The Protocols: Urgent Mysteries

A review of: Protocols of the Elders of Zion: The Definitive English Edition, Edited and Translated by Thomas Dalton, Clemens & Blair, 2023

reviewed by Karl Haemers

CLEMENS AND BLAIR HAS issued a brand new book on a long-debated topic titled Protocols of the Elders of Zion: The Definitive English Edition, which was edited and translated by Thomas Dalton, PhD. I was intrigued to see it, having found piecemeal material on the mysterious Protocols over years of indirect study, and also having studied only one other full book devoted to the subject, Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, with a foreword by Texe Marrs, commentary by Henry Ford, translated by Victor E. Marsden (1934, reprinted Rivercrest Publishing, Austin TX, 2011). I wondered whether another book on this persistent topic would offer much that was new.

This Dalton book encompasses 275 pages, almost the same as the 2011 Marrs book. Both contain at their core accurate translations of the 24 protocols themselves, which are necessary for reference. Dalton adds his own useful explanatory footnotes and titles for each protocol. The great value in the new Dalton treatment is in the three other sections: “Overview and Early Commentaries,” “National Socialist Commentaries,” and “Contemporary Reflections.” Both books devote about 75% of their pages to such focus.

Introduction

These commentaries and reflections are particularly welcome in the Dalton volume. His introduction of 14 pages gives us the necessary background so we know what the Protocols essentially are: “I am tempted to call it the nicest work of anti-Semitism known to man.” Author and editor Thomas Dalton is known for many volumes that address the Jewish Question, and this book is still another — surprisingly, not all Protocols analyses do. I found it admirable that the introduction also admits that “the document is truly shrouded in mystery,” “its origins are unknown,” and “the author likewise is unknown,” thus avoiding the ignorant arrogance of other works.

The introduction goes on to establish what is known, including an analysis of the strange writing style and structure (or lack of it), the clear fact that the Protocols are by Jews for Jews, and Jewish stridency in insisting it is a “forgery.”

Under the sub-section “Murky Origins,” Dalton details the first signs of the Protocols’ public emergence in 1902 in Russia, their subsequent publication by Sergei Nilus in his 1905 book, and on from there. The Protocols have earlier origins, however, in France, and while later sections of the book present some of this knowledge, overall the book misses a couple too. I searched the convenient index for “Justine Glinka,” and found no entry, but the index covers only the Protocols themselves. Overall the book met the standards for a “definitive” edition, while the omission of this small detail left it just short of exhaustive. The Marrs version includes the Glinka account, and I have found that no single source of analysis on the Protocols collects all knowledge in one place. Dalton’s version comes closer than any.

Part One: Overview and Early Commentaries

This section includes a “Summary” by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is almost humorous in this context, but wise to establish the overwhelming Jewish dismissal of the Protocols. This sentence will serve to summarize almost all Jewish perspectives: “The Protocols is entirely a work of fiction, intentionally written to blame Jews for a variety of ills.” Case closed.

One early commentary discussed in the book comes from Wickham Steed writing in the London Times in 1920. He remarks upon the Protocols published in English in his booklet The Jewish Peril. Steed frames his essay through concern for unjust anti-Semitism the book could cause if left unexamined, but in the end conveys a genuine alarm that the Protocols are being successfully applied, especially in the then three-year-old USSR. He summarizes the 24 protocols and brings forth the validity of a secret international cabal of Jews, with an “undying hatred of the traditional Christian world” and a lust for domination and for destroying nation-states and imposing Jewish control, using toxic political ideologies, all done by experts in governing of many centuries’ standing; Jews, ruling over ignorant non-Jewish masses using corrupt puppets, weaponizing every sector and institution of their host nations to demoralize, confuse, pervert, and subvert the populations. Steed speculates: “Have we [British], by straining every fibre of our national body [in WW1], escaped a ‘Pax Germanica’ only to fall into a ‘Pax Judaica’?”

Next we have an extensive section discussing Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent newspaper’s treatment of the topic. The Marrs book has 10 full essays from Ford covering 90 pages. This entry by Dalton keeps the focus, presenting the essentials in key extracts from multiple essays, all written around 1920. Ford basically reviews the Protocols to show that it was being implemented at that time, citing verbatim text and associating it with known developments of the day. Concluding, this chapter quotes Ford when he speaks of “…a program by which a people may be deliberately devastated materially and spiritually, and yet kept pleasant all the time… altogether under control of the members of one race.”

