Talk:The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

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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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Suggested Corrections to avoid false claims.

I'm not sure it's true to claim that the document is a forgery (copy), since it reproduces nothing, and seeks no profit from false attribution. It is either a fiction, propaganda, or hoax. For example, Crichton's Eaters of the Dead is a fictional account attributed to Ibn Fadlan - it is a fiction, but not propaganda. The Voynich Manuscript is a Hoax - but not propaganda or fiction. The Protocols are clearly a Hoax, and clearly Propaganda. So, as far as I know 'inflationary language' (misrepresenting it as a crime) is a form of deception just as pseudoscientific claims (not following the scientific method's warranty of due diligence), and pseudo-rational (sophistry) are a deception. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:188:4100:1304:81A5:A7AD:18E3:DA3D (talk) 15:03, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

It is a forgery in the sense that it claims to have been written by Jews, and just because it doesn't seek a financial profit doesn't mean there's not a motive. Crichton would acknowledge that Eaters of the Dead is fiction, the author of the Protocols claimed that it was real. We're not playing the middle ground because that would just please the antisemites who insist that it's real. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:08, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Well you're just as bad as they are then. And I'll let my objection stand. It's absolutely positively not a copy (forgery). It MAY be a fraud (if for money) and it is certainly a hoax and propaganda. It's not a middle ground position - it's a falsehood. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:188:4100:1304:81A5:A7AD:18E3:DA3D (talk) 15:21, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

We're not going to downplay the falsehood of the Protocols. The only people who want to are antisemitic trolls who want to pull a "fine people on both sides" argument. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:55, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Comment - I am going to disagree with both sides here. First: In English 'forgery' does not exclusively mean "fake copies" of a thing, it can also be used to refer to fakes made "in imitation of" or "falsely claimed to be by" among other things. Also, as mentioned above, profit (financial or otherwise) is not a prerequisite of a 'forgery' (although the people who created this one did so with full intention to use it and benefit from it). However I can understand why a person might think in terms of a more limited definition of the term, especially if English is not their first language. Second: Disputing the most-correct terminology to describe the nature of this hoax is not proof of anti-semitism or bad faith. The commenter has agreed that this was a hoax (though even that would still be a fair question in an open debate, but one that is already reasonably well-answered with WP:Facts and WP:RS in the article). This is not about WP:GEVAL, it is a technical point about terminology. With respect, the editor is over-reacting here and failing to WP:AGF. 23.91.234.76 (talk) 09:36, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

The Protocols are not so much a forgery as they are a hoax. They are not what they are held out to be. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:46, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Forgery or Hoax. I undid the collapse, for which there is no rule-based justification. About the dispute, forgery or hoax, I have to say that it is one of the dumbest I've seen in the encyclopedia in recent years. An argument based on word meaning can only proceed on the basis of an interpretation of one or both words more narrow than their usual meanings. There is a difference though: a "forgery" is a thing, but a "hoax" can also be an idea, claim, event, etc.. A fake news story that says aliens have landed is a hoax, but a photoshopped NYT cover that appears to confirm it is a forgery. In general, a forgery is a hoax (supports a hoax, etc, choose your wording), but not necessarily vice versa.

All of this is beside the point, since it matters not a flea's fart what word we think is correct. Have you all forgotten WP:NOR? Check what the sources use and follow them! Well, I looked at every item in the Bibliography section of the article, except for two (Luthi and Pipes) that I can't immediately access. I tried to not count words used in quotation. In the cases of Cohn and De Michelis, I only have their books on paper and searched about 50 pages.

The results: Ben-Itto and David use both "hoax" and "forgery" repeatedly. Carroll, Chanes, Jacobs and Singerman use "hoax" once but "forgery" multiple times. Bernstein, Bronner, Cohn, Graves, Hagemeister, Kellogg and Webman strongly prefer "forgery". De Michelis doesn't care about labels but introduces the document as "fake". Klier only has one sentence, which uses "fabricated". I also checked 9 additional academic articles specifically on the Protocols that I happen to have on my computer. Levy uses both "hoax" and "forgery" repeatedly. Five extra articles by Hagemeister, and articles of Burtsev, Bytwerk and Hasian, strongly prefer "forgery".

From this is it clear that many sources have a preference for "forgery" over "hoax", and none have a preference for "hoax" over "forgery". So there is no rule-based case for us to prefer "hoax". Personally I like "a forgery and a plagiarism" that Richard Levy uses in his first sentence. Even though he is the only one with exactly that word combination, it encapsulates the overwhelming consensus of the sources that the work is a forgery which is based in large part on earlier writings. Zero 05:48, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Ah.... if the debate is so "dumb", then why did you just spend four paragraphs and the time necessary to research them putting forward your point of view? If it was worth your time and effort, then it ain't so "dumb" after all. The fact of the matter is, both "forgery" and "hoax" are used, and we are not limited to using just one of them, we can used both, as the Protocols are both, depending on from what perspective you look at them. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:47, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

It's not dumb to raise the issue, but it is dumb to edit-war over it. Zero 01:06, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Point taken. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:10, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Proposed rollback

I am proposing a rollback of the article to to version 867831438 of 08:15, November 8, 2018, to remove a series of two dozen edits in the last 24 hours that were either inconsequential sentence reordering or minor changes of words, or were detrimental to the clarity and flow of the prose in small ways, and that taken as a whole, have not improved the article and been disruptive of editors’ time. For more detail, please see User talk:Chas. Caltrop#The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Mathglot (talk) 05:21, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

I have WP:BOLDly rolled back to the version in question. Coretheapple (talk) 05:25, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

I endorse the rollback. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:39, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Agree. William Avery (talk) 09:40, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

A reply to the page owners

I have edited the article to remove the POV-pushing, which, curiously, always identifies the Jews as Jews, yet, for example, the American historian Daniel Pipes is NOT identified as a Christian historian. Please, identify specific factual faults with the content, not just opinions about how you just don't like it. Be specific, give examples of deleterious edits. I've copied your complaint from my personal page to this article Talk page, where it belongs; volume is not fact, just game-playing with the rules.

