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. 

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. 

I Know Aristotle: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as presented in Behold a Pale Horse pp. 317-318

 Protocol 18

This week’s protocols is weird. It’s spaceman, UFO weird; and the only anti-Semitism in it is a few “goys” and “Goyims” thrown in there as if to remind us what this book is supposed to be; but generally this protocol is weird because it is so bland. This is one of those protocols I’d have one of my classes read because it’s short but it also doesn’t say anything. The subject of this protocol is the ruler of the conspiracy. 

We are 66 pages (according to the PDF of Cooper’s book acquired from the internet archive) in and there is little that we know about the rulers of the conspiracy. What little we do know is almost always contradicted by something else. On one hand the kings and rulers must be members of the conspiracy on the other hand they can be regular people who are blackmailed by the conspiracy. The problem is one of consistency, does the conspiracy want to control things from the throne or from behind the throne? Throughout most of the book, and indeed, all other conspiracy works; we have the impression of the “hidden hand” which guides everything. Yet, if you have total authority, then why hide? The rulers only gain the security of anonymity from concealment. 

Lest anyone be confused, I’ve framed this debate much more interestingly than the Elder (or our plagiarist) has.

The first paragraph begins with a discussion of surveillance and control. The control will be achieved through the use of good speakers. Remember, this was written in the late 19th century and then plagiarized in the very early 20th–so a good speaker is entertainment. Of particular interest is that they are going to “astroturf” the crowd and somehow this will give the conspiracy a pretext to search and follow the crowd. I don’t quite understand how. Unless, the speaker is going to attack the state and the conspiracy itself; but that detail is left to our imagination. 

Then we get my favorite part “…”

These ellipses are increasing in frequency and I suspect that our plagiarist is getting bored with his own book, but there is another possibility: that these sections are failed attempts at ideas. This happens to me–it happens to everyone that writes; you get an idea in your head and you begin writing only to find out that the idea has no traction. My notebooks (because I handwrite a lot of stuff) are full of abandoned ideas. If I begin a new word document, it starts as document “36” because there are 35 ideas I’ve had to abandon. Sometimes I save them, most times I do not. What I certainly don’t do is submit them for publication. When Cooper does this, or Alex Jones, I get it–they think length equals authority. So very little gets cut, and I suppose that the plagiarist deserves some moderate credit for making it obvious when the subject is being changed. 

The subject is changed, and our second subject concerns security of the ruler. The suggestion is strange, the conspiracy’s ruler (either figurehead or real) will have only the thinnest of guards. The thinking is that, “we shall not admit so much as a thought that there could exist against him any sedition with which he is not strong enough to contend and is compelled to hide from it.” 

So there plan is to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that there are no threats to the ruler? That seems like a plan that is doomed to fail. Pretending the ruler doesn’t need elaborate security isn’t enough to protect them from the times that they do. I get the point that the Elder is going for, but this is just a bad plan. 

In the preceding paragraph we are told that the discovery of frequent conspiracies against the ruler is a sign of weakness. This is borrowed directly from the actual Machiavelli, who, in the Discourses discussed conspiracies as being legitimate threats against the state; and his recommendation is to not do things that will earn the enmity of those people that have the power to conduct them. The solution offered by the conspiracy is “According to strictly enforced outward appearances our ruler will employ his power only for the advantage of the nation and in no wise for his own or dynastic profits.”

In Aristotle’s Politics, he describes a tyrant as someone that acts for themselves. A ruler that seeks their own profit rather than one that puts the kingdom first. One of his recommendations to prevent tyranny is for the tyrant to act in a manner beneficial to the people to secure his own authority. So, for selfish reasons, he should appear altruistic. The effect is the same because, ala Kant, we do not have insight into the internal motivations of a person. Aristotle would use this same reasoning in his rather tepid defense of slavery–the slave is incapable of ruling therefore must be ruled, but the master must rule toward the virtue of the slave. In effect, this becomes a worker/owner relationship that Marx thought was exploitative, the difference according to Marx was in terminology and I’ll avoid long philosophical discourse here. The point is that if the secret Jewish conspiracy is going to rule to our benefit in order to appear to be benefactors, then it’s no different than if they were our benefactors. The conspiracy is saying, we’ll help you so you want us in charge. This isn’t the problem that the intended audience is supposed to think it is. It’s also telling because it reveals that the Tsar, who has elaborate security and does not act in beneficence of the people, is supposed to be the good guy here.  

