The publisher of the Protocols, Sergey Nilus, claims in his comment on them that they are a verbatim report of the secret session of the First Zionist Congress held in Basle in the autumn of 1897 (1). In reality, they are based closely on a pamphlet against Napoleon III published by Maurice Joly (1821-1878), a journalist and writer. The title of the pamphlet was "Dialogue aux Enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu ou la politique de Machiavel au XIXe siècle". Machiavelli is presented as an embodyment of unscrupulous power politics, Montesquieu - the mouthpiece of Joly himself - that of legalism mindful of ethical principles. "The Dialogue in Hell" was instigated by his desire to prove that Napoleon III was a thoroughly Machiavellian politician. His regime meant systematic manipulation and misleading, corruption, oppression, and exhausting wars. Machiavelli's "Il Principe" had become the reality of modern social life. Joly accuses the French Government of being cynically hypocritical, misleading the citizens, and demoralizing the nation merely for the sake of power. He is a sworn moralist and a vehement critic of despotism (2); unfortunately he is, unlike Orwell, quite forgotten today.
The "Dialogue" was published anonymously in Brussels in 1864. Copies of it were conveyed into France, where the police got hold of some. As Joly was already a marked man because of his earlier anti-government activities, the booklet was promptly attributed to him. He was fined and imprisoned for almost two years. The state confiscated the "Dialogue". It became a prohibited book, for Joly was convicted of a criminal act by instigating contempt and hatred against the French Government. Released from prison, he quickly realized that he had no future in a world that had turned quite impossible for him, and in 1878 he finally shot himself (3). For years he had failed to recognize the incontestable fact that he had fought against an invincible enemy, the inevitable development of the history of the modern world.
"Habent sua fata libelli." This adage could hardly be more valid. The fate of Joly's booklet has been most strange. It became a weapon of political propaganda. All over Europe, opportunists, fanatics, terrorists, police spies, and paranoid clerics were industriously plagiarizing the "Dialogue". And so what Machiavelli, straight from Hell, remarked about the stifling circumstances in the Second French Empire, turned into the plot by Jewry for gaining ascendancy over the world in the writings of the plagiarists (4). In Joly's pamphlet Machiavelli had spoken, among other things, of fomenting discord amidst the citizens, the violation of personal liberty, the devastation of the conscience, the autocracy of the Freemasons, and the establishment of police terror. In the Protocols all these and much more are presented as the policy of World Jewry (Political Zionism).
Norman Cohn has systematically compared the "Dialogue" with the forged Protocols. According to him,
over 160 passages in the Protocols, totalling two-fifths of the entire text, are closely based on passages in Joly; in nine of the chapters the borrowings amount to more than half the text, in some they amount to three quarters, in one (Protocol VII) to almost the entire text (5).
In addition to Joly's pamphlet, the fabricators also took advantage of the rich anti-semitic tradition. In this connection, the most important source was a novel called "Biarritz" (1868), written under the pseudonym Hermann Goedsche. The novel includes a description of a nocturnal meeting of the Sanhedrin, the Supreme Council of the Heads of the twelve Jewish tribes, in the cemetery of Prague. In the presence of Satan, the meeting draws up plans for the enslavement of the world. - Professor Matti A. Sainio (Upsala) told the present writer in September 1986 that the meeting of the Sanhedrin was also spread as a separate pamphlet with the title "The Rabbi's speech". The propaganda was effective.
_____________________Notes
(1) S.Nilus, Juutalaisten salainen ohjelma nykyisen sivistysmaailman hävittämiseksi [The Secret Plot of the Jews for the Destruction of Present Civilized World] Hämeenlinna 1920, 126. - (2) H. Speier, The Truth in Hell: Maurice Joly on Modern Despotism. In: Propaganda and Communication in World History Vol. II. Emergence of Public Opinion in the West. Edited by H.D. Laswell, D. Lerner, H. Speier. Honolulu 1980, 301f. - (3) Speier 1980, 302. - (4). Speier 1980, 304. - (5) N. Cohn, Warrant for Genocide. The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. New York 1969, 75f.
