Foundations; The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion presented within Behold a Pale Horse pp. 268-274

We begin our journey into another chapter that Cooper didn't write (I think this is five so far, and I'm not counting the interview because Cooper actually did that). This is a very anti-Semitic work that one cannot divorce from the racism. What Cooper could have done was rewrite the entire thing, eliminate all references to race and religion, and then claim that the Illuminati wrote it. It would still have been bad, but it would have been better. He could have found the original document by Maurice Joly, which essentially does that, and reprinted it. Instead, Cooper is telling us to replace the word "Goyim" with the word "Cattle," the word "Jews" with "Illuminati," and the word "Zion" with "Sion." 

Two things about this approach: the first is that he could do this. Instead, he tells us to do it while reading. When Alex Jones interviewed Kanye West last year, you could tell by listening to it (and the Podcast Knowledge Fight points this out frequently about Jones' show) that there was a game being played by Jones. He's willing to tolerate anti-Semitism on his show as long as it doesn't get too overt. Jones only pushed back on West when West would talk about how great Hitler was, or when he would name "the Jews" overtly as being responsible for whatever it was West was complaining about. He plays this game because Jones knows that if he comes down too hard on anti-Semitism he loses a good portion of his audience. I can't say if Cooper is doing the same thing here; the mid-90s conspiracy crowd was tied up with the militia movement which was also tied up with a growing Neo-Nazi movement (which then became the Proud Boys and groups like that today). Cooper could have been catering to them. Again, I cannot say for sure.

The second thing is that the third example "Zion" = "Sion" is just nonsense. Does Cooper think that the person who is repulsed by anti-Semitic conspiracy theories is going to keep reading because now he's referencing the "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" conspiracy theory? Absolutely not. Furthermore, the person is just going to think "They spell it two ways." 

This is the leader of the Jewish elders speaking to the group. He's laying out how his group is going to take over the world and overthrow good Christian society. I've read this pamphlet before and I don't prefer the translation that Cooper is using, but we will keep to it: "It must be noted that men with bad instincts are more in number than the good, and therefore the best results in governing them are attained by violence and terrorisation, and not by academic discussion." 

I teach philosophy and this is a debatable point. In the original text, this is put into the mouth of Machiavelli; which I dispute the accuracy of doing so because the man's work is not accurately reflected by his reputation, e.g. he never wrote that the ends justify the means. 

The sentiment here would be something that accurately reflects the work of 17th-century English Philosopher Thomas Hobbes or this is a sentiment that Aristotle communicated in the Nichomachean Ethics. For the former, the idea is that people will get away with whatever they can until the force of violence stops them. For the latter, Aristotle believed that only the truly wise would have no need of the law to compel them to right action. Most people though, need a carrot and a stick to behave morally. 

It's an actual good question but so far we haven't gotten anything terrible. The work continues to describe that "political freedom" isn't something that can be defined. Ok, again, this is true. What would it mean to say that an individual is "politically free"? Is it anarchy? Because then we are back in the Hobbesian state of nature, where we may have no laws personally, but we are subject to the whims of the unrestrained actions of our neighbors. Another English Philosopher, John Locke, would agree, but his state of nature was one of abundance and thus peace. Hobbes famously believed that life in the state of nature would be "nasty, brutish, and short." The short-lived pirate kingdom of the late 1600 and early 1700s would be an example, but there a rudimentary government system was created until the English Navy destroyed it. 

The problem is that being politically free means nothing. The libertarian dream of people like Ayn Rand pretending they want no government but then they have no plan for who runs the roads or the sewers. So far, other than this work allegedly coming from the mouth of an unnamed and unidentifiable Jewish group who met at a cemetery in Prague there is nothing bad here. 

"In our day the power which has replaced that of the rulers who were liberal is the power of Gold."

Ok, I agree (?), there is too much money in politics. However, that is not what this means. Remember, this is supposedly coming from the "Jew" and the canard here is that the banks, run by the Jewish cabal, control the money. The claim is that all governments can be controlled by the flow of gold. When the original work by Joly was written, all nations were on the gold standard for their economy. We would call it "capital" in modern terms. What's happening is that the elder is claiming that with gold, they can turn any liberal, i.e. politically free, state into a despotism by injecting gold into the mix. The goal is to subvert any society into despotism through the use of what matters most to the populace--gold. 