This is just a boring Protocol. The final two recommendations is that the ruler will always look at petitions from the crowd so the crowd can never deny that the ruler has seen it. Ok, good. This isn’t a bad thing. While the final one is that criminals within the conspiracy, within the ruler’s orbit will be arrested and punished immediately so as to eliminate any appearance of corruption. 

Again, I’m in. I’m beginning to think that maybe this Cabal should rule the world. 

Trois: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as Presented in Behold a Pale Horse pp. 314-316

Protocol 17

A good start is what you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the sea. And fortunately, the Elder agrees…sort of. This protocol is a strange one, it is more evidence that the Protocols are not meant to be read like a normal book. We are supposed to cherry pick sections of it as evidence of the conspiracy while making the assumption that the rest of the book offers support for the part we cherry picked. I’ll spoil the surprise now, this protocol contains three distinct subjects, which are unrelated narratively from each other. 

I] The practice of advocacy produces men cold, cruel, persistent, un-principled, who in all cases take up an impersonal, purely legal standpoint.

The elder is going to discuss lawyers and the legal profession. I know that hating the lawyers is as old as the legal profession. We have Shakespeare’s Dick the Butcher and Jack Cade discussing the formation of a new society and Dick the Butcher suggests, “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers (Henry VI Part 2 Act IV Scene 2).” The lament of Dick and Jack is that it seems like that lawyers do more damage with the skin of the lamb (the parchment that the law is written on) and the wax of a bee (the official seal) than the lamb or the bee does and it seems like magic. This is the motivating force behind the Sovereign Citizen/Freemen on the Land, movement which I have discussed throughout this book. 

The Elder describes lawyers as being cold, impersonal, and being so focused on the law that they have no conception of the public benefit. So far, this strikes me as Golovenski (our plagiarist) as having a personal problem with a particular lawyer, or perhaps this is Joly’s beef with the lawyers defending the legality of Napolean III without understanding the damage that enabling him can cause. Either way this is playing on the stereotype that even Shakespeare is using in the Henry VI. 

The elder further suggests that the law become more impersonal. The lawyers (he uses the term “Advocates”) must be completely separated from their clients and only confer with the judges and each other. This way the lawyers will be more reporters of the law than those with an interest in the outcome, or so it will seem to the clients. 

Further lending credence to my hypothesis that this is personal: “This will also, by the way, remove the present practic of corrupt bargain between advocates to agree only to let that side win which pays most…”

That ellipses is not mine, it’s in the text, and that means it is time for a subject change. 

II] The very next sentence, “We have long past taken care to discredit the priesthood of the goyim, and thereby to ruin their mission on earth which in these days might still be a great hindrance to us.” 

The word “goyim” is what we are supposed to read as “cattle” according to Cooper’s attempt at making this chapter not seem to be as anti-Semitic as it is. This excuse never works because it’s not the word that makes it anti-Semitic it’s the context. Christians call their religious leaders “priests” and while the term can be generic, to a European audience it’s not. Further, two sentences later, the Elder discusses that they’ve been specifically attacking the “Christian religion.” 

The rest of this subsection attacks the Catholic Church. This is an interesting take because I’m not quite sure who it is for. Modern believers in the Protocols are anti-Catholic. It’s easy to forget, but one target of groups like the Ku Klux Klan were Catholics. The Elder attacks the Papal Court because, during the time of the Russian Revolution the Vatican is the last feudal society left in Europe. It has some esteem earned solely from age and even those who dislike the Catholic religion have a certain respect for the institution itself. Attacking that shows the immorality of the Elder and his people, which is why they will rush to defend it after their proxy forces have broken it down. 

