Luxury Goods: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as Presented in Behold a Pale Horse; pp. 284-286

Protocol 6

We begin with the Elder, "We shall soon begin to establish huge monopolies, reservoirs of colossal riches, upon which even large fortunes of the goyim will depend to such an extent that they will go to the bottom together with the credit of the States on the day after the political smash..."

Protocol 6 is "the Jews own the banks." The Elder isn't making a claim that they will monopolize industry, but that of finance. Oddly, this carries a thread from the last protocol where he laid out the plan to keep the people dependent on gold and drown in them in abstract ideas. Early in the book Cooper quoted Mayer Rothschild, "Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws;" the idea being that a powerful enough economic force is beyond the reach of the law. It doesn't matter that the quotation of Rothschild is false, it can be sourced nowhere but in weirdo conspiracy books (see the book "Jewish Space Lasers" for a more thorough debunking of this quote). The point of it, I think actually holds water. If an individual or other entity (bank, corporation, company, etc.) becomes too wealthy there is very little political will to do anything about it. Republicans in the US have been bemoaning the power of the tech companies for years, and they are correct, but it's all bluster. 

Why? Because they have no real willingness to alienate the investors in those companies. While Democrats in the US typically use anti-corporate sound bites are unwilling to alienate the money from those companies. The control of finance is how the Elder will control society. 

The rant here harkens back to the canard that the Jews control the banks. It's playing on that stereotype, which was, for a bit based on fact--though not in the way most people consider it. The fact is that it was an established position that charging interest was a sin in Christianity, but not in Judaism. Yet, banking is too important to the finances of the world and to the kingdoms of medieval Europe (with special thanks to the Knights Templar) that the Christian monarchs would hire Jewish scholars to run the finances. This way, the kingdom could profit from interest without the stain of having charged it. This is similar to the use of mercenaries in Renaissance Europe because waging war was a sin but hiring people to do your killing for you was a step removed. This was, of course, bullshit in both respects. Machiavelli would write large sections in all of his books bemoaning the use of mercenaries and concluding that a good leader (Prince or Republic) would not care about personal morality when the security of the state was at risk. The best part of the Jewish bankers working for the kings was that if the kingdom was losing money--the king could just confiscate all Jewish property and kick them out. This was literally the reason for the Spanish Inquisition--hunting down Jews and those suspected of crypto-Judaism in order to fill the coffers of the Spanish royalty. 

The problem with finance is that it isn't anything. Adam Smith makes this point in "Wealth of Nations" when he discusses speculation, because "speculation" is money for money's sake it is hollow and places society at risk. Just wanting money for the sake of wanting money creates a hollow foundation for the economy. In Smith's recommendation, at least the price of silver was set against the amount of the basic cereal (in his case corn) the population ate. 

The most interesting aspect of this protocol though is what it targets and then what it actually hits. The Protocols and the Joly text are very similar here, and I was sure that this argument was an addition by the pro-Tsarist anti-Semitic adaptor of Joly's work that I was shocked to find it almost word for word. 

The Elder desires to eliminate the potential opponents through the accumulation of money. The aristocracy is dead, but the problem is that the aristocrats still own land and thus can generate their own wealth. To eliminate them as a threat, the move is to raise taxes on the land. This is obvious and sounds very Marxist. However, the next move is to focus on trade and industry, which robs the landed people of their monopoly on resources but only if they fail to adjust. We know from reading Das Kapital that the problem isn't land, it's ownership. The aristocracy and the robber barons are the same people in different times. 

The conspiracy will then use speculation to drain the wealth of these people as it will focus on luxuries. The very thing Athenian Philosopher Epicurus warned about to keep these in reach they will raise the wage of the common worker, but also raise the prices. Up until the second point, I had an idea where this was going. However, they add the last part, and it's not about Marxism, it's about keeping people poor and distracted to realize that they are being expended to keep other people rich. 

In skeptic circles, we have a saying that one should never attribute to malice what can better be explained by accident. Protocol 6 violates this principle and it's not anything new. 

You can find people complaining about this as far back as you can find old people complaining about young people. Yes, the population is too distracted by the games to understand the nobility is fleecing them. We, currently, are too distracted by social media to understand that we're being fleeced. 

The sentiment isn't new but you have to realize that conspiracy theories like these are written for people that think civilization peaked when they did. Sure, they had their Discos and metal bands, but today's music is evil. They complain about the kids on their screens but the only difference is that their screen wasn't in their pocket. The concept of luxury items as being a hollow pursuit is legitimate but it's a perpetual problem. The conspiracy theory is just galvanized neophobia but it sounds different because the author has put Marxist sentiment in the mouth of the Elder.