Sure, you're thinking, that makes some sense when you talk about campaign finance or banks; but not regular people. To which, I disagree, you can promise the people free healthcare or lower taxes. Which one do they choose: in the US, we chose lower taxes. We do this quite frequently because the promise of personal wealth means more than the common good and those abstract poor people can all die. 

I know I keep saying it, but these are all good questions from a political philosophy position. The elder continues by explaining the fundamentals of this plan, "The political has nothing in common with the moral. The ruler who is governed by the moral is not a skilled politician, and therefore is unstable on his throne."

In the original, these words are spoken by Machiavelli--and this is an accurate representation of his belief. He argues in the Prince, The Discourses, and the History of Florence; that great leaders are not afraid to commit immoral actions in service to their state. However, his case for this is war. There is a larger case that Machiavelli is making though that gets ignored. Italian princes in the 1500s were almost exclusively Catholic. This prevented them from going to war with their own forces unless they could get a dispensation from the Church--which could easily be purchased. Unless, of course, the Pope was a Sforza; you were a Medici, and the war you wanted was against the Sforza. One way around this was to hire condottiere or mercenaries to do your fighting for you. Then you didn't impugn the morality of your state, because it wasn't your army that did the fighting. The hair-splitting involved here is impressive but it's well within Aquinas's Doctrine of Double Effect to call it moral. Machiavelli's longer point was that a prince should just swallow up the immorality and create their own army to do their fighting for them. The army would be loyal because they were fighting for their homeland. They wouldn't switch sides or feel "not up to fighting" on some days (these were problems Machiavelli points out with hired soldiers).

What the elder is arguing though is a bit convoluted. This is because Joly has to hide his claims from the censor of Napolean III who can have him killed, and the person who plagiarized him to make the Protocols was an idiot who didn't understand it is less a good question of political philosophy but a convoluted conspiracy theory. 

1) People are idiots: It is necessary to have regard to the rascality, the slackness, the instability of the mob, its lack of capacity to understand and respect the conditions of its own life, or its own welfare. 

2) We will exploit their greed (as I said above). 

3) We will bring down the state by equivocating: If every State has two foes and if in regard to the external foe, it is allowed and not considered immoral to use every manner and art of conflict, as for example to keep the enemy in ignorance of plans of attack and defence, to attack him by night or in superior numbers, then in what way can the same means in regard to a worse foe, the destroyer of the structure of society and the commonweal, be called immoral and not permissible?

They will frame the struggle as being an existential one and thus any means to win are permitted. Those, like Cooper, who push the NWO/Illuminati/Jewish conspiracy frame it just like this. Oh sure, China is bad, but look what these liberals are doing to our kids. 

4) Here, the "liberal," has no position, their dream is too ideological (As I explained in the beginning of this post), so they are clearly trying to bring down this society therefore we must destroy them. 

Therefore: "Out of the temporary evil we are now compelled to commit will emerge the good of an unshakeable rule, which will restore the regular course of the machinery of the national life, brought to naught by liberalism." 

Those who wish for freedom cannot be allowed to exercise those wishes. The elder, believes that people will prefer what they are used to rather than anything new. Thus, the temporary evil they will be "forced" to commit will be in service to the maintenance of the status quo. Machiavelli agreed with this idea but he didn't think it was good. 

One of the appeals of this work is not only is it anti-Semitic, but that it attacks all forms of permissiveness (i.e. liberalism in the modern sense). It believes that any group allowed to govern itself will fall to the same victimization provided above. This is because the mob cannot be trusted to live their own lives. The author exploits neophobia here. If only the youth would just listen to their fathers, then they would not have to intervene in this manner. Since the right-wing conspiracy crowd is, by necessity, conservative (especially in Tsarist Russia at the end), this hits a chord with them. The kids are all drinking and cavorting with one another--why can't they just listen to us? They claim to want simple "freedom" but then cannot define it, so we must give it to them in our own way. 

The abstraction of freedom has enabled us to persuade the mob in all countries that their government is nothing but the steward of the people who are the owners of the country, and the steward may be replaced like a worn-out glove.

The people who want revolution, who protest for rights, etc? Those people are controlled by the Jewish elders and are the problem because they challenge the status quo in the name of "freedom."