The Protocols of the Elders of Zion have finally come into their own. The pieces of imperialism’s geopolitical jigsaw have fallen into place after four centuries. Jerusalem (read: JerUSAlem) is the honorary capital of the US-Israel empire. All hail King Donald I.

The ‘elder’ly bile aside (pretty nasty stuff), it is in fact an series of 24 mostly articulate, well-argued lectures outlining a plan for world capitalist domination, with sharp political and social analysis, lots of Machiavelli and a Marxian sophistication in its understanding of capitalism and historical processes. Briefly, it outlines a plan of world conquest by first establishing world government by consent. As with any sharp political expose, it has been denounced, dismissed, misinterpreted and banned. And made very good use of by those lusting for world power.

It was first published in Znamya in 1903, written in the swirl of imperialist scheming of the late 19th century, where Jews dominated world finances, at the very heart of the British Empire. Conspiracies about Masons, Illuminati,  End Timers, and, yes, Jews were the subject of pamphlets in the new age of cheap newspapers and high literacy.

The plan for the complete triumph of the British Empire was formulated and implemented at that time—as far as the real world allowed—by Cecil Rhodes. He had made his fortune exploiting southern Africa’s mineral and resource wealth.

In the first draft of his will in 1877, Rhodes planned to give his considerable fortune to found an elite society to further the aim of reunifying Britain and the US, to colonize the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates [and more, inaugurating] a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity with the British empire as the prototype of a world imperial government.

Now THAT’S a real conspiracy. Well done, Cecil!

At the time of his death in 1902 his secret society was functioning, chaired by his protégé, Lord Milner. His board of trustees included Lord Rosebery (son-in-law of Leopold Rothschild) and Jewish financier Alfred Beit, who proceeded to set up the ambitious Rhodes Scholarship fund to train the elite of the US and British empire(s).

His plan for world empire in perpetuum was put into effect via the creation of the Rhodes-Milner Round Table with affiliates throughout the empire, and eventually the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA) in Britain and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in the US.

The British Empire represented an evolution of the path to global dominance: a single hegemonic power playing off other powers against one another, a global financial and economic order, an imperial mindset nurtured through an increasingly global media, intelligence operations involving covert intervention and diplomacy, and when all else fails, the exercise of military power. Britain had control of the oceans and the ability to contain the heartland rivals Germany and Russia.

The global empire, with a “Jewish-dominated Palestine, beholden to England for its tenuous survival, surrounded by a balkanised group of squabbling Arab states” was foreseen by Halford Mackinder as a key linchpin: “If Arabia, as the passage-land from Europe to the Indies and from the Northern to the Southern Heartland, be central to the World-Island, then the hill citadel of Jerusalem has a strategical position.”

He was a realist in foreseeing that the new “Crusade” to capture the Holy Land would be a political and economic quest rather than the supposedly spiritual and in fact military quest that the original Crusades were (and the new Zionist version would become). Mackinder realized that this one last formal colony was necessary to complete the empire geopolitically.

Though Zionism already had its following in the British political elite, his inspiration was not Zionist but rather imperial, and by putting Jews in a Palestinian homeland, he was assembling the pieces in today’s imperial order, but for a different “World-Island” and with a very different “hill citadel” at the heart of the world-island empire.

Just a minute

The Protocols were germinating at the very same time as Zionism, too. Eerily, the Jewish logic behind Zionism was articulated by Britain’s first and only Jewish prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli:*

although unjust, [this] may have reduced the modern Jews to a state almost justifying malignant vengeance. They may become so odious and so hostile to mankind, as to merit for their present conduct, no matter how occasioned, the obloquy and ill-treatment of the communities in which they dwell, and with which they are scarcely permitted to mingle... They may be traced in the last outbreak of the destructive principle in Europe. An insurrection takes place against tradition and aristocracy, against religion and property. Destruction of the Semitic principle, extirpation of the Jewish religion, whether in the mosaic or in the Christian form, the natural equality of man and the abrogation of property, are proclaimed by the secret societies who form provisional governments, and men of Jewish race are found at the head of every one of them. The people of God cooperate with atheists; the most skillful accumulators of property ally themselves with communists; the peculiar and chosen race touch the hand of all the scum and low castes of Europe! And all this because they wish to destroy that ungrateful Christendom which owes to them even its name, and whose tyranny they can no longer endure.” (Benjamin Disraeli, Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography (1905))

Disraeli, of Sephardic Jewish descent, is hailed for his brilliant foreign policy in the service of British imperialism, the first and only Jewish prime minister, though he is today mostly forgotten. And armed with the knowledge of Rhodes’ secret society and the later incorporation of much of the communist social policy into the imperial conspiracy, we can take his words as an appropriate (if creepy) introduction to the role of Jews in all the 20th century conspiracies.

Yuri Slezkine’s The Jewish Century (2006) refers to the three ‘promised lands’ of 20th century Jewry—the US, the Soviet Union and Israel— putting Jews at the heart of all three New World Order conspiracy factions, in line with Disraeli’s musings. With the Balfour letter and the Russian revolution in 1917, and the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate the next year, it looked like the Jewish bankers and Zionists had hit the jackpot, but Ginsberg would only shake his head, contemplating where that soaring to the heights of wealth would lead.**

The seamy side of empire

What immediately struck me actually reading the Protocols was that with a little dusting off, abridging and updating, it could easily be the handbook of the neocons, and most certainly was modeled on the Rhodes-Milner Round Table guys. With the wonders of modern computers, you can download a free copy from the Internet (Wikipedia now offers a complete text).

