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Q: Why does the first sentence of the article say the Protocols is fraudulent? Aren't Misplaced Pages articles supposed to be neutral?
A: Misplaced Pages articles are absolutely required to maintain a neutral point of view. It has long been established that this work is fraudulent; its author(s) plagiarized a work of fiction, changing the original, Gentile characters into the secret leaders of a Jewish conspiracy. That plagiarized, fictional material is presented as though it were fact. That constitutes a literary fraud.
Q: So Misplaced Pages is saying that there was not a secret Jewish conspiracy to rule the world?
A: That is an entirely separate issue from the established fact that the Protocols is fraudulent.
Q: Why not let the reader decide for him- or herself whether the document is fraudulent or not? Doesn't drawing conclusions constitute WP:OR?
A: The article does not draw any conclusions; journalists drew the conclusion in 1921, and numerous scholars have reaffirmed it since then. It is not original research to state that the the Protocols is fraudulent; it is a well-established scholarly fact, as documented and sourced in the article. Numerous similar examples exist throughout Misplaced Pages; for example, the Hitler diaries are demonstrably fake, and the WP article says so—and sources it.
Q: But if the fraud is a well-established fact, why do some groups still assert that the Protocols is a genuine document?
A: It is difficult to answer why anyone still believes that the Protocols is a real document, other than to say that some people have beliefs that are simply immune to facts (Exhibit A: Holocaust deniers). To those whose minds are made up, it makes no difference that the Protocols have been debunked countless times—or that so much incriminating Holocaust evidence survives that a dozen museums can't hold it all.
Q: But you can't disprove the contention that a bunch of Jews got together sometime in the mid-19th century and plotted a conspiracy, can you?
A: As already stated, the conspiracy issue is not relevant to this article. But to answer your question, if one was told that the Moon is a giant ball of Gouda cheese covered with a foot-thick layer of dirt, it would be their responsibility to prove them.
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part of the intro is not good
There is "According to the claims made by some of its publishers, the Protocols are the minutes of 24 sessions of a meeting of the "twelve tribes of Israel", during which Jewish leaders discussed their goal..." There is no mention in the Protocols of "twelve tribes", though "our tribe" (singular) appears. The source attributes these claims to the Protocols, not to "some of its publishers", so it is wrong, and it is also wrong that the "congress" was "led by a Grand Rabbi" as no rabbi is mentioned in the Protocols at all. Some publisher may indeed have made these claims, but we don't have a source attributing them to a publisher. Zero06:11, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Zero, I don't have time to fix this at the moment. If the edits were misleading, feel free to revert and I might redo some other time. SarahSV06:15, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 12 June 2020
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Please remove the portion that attributes part of the Elders of Protocol to Eugene Sue. Umberto Eco provided no documentation where in the Les Mystères du peuple the passage is located which, considering that the book is well over 2,000 pages), makes validating difficult. I can confirm that I have read the entire English translation and did not find the passage he mentioned. My fear is that Umberto Eco made this up and figured that no one would ever check (which, given the poor prose of this particular Sue work is easy to understand). I think he did it as a joke and due to his love of conspiracies. He probably thought it was innocent, I do not. If Sue can be falsified then antisemitics will say that Joly is invalid, and that is certainly not the case (having read Joly as well). Now I will admit maybe it is in the French original, but without a citation, this should be considered unproven. 2601:646:9600:74A0:29A4:CB9:54B1:3552 (talk) 00:36, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
I have wondered about this. In The Holocaust Encyclopedia (p503), Michael Hademeister wrote, "Yet, as Umberto Eco has shown, Joly himself made use of the popular fiction of his age, adopting passages from Eugène Sue’s novel Les Mystères du Peuple (including the classic formula 'the end justifies the means') in his Dialogue aux Enfers." So at least one Protocols expert believes it. More than that I can't say, though I will change the weasel "Scholars" into "Emberto Eco". Zero01:06, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. There appears to be a discussion in this section about the merits of this change. Please note that edit requests should only be made once a consensus has been reached. Please continue this discussion in another section on this talk page and gain a consensus before reopening this request. Thanks. — Tartan35723:29, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
Comparison in introduction
The introduction includes a comparison by Stephen Bronner. Is it really relevant to single out one opinion in the introduction, especially the rather random comparison? The intro already describes the significance of this document "It remains widely available in numerous languages, in print and on the Internet, and continues to be presented by neofascist, fundamentalist and antisemitic groups as a genuine document.", adding the quote of Bronner seems just arbitrary. Maybe keep the "probably the most influential work of antisemitism ever written"-quote, but at least the comparison to another book adds no information and just possible controversy to the intro. --2001:A62:41C:5901:3972:8B4:72C2:739F (talk) 14:35, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
I took out a sentence cited to Bronner. I discussed it before on this page (see the section "part of the intro is not good"). Zero04:22, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
Those 500,000 copies
Some myths just won't go away, largely because they appear in "reliable sources". An example is "Henry Ford funded printing of 500,000 copies that were distributed throughout the United States in the 1920s." Now we have a new source Boyle, Arc of Justice that says "Determined to explain moral decline, he latched onto The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, .... By the summer of 1921, the automaker had already mass-produced some half million copies." Wondering exactly what this means, and why Boyle doesn't mention the Dearborn Independent here, we turn to Boyle's source: Nevins and Hill, Ford, Expansion and Challenge, 1915–1933 (1957). There we find the origin of the 500,000 (p316): "The articles probably had little effect in stimulating the circulation of the Dearborn Independent. That circulation grew during 1922 to almost 270,000 paid copies, and in the middle of 1923 stood at 472,500, but the growth was based on semi-compulsory buying by branches, agencies, and dealers." So the 500,000 is about the Dearborn Independent, not about a separate publication. This inaccuracy is connected to another: the claim that the Dearborn Independent serialised the Protocols. Actually, the DI (which I have read) published a long series of original articles that quote paragraphs from the Protocols in support, but it never published the Protocols as one text from start to finish, together or in sections. I gave fine sources in Archive 10 of this page. A missing part of the puzzle concerns The International Jew, which was a compilation of articles from the Dearborn Independent published as a booklet. Like the magazine, it wasn't a copy of the Protocols but an original rant peppered with quotations from the Protocols. What was its circulation? I believe that "half a million" is a mistake caused by confusion with the magazine. Zero04:36, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
Seconded, strongly. It is essential for a page like this not to perpetuate inaccurate details and exaggerated numbers just because they've been promulgated for a long time. The publication history of these "protocols" is an essential part of their history. Forelyn (talk) 09:27, 20 October 2020 (UTC)