Jewish Mythbusters: Elders of Zion

The Myth: Someone has published the minutes from a meeting of a bunch of Jewish elders who are plotting world domination and discuss the various way they plan to manipulate other peoples, economies, and governments. It has widely been used to fuel anti-Semitic sentiment. Last year I had a scary experience at Vanderbilt where a professor started telling the class that the Elders of Zion were a religious group. I stepped in and immediately set the record straight, but even as I was talking I realized I didn’t know quite as much about the hoax as I’d like to. There are some great online sources for debunking this myth. There’s always Wikipedia, which does a great job of giving background on the original document, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, with a long and very well-cited article:

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Russian: "????????? ???????? ????????", or "???????? ?????????", see also other titles) is an antisemitic and anti-Zionist plagiarism and literary forgery first published in 1903 in Russian, in Znamya; it alleges a Jewish and Masonic plot to achieve world domination. "The Protocols" (the most brief title by which the text is known) is an early example of contemporary conspiracy theory literature, and takes the form of a speech describing how to dominate the world, the need to control the media, finance, replace traditional social order, etc. It is one of the best known and discussed examples of literary forgery, and a hoax. The text was popularized by those opposed to Russian revolutionary movement, and was disseminated further after the revolution of 1905, becoming known worldwide after the 1917 October Revolution. It was widely circulated in the West in 1920 and thereafter. The Great Depression and the rise of Nazism were important developments in the history of the Protocols, and the hoax continued to be published and circulated despite its debunking.

The United State Holocaust Museum has a really nice page about the Protocols and all of the anti-Semitism they’ve inspired from their genesis at the turn of the 20th century through the Holocaust and to today. Though the Protocols have been debunked over and over, they’re far from out of favor. There was a New York Times article about the Protocols in 2006 called The Anti-Semitic Hoax That Refuses to Die, and documentary called the Protocols of Zion about the rise of anti-Semitism after September 11th. Finally, there’s a Snopes page about a similarly anti-Semitic blood libel in Saudi Arabia that claims Jews use Christian blood to make hamentaschen. Snopes mentions the recent reprinting of the Protocols in an Egyptian newpaper.