Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 08:29, 30 October 2003

There is a link to 'false document' here, but the meaning of the false document article appears to relate to artistic creations, rather than to forgeries of this sort.

We could either:

• remove the link
• change the 'false document' article to reflect the fact that there are non-artistic forgeries
• change the wording to 'forgery'

-- The Anome

Precisely my point.

Also, is it actually agreed by all that it is false? Do there exist rabid anti-semites who believe it's true? If so, then we should say something to the effect that most historians and other sane :-) people believe it's false, but there are a small handful of anti-semites who believe it's true. That is important information, if true, and must be stated fairly if the article is to cohere with the neutral point of view. --LMS

Arab newspapers insist that the protocols are real. The reality of them are even taught in some high schools in the Arab world as "proof" of the evil nature of Jews". Many Japanese citizens believe that the Protocols are genuine. A small number of Japanese professors and other professionals have even written books about them in recent years, which have shot to the top of Japanese book best-seller lists. Most of these books are flatly anti-Semitic. However, and bizarrely, some of these books aren't anti-Semitic in any way that yoo are I would understand the term, because some of them teach that "The Jews use the protocols to try and conquer the world...but we Japanese can adopt these Jewish techniques so that we too can be as powerful as the Jews, or more so!" That is to say, some of these books are literally written as "Self-Help" books for businessmen, who seem to admire the "international Jewish conspiracy", and wish to emulate it. I have a detailed article on this that I can e-mail you if anyone is interested it. A good study of this fascinating and complex topic is "Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and Uses of a Cultural Stereotype", by David G. Goodman and Masnori Miyazawa, The Free Press, 1995.

RK, if you want to mail it to me I would be interested. My email address is sj_kissane at yahoo.com -- SJK

I would be interested in this article as well. TLB

The subject page is SO NOT neutral point of view. It is almost like it was written with the single purpose of discrediting these writings.

I agree we should state that they are believed by some to be true, but this being an encyclopedia, we can still say pretty flatly that they're false. The fact that they're believed to be true by some nutcases doesn't mean we need to make a disclaimer of "believed to be false by almost everyone sane," any more than we need to add disclaimers of "NASA claims, and most historians believe, that the US landed on the moon in 1969, but there are some who claim that the moon landing was fake" to articles on space exploration. -- Delirium

Can someone add a brief summary about what kinds of accusations the document specifically makes? Maybe in a bullet list or something? user:J.J.

Delirium, I disagree with you - since your parallel between the belief that NASA moon landing was staged, and the belief that the Protocols are for real - is wrong.

In the Islamic world - roughly a quarter of the world's population - the belief that the Protocols are for real is not restricted to a very small minority of nuts. It is restricted to a small minority of nuts in the West, but the Misplaced Pages is supposed to represent the views of the entire world, not just of the West - the NPOV should not be Western.

In case of NASA sending people to the moon, a small minority of nuts worldwide believes this - so from NPOV view, it seems reasonable to view it as fact. -- Michael V.

Are we putting everything up for a vote?

Michael V's comment suggests that if three billion people think something is true, then we can't say otherwise. That is nonsense. The book is demonstrably false, not to mention pernicious, and its is POV to say otherwise. Italo Svevo

Then why don't you demonstrate it?

This is an excellent article, and admirably defends the concept of historical truth against attempts to deny that this concept has any meaning. The fact that ten people somewhere think the world is flat does not prevent us from laying that it is (almost) round. The Protocols are a forgery, and any self-respecting encyclopaedia needs to say so. Having said that, the last paragraph seems a little over-optimistic, and in fact contradicts the preceeding text. It is clear that in fact many people think the Protocols are genuine. Adam 03:13, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Good point on last paragraph. In addition, it has an editorial tone implying that open information (the underpinnings of this site) is to be feared and controlled rather than combatted on merit. It almost seems to mock the idea that anyone who reads something in a library should value his/her privacy. Anyone revising it might tweak the spin there. Chris Rodgers 00:18, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

"While few people currently believe the Protocols to be genuine, many people now have the opportunity to assuage their curiosity about the Protocols due to the Internet. This raises issues of whether the Internet as it stands is an unalloyed good. Previously, few people were willing to risk getting on government lists by loaning the book from the library, or ordering it through a book-shop through fear of being labelled anti-Semitic."
Is this to say that someone who favors the free flow of information is an anti-semite? That any topic that risks offending a Jewish person shouldn't be discussed? That Jewish lobby groups are more deserving of freedom of speech than anyone else? I never thought of myself as an anti-semite but the more I see statements like these, the more I'm starting to wonder...