War! The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as Presented in Behold a Pale Horse; pp. 286-287

Protocol 7

Anti-Semitism is so baked into the fabric of European history that narrowing down the worst tracts, polemics, and writings is hard to accomplish. The Protocols stand out because they were published and within a decade Europe erupted into war. The Protocols looked like it was revealing a secret, but then, we must remember that the Protocols were plagiarized from a criticism of Napolean III, who was a warmonger and for original author Maurice Joly to predict that Napolean III would start a new war, was like predicting that fish are going to be wet. 

No one pays attention to that, because it's boring. Knowing that war was inevitable in Europe in the 1900s because of the intense animosities in the Balkans and all of the alliances and treaties; is equally boring. Claiming that the "Great War" was the result of the machinations of a secret cabal that needed European society to get checked...that's much more interesting. 

This Protocol is about the coming war. This one may have more of a responsibility in the Protocols gaining their popularity throughout Europe than the book in total. The Elder has a strange throwaway paragraph in the beginning. He recommends increasing police forces and then populating the rest of the world with them, the masses of the proletariat, and the rich. Then he moves on to the real topic.

What happens next is a description of the world as an interconnected tangle of alliances and treaties. Doing this, the Elder claims, will allow the world to rely on them as benevolent forces that are the only thing able to keep the peace, "In the first place we keep in check all countries, for they well know that we have the power whenever we like to create disorders or to restore order. All these countries are accustomed to see in us an indispensable force of coercion."

This is confusing to me. Isn't the point of the conspiracy to stay in the shadows? The Elder made this point three sections ago, that control was more effective if they controlled the secretaries and were, in fact, the deep state. Now, he's claiming that they will be in the open? Not to spoil anything for the future, but I know that this contradicts later Protocols. Unless he's being metaphorical, in fact saying that the leaders of nations will rely on "us" meaning their various puppets, but I think I'm being too generous with that claim. 

The elder discusses the tangled webs of politics and economics that link the countries of Europe as part of their plan. This makes sense if one wants to pretend that this is a web that cannot be understood. Yet, it can easily be understood if one wants to sit down and figure it out. The chief factor is trade. England and France settled their centuries-long animosity through trade. It simply became no longer worth the economic risk to make war. In the 21st century, one can make a pretty good bet that China isn't going to war with the United States (or vice versa) because our two economies are so intermingled. Sure it would be a little more difficult to understand that if Germany invades Belgium and France has to defend; what the Ottoman Empire will do--but it's not impossible. We must remember that this book is written for morons who are too lazy to figure out the politics of the world, or it's for people that have never been taught how to look up anything beyond what their authorities have told them. 

The Protocol closes, "In a word, to sum up our system of keeping the governments of the goyim [remember that Cooper wants us to read this as "Sheep"] in Europe in check, we shall show our strength to one of them by terrorist attempts and to all, if we allow the possibility of a general rising against us, we shall response with the guns of America or China or Japan."

"Terrorist" here would just mean "force." They would use force to assert their authority as the Russians did numerous times against protestors desiring democratic reforms. It is almost impossible to separate our understanding of "terrorism" which is narrow, from the older understanding which is much broader. The idea is the same, to terrorize; but it's more than just a bomb in a building. 

What's more interesting is that list of countries. America in the early 20th century was becoming understood by the international community as a military force because we had very recently just ended the first "modern" war--the US Civil War. We had also become recognized for our industrial output. The reason that the Confederacy could never have won that war is that they could not match the material that the Union was churning out (they also had incompetent commanders, less of a population, and a lack of resources--but the industrial output was certainly a factor). China is different. It wasn't regarded as industrialized, indeed the Opium Wars pretty much settled that debate, but it was always recognized for its population. Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, recognizes China as an economic force because its staple crop, rice, is harvested twice a year. It has an enormous population under the sway, at the time, of a single person. 

Japan is the outlier here. Japan is not highly regarded by Europe at all. In the original Joly text, Japan would not have been considered as a force with guns at all. By the time the Protocols is plagiarized Japan isn't considered much better. This is the reason that the Russian Empire began the Nichiro Senso, which I use the Japanese word for the Russian-Japanese War because the Russians get humiliated and this causes a collapse in the esteem the world and the Russian people give the Empire. My guess is that Japan is chosen because no one reading the Protocols is going to be familiar with it. 

It's a short Protocol and it only adds confusion within the conspiracy theory.