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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.
It is weird that Eco's writings on this have been reduced not to The Prague Cemetery but to Foucault's Pendulum. In the latter, the Protocols are just a minor aspect in a vast construct of conspiracies. The former is about the Protocols, narrated by the person who faked them. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:32, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
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)
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Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the