Part One ends with a full essay by Richard Graves, published in the London Times in 1921, in which it was first announced, according to the received narrative, that the Protocols was a “forgery.” But in fact Graves said it was plagiarism, which is not quite the same thing. Here we learn that the document draws extensively on the contents of a book published in 1864 known as the Geneva Dialogues, authored by Maurice Joli (sometimes spelled Joly). I found Dalton’s relevant footnotes helpful, but was surprised he did not note here that Joli was Jewish, and even a Freemason (this is revealed later in the book). The Geneva Dialogues present as a conversation in the underworld between the ghosts of Montesquieu and Machiavelli, and Graves catalogs many verbatim or near-verbatim quotes from Joli’s book which appear in the Protocols. Plagiarism is established, forgery is not.

The epilogue to this chapter is written not by Graves, but by the editors of The Times, who dismiss the Protocols as irrelevant: “The fact of the plagiarism has now been conclusively established, and the legend may be allowed to pass into oblivion.… though it does not, in our opinion, affect the Jewish problem, which happily, in this country, cannot be said to exist in its Continental form.” Of course this assessment was entirely false, as we will shortly see.

Part Three: National Socialist Commentaries

Part Two of Dalton’s book is the text of the Protocols. This is followed by Part Three, a unique contribution to Protocols analysis; I have not seen it elsewhere. It is understandable that Dalton would include it, given his expertise in this area of history reflected in other books he has translated and published. Since the National Socialist Germans were renowned for their problems with Jews, I was interested to see what they had to say about the Protocols.

First is an introduction to a full book about the Protocols by Estonian-born German National Socialist philosopher and leader Alfred Rosenberg. He explains that the elaborate attempts by Jews to suppress knowledge of and discredit the validity of the Protocols only confers more validity upon them, and discredits Protocols-denying Jews. Rosenberg adds his own knowledge to the large corpus showing the Jewish plan for world control through destruction of our civilization, referencing several sources, notably the writings of three Jews: Theodore Herzl, Max Nordau, and Ahad Ha’am (Asher Ginsberg). Rosenberg also shows that Jews dominated the Entente against Germany in World War I, and four Jews held positions of power in Great Britain. The rest of Rosenberg’s essay details Jewish power in America, England, France, Italy, the League of Nations, and Germany. He states: “The politics of the present (1924) corresponds exactly to the details of the intentions and plans as they were discussed and laid down more than 25 years ago.” Thus Rosenberg brings the Protocols into the context of his time.

He closes with a classic National Socialist perspective on the entire Jewish-German question:

… at the highest point of the greedy peak of power, the fall into the abyss awaits the Jew. The final fall. After him the Jew has no more room in Europe or America. … a new epoch is beginning… As one of the portents of this coming struggle for a new world formation stands the knowledge of the nature of the demon of our present decline. Then the way will be free for a new era.

Dalton is also known for two books, Hitler on the Jews and Goebbels on the Jews, and in this volume he offers us “Hitler and Goebbels on the Protocols.” Among all his speaking and writing, Hitler has produced one statement on the Protocols, from Mein Kampf, Volume 1, 11.4. He states in part:

It doesn’t matter from what Jewish brain these revelations sprang; the important thing is that they disclose, with an almost terrifying precision, the nature and activity of the Jewish people, exposing both their inner contexts and final aims. …The moment that the general public gets hold of this book, the Jewish danger will be stamped out.

Of the many thousands of entries in Goebbels’ diaries over 20 years, only four mention the Protocols. First (1924) he says he must study them after reading of them in Henry Ford’s work, next that they are a forgery but still reflect “inner truth,” then wonders whether the Protocols would be good propaganda in France (1939) and finally decides that the Protocols can be effective war propaganda, especially in Britain, if done with subtlety (1943). Goebbels clarifies something I have pondered for years:

The intellectual man doesn’t have a natural defense against the Jewish danger because he is essentially broken in his instinct. As a result, people of a high level of civilization are the most vulnerable. In nature, life always acts in the same way against parasitism; this is not always the case in the existence of nations. This actually results in the Jewish danger.