The religion of the elder is the only thing that will be practiced and only by the elite. Yet I don’t quite understand why this would even be necessary. If only the Elder’s people can practice the true religion, do they even need the true religion? Perhaps it’s my atheism, or even the incapacity of the plagiarist to conceive that there could be a people without religion. The rest of the religions of the world will be debased to vulgar and unprincipled expressions because the true religion can only be “practiced by the genius of our gifted tribe…”

III) This third topic is unfocused, er, more unfocused than usual. It discusses that the population will keep itself under surveillance, the Elder will impart a sense of duty so that 1/3 will feel obligated to report the rest for any infractions. It will be an honor to be a spy and informer, but they will quickly and severely deal with any unfounded denunciations. We wouldn’t want a recreation of the Inquisition or the witch-hunts in our dystopian society. The irony of this is that Golovinski, the plagiarist, was an agent of the Russian secret police who planted stories in the press–so this section was very familiar to him. 

The rest of the protocol describes who they will control and if you think we’ve read this before–we haven’t. In previous protocols he’s described controlling the advisors to rulers who can blackmail them. Now he’s going to control the administrative state, but also those people who spend their time in, “amusements, editors, printers, and publishers, booksellers, clerks, and salesmen, workmen, coachmen, lackeys, etcetera.” 

So, the question we should be asking is, “who is left out?” That list covers everyone. If everyone is in on the conspiracy than it’s not a conspiracy, it’s just society. The elder is describing a society that is authoritarian for sure, but everyone knows about the conspiracy. He just listed every profession and then capped it off with an “etcetera” so that if we can point out a missing profession it’s in there. 

Finally, the protocol closes by reminding us that it’s explicitly anti-Semitic, “Such an organisation will extirpate abuses of authority, of force, of bribery, everything in fact which we by our counsels, by our theories of the superhuman rights of man, have introduced into the customs of the goyim…”

Again, with these ellipses. Anyway, the point here is that all the problems that we see are really the Jews’ fault. Bribery, abuse, force, etc.. these crimes may be committed by the good Christian leaders but they do so only because the Jewish Kabal has introduced them into the world. To repeat from earlier, the point of this book is not to read it, it’s to skim it and then find whatever you need to justify your worldview. 

Individualism: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as Presented in Behold a Pale Horse pp. 312-314

Depression saved me. I had a roommate one that was very into Ayn Rand, and he kept telling me that I needed, NEEDED, to read the Fountain Head. I took one look at the size of the book, and in my depression spiral, said ‘no.’ It was too big, too long, and my depression wasn’t going to let me read it. I should also explain that at this time I was reading the History of Florence by Niccolo Machiavelli; and a history of Rome that argued that the fall of Rome was due to the change in the Legions from different forces to one large mobile army (I’m not exactly convinced of that argument). Still my brain took a hard pass on Ayn Rand. 

For a class I had to read her “Anthem,” which is significantly shorter, but, somehow just as preachy. I found her prose to be trite and terrible. The idea, that some force prevented people from saying the word “I” (this is the revelation at the end of the book) was absurd. If the word “we” is used in the singular enough it adopts the same meaning. The metaphor is bad. 

Conspiracy theorists on the right of politics laud individuality as a virtue. They claim that groups like the World Economic Forum, the UN, the Tri-Lateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Illuminati are working to subvert the very concept of individuality. Our Elder is, oddly, doing the opposite. He wants to destroy collectivism, “In order to effect the destruction of all collective forces except ours we shall emasculate the first stage of collectivism–the universities, by re-educating them in a new direction.” 

I, was not prepared for this. So much of this book is a blueprint for conspiracy tracts that follow it–that  I was entirely expecting the collectivism to be the goal. The Elder wants to demonize Universities because they teach working together, so we, as the reader, are supposed to want this. Mind = blown.

Then again…this protocol seems to be all over the place. He wants to destroy collective education in order to drive a wedge between the established order (the monarchy of the Russian Empire) and the people. Ok, fine, I get what the goal is there, but then he argues that “when we are in power we shall remove every kind of disturbing subject from the course of education and shall make out of the youth obedient children of authority, loving him who rules as the support and hope of peace and quiet.” 

Golovenski is having a difficult time “writing” this section. On the one hand the Elder is going to demonize the established order, but on the other hand he’s not going to teach anything which goes against the authorities in charge. Previously, the Elder has argued that he would make puppets of the established rulers, so how does driving the wedge between them and population serve that plan? Again, I don’t think that the audience of this book has really read the content of the book. They’ve skimmed it, and I would certainly doubt that very few of them have made it this far. 

