A fraudulent document that has served as the basis for modern anti-Semitism. The document claims to be a report of 24 (27 in some versions) meetings held in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, the time of the First Zionist Congress, during which the gathered Jews and Free Masons were supposed to have made plans to sabotage and disrupt Christian civilization in order to build a new world order under their control.
It was first printed in Russia in the early 1900s, and then translated and published in many of the European nations. The American industrialist Henry Ford found the Protocols particularly congenial to his anti-Semitism and often cited them in his public warnings as evidence of the Jewish threat to the American way of life. The fraudulent nature of the work was first voiced by Philip Graves of the London Times, who detected in it obvious resemblance to a French satire. Later critical work by Russian historian Vladimir Burtsev has shown that the document was very likely the work of the Russian secret police, forged to foment anti-Semitic feelings which had long been a part of the Russian cultural establishment.
©ALBERITH
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