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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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Henry Ford allegedly gave Hitler a copy of the Protocols while he was in prison and before writing Mein Kampf
I have read two Misplaced Pages articles on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Both are full of allegations, research and historical facts. But neither seems to delve into something I cam across recently that it was Henry Ford who allegedly got the Protocols into Hitlers hands while he was in prison and before he wrote Mein Kampf. If true, this would point to the Protocols as being the SOURCE of Hitlers ultimate plan to murder all Jews. i would like to see this information further researched and written up. 2601:1C0:CA01:9240:4DD7:9C90:1573:2C51 (talk) 17:06, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
It's likely the best you'll find will be WP:SYNTHESIS of sources, which isn't going to fly. Was it influential? Probably. The source of his ultimate plan? That's conjecture. If you can find a reliable academic source that makes that assertion, the best you can probably do is to mention it with attribution to the source. ButlerBlog (talk) 18:20, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
I think it's a conflation. Ford was already publishing The International Jew when L. Fry introduced him to the Protocols (this would be 1920 or so.) Hitler's time in jail was 1924, and he certainly was familiar with Ford's writings by then -- and that might be where the idea that Ford "got the Protocols into Hitler's hands". --jpgordon19:55, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
According to Ullrich, Ford's pamphlet "The International Jew" was published in German in 1922, and Hitler "allegedly" told a reporter that he regarded Ford as "an inspiration". There is no mention in either Ullrich or Kershaw of Ford providing Hitler with either the pamphlet or the Protocols, which was published in German in 1919 and was widely disseminated in the German antisemitic community.(Kershaw, v.1, p.153) Hitler first mentions it in notes for a meeting and a speech in August 1921 (Ullrich, v.1, p.103). I agree that the claim that Ford provided Hitler with the Protocols is most likely a conflation for which there is no evidence; and certainly Hitler was aware of the Protocols before he was imprisoned. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:07, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
There is also no support in Victoria Woeste's "Henry Ford's War on the Jews" for Ford providing the Protocols to Hitler. Leaving Ford aside, the idea that the Protocols gave Hitler the idea to kill all the Jews was the title thesis of Norman Cohn's "Warrant for Genocide" but modern historians like Richard Levy do not buy it. Zero05:53, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
2601:1C0:CA01:9240:4DD7:9C90:1573:2C51 This is settled, as per the above comments. What follows is a foruming closing note, not intended to open so much as closew the discussion. Psychologically, the fact that a major industrialist used his resources to promote the Protocol fantasy certainly would have influenced Hitler, who had Ford's photograph on his desk. But the idea that genocide was practicable, i.e, that countries could get away with it, and any controversy would blow over, was in the air in Hitler's youth, and later 'maturity', regardless of the Protocols. The Herero genocide that executed General Lothar von Trotta's 'extermination order' (Vernichtungsbefehl), itself imitating what Belgium's king Leopold carried out in the Congo, was covered euphemistically in the German press, as was the Armenian genocide. Several core people, including military officers and scientists experimenting on race (Mengele's teacher) in the Herero campaign later rose to important roles in the Third Reich. The Holodomor in the Ukraine iun the 30s only confirmed the principle at a time when, to get round the Versailles limitations on Germany's military, Germany and the Soviet Union had a secret pact enabling the former to train in that area, etc.etc. It's an old rule in history that what 'exceptionally' one can get away with by loosening civilized rules, eventually comes home to roost in the homeland: if we can get away with massive infrastructural devastation in Syria without widespread rage, why not also the Ukraine?Nishidani (talk) 10:02, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
New book
I suggest to add the following book to Further Reading:
Hagemeister, Michael (2022): The Perennial Conspiracy Theory: Reflections on the History of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, London, New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-03-206015-6. 2003:E4:AF0E:5F01:3C14:8034:6E0:5B33 (talk) 10:55, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Strange passage here:
The passage beginning with According to Norman Cohn, the modern myth of a world-wide conspiracy by Jews has its earliest precursor in a work written by a Jesuit priest, is odd - all respect to Norman Cohn, but how can the modern Western myth of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy be rooted in the work of a Jesuit Priest who lived in 1800, when over 500 years earlier, Jews across Europe were accused of poisoning wells with the Black Death and slaughtered en-masse? (Dorsey Armstrong, The Black Death: The World's Most Devastating Plague)
I can understand an argument that this was not worldwide, but localized to Europe, but even the myth of a Jewish worldwide conspiracy is largely a Western conspiracy theory rooted predominantly in European/Western culture. All of this is to say; I don't think Cohn is correct, and the statement is a strange one to state so authoritatively. There is even a Misplaced Pages article about the mass-pogroms here, which spread across the Catholic world and were incited by a conspiracy theory surrounding Jews and the poisoning of the city wells. Mishmoo (talk) 23:10, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
As the paragraph states, the priest in question (Barruel) did not attribute his conspiracy to the Jews. The only Jewish connection was a letter written to Barruel by "Simonini" (perhaps not a real name) complaining that Barruel did not include the Jews in his conspiracy. So it was Simonini and not Barruel who proposed a conspiracy by Jews and only in a private letter. Moreover, there is no evidence whatever of a connection between this affair and the "Protocols". So I believe this paragraph is of dubious value to the article. Zero05:25, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
I've removed the passage unless there's any demonstrable value to reinstating it - even Cohn's quote supposedly tying the private letter to the Protocols is highly suspect, since the essential gist of what Cohn seems to be saying is, 'This is one of the earliest examples I can find of someone mentioning a Jewish conspiracy'. Mishmoo (talk) 20:07, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
Textual evidence shows that it could not have been produced prior to 1901
This very specific claim, with a very specific date, is made with no citation at all. Further in the article there are sections comparing the text with earlier works, but nothing (so far as I can ascertain) about this 1901 date. Where does this come from, and what is the evidence for this as an earliest date? 109.176.90.215 (talk) 12:16, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
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