The Protocols

ange persistence of a proven forgery:

A catalog of threatening modernity is being boasted of: liberal rights proliferate, faith falters, commerce rules, citizens are seduced by “corruption and luxury.” “Think carefully of the successes we arranged for Darwinism, Marxism, Nietzscheism,” the Jews in “The Protocols” say, and look what “disintegrating” effect these ideas have had. These Jews claim to be undermining the world with “disenchantments” in order to take it over.

This forgery encapsulates the image of the cosmopolitan Jew as the unprincipled molder of modernity.

But modernity and liberalism are never really meant seriously by these Jews; the ideas are manipulations, fabrications. In addition these Jews sound as if they could confirm Al Qaeda or Islamist movements in their indictments against the West. The Jews of “The Protocols,” in their determination to dissolve national boundaries in pursuit of power and profit, could also as easily be associated with globalization, inspiring anti-Americanism as much as anti-Semitism. “The Protocols” feeds into a wide variety of resentments and longings for a premodern world.

But the really astonishing thing is this: These Jews, in secretly planning to overturn the very forces of liberalism and modernity they have just created are doing just what their anti-Semitic nemeses desire. That is not the only point of agreement. Look at the Jews’ approach in “The Protocols.” They believe in absolute power. They will brook no opposition. They will use the rights and values of liberalism to undermine it, exploiting its weaknesses. They will be patient and ruthless and unrelenting.

Hitler once said he used similar techniques for similar ends. He did. So do the Islamists. If “The Protocols” has found such resonance among anti-Semites across the world, it is partly because, in its villainous Jews, they see images of what they yearn to be.