Regards,

Chas. Caltrop (talk) 10:03, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Transposed to the pertinent Article Talk Page

Note: Box border added for clarity around material copied here by User:Chas. Caltrop from their Talk page. Mathglot (talk) 01:48, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Please stop your long series of edits which in no way improve the article The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. There are somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five recent edits of yours with edit summaries like, ‘’CE; full facts, narrative flow’’ (or similar) which make trivial changes of wording or sentence order, some of which are not harmful but neither are they an improvement, and others of which are detrimental. What is your goal, here? Are you trying to rack up a large number of edits or are you genuinely trying to improve the article, because I am at a loss to see any overall improvement to the article at all, after two dozen edits by you. This is becoming disruptive of other editors’ time, who have to come in behind you and examine the changes, cleaning up where necessary.

Your editing at this article is starting to become disruptive. In addition,

this diff spans 32 edits of yours in the last 24 hours (including a smattering by other editors attempting fixes), and I fail to see any overall improvement in the article in that span. Can you give a good reason why the article should not be rolled back to version 867831438 of 08:15, November 8, 2018? Cordially, Mathglot (talk) 05:01, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

I’ve opened a section at Talk:The Protocols of the Elders of Zion#Proposed rollback concerning this to see if there is consensus for a rollback. Mathglot (talk) 05:28, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

The edits in question are manifestly unnecessary and unhelpful and have been reverted to this diff. User Caltrop, if you don't care to discuss the edits that you have made, feel free to not do so but there is an apparent consensus that you are wasting time by making unnecessary edits to the article that do not improve it. Coretheapple (talk) 05:33, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

User Caltrop, I hope this puts an end to your disruption at this article. If not, I call your attention to this AN/I discussion where you were apparently reported for exactly the same behavior. Cordially, Mathglot (talk) 05:55, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

A reply

Be specific, give examples. Your opinion is your business, the facts remain to be presented. Disruptive editing must be demonstrated, with specific examples, not just opinions.

Regards,

Chas. Caltrop (talk) 10:14, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Talk pages are for gaining consensus about how to improve the article. Disruptive editing does not have to be “demonstrated” here; it’s sufficient that you have been reverted and that consensus appears not to be in your favor. Save your wikilawyering about facts and diffs for AN/I. But I’m sure you know that already; you’ve been there before for similar behavior. Let’s see how far other editors’ patience extends this time. Perhaps like a cat, you still have a few more lives left. Perhaps not. Sea lions can only swim so far.

Oh, and since we are still discussing improvements here, per WP:BRD would you kindly self-revert your edit version 868458619 until such time as you gain consensus for it while discussions are still underway? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 11:05, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Despite reverts from other editors, changes of dubious utility continue under such rubrics as "CE". William Avery (talk) 14:18, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

User:Chas. Caltrop continues to engage in outrageous edit-warring, non-consensus editing, ignoring any and all requests to modify his behaviour. Something needs to be done to make this stop.Smeat75 (talk) 15:13, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

A reply to Smeat75

Your turn at rollback mentions no specific editorial mistakes or factual incorrectness. Why? Surely, not every edit I have made is factually incorrect, is it, Ma'am? I ask.

Let me know, perhaps we can correspond, the way the lads cannot.

Regards,

Chas. Caltrop (talk) 15:49, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

If necessary, I will bring Chas. Caltrop to WP:ANI once again, as I did here, to stop his POV-pushing edit-warring. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:54, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

school textbook

The following appears in the introduction without a source: "the Nazi Party's régime ... applied The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a textbook for German schoolchildren." This is not mentioned in an academic article I have on the Nazi use of the Protocols, and frankly I doubt it is true. School kids would not be able to make head or tail of it. Where is this claim from? Zero 11:59, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Here is the source and this --Shrike (talk) 12:28, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Those are pretty weak, though. The first indeed asserts "some schools used the Protocols to indoctrinate students", but it links to an article about indoctrination in general that does not mention the Protocols. The second is a sidebar comment "It was used in schools after the Nazi Party took power in the 1930s." I'd be a lot happier if there was a better source here. --jpgordon 14:23, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Here is a scholarly source .--Shrike (talk) 14:47, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

That is indeed a much better source. Meanwhile I found that it appeared as a claim without a source in Norman Cohn's 1967 book (which more recent historians have a poor opinion of). Zero 00:04, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Exposure of the forgery should be prominent

Since the status of this document as a forgery is "controversial" (in the way that most conspiracy theories are "controversial"), the lead should summarize how the forgery was discovered, with multiple RS references. Right in the lead. As it stands, the lede only states that it's a forgery, and the facts about its discovery are buried waaaaay down in the article's body. This creates the impression that the forgery status is being dubiously claimed by brute force and repetition, and not via reliable sources. I'm sure a lot of people, like myself, come to this article looking for that information — "how do we know it's a forgery?" — and not, for example, what the document actually says or who was purported to have written it. -Jordgette 01:08, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

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