Trois: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as Presented in Behold a Pale Horse pp. 314-316

Protocol 17

A good start is what you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the sea. And fortunately, the Elder agrees...sort of. This protocol is a strange one, it is more evidence that the Protocols are not meant to be read like a normal book. We are supposed to cherry pick sections of it as evidence of the conspiracy while making the assumption that the rest of the book offers support for the part we cherry picked. I'll spoil the surprise now, this protocol contains three distinct subjects, which are unrelated narratively from each other. 

I] The practice of advocacy produces men cold, cruel, persistent, un-principled, who in all cases take up an impersonal, purely legal standpoint.

The elder is going to discuss lawyers and the legal profession. I know that hating the lawyers is as old as the legal profession. We have Shakespeare's Dick the Butcher and Jack Cade discussing the formation of a new society and Dick the Butcher suggests, "First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers (Henry VI Part 2 Act IV Scene 2)." The lament of Dick and Jack is that it seems like that lawyers do more damage with the skin of the lamb (the parchment that the law is written on) and the wax of a bee (the official seal) than the lamb or the bee does and it seems like magic. This is the motivating force behind the Sovereign Citizen/Freemen on the Land, movement which I have discussed throughout this book. 

The Elder describes lawyers as being cold, impersonal, and being so focused on the law that they have no conception of the public benefit. So far, this strikes me as Golovenski (our plagiarist) as having a personal problem with a particular lawyer, or perhaps this is Joly's beef with the lawyers defending the legality of Napolean III without understanding the damage that enabling him can cause. Either way this is playing on the stereotype that even Shakespeare is using in the Henry VI. 

The elder further suggests that the law become more impersonal. The lawyers (he uses the term "Advocates") must be completely separated from their clients and only confer with the judges and each other. This way the lawyers will be more reporters of the law than those with an interest in the outcome, or so it will seem to the clients. 

Further lending credence to my hypothesis that this is personal: "This will also, by the way, remove the present practic of corrupt bargain between advocates to agree only to let that side win which pays most..."

That ellipses is not mine, it's in the text, and that means it is time for a subject change. 

II] The very next sentence, "We have long past taken care to discredit the priesthood of the goyim, and thereby to ruin their mission on earth which in these days might still be a great hindrance to us." 

The word "goyim" is what we are supposed to read as "cattle" according to Cooper's attempt at making this chapter not seem to be as anti-Semitic as it is. This excuse never works because it's not the word that makes it anti-Semitic it's the context. Christians call their religious leaders "priests" and while the term can be generic, to a European audience it's not. Further, two sentences later, the Elder discusses that they've been specifically attacking the "Christian religion." 

The rest of this subsection attacks the Catholic Church. This is an interesting take because I'm not quite sure who it is for. Modern believers in the Protocols are anti-Catholic. It's easy to forget, but one target of groups like the Ku Klux Klan were Catholics. The Elder attacks the Papal Court because, during the time of the Russian Revolution the Vatican is the last feudal society left in Europe. It has some esteem earned solely from age and even those who dislike the Catholic religion have a certain respect for the institution itself. Attacking that shows the immorality of the Elder and his people, which is why they will rush to defend it after their proxy forces have broken it down. 

The religion of the elder is the only thing that will be practiced and only by the elite. Yet I don't quite understand why this would even be necessary. If only the Elder's people can practice the true religion, do they even need the true religion? Perhaps it's my atheism, or even the incapacity of the plagiarist to conceive that there could be a people without religion. The rest of the religions of the world will be debased to vulgar and unprincipled expressions because the true religion can only be "practiced by the genius of our gifted tribe..."

III) This third topic is unfocused, er, more unfocused than usual. It discusses that the population will keep itself under surveillance, the Elder will impart a sense of duty so that 1/3 will feel obligated to report the rest for any infractions. It will be an honor to be a spy and informer, but they will quickly and severely deal with any unfounded denunciations. We wouldn't want a recreation of the Inquisition or the witch-hunts in our dystopian society. The irony of this is that Golovinski, the plagiarist, was an agent of the Russian secret police who planted stories in the press--so this section was very familiar to him. 

The rest of the protocol describes who they will control and if you think we've read this before--we haven't. In previous protocols he's described controlling the advisors to rulers who can blackmail them. Now he's going to control the administrative state, but also those people who spend their time in, "amusements, editors, printers, and publishers, booksellers, clerks, and salesmen, workmen, coachmen, lackeys, etcetera." 

So, the question we should be asking is, "who is left out?" That list covers everyone. If everyone is in on the conspiracy than it's not a conspiracy, it's just society. The elder is describing a society that is authoritarian for sure, but everyone knows about the conspiracy. He just listed every profession and then capped it off with an "etcetera" so that if we can point out a missing profession it's in there. 

Finally, the protocol closes by reminding us that it's explicitly anti-Semitic, "Such an organisation will extirpate abuses of authority, of force, of bribery, everything in fact which we by our counsels, by our theories of the superhuman rights of man, have introduced into the customs of the goyim..."

Again, with these ellipses. Anyway, the point here is that all the problems that we see are really the Jews' fault. Bribery, abuse, force, etc.. these crimes may be committed by the good Christian leaders but they do so only because the Jewish Kabal has introduced them into the world. To repeat from earlier, the point of this book is not to read it, it's to skim it and then find whatever you need to justify your worldview.