand how things like this work. A large pile of gold means a state is wealthy, no gold means it is poor. This is simple and this is an economic system called “Mercantilism.” Mercantilism was the dominant economic model during the age of colonization; and it would remain so until Adam Smith detonated his magnum opus, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.” Most of us know that book by the last three words in the title. 

Now that you’ve re-read that title, understand that what Smith did was place the wealth of a nation into the hands of its workforce rather than its material stores. The United Kingdom in the 18th century had both, and smartly, it increased them at the same time. The ethics of how it did this are pretty terrible, but every time it conquered a new land for its material wealth, it also assumed a new workforce. This continued the illusion that material goods were the necessary feature of the power of a state. Smith recognized that the issue was that material goods were necessary to feed the workforce. Silver was important, but not intrinsically -the price of silver was set at how much of the staple crop (in this case corn) the market would exchange for a certain amount. Smith’s work absolutely obliterated the concept of mercantilism. Mercantilism now, only exists as an economic model favored by idiots who think that resource hoarding is how you “win” at economics–hence their adoption of crypto. 

The gold standard works when you are winning at gold. The advantage of the gold standard is that it is a bulwark against hyper-inflation, but the downsides are numerous. For one, moving wealth is very difficult because you have to move the literal gold. Those Dwarves in the Lonely Mountain may have a literal pile of gold but what can they do with it? 

What the Elder is claiming to have done is stolen the gold out of the system which is why Russia has fallen so far. It’s not terrible decisions like going to war with the Japanese and losing, it’s because the Jews stole the gold. This isn’t the origin of the anti-Semitic trope but it is pushing it. 

The rest of this protocol is a justification for the Russian economic woes and it strikes me as very familiar, “Every kind of loan proves infirmity in the State and a want of understanding of the rights of the State. Loans hang like a sword of Damocles over the heads of ruler, who, instead of taking from their subjects by a temporary tax, come begging with outstretched palm of [sic] our bankers.”

What a state should do, according to the Elder, is just toss a quick, simple tax on the population to fix the deficit but they go the banks. Here, is where Nilus’s knowledge fails. He thinks that the point Machiavelli is making in the original is the good point. What Machiavelli is actually doing is lampooning the method by which Napolean III funded his states. He kept borrowing but maintained a simple tax rate. Tax increases make the people cry out, he says, but call it something else and maybe you can float it around. 

Instead, the states take loans. Loans which only “they” understand and cause the state to go bankrupt. These are merely external loans made by foreign governments…

And I’m bored. Sorry, but it’s hard to follow this because the plagiarist has cut and pasted from the original. In the original Machiavelli and Montesquieu spend pages on percentages and getting into much greater economic details. The elder makes a point about the fictional nature of foreign loans, and why a state doesn’t actually need to pay them-and again, it’s just an idiot’s version of how finance works. We see this in modern times when the US Debt Ceiling conversation happens. The people against raising the ceiling are following this line of reasoning. We don’t need to pay them back because it’s not like they can repossess a tank. The reasoning that Nilus is trying to get us to adopt, by having the Elder demonize it, is that a state isn’t a person and the banks have no authority over it. Which, if this is how such things worked would be a good point. However, it’s not, and while I do not understand exactly how international loans, bonds, and markets work; I do know that they don’t work like my car loan. 

Financial Obligations: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as Presented in Behold a Pale Horse pp. 319-322

Protocol 20

After the shortest of Protocols I think we come to the longest. This Protocol is six pages long and it is predictably unfocused. This week we’ll focus on the tax plan set forth by the Elder. 

I think my favorite thing about when conspiracy theorists get into financial conspiracies is that they have no idea what they are talking about. We saw this when I covered None Dare Call it Conspiracy; as soon as Allen attempted to dive into financial ties it he was lost. Economics is never as simple as balancing a checkbook, but it is an easy way to enrage people who pretend to be concerned about deficit spending and that sometimes “the poors” get stuff for free. 

The conspirators here are going to redesign an entire economic system from the ground up. They are going to do this in order to hide the fact, that in the real world, the Russian Tsar is out of money but that we shouldn’t worry about that because the Jews are behind it. 

The elder begins oddly, well oddly for this book, “…which I put off to the end of my report as being the most difficult, the crowning and decisive point of our plans.”

Since when has this been a report? The entire thing has been framed as the directions and instruction of the Elder to the Cabal. The myth is that these are the minutes of a meeting taking place in a cemetery in Prague; it’s never been a report. The only thing that almost makes the leap is that it’s a copy of the minutes made by an agent of the Okhrana; but then we wouldn’t be using the “I” if that were the case.

