by Umberto Eco
But these were cheap booklets. An expanded version of the Protocols, the one that was to be translated all over the world, came out in 1905, in the third edition of Nilus's book, The Great in the Small: The Antichrist Is an Imminent Political Possibility, Tsarskoye Selo, under the aegis of a local chapter of the Red Cross. The scope was broader, the framework that of mystical reflection, and the book ended up in the hands of the tsar. The metropolitan of Moscow ordered it read aloud in all the churches of the city.
"But what," I asked, "is the connection between the Protocols and our Plan? We keep talking about these Protocols. Should we read them?"
"Nothing could be simpler," Diotallevi said. "There's always someone who reprints them. Publishers used to do it with a great show of indignation, purely out of a sense of duty to make available a historical document, then little by little they stopped apologizing and reprinted it with unrepentant pleasure."
"What genteel gentiles."
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The only society known to us that is capable of rivaling us in these arts is that of the Jesuits. But we have succeeded in discrediting the Jesuits in the eyes of the stupid populace, because that society is an open organization, whereas we stay in the wings, maintaining secrecy.
—Protocols, v
The Protocols are a series of twenty-four declarations, a program of action, attributed to the Elders of Zion. To us, these Elders' intentions seemed somewhat contradictory. At one point they wanted to abolish freedom of the press, at another they seemed to encourage libertinage. They criticized liberalism, but supported the sort of thing today's leftist radicals attribute to the capitalist multinationals, including the use of sports and visual education to stultify the working class. They analyzed various methods of seizing world power; they praised the strength of gold; they advocated supporting revolution in every country, sowing discontent and confusion by proclaiming liberal ideas, but they also wanted to exacerbate inequality. They schemed to establish everywhere regimes of straw men they would control; they fomented war and urged the production of arms and (as Salon had said) the building of métros (the underground world!) in order to have a way of mining the big cities.
They said the end justified the means and were in favor of anti-Semitism both to control the population of Jewish poor and to soften the hearts of gentiles in the face of Jewish tragedy (an expensive ploy, Diotallevi said, but effective). They candidly declared, "We have unlimited ambition, an all-consuming greed, a merciless desire for revenge, and an intense hatred" (displaying an exquisite masochism by reinforcing, with gusto, the cliché of the evil Jew that was already in circulation in the anti-Semitic press, the stereotype that would adorn the cover of all the editions of their book). They called for abolishment of the study of the classics and of ancient history.
"In other words," Belbo said, "the Elders of Zion were a bunch of blockheads."
"Don't joke," Diotallevi said. "This book was taken very seriously. But there's something that strikes me as odd. While the Jewish plot was meant to seem centuries old, all the references in the Protocols are to petty fin-de-siècle French questions. The business about visual education stultifying the masses is a clear allusion to the educational program of Léon Bourgeois, who had five Masons in his government. Another passage advises electing people compromised in the Panama Scandal, and one of these was Emile Loubet, who in 1899 became president of the French republic. The Métro is mentioned because in those days the right-wing papers were complaining that the Compagnie du Métropoli-tain had too many Jewish shareholders. Hence the theory that the text was cobbled up in France in the last decade of the nineteenth century, at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, to weaken the liberal front."
"That isn't what impresses me," Belbo said. "It's the sense of déjà vu. The upshot is that these Elders are planning to conquer the world, and we've heard all that before. Take away the references to events and problems of the last century, replace the tunnels of the Métro with the tunnels of Provins, and everywhere it says Jews write Templars, and everywhere it says Elders of Zion write Thirty-six Invisibles divided into six.... My friends, this is the Ordonation of Provins!"
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Voltaire lui-même est mort jésuite: en avoit-il le moindre soupçon?
—F. N. de Bonneville, Les Jésuites chassés de la Maçonnerie et leur poignard brisé par les Maçons, Orient de Londres, 1788, 2, p. 74
All along it had been right in front of us, the whole thing, and we had failed to see it. Over six centuries, six groups fight to achieve the Plan of Provins, and each group takes the text of that Plan, simply changes the subject, and attributes it to its adversaries.