It was originally crudely interpreted as foretelling the Bolshevik revolution as the crucial link in a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, a plan for capitalist domination through Jewish control of international finance. and just happened to appear at the very moment of the founding of the Zionist movement, with its goal of establishing as soon as possible a Jewish state in Palestine, backed by powerful worldwide Ashkenazi Jewish economic interests.

It's as if an especially ruthless and well-read 19th century Zionist agent (or whistleblower, think: an embittered Hogan’s hero.***) inspired by the Rothschilds and other great Jewish financiers of the time, wrote it or most of it. Really, it reads as if it were written by the Jungian shadow of the likes of Zionism's founder, Theodore Herzl, or any of Israel's notables from Ben Gurion to Ariel Sharon.

Its anti-’goyim’ callousness certainly indicates it was not written for public consumption, and after Hitler, it was relegated to the Forbidden Shelf in ALL libraries along with Mein Kampf and naked bottoms. But it is very hard to believe that it is a spoof or a mere provocation, as it is just too impressive in detail and understanding of the logic of late 19th c capitalism.

Just cleanse it of anti-Jewish bigotry by replacing "fellow Jews" with "neocons" and make sense of what's happening in the world today. As for the “hill citadel of Jerusalem”, well, I guess Trump fantasizes crowning himself King of the New World Order there, trying to force his last piece into the world geopolitical jigsaw puzzle, come hell or high water. Everyone with any political standing is a member of at least the CFR, and, as vice president Biden put it, “You don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist.”

Perhaps in some more rational future the Protocols will be compulsory reading for Eco202, after students have a thorough grounding in Marx's “fictitious capital”, fiat and fiduciary money, the history of how logic was turned on its head for centuries, when banks were worshipped as creators and high priests of the sacred golden cow, the ‘gold’ standard, by which all things, all people, all ideas, all civilizations were measured. The metal seems pure, ageless, but the flip side is it’s inert, lifeless, really just a slicker version of its cousin fool’s gold.
xxx
Postscript: Root of all Evil

How gold, money came to be indelibly identified with one human tribe is the story of mankind (now, thanks also to gold and its logic, ‘peoplekind’).* That tribe gained its foothold through a distortion of the Old Testament, which was supposed to herald a just world based on the belief in one god, but became a tribal religion, where usury was a crime but only within the tribe.

Almost all of the financial advice in the Old Testament is ‘no usury’. Period.
*Psalm 112:5 Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice.
*Exodus 22:24 (25)—If thou lend money to any of My people, even to the poor with thee, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor; neither shall ye lay upon him interest.
*Psalm 15:5 who lends his money without interest and refuses a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be shaken.
*Leviticus 25:36— Take thou no interest of him or increase; but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee.
*Jesus made it even clearer: Luke 6:35 But love you your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing.

But Jews argue that God also encouraged his ‘chosen people’ (ie, those who worship him) to lend:
*Deuteronomy 15:6 You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. You will rule over many nations but none will rule over you.
*And the clincher: Deuteronomy 23:19 Do not charge a fellow Israelite interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest. (New International translation) In most earlier translations, such as the King James Bible "Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother."

Quote the Bible at your peril, but a non-Jew reads ‘brother’, even ‘Israelite’ as a universal for ‘believer’. I bet most Jews stick with the tribe on this one. In fact, like Marx (and Biden) concluded, ‘we’re all Jews now.’

There is no need to take recourse to the Bible or Quran to know that interest/usury is a dangerous idea, especially with the gold standard. Together, they make a toxic brew that has plagued civilization from the start.

Temple priests (or the emperor) liked their offerings/ tribute in gold. Amassing gold means you are rich. But gold is scarce, and when horded, it means the money in circulation is reduced. And when desperate people borrow, they can’t repay, by definition, which means deflation and economic collapse.

A vicious circle. No wonder it took abandoning the gold standard, and a world war to end the Great Depression. Interest and the gold standard was poisoning the host (capitalism). Only a dose of war and socialism brought it back to life.

If God meant for Jews to be the only ‘chosen people’ with an exemption on economic relations with non-Jews, then Jews will logically amass gold and have a stranglehold on the money supply, giving them the power to undermine an economy, or to force the king to borrow ever more money to put the horde of gold back in circulation, but putting ever more power in the hands of the lenders.

Bad economics, but that has been the history of the Jews since the biblical texts were compiled in the 3rd century BC. The tribal free pass on interest/usury had a very dark side: the persecutions that erupt from time to time.**

This dynamic turns the OT into a satanic text. Eerily, the Bible and the Protocols are still the top bestsellers in dozens of languages -- God and Satan. The reading of the Protocols carried the death penalty in Stalinist Russia, was lauded by the likes of Henry Ford and Winston Churchill, then loudly condemned for the past 60 years, and is now honoured with its wide dissemination thanks to Wikipedia. Beat that, Cecil!
**Benjamin Ginsberg explains this dilemma at the heart of Judaism in The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State.