The other odd thing is that this isn’t the end either.  There’s still five Protocols left in this book. I wondered if this was one of those cases where the plagiarst copied directly from the Joly work without checking it–but no. Financial plans begin on page 113 and there’s still 40 pages left there. 

Let’s move past that…the Elder addresses a topic that I am always curious about–how is the conspiracy funded? The original Men In Black (1997), had a fun scene where Agent Kay explained that they held patents on things like velcro and CDs for funding. But nowhere else do we actually see this. How is the Flat Earth conspiracy funded? Who paid for the 9/11 inside job? What was the line item for faking the Moon Landing? 

Then again, why does it need to be funded in the first place? If the cabal controls everything there isn’t a need they have to pay for things, they just take it. You could hide such purchases in the nebulous world of “credit” and just make it vanish. Of course, given that the larger scope of this anti-Semitic conspiracy theory is that the Jews control the gold and diamonds–the funding of the conspiracy isn’t that much of a problem. 

The point of this protocol isn’t to explain how “they” are funding the operation but why the Russian government has no money. Remember how we read this: everything the Elder is going to recommend we are supposed to hate. This is going to be important to remember because the Elder’s recommendations will actually make sense to a lot of us. 

The first rule is that “…the king will enjoy the legal fiction that everything in his State belongs to him (which may easily be translated into fact), will be enabled to resort to the lawful confiscation of all sums of every kind for the regulation of the their circulation in the State.” 

First, the phrase “legal fiction” does not mean imaginary. Think of a corporation like Microsoft. Microsoft is real in the sense that it produces products, has employees, and can be located. The “corporation” though is a legal arrangement, it’s fictional in that a person can’t touch it. When the elder says that the king enjoys this legal fiction, it’s within the power of the king, When it gets translated into fact, that power has been enabled. The Elder is merely describing a standard autocrat here–they own everything in the state, there is no private property. 

What this is actually about is an appeal against the Socialism that was sweeping Europe at the time. We know this because of the last part of the sentence, “regulation of their circulation in the state.” This is very similar to the modern “you will own nothing and be happy;” mantra that conspiracy theorists repeat but take out of context and still fail to understand. Legally, the Tsar owned your house, but he had little need for peasant hovels and goats. The moral panic surrounding the Socialist movement was that your neighbor, or gasp, a poor person would also need your goat. 

The elder then makes the claim that the rich will be taxed at a higher rate than the poor. In this the elder is repeating something not from Karl Marx, but from Adam Smith who wrote that it is “not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue but something more than in that proportion.”

It’s very amusing to read the Adam Smith Institute try and weasel out of that direct quote from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. 

The reasoning is, again, straight from Smith. Because the rich enjoy more privileges from the state in the form of protection and maintenance they should pay more. Park illegally in one of the wealthier neighborhoods of my city and you’ll find a traffic ticket very quickly, unlike parking illegally in my neighborhood (though not my street–I live on an ambulance route and that’s a special case). The Elder first concentrates on property for this reason. Then he quickly moves over to taxing capital as well. 

We should be quite aware that what’s happening is a response to the Socialism of the late 19th century, the word “capital” gets brought up quite frequently as a reference for people that know “Das Kapital” is a book but have never read it. 

One of the most interesting things that comes up in this Protocol is why progressive taxation makes sense. The Elder is concerned with the idea of revolution and he claims that burdening the poor with the highest of taxes is the seed of revolution. This is an odd turn for a cabal that seemed, throughout this book, to have no concern over the public other than dominating them. Now, he seems to care for the people in such a way that he will prevent revolution by throwing them a lifeline, “such a measure (progressive taxation) would destroy the hatred of the poor man for the rich in which he will see a necessary financial support of the state.” 

The poor will not hate the rich, because their taxation (on both property and capital) will support the very things that they need. A plan like this could amend some of the wealth inequality in our current world. People like me might see that people like Musk actually contribute something to the general weal rather than not being just obscenely wealthy but also parasites on the system. 

As a book plagiarised for the general public I’m not quite certain what the point of this is supposed to be. Is an early 20th century beet farmer in Western Russia supposed to read this and then think, “Those dastardly Jewish overlords! Attempting to make the local Duke and I equal! I’ll die before he is forced to share borscht with me!” 

We’re supposed to hate this, but I can’t see one reason that we should. Was the lie of unregulated capitalism rampant in Tsarist Russia? I cannot see that the fictional beet farmer would think to themselves that hard work was going to elevate them beyond the rank of peasant farmer. That’s a lie sold to the poor in societies with representative governments not monarchies.