After the Rosicrucians turn up in France, the Jesuits reverse the Plan, replace it with its negative: discrediting the Baconians and the emerging English Masonry.
When the Jesuits invent neo-Templarism, the Marquis de Luchet attributes the Plan to the neo-Templars. The Jesuits, who by now are jettisoning the neo-Templars, copy Luchet, through Barruel, but they attribute the Plan to all Freemasons in general.
Then the Baconian counteroffensive. Digging into the texts of this liberal and secular polemic, we discovered that from Michelet and Quinet down to Garibaldi and Gioberti, the Ordonation was attributed to the Jesuits (perhaps that idea originated with the Templar Pascal and his friends). The subject was popularized by Le Juif errant of Eugène Sue and by his character, the evil Monsieur Rodin, quintessence of the Jesuit world conspiracy. But as we looked further into Sue, we found far more: a text that seemed copied—but half a century in advance—from the Protocols, almost word for word. This was the final chapter of Les Mystères du peuple, where the diabolical Jesuit plan is exposed down to the last criminal detail: in a document sent by the general of the Society, Father Roothaan (historical figure), to Monsieur Rodin (who appears in the earlier Juif errant). Rudolphe de Gerolstein (previously the hero of the Mystères de Paris) comes into possession of this document and reveals it to the other democracy-loving characters: "You see, my dear Lebrenn, how cunningly this infernal plot is ordered, and what frightful sorrows, what horrendous enslavement, what terrible despotism it would spell for Europe and the world, were it to succeed...."
It seemed Nilus's preface to the Protocols. Sue also attributed to the Jesuits the motto (which will be found in the Protocols, attributed to the Jews), "The end justifies the means."
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There is no need to multiply the evidence to prove that this degree of Rosy Cross was skillfully introduced by the leaders of Masonry.... The doctrine, its hatred, and its sacrilegious practices, exactly those of the Cabala, of the Gnostics, and of the Manicheans, reveals to us the identity of the authors, namely the Jewish Cabalists.
—Mons. Léon Meurin, S.J. La Franc-Maçonnerie, Synagogue de
Satan, Paris, Retaux, 1893, p. 182
When Les Mystères du peuple appears and the Jesuits see that the Ordonation is attributed to them, they quickly adopt the one tactic not yet used by anyone. Exploiting Simonini's letter, they attribute the Ordonation to the Jews.
In 1869, Henri Gougenot de Mousseaux, famous for two books on magic, publishes Les Juifs, le judaisme et la judaisation des peuples chré- tiens, which says that the Jews use the cabala and are worshipers of Satan, since a secret line of descent links Cain directly to the Gnostics, the Templars, and the Masons. Gougenot receives a special benediction from Pius IX.
But the Plan, novelized by Sue, is rehashed by others, who are not Jesuits. There's a nice story, almost a thriller, that takes place a bit later. In 1921—after the appearance of the Protocols, which it took very seriously—the Times of London learns that a Russian monarchist landowner who fled to Turkey has bought from a former officer of the Russian secret police, now a refugee in Constantinople, a number of old books, and among them is one without a cover. On its spine it has only "Joli," and there is a preface dated 1864. This is the source of the Protocols. The Times does some research in the British Museum and discovers the original book, by Maurice Joly, D
ialogue aux enfers entre Montesquieu et Machiavel, Bruxelles (though it says Genève on the title page), 1864. Maurice Joly has no connection with Crétineau-Joly, but the similarity of the names must mean something.
Joly's book is a liberal pamphlet against Napoleon III, in which Machiavelli, who represents the dictator's cynicism, argues with Montesquieu. Joly is arrested for this revolutionary venture, he serves fifteen years in prison, and in 1878 he kills himself. The Jewish plot enunciated in the Protocols is taken almost literally from the words Joly puts in Machiavelli's mouth (the end justifies the means); after Machiavelli, the words become Napoleon's. The Times, however, does not realize (but we do) that Joly had shamelessly copied Sue's document, which predates it by at least seven years.
