http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma01/kidd/thesis/pdf/protocols.pdf
“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” copy provided by American Studies at the University of Virginia.
Bob Weinberg’s article on popular antisemitism draws our attention to one more violent thread in turn-of-the-century Russia. Most importantly, Weinberg illustrates the “persistence” of “medieval biases” and antisemitism in “modern” twentieth-century Russian culture. In doing so, Weinberg demonstrates the artificiality of constructing a dichotomy between the “medieval,” religious, irrational and the “modern,” secular, and rational. This applies as much to our own thinking as to the “moderns” in Weinberg’s article, especially those letter writers who want to apply “scientific” empiricism to proving the existence of blood libel. Indeed, many prejudices not only persisted, but also became articulated through more biting and violent methods (as we remember in our discussion a few weeks ago of Social Darwinism, for example).
In fact, Russia was the birthplace of one of the most powerful antisemitic documents of the twentieth century, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Written sometime in 1902 or 1903, the Protocols claim to be a factual representation of a meeting of powerful Jewish leaders (e.g. “Capitalists”) plotting global domination. The text first gained popularity in Russia, fitting into the wave of pogroms that accompanied the unrest of 1904 – 1905. From there, it spread throughout Europe and then globally. Henry Ford, for example, printed hundreds of thousands of copies for distribution in the United States in 1921 (see the preface to the edition I have linked above). The Nazis also used it as a propaganda piece. Even post-Holocaust, the document remained popular, if pressed somewhat more underground. It figures in dialogues in the Middle East and, as events across the US and more recently at UNC have shown, close to home, too.
As we continue talking about “transitioning” to and “rejecting” modernity, the Protocols can give us added insight into the uncomfortable, violent, unpredictable working out of the process in Russian culture and thought. The details of the Protocols deal directly with several of the most significant and problematic aspects of European “modernization,” secularism (protocols IV and XIV), world wars (VII), education and epistemology (IX and XVI), totalitarianism (XI), the popular press (XII), and even modern banking systems (XXI, XXII). Of course, the Protocols have been translated, amended, and reformatted to suit antisemitic impulses across time and space over the last one hundred years. Thus, the origins of this document lay in Russia, but extend to a much broader story of global antisemitism and a hesitant, violent playing out of “medieval” biases and hate in “modern” masks.