The Elder then makes a curiously ironic declaration, “Each state of life must be trained within strict limits corresponding to its destination and work in life.“

His edict is that people will be educated in hyper-specific categories. People will only be educated in the spheres that will serve them in their lives. This is interesting because the current conspiracy crowd is in favor of this kind of thinking. Ever since William F. Buckley’s “God and Man at Yale” it has been a mantra amongst the conspiracy crowd to demonize higher education, especially of the generalize liberal arts variety. If you’ve ever encountered someone arguing that people ought to be in trade schools, this is the fruit of that tree. Yet, here the Elder is arguing pro-specialized education so that we are supposed to hate it. 

Then, of course, the elder entirely contradicts himself, “daring these assemblies, on holidays, teachers will read what will pass as free lectures on questions of human relations, of the laws of examples, of the limitations which are born of unconscious relations, and finally, of the philosophy of new theories not yet declared to the world.”

He wants the people to read speculative philosophy–which I am interpreting as the socialist literature of the day given the context of the protocols. So, at first the elder wants to ban collective education but then he wants us to embrace the most theoretical of it. This game is getting tired at this point because it’s hard to really pinpoint what it is that the conspiracy wants. Normally, I would say that this is the point of the contradictions and obfuscations–so that the reader can fill in whatever they want as being the tool of the conspiracy and the solution to it. I won’t do it here because our author does not appear to be clever enough to accomplish that. 

The entire Protocol is really concerned with “thought control.” This is what Orwell was trying to warn us about in 1984–not the mis-characterized version that pundits bring up but in the actual reading of 1984. The point was to control the thought process of the population, so that the word “knife” would mean six different things thus restricting the ability of the people to express themselves. The Elder is short on details because those don’t really matter in this fiction, what matters is that anytime someone criticizes the authority of the people in charge, they can be demonized as being brainwashed by “them,” which in this case is the “Jews.” 

The Elder closes with an ellipses that is complete nonsense; then he writes, “In France, one of our best agents, Bourgeois, has already made public a new programme of teaching by object lessons.” 

What? “Bourgeois” is a person? I have to guess that the point of this comment is to get people to analyze the French educational system, but to make comparisons against a stereotype of the French from all of the problems they’ve encountered since their Revolution. Even if that’s the case, we should be given longer than a single oddly constructed sentence about it. As I said in the Gary Allen book, the Robison book, and even in the larger Cooper book: these conspiracy theorists could use an editor. 

Anti-Masonry: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as presented in Behold a Pale Horse pp. 305-12

Protocol 15

I remember as a kid being fascinated by a book cover that transformed step by step the symbol of the Freemasons into the Star of David. I didn’t know precisely what it meant, I was sitting in the corner of the Waldenbooks at the local mall (because I’m old). I don’t remember the title of the book but just remembering the cover can tell me what the book was about. Here the elder makes an explicit reference to other secret societies and names the Masons. It leads to an interesting problem. 

First off, the Elder claims that there will be a coup d’etat which has been “prepared everywhere” for the “the same day” that will usher in the world government. It’s a plan, and it’s one that has been done before. Given that the original work is French in origin this has to be a reference to the arrest of the Templars. The Knights Templar (who I brought up last post as well) were arrested in one day in simultaneous raids whereever the French King had influence. It was done in this manner so that the Templars could not flee to other strongholds to warn the others. Still, this did not work, because the word “simultaneous” is going to have a bit of difficulty working in all of Europe in the 14th century. Clocks aren’t even a thing yet. In the original work, this universal coup d’etat, is actually a reference to what Machiavelli writes in “The Prince.” He writes in Chapter VIII that a ruler ought to perform all of their brutalities at once in order to get them over with, rather than prolong the people’s awareness of methods that may seem vicious or excessive so that the people forget.

The Elder then makes a pronouncement concerning what he will do with the secret societies, “Every kind of new institution of anything like a secret society will also be punished with death; those them which are now in existence, are known to us, serve us and have served us, we shall disband and send into exile to continents far removed from Europe.” 