An anti-Semite authoress, devotee of the plot theory and the Unknown Superiors, a certain Nesta Webster, faced by this development, which reduces the Protocols to the level of cheap plagiarism, provides us with a brilliant idea, the sort of idea that only a true initiate or initiate-hunter can have: Joly was an initiate, he knew the Plan of the Unknown Superiors, and attributed it to Napoleon III, whom he hated. But this does not mean that the Plan does not exist independently of Napoleon. Since the Plan outlined in the Protocols is a perfect description of the customary behavior of the Jews, then the Jews must have invented the Plan. We had only to reread Mrs. Webster in the light of her own logic: since the Plan coincided exactly with what the Templars wanted, it was the Plan of the Templars.
Besides, we had the logic of facts on our side. We were particularly attracted by the episode in the Prague cemetery. This was the story of a certain Hermann Goedsche, an insignificant Prussian postal employee who published false documents to discredit the democrat Waldeck. The documents accused him of planning to assassinate the king of Prussia. Goedsche, after he was unmasked, became the editor of the organ of the big conservative landowners, Die Preussische Kreuzzeitung. Then, under the name Sir John Retcliffe, he began writing sensational novels, including Biarritz, 1868. In it he described an occultist scene in the Prague cemetery, very similar to the meeting of the Illuminati described by Dumas at the beginning of Giuseppe Balsamo, where Cagliostro, chief of the Unknown Superiors, among them Swedenborg, arranges the Affair of the Diamond Necklace. In the Prague cemetery the representatives of the twelve tribes of Israel gather, to expound their plans for the conquest of the world.
In 1876 a Russian pamphlet reprints the scene from Biarritz, but as if it were fact, not fiction. And in 1881, in France, Le Contemporain does the same thing, claiming that the news comes from an unimpeachable source: the English diplomat Sir John Readcliff. In 1896 one Bournand publishes a book, Les Juifs, nos contemporains, and repeats the scene of the Prague cemetery; he says that the subversive speech is made by the great rabbi John Readclif. A later version, however, reports that the real Readclif was taken to the fatal cemetery by Ferdinand Lassalle.
The plans revealed are more or less the same as described a few years earlier, in 1880, by the Revue des Etudes Juives, which publishes two letters attributed to Jews of the fifteenth century. The Jews of Aries ask the help of the Jew's of Constantinople, because in France they are being persecuted, and the latter reply: "Well-beloved brothers in Moses, if the king of France forces you to become Christian, do so, because you cannot do otherwise, but preserve the law of Moses in your hearts. If they strip you of your possessions, raise your sons to be merchants, so that eventually they can strip Christians of their possessions. If they threaten your lives, raise your sons to be physicians and pharmacists, so that they can take the lives of Christians. If they destroy your synagogues, raise your sons to be canons and clerics, so that they can destroy the churches of the Christians. If they inflict other tribulations on you, raise your sons to be lawyers and notaries and have them mingle in the business of every state, so that putting the Christians under your yoke, you will rule the world and can then take your revenge."
It was, again, the Plan of the Jesuits and, before that, of the Ordonation of the Templars. Few variations, few changes: the Protocols were self-generating; a blueprint that migrated from one conspiracy to another.
And when we racked our brains to find the missing link that connected this whole fine story to Nilus, we encountered Rachkovsky, the head of the tsar's secret police, the terrible Okhrana.
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A cover is always necessary. In concealment lies a great part of our strength. Hence we must always hide ourselves under the name of another society.
—Die neuesten Arbeiten des Spartacus und Philo in dem lüuminaten-Orden, 1794, p. 165
At that same time, reading some pages of our Diabolicals, we found that the Comte de Saint-Germain, among his numerous disguises, had assumed the identity Rackoczi, at least according to the ambassador of Frederick II in Dresden. And the landgrave of Hesse, at whose residence Saint-Germain was supposed to have died, said that he was of Transylvanian origin and his name was Ragozki. We had also to consider that Comenius dedicated his Pansophiae (a work surely born in the odor of Rosicrucianism) to a landgrave (another landgrave) named Ragovsky. A final touch to the mosaic: browsing at a bookstall in Piazza Castello, I found a German work on Masonry, anonymous, in which an unknown hand had added, on the flyleaf, a note to the effect that the text was the work of one Karl Aug. Ragotgky. Bearing in mind that Rakosky was the name of the mysterious individual who had perhaps killed Colonel Ardenti, we now could include in the Plan our Comte de Saint-Germain.
