Skepticism: The Plot Against Civilization pp. 320-323

Last week we glossed over the long period where Webster compared selections of the Protocols to selections of whatever she could use to show that the world revolution was being controlled by a single entity. She failed in this, but the point was to never create a case—this far in the book, you are buying her story. Her intended audience is not going to fact check her assertions about the other books. She’s been handed a gift in the form of an English translation of the Protocols which not only justifies her anti-Semitism but also her conspiracy. Because the Protocols are too good of evidence she questions their authenticity.

This is a good move, a surprising one for her, but I would give her credit if I didn’t suspect that it was disingenuous. A little background for any new readers. This book was published in 1921. The first English version of the Protocols was published in Britian in 1920. While she’s writing this book, the Protocols are going to hit the shops. It had been widely circulated in Russia by this time and editions appeared in Germany. Some excerpts would be published in the US, but references to “Jews” were removed and instead it was framed as a Communist manifesto. Webster gets a full version in 1920, and London Times writer Phillip Graves is going to expose it as a forgery in 1921. I must allow that Webster doesn’t know it’s a forgery when her book goes to press. I can’t get a specific publication date for this book, but Graves’s article exposing the forgery is going to happen in mid-August the same year.

The book publication process is long and tedious, so even if the book isn’t published by the time Graves’s expose comes out, it may be too late. Yet, the book could be given a retraction of the last chapter, an addendum, or even just an insert explaining the problem.

Webster questions whether Serge Nilus, the supposed discoverer of the Protocols, didn’t let his known anti-Semitism influence his discovery. This is a good question. Just as much as it would be to explain that Nilus was an individual who saw conspiracies everywhere and just folded the Anti-Semitic conspiracy theory into his ultra-Orthodox Christian worldview. This is what he essentially did anyway. She then asks whether or not the Protocols were just invented by the Tsarist government. Again, a good question, and this one is a bit trickier to answer. The Okhrana (the Russian Secret Police), if they didn’t commission it at least allowed it to be published and distributed.

She writes, “the Protocols have never been refuted.”  In English, she’s correct; but even early on in German and Russian there were serious doubts about this way too convenient of a book.

Webster makes an interesting claim, that a defense of the Protocols (provided that they are not authentic) is that they are the work of Illuminized Masonry, “and not of a purely Jewish association, has been rejected by advocates of the Jews themselves.” She wonders why? Well, it’s because it wasn’t the work of Illuminized Masonry, it’s a forgery and almost anyone carefully reading it would know that.

The biggest problem she has with her conspiracy theory, is that the original manuscript the Protocols was plagiarized from was written in 1864. This means that the “roadmap” of world revolution does not include any Revolutions from 1789 to 1864; meaning that the French Revolution is out. This conundrum is devastation for her story. Webster fancies herself an expert on the French Revolution, she’s not, but she thinks she is, so it has to fit in her conspiracy theory. What follows then is some mental gymnastics where she makes up terms in order to justify how this 19^th century book is the model for an 18^th century event. She writes, “It is strange that in the controversy that has raged over the Protocols so little attention has been paid to the fact that the so-called “Elders of Zion” were admittedly masons of the 33^rd degree of the Grand Orient.”

She’s just making this up. 33^rd degree Masons are purported to be the highest a mason can achieve…like an Eagle Scout. Which, fine, I’d accept that the authors of world history would be at the top of the organization, but she’s pulling this from thin air. I’ve read other conspiracy theories that claim the Protocols are not Jewish but Illuminati (Cooper’s book makes this claim), Lizard Aliens (Icke makes this claim), and Masonic; but the Masonry conspiracy claims always cite back to this book. She’s just invented it because she’s trying to make the French Revolution fit into the grand conspiracy.

Since Webster tries to pretend that she’s some kind of academic she has to know that she’s making this up. She has so many quotation marks in this single paragraph that the omission of any reference is striking. Her evidence is proof by absence; there were no Jews present in the leadership of the French Revolution or the conspiracy of Babeuf therefore it’s not the Jews; it’s Illuminized masonry. That’s not how evidence works. You don’t get to eliminate one group and then just swap in a different group. It’s not the Jews therefore it’s the Dutch, has the same level of veracity that her position.

The larger problem presented by the existence of the Protocols is that they undermine most of her work so far. She’s spent a lot of the time blaming the Jews for these various revolutions, but now she’s being forced to walk a good deal of it back ironically because of a book which argues that the Jews are trying to takeover the world. This has to be very confusing for her.

It leads me to the assumption that she found the Protocols while writing this book. These three pages have a very “retcon” feel to them. Someone handed her the Protocols all excited because they were helping her prove a theory, she’s bored people to tears at dinner parties and such; then she begins checking them out but then she notices that they were written too late. So instead of driving to her conclusion she’s got to spend a bit of time trying to figure out how this book which hasn’t been mentioned at all by either Robison or Barruel, the foremost experts on this specific conspiracy. This means she has must shift responsibility and if there’s one group that she hates more than the Jews, it’s the Germans.