I feel this is reasonable. Remember a “secret society” is just a private club that does not publish its membership. Because of books like Robison’s though, this has taken on a more sinister meaning. I suppose that because they have served they will continue to serve, just somewhere else. The Elder doesn’t say where they will be sent, only out of Europe. Given that this work is being written for a Russian audience, they could mean America, China, or Japan. I admit that wanting this detail is odd, but the practicalities of these conspiracy theories is a source of amusement to me. Do colonial areas count? Would Ethiopia or India count as “non-European” to the Elder? 

The Elder makes this strange comment, “In this way we shall proceed with those goy masons who know too much; such of these as we may for some reason spare will be kept in constant fear of exile.”

It’s more of the same, but I don’t get why the Elder says “for some reason” they will keep them in fear of exile. He’s the omnipotent ruler of the secret cabal which controls the world. Shouldn’t he know why? The problem with this book is that it’s poorly written while its source material is not. It’s very clear that the Golovinski did not understand Joly’s work nor the Philosophical work that inspired Joly. 

Most of this protocol is a justification for absolute authority. It’s rather uninteresting in that vein because we should understand that the Elder is just trying to inscense the readership. However, they’re not trying to incense the reader against autocracy, but the steps prior to it. They can’t ban the secret societies until they’ve taken power, so in the meantime the Elder is going to do the opposite, “we shall create and multiply free masonic lodges in all the countries of the world, absorb into them all who may become or who are prominent in public activity, for in these lodges we shall find our principle intelligence office and means of influence.” 

Did the Elder forget the earlier part where all of these people are going to be exiled? It seems that such organizations would be useful in maintaining the absolute power of the cabal. He later writes that such authority over these lodges means that any plots that arise against them will, in actuality, be their own plots by their own agents. Disbanding this, according to every fictional world that I ever read like this, just means that they will find their own places. The entire diatribe against secret societies is very reminiscent of the complaints that Robison had of “New Masonry” in his book. There were too many new lodges and too many people in them that talked about forbidden topics (religion, politics, women). 

The elder then writes, “though it be nothing more than the stoppage of the applause they had, and to reduce them to a slavish submission for the sake of winning a renewal of success…”

This isn’t the first time we’ve ended a paragraph on an ellipses, but it’s just as infuriating. Is there a thought that this is meant to hold the place of? Or is this just supposed to leave an impression? I think the latter, but the problem being we have to guess. The story of the Protocols is that this was an intercepted document of instructions to the rest of the Cabal. If that is the case then there is no justification for the ellipses. It makes as much sense as the ellipses and rhetorical questions in “Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars.” 

This protocol concludes with the worst attempt at self-justification I’ve read outside of a business ethics’ student’s final paper, “As you see, I found our despotism on right and duty; the right to compel the execution of duty is the direct obligation of a government which is a father for its subjects.

No, the Elder has not done any of this. All the elder has done is listed a series of actions that he will take: get rid of the secret societies, exile the membership of those that he found useful, abolish legistlature, replace the judiciary at the age of 55, and abolish the right of appeal. Those are things that he will do, but he’s only justified them as the path toward power there has been no reasoning at all. 

Philosophically the argument is nonsense. A right is that which the government has a duty to protect. We have a right to free speech thus the law has a duty to protect it. Rights are claims that individuals make against others. Duties are obligations, you do not need a special right to perform a duty. Duties must be performed, that’s the ontological nature of the word “duty.” 

The entire section (that doesn’t concern secret societies) reinforces my belief that the plagiarist knows what political philosophy sounds like but doesn’t understand the words. 

Persecution Complexities: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as Presented in Behold a Pale Horse pp. 304-305

This week’s post is late because I had to have an emergency appendectomy this week. I’m recovering well. 

Protocol 14

I cannot to say that I’ve come across any real atheist globalist conspiracy theories. Sure, atheists (of which I consider myself) have some irrational beliefs. There is the Sam Harris problem of blending Islam with Islamic nationalism; there are some martyrdom issues (of which some are exaggerated, some fabricated, but there are legitimate causes of concern); but once we get into a large scale conspiracy theories they evolve (devolve?) into a weird religious position. Cooper has got his version of Christianity throughout this book. The Flat Earth conspiracy theory is fundamentalist Christian at its center (I should note that there might be a version of fundamentalist Islamic flat earth since it is flat in a literal reading of the Koran); and only the 80s and 90s UFOlogy circuits were non-religious. Cooper comes out of the circuit so I may have to revisit those writings to see if the religious stuff is just better hidden. 