"Aren't we giving that scoundrel too much power?" Diotallevi asked, concerned.
"No, no," Belbo replied, "we need him. Like soy sauce in Chinese dishes. If it's not there, it's not Chinese. Look at Agliè, who knows a thing or two: did he take Cagliostro as his model? Or Willermoz? No. Saint-Germain is the quintessence of Homo Hermeticus."
Pierre Ivanovitch Rachkovsky: jovial, sly, feline, intelligent, and astute, a counterfeiter of genius. First a petty bureaucrat, later in contact with revolutionary groups, in 1879 he is arrested by the secret police and charged with having given refuge to terrorist companions after their attempted assassination of General Drentel. He becomes a police informer and (here we go!) joins the ranks of the Black Hundreds. In 1890 he discovers in Paris an organization that makes bombs for demonstrations in Russia; he arranges the arrest, back home, of seventy-three terrorists. Ten years later, it is discovered that the bombs were made by his own men.
In 1887 he circulates a letter by a certain Ivanov, a repentant revolutionary, who declares that the majority of the terrorists are Jews; in 1890, a "confession par un veillard ancien révolutionnaire," in which the exiled revolutionaries in London are accused of being British agents; and in 1892, a bogus text of Plekhanov, which accuses the leaders of the Narodnaya Volva party of having had that confession published.
In 1902 he forms a Franco-Russian anti-Semitic league. To ensure its success he uses a technique similar to that of the Rosicrucians: he declares that the league exists, so that people will then create it. But he uses another tactic, too: he cleverly mixes truth with falsehood, the truth apparently damaging to him, so that nobody will doubt the falsehood. He circulates in Paris a mysterious appeal to support the Russian Patriotic League, headquarters in Kharkov. In the appeal he attacks himself as the man who wants to make the league fail, and he expresses the hope that he, Rachkovsky, will change his mind. He accuses himself of relying on discredited characters like Nilus, and this is true.
Why can the Protocols be attributed to Rachkovsky?
Rachkovsky's sponsor is Count Sergei Witte, a minister who desires to turn Russia into a modern country. Why the progressive Witte makes use of the reactionary Rachkovsky, God only knows; but at this point the three of us would have been surprised by nothing. Witte has a political opponent, Elie de Cyon, who has already attacked him publicly, making assertions that recall certain passages in the Protocols, except that in Cyon's writings there are no references to the Jews, since he is of Jewish origin himself. In 1897, at Witte's orders, Rachkovsky has
Cyon's villa at Territat searched, and he finds a pamphlet by Cyon drawn from Joly's book (or Sue's), in which the ideas of Machiavelli-Napoleon III are attributed to Witte. With his genius for falsification, Rachkovsky substitutes the Jews for Witte and has the text circulated. The name Cyon is perfect, suggesting Zion, and now everybody sees that an eminent Jewish figure is denouncing a Jewish plot. This is how the Protocols are born. The text falls into the hands of Juliana or Justine Glinka, who in Paris frequents Madame Blavatsky's Parisian circle, and in her free time she spies on and denounces Russian revolutionaries in exile. This Glinka woman is undoubtedly an agent of the Paulicians, who are allied to the agrarians and therefore want to convince the tsar that Witte's programs are part of the international Jewish plot. Glinka sends the document to General Orgeievsky, and he, through the commander of the imperial guard, sees that it reaches the tsar. Witte is in trouble.
So Rachkovsky, driven by his anti-Semitism, contributes to the downfall of his sponsor. And probably to his own. Because from that moment on we lose all trace of him. But Saint-Germain perhaps donned new disguises, moved on to new reincarnations. Nevertheless, our story was plausible, rational, because it was backed by facts, it was true—as Belbo said, true as the Bible.