The penultimate chapter in this section is titled “NSDAP Introduction to Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which Dalton suspects was also written by Rosenberg. The party had been producing copies for public consumption in Germany since it won leadership in 1933, and the introduction is from the 1938 edition. In one passage it states: “In this way, millions of people have become informed about the corrupting character of Jewish thought and action.”

This introduction gives its own account of the origins of the Protocols, and then focuses on evidence of the Jewish plan inflicted on Germany. The actions of the Jew Lucien Wolf are identified as shedding light on Jewish influence over the Treaty of Versailles that so devastated Germany. Other Jews are named as founding and leading many of the political parties violently opposed to the NSDAP, including the German Communist Party (KPD). Clearly. it is argued, the Protocols had been applied to use of the media and entertainment in pre-NSDAP Germany, as well as to Jewish promotion of pacifism, sexual perversion, abortion, and miscegenation.

The chapter closes with powerful warnings for the people of other nations, and indeed for people of the world today:

This bloodthirsty desire for murder and revenge… is frightening and revolting, but nonetheless a genuine and accurate picture of the eternal enmity Jews have against non-Jews. …[T]his well nourished racial instinct… steadily works to oppose and destroy all existing values of community, culture, justice, and morality. …[W]e must conclude that the theses and facts proclaimed in the Protocols, and evidenced by the activities of the Jews in Germany, have been fully proved. …At the moment, Germany is enemy #1 of the Jews. It has freed itself from the poison in its racial body through the Nuremberg laws. Each people and each country, however, must sooner or later defend itself against subversive Jewish activity. …We have freed ourselves from the nightmare of Jewish dominance. …For the future, therefore, and for every country, there is but one warning call… Peoples of the world, defend your holiest possessions! [folk and nation — KH]

Though not technically National Socialist, Italian “’neo-fascist’ thinker” Julius Evola’s evaluation of the Protocols is the focus of the last chapter. Dalton’s initial summary tells us Evola’s name on the Italian translation in 1938 “contributed greatly” to its spread. Evola first answers the questions of authenticity and veracity. He cites the Bern Trial in Switzerland, where Jews tried to establish the non-authenticity of the Protocols — the only mention of this trial I have seen in any work on the topic. Evola also presents more details on the Protocols’ origins, and we learn Joli was “a half-Jew, a revolutionary, and a Freemason.” As with others we have seen, Evola shows that plagiarism in no way precludes veracity, given “1) proof by the facts; 2) proof by the nature of the Jewish spirit.”

Evola summarizes some of the protocols by number: “This is the first phase of the occult war; its goal is to create an enormous proletariat, to reduce the peoples to a mush of beings without tradition or inner strength.”

He adds broad historical perspectives — including a Masonic Congress declaring World War 1 “the crowning work of the French Revolution,” leading to the League of Nations, the Popular Front swallowing France, and the incitement of the Spanish Civil War. Evola states:

This is why Adolf Hitler considered it [the Protocols] to be undoubtedly the most powerful means of awakening the German people.

This is somewhat divergent from what we read earlier from Hitler and Goebbels themselves, but the point is clear.

Evola presents his perhaps unique theory that the plan for world domination may not be exclusively Jewish. He asks us to “become aware of forces for which Judaism itself may have been, to some extent, only the instrument.” He claims the first edition of the Protocols is “signed by the representatives of Sion of the 33^rd degree,” and explains that Freemasonry was not founded by Jews, but only became Judaized in the 1700s. This is classic Evola:

[I]t follows that it is necessary to refer to a much larger network of corrupting occult forces, which we are even inclined to believe is not purely human.

Evola accepts the Jews’ undeniable ability and power to conduct the Protocols, but attributes that not to their racial nature, but to “the Law,” the “Talmudic spirit… whether in an atavistic and unconscious manner, or an occult manner….” He gives examples of how some Protocols derive directly from Jewish law. Evola ends with hope for “a robust, unshakable, irresistible block” of European reconquest against the Jewish sovereign in a conflict “of such a merciless nature as the world has never seen before.” (The phraseology is taken deliberately from the Protocols.) Recall Evola is writing in 1938.