The Protocols are explicitly religious. There is no way around it. It’s plagiarized by extremists looking to absolve the Christian Russian monarchs of the problems in Russia. It’s using a historical bias against one group by another group based solely in religious differences so that Western Russians will ignore that the Tsar is starving them to fund a war in the East that they will eventually lose. So far, the book has been oddly blase about anti-Semitism. It’s been littered throughout the previous protocols but Cooper’s idea that we can just swap out the word “Goyim” for “Cattle” and “Zion” for “Sion” isn’t that absurd. It’s just a standard super-conspiracy. Now we get right into the blatant and dangerous anti-Semitism.

“When we come into our kingdom it will be undesirable for us that there should exist any other religion of the One God with whom our destiny is bound up by our position as the Chosen People and through whom our same destiny is united with the destinies of the world.”

I will repeat how we are supposed to read this book. We’re supposed to hate the recommendations of the Elder, as good Russians (or Christians) this claim on the one true faith is supposed to inflame our anger. Who is this elder to claim that they are the chosen people when clearly Jesus died to free of us of the old ways (except the ones we like)? These are the thoughts that we are supposed to feel when reading these claims. 

The elder then adds that they will use the press (which they control from two posts ago) to publish all of the faults in the non-Jewish governments so that the people will turn to the Elders for their historically beneficence. I don’t like to nitpick conspiracy theorists on the details of their theories, but as of 1910 do the Jewish people have a history of beneficent rule? I’m not trying to say they were terrible rulers, but that they have a neutral presence. The history of Jewish political influence in European royalty was that of running the finances–it’s where our stereotype of the “Jewish Banker” comes from. The Elder can highlight the problems of the Christian governments all he wants, but there is no replacement that he can offer. 

I suppose that merely pointing out the issues in the Christian governments might work but then won’t people just point out the problems in the Elder’s government? No, because (and all-caps is in the original): “BUT NO ONE WILL EVER BRING UNDER DISCUSSION OUR FAITH FROM ITS TRUE POINT OF VIEW SINCE THIS WILL BE FULLY LEANRED BY NONE SAVE OURS, WHO WILL NEVER DARE TO BETRAY ITS SECRETS.” 

This is one of the most dangerous sentiments in the book. Judaism, as a religion, is easily available. Every Christian has most of it in their own book, then there’s the Talmud; but none of that is beyond reproach. The Abrahamic tradition mostly agrees with itself. The difference is the placement of the Messiah: Christians believe it happened, Muslims and Jews don’t. The rules are largely the same, and where they are different it’s fairly arbitrary. None of the three permit tattoos, homosexuality, and are fairly misogynist; Jews and Muslims can’t eat pork, but they are all supposed to pray daily. Muslims have a direction to pray in, but they all have a holy day, etc. What the protocols are claiming is that this isn’t Judaism, this the public face of Judaism. 

The hidden face of Judaism is the one that no one on the outside ever hears about. This is the religion spoken of in their weird strange language that no one can learn, or their secret books; and it’s xenophobia at its literal worst. Even the “good ones” aren’t excused because they are aware of the secrets. They will never tell you the secrets because of they are sworn to secrecy. There are parallels between this claim and what happened to the Knights Templar in 1312. There was no evidence that Jacque DeMolay was plotting against Philip IV of France, but the claim was that they were and they were sworn to keep the secret. Which is why there tortured into confession of everything but a plot against the French king. There was the same sentiment regarding Muslims shortly after 9/11; sure not all Muslims were responsible but they all secretly approved of it, and this accusation continues to the present day. The Mexican border, the caravans, etc. You’ll never find one confession but, as the Elder claims, they would never betray the secret true version of their religion. 

They are all part of the crime and this is why the Jewish population of the Western Russian Empire is going to pack up and flee into Poland.  

It took awhile, but we’ve gotten to the really bad parts of the book. It’s also the point where Cooper can no longer claim ignorance on the anti-Semitic content of this chapter. Either he knows and doesn’t care, or he doesn’t care enough to learn. 

