2. In the early 20th century, the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion ‘revealed’ a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, and is still a foundational text for today’s antisemites
In 1903, the Russian newspaper Znamya secured an exclusive serial of great importance. It revealed a terrible conspiracy for world domination from a group responsible for some troubling recent events: the Jews. Purporting to be the minutes from a meeting of Jewish leaders, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion revealed that the Jews planned to take over the world through manipulating the economy and media and starting religious conflicts. In fact, Protocols is known to be a messy hodge-podge of Maurice Joly’s 1864 satire Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu and Hermann Goedsche’s novel, Biarritz, from 1868.
But plenty of people believed in its authenticity, and a shocking number still do today. The pamphlet spread throughout Europe after the Russian Revolution in 1917 with anti-Bolshevik immigrants who blamed the fall of Tsar Nicholas on Jews (see below). In 1920, The Dearborn Independent, Henry Ford’s newspaper, ran a series of articles based upon Protocols, earning praise from Adolf Hitler himself. Indeed, Protocols served Hitler as a how-to manual for his attempt to exterminate the Jews altogether. Incredibly, this known forgery has also recently been endorsed by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hamas, and Saudi Arabia.