For added perspective, this chapter includes an extended excerpt from his book of 1953, Men Among the Ruins. It focuses on the likelihood that a hidden force beyond organized Jews and Freemasons will emerge in the last phase of world control. It may even supersede Jews and Freemasons:

[T]he role of a central guiding force of global subversion in this last period will no longer be played by Judaism or Masonry and that the main current may turn against both of these groups, as if they were residues to be liquidated once and for all….

Evola does not try to define this force.

Part Four: Contemporary Reflections

This is the shortest section, yet of great interest to me. It is divided into two chapters making up 39 pages, the first written in 2010 and the second written in the year of publication, 2023. The Marrs book has nothing so current but for a brief Conclusion, nor does any other source on the Protocols I have seen.

Carlo Mattogno, known for his works of Holocaust revisionism, is author of “The Fake ‘Fake Protocols’: the Purpose and Significance of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Mattogno starts by telling us that the Protocols as a ploy used by Russians to deflect blame onto Jews was false. Second, he presents the view that “philo-Semitism has used the Protocols” in “a strategy aimed at reinforcing the idea that anti-Semitism has no legitimate causes.” Both theses are supported by extensive references and analysis. Finally, Mattogno reveals his grand insight into the double-fake in his title: the Protocols “explicitly call on the peoples of Europe to reject liberalism and restore autocratic sovereignty… absolute monarchy by divine right.” This suggests Czarist Russians and perhaps agents of other monarchs of Europe as the ultimate authors, with the goal of preserving their monarchies against the rising threat of liberal parliamentary democracies— an avenue for Jews, I would ask?

As appropriate, editor Thomas Dalton has the final word in “The Protocols in the 21st Century.” He re-establishes the unknowns and mysteries of the Protocols as the humble and proper basis for understanding. As in other chapters, Dalton reviews the record of evidence for Jewish world domination prior to the emergence of the Protocols, finding a different explanation than Evola. He brings it up to date, though vaguely: “One can only wonder how extreme the situation is today, more than 150 years later.”

Dalton gives his own view of four aspects: the “forgery,” politics in Russia, writing style analysis, and veracity. I was intrigued to read about his knowledge of the four Czars in temporal proximity to the emergence of the Protocols, especially Alexander II who was assassinated by Jews in 1881. Dalton’s view is essentially aligned with the National Socialists and the others throughout the book, with the exception of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Graves, and Evola: forgery, plagiarism, Russian origin or not, the Protocols is being applied, and Jews achieving effective world domination.

Dalton provides a fascinating list of quotes denouncing Jews ranging from Hecateus in 300 BC to Heidegger (no date is given but he lived until 1976); see especially the Voltaire, Nietzsche, Twain, and H.G. Wells quotes. Dalton concludes:

Both main themes are thus proven: Jews indeed have designs on world domination, and they indeed view all of non-Jewish humanity with contempt and hatred. The Protocols are, in this sense, true.

In my own studies of many sources of opinion on the Protocols, I cannot remember ever seeing any substantive solutions to the dreadful horrors they portray. Dalton delivers his solutions in this final chapter of his fascinating and engaging book: 1) Limit the number of Jews in every nation, restrict their accession to positions of power, and tax them in compensation for their financial predation. 2) Independent nations should join together to impose boycotts and sanctions on nations Jews control. 3) There should be a massive education campaign to reveal the truth about the Jews past and present. In closing, Dalton states that if knowledge of the Protocols can help avert a “global calamity,” their value is assured.

The book includes a bibliography, and I thought it might be more complete if it included the Marrs volume as well as the essay by Revilo P. Oliver “Those Awful Protocols” (1991), which complete those very few details that this otherwise superior edition omits. An index is also a very welcome resource for those of us drawn to research; this index covers the Protocols alone and not the commentaries and reflections.

Dr. Dalton has achieved the high claim of his title, Protocols of the Elders of Zion: The Definitive English Edition. While such reading cannot be considered “entertainment,” given the urgent and alarming subject matter, I found the variety of writing styles, viewpoints, and analyses among the many chapters compelling in counter-point and also in consensus. I struggle to think of any man, woman, or youth today who would not gain crucial perspective on history and current events that can be applied to his or her own life-path and to the protection and defense of the world. Along with bringing this knowledge to our attention once again in this new form, Dalton’s greatest contribution is the simple, clear, and effective solutions he offers at the end. I am left with a persistent peal of passion:

We must do this!

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