Distractions: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as Presented in Behold a Pale Horse pp. 302-303

Protocol 13

The protocol continues the same idea that 12 focused on, the press as a means of control. This protocol is more in tune with the practicalities of this plan rather than the theoretical nature of “we must control the press.” I commented last week that 12 was unique in conspiracy theory literature because it had more specificity than all of the other stuff that I’ve read. Sure, “None Dare Call it Conspiracy” had names and dates, but it was all pretend. Business magnates went to Russia therefore Rockefeller was in charge of Communism is how the argument went there and it felt rather hollow. 12 wasn’t that, it was a single focus and a goal; 13 continues along that idea. 

My biggest complaint about 13 is that it is short enough that it should have been the final part of 12. I do not know if this to keep the reader engaged with constant section breaks or if the plagiarist just became tired. I know from years of blogging, that if I go over 1000 words I better have a good reason because people need a break from reading or they just kind of look at the text without reading. 

I’m of the opinion too that there is some antiquated phrasing. The elder admits that the press is an effective tool but it is limited. They cannot just say all of their plans, they will have to imply some of them, “Agents take on to our press from among the goyim will at our order discuss anything which it is inconvenient for us to issue directly in official documents, and we meanwhile, quietly amid the din of the discussion so raise, shall simply take and carry through such measures as we wish and then offer them to the public as an accomplished fact.” 

I think he’s talking about the opinion and gossip columns of the press. They cannot issue a proclamation about X but they can have their agents discuss X as opinions; then amidst the debates they will just do X, anyway. The plan here raises the question, why do they need to have the discussion? Just do the plan. This is like the phrase attributed to the Roman Philosopher Epictetus, “lead me fate and I shall follow willingly, and if not willingly I shall follow, anyway.”

If the Elder is this powerful, why even tell us about the plan? It’s a problem in every conspiracy theory of this scale: there seems to be need by the conspirators to inform the public. It’s why the Masons have to put all of their symbolism all over the world, the Illuminati celebrities have to the eye thing, and apparently the Jewish conspiracy has to place their plans in the local newspaper. Nixon didn’t place an editorial in the Washington Post that referenced his break in plan at the Watergate hotel. 

The answer to this should be obvious: it’s to let the believers think that they can help discover the conspiracy. It gives them a goal to tickle their endorphin receptors and keep them hooked on the conspiracy theory. There is also the effect of inflating the reputation of the creator of the conspiracy theory. We all digest the media, but these people can see the hidden messages in it; they can decipher what is really going on so we should listen to them. It is a good way of pretending that the thing they are making up isn’t complete made up. 

The writing goes downhill as it loses its thread. The elder claims that matters of politics, the common people will not be able to comment, but in matters of industry “let them discuss themselves silly!” The people need jobs, they need bread, so they must be allowed to discuss the means by which they attain the bread. However, this conflicts with the overall conspiracy in which everything is related and controlled. If we remember that this document is being plagiarized in order to buttress the Tsarist rule in Russia, then business is politics given what is coming. Even without knowing how the revolution would shake out, the theorist must know the power of the Socialist movement at the end of the 19th century. The whole problem was that the capitalists operated above the law. Business is political at the beginning of the 20th century when this document appears in Russia. Again, I don’t think people are reading this work as carefully as we are. 

What’s more mysterious is that the Elder drops the entire thing to begin talking about creating distractions with gossip columns, amusements, games, pasttimes, passions, and something called a “people’s palace.” The short of it is that the Elder is going to place enough distractions in the press that people never know anything other than who the latest Kardashian is married to. 

What’s the point of this? I think the point is to demonize the younger generation. The old press only had important news of things but this modern press has box scores of sports, celebrity news, and play reviews. If only the young people would pay attention to the real news they would know what is going on. It’s blaming Taylor Swift for the way young people pay attention to politics and not paying attention to the reason that young people reject the values of the old generation. It’s not that they have moved past it, the reason is that the Elder is manipulating them. The elder admits this in all-caps, “who will ever suspect then that ALL THESE PEOPLES WERE STAGE-MANAGED BY US ACCORDING TO A POLITICAL PLAN WHICH NO ONE HAS SO MUCH AS GUESSED AT IN THE COURSE OF MANY CENTURIES?”

(There’s an ellipses at the end, but I don’t know what it is for.)