Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History by David Aaronovitch Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: David Aaronovitch
“might offend the Hebrews.”
We don’t know exactly when Boris Brasol told Liebold that he had a copy of the Nilus version of the Protocols . We do know that around the end of May 1920, a stenographer in Washington, D.C., made a copy of the Brasol text of the Protocols on behalf of the Ford Motor Company, and had it sent to Liebold. 17 Then, on June 26, the Independent began to publish the Protocols as part of its series “The International Jew.” The serialization began with a complaint about the fuss that the publication was likely to cause. “The chief difficulty in writing about the Jewish Question,” the editor wrote, “is the supersensitiveness of Jews and non-Jews concerning the whole matter.” It was an early complaint about what today might be described as political correctness. In August, the Independent claimed to show exactly the “connection between the written program of the documents and the actual program as it can be traced in real life.”
When the series was finished, it was collected together by Ford’s publishing house and sold in four volumes as The International Jew . Subsidized by Ford to the tune of $5 million, the books cost twenty-five cents per volume and sold half a million copies in the United States alone. But if Ford was a selling point in America, he was revered abroad. That such an endorsement of the Protocols should be made by someone so successful, so modern, and (presumably) so wise, added significant credibility to a document which had previously seemed rather outlandish. It is hardly surprising that versions of the Protocols published right up to today often quote the words of Henry Ford when interviewed by the New York World in February 1921: “They fit with what is going on,” said Ford. “They are sixteen years old and they have fitted the world situation up to this time. They fit it now.”
Enter Sir John
But even as Ford spoke, the Protocols were unraveling. Ten months earlier, in an article in the Berlin monthly journal Im Deutschen Reich , a German academic, Dr. J. Stanjek, had revealed that a secret meeting of Jewish elders, very much like the one supposed to be the source of the Protocols , had been described in a book published some time before. In fact, said Dr. Stanjek, it had been published more than thirty years before the First Zionist Congress had even met in Basel. And this earlier book was not a work of history or fact, but of fiction. A novel.
The book in question appeared in German in 1868, and had been supposedly authored by a certain Sir John Retcliffe. But Retcliffe was actually the nom de plume of a German journalist Hermann Goedsche. Goedsche had been convicted of political forgery back in 1848, when he had used fabricated letters to try to discredit the leader of the Prussian liberals Benedikt Waldeck. Sacked from his job in the post office, he had become a journalist on a right-wing Berlin newspaper, and supplemented his income by writing lurid novels under a romantic pseudonym. And it was in one of these, Biarritz , that a remarkable gathering takes place in a central European graveyard.
The scene is the Jewish cemetery in Prague, the oldest in Europe, during the Feast of Tabernacles. It is night and all is silent. Then the tower clock of the town hall strikes eleven. A key clicks in the lock of the cemetery gates. A rustling of long coats is heard; a white, shadowy figure appears, and then twelve more. These thirteen are the representatives of the twelve tribes of Israel plus the exiles, and they are greeted by someone who is addressed as “Son of the accursed.” It is evident they are up to no good.
One by one, they report on what they’ve been doing for the last hundred years and their current thinking. Levi has got gold; Reuben has been setting up stock exchanges; Simeon has been getting his hands on all the best agricultural land, Judah on the factories. Manasseh from Budapest meanwhile is capturing the press, Benjamin the
We don’t know exactly when Boris Brasol told Liebold that he had a copy of the Nilus version of the Protocols . We do know that around the end of May 1920, a stenographer in Washington, D.C., made a copy of the Brasol text of the Protocols on behalf of the Ford Motor Company, and had it sent to Liebold. 17 Then, on June 26, the Independent began to publish the Protocols as part of its series “The International Jew.” The serialization began with a complaint about the fuss that the publication was likely to cause. “The chief difficulty in writing about the Jewish Question,” the editor wrote, “is the supersensitiveness of Jews and non-Jews concerning the whole matter.” It was an early complaint about what today might be described as political correctness. In August, the Independent claimed to show exactly the “connection between the written program of the documents and the actual program as it can be traced in real life.”
When the series was finished, it was collected together by Ford’s publishing house and sold in four volumes as The International Jew . Subsidized by Ford to the tune of $5 million, the books cost twenty-five cents per volume and sold half a million copies in the United States alone. But if Ford was a selling point in America, he was revered abroad. That such an endorsement of the Protocols should be made by someone so successful, so modern, and (presumably) so wise, added significant credibility to a document which had previously seemed rather outlandish. It is hardly surprising that versions of the Protocols published right up to today often quote the words of Henry Ford when interviewed by the New York World in February 1921: “They fit with what is going on,” said Ford. “They are sixteen years old and they have fitted the world situation up to this time. They fit it now.”
Enter Sir John
But even as Ford spoke, the Protocols were unraveling. Ten months earlier, in an article in the Berlin monthly journal Im Deutschen Reich , a German academic, Dr. J. Stanjek, had revealed that a secret meeting of Jewish elders, very much like the one supposed to be the source of the Protocols , had been described in a book published some time before. In fact, said Dr. Stanjek, it had been published more than thirty years before the First Zionist Congress had even met in Basel. And this earlier book was not a work of history or fact, but of fiction. A novel.
The book in question appeared in German in 1868, and had been supposedly authored by a certain Sir John Retcliffe. But Retcliffe was actually the nom de plume of a German journalist Hermann Goedsche. Goedsche had been convicted of political forgery back in 1848, when he had used fabricated letters to try to discredit the leader of the Prussian liberals Benedikt Waldeck. Sacked from his job in the post office, he had become a journalist on a right-wing Berlin newspaper, and supplemented his income by writing lurid novels under a romantic pseudonym. And it was in one of these, Biarritz , that a remarkable gathering takes place in a central European graveyard.
The scene is the Jewish cemetery in Prague, the oldest in Europe, during the Feast of Tabernacles. It is night and all is silent. Then the tower clock of the town hall strikes eleven. A key clicks in the lock of the cemetery gates. A rustling of long coats is heard; a white, shadowy figure appears, and then twelve more. These thirteen are the representatives of the twelve tribes of Israel plus the exiles, and they are greeted by someone who is addressed as “Son of the accursed.” It is evident they are up to no good.
One by one, they report on what they’ve been doing for the last hundred years and their current thinking. Levi has got gold; Reuben has been setting up stock exchanges; Simeon has been getting his hands on all the best agricultural land, Judah on the factories. Manasseh from Budapest meanwhile is capturing the press, Benjamin the
Similar Books
Sick of Shadows
Sharyn McCrumb
A French Kiss in London
Melinda De Ross
In the Pond
Ha Jin
Like Sheep Gone Astray
Lesile J. Sherrod
Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth
Simon R. Green
Dark Intelligence
Neal Asher
ALL HE DESIRES (Voluptuous Woman Series)
Brenda Jackson
Alpha Alpha Gamma
Nancy Springer
Secrets and Lies 6 (The Ferro Family)
H.M. Ward
What Stalin Knew
David E. Murphy