Part One: The Conspiracy to Begin All Conspiracies

That I decided to throw a wild card in this time. Um, although I could have given the topic today, it might have been appropriate to just shout Hitler, I mean where you were going, But then you didn't do it, and now I'm confused. Well, Hitler did have a lot of weird butt problems. So it's this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast where we talk about the worst people in all of history and the things behind them. In today's episode is one of the latter. My guest today is

Langston Kerment from the Boys and from Insecure. Langston, how are you doing today? Oh? I'm fantastic And what an intro? What make the start? I love the way you start your show? This is fantastic. We're professionals here, Langston, And the way professionals open shows is by immediately before the show starts shouting out the name of a disease, illness, or just a totally shrieking um. Lankesons Lakes and has a podcast. I do have a podcast. That's true. It's

it's about black people in our conspiracy theories. I rarely yell anal Fishers, but I'm learning a lot today and maybe that's something I'll incorporate. Linkston. One of my really good friends, Cody del Rosario, he texts me, He's like, You've got to listen to this podcast, and I'm like, it's your show, and I'm like, yeah, that's kind of on our network, and I will hell yeah, yeah, Well Langston you you you just as you just said, you

do a show about conspiracy theories. Um, and today we're talking about the conspiracy theory that kind of started all modern conspiracy theories. We're going back to the source, the the the origin point for like Q and on for like the n w oh, the Illuminati conspiracies, all of that ship, all that Bill Cooper's stuff starts with the subject of today's episode. We are talking about the protocols

of the Elders of Zion. Yeah you heard anything about that? No, But I just love a lot of fancy words strong together. This is one of the most influential pieces of dangerous conspiratorial nonsense ever created. It has gotten millions of people killed, like like like a death told that that your average dictator would struggle to or your average American president for that manner, we struggled struggle to match like this is. This thing has gotten so many real Jimmy Carter worth

of numbers. I got you. I love the Jimmy Carter's your yard stick for a president. He gets a lot of people kill. The greatest murderer of all time, I would say, Jimmy Carter, history's greatest monster. Um. Yeah, you can see in his eyes as he feverishly builds houses, he's just desperately trying to weigh down his debt to humanity, so boiling out of him. Uh So, as you're well aware, as all of our listeners are well aware, we live

today in an age of conspiracies, real and theorized. I think about half of the country, uh probably about half of the world lives in a semi permanent state of conspiratorial obsession. And a lot of these folks are right,

you know. Um, for example, there's a ton of black people today who remember personally what the FBI co intel pro like program did to the civil rights movement, the black There's people all over the Arab world and in Latin America who lost family members and lived in chains for decades because of conspiracies cooked up or funded by the CIA. A lot of people have been victims of real conspiracies. So when I say we live in a

world of conspiracies, it's not all nonsense. Um, So I would say the great plague of our modern world isn't that a lot of people believe in conspiracies, because a lot of people have a good reason to. The thing that's slowly tearing our society apart, which is kind of perfectly embodied by Q and On in the terminal case of fascist brain worms that it spread the millions of

Americans is something different. It's called conspiracism. This term was popularized by a scholar named Frank Mints in the nineteen eighties. He defined conspiracism as belief in the primacy of conspiracies and the unfolding of history. In other words, the idea that conspiracies or a conspiracy is a moving the primary moving factor in the history of a nation of the world. That's conspiracism. It's demonstrably false because the vast majority of

ship that happens happens pretty much out in the open. Right. There's all these different like like like with the with the case of like kind of white supremacy in the United States, there's a bunch of FBI conspiracies and stuff you can point to, But the history of white supremacy is mostly pretty open, like most of it's not really all that hidden. It's just like the way things fucking work and stuff. Um, But so you've got these real conspiracies.

Conspiracism is believing that everything that happens is tied to a conspiracy in some way, as opposed to this then being kind fragments of the reality that we live in. As Frank Mintz wrote, conspiracism serves the needs of diverse political and social groups in America and elsewhere. It identifies elites, blames them for economic and social catastrophes, and assumes that things will be better once popular action can remove them from positions of power. And I think that gets to

the key difference between believing in conspiracies and conspiracism. If you understand like that the FBI and the CIA carry it out and still engage in a variety of conspiracies to funk up a bunch of things. You probably don't believe that just getting rid of one of those organizations

will solve all of the world's problems. Like you'd be rad to get rid of the CIA and the FBI, But it wouldn't stop Turkey from ethnically cleansing the Kurds, or a year by jan by ethnically from ethnically cleansing Armenians. It wouldn't fix climate change overnight. It wouldn't stop our

world from accelerating into an uninhabitable mess. Conspiracists believe it, like, yeah, if you get this conspiracy out of the way, Like that's the Q and on thing, right, if we can get rid of this cabal of evil child eating pedophiles to solve all of the world's problems, everything will be fair. We just have to solve this one. It's kind of an optimistic worldview when you really think about it, conspiracism because it believes that there's a magic bullet that can

fix everything. So yeah, scholar, and you like, it's it's clear why conspiracism is particularly um attractive today. Because all of our problem we have so many problems, and they're all so complex, and they all like have tendrils not just into these different government organizations and different like cabals and whatnot, but they have all these tendrils into like

just the way we live our lives. Right, it'd be nice if there was like one group of small one small group of evil men making climate change happen, But it's largely tied to the fact that we all kind of live the life that we live and we have all these systems that ensure that we're going to continue pumping carbon into the atmosphere and that's hard to fix.

Like dope, if it was just like those some three dudes and you were just like, oh, you're fucking something all right, by yeah, yes, I And I maintained that it is three dudes, mostly so that I don't have to work on me, but that yeah, that's the personal work. But I'm ay, there's there's two, like there's the there's that like oh seven companies responsible for like the carbon emissions.

Like that's true, but they're doing it because of the way we all because for example, we all need to drive a car because we for years like allowed fossil fuel companies to destroy any chance at functional public transport in a large chunk of the world, or like, um, you know, yeah, yeah, like you can tie a lot of emissions to Amazon, but Amazon is emitting because we all want our second day delivery and ship like there's it's it's all more complicated than just like Jeff Bezos

bad he is, but a lot of a bunch of fruit leather the other day from Amazon. And I didn't have to do that. I didn't need that product. You wanted the fruit leather, and so you really wanted that fruit ye Did I need a hundred pieces of fruit leather? Absolutely not. That's on me, Jeff. We all we all have our fruit leather in this discussion, you know, um

yeah so. Scholars Seymour lip Set and Earl rob wrote that the typical conspiracy theory is international in scope, extends both in space and time, dates back in history, and is destined to endure forever. And that's kind of what

separates an actual conspiracy. You know, you can look at real conspiracy like, okay, well, at this date, the c i A launched a plan to overthrow the democratically elected president of Guatemala and backed death squads and stuff, and like there's a beginning and an end and a scope, a limited scope to the conspiracy. A conspiracy theory, there's no limit. It goes on forever, It goes back in time forever, and it will never it will endure forever.

Alex Jones, for example, believes in a globalist conspiracy that stretches literally back into prehistory. A small group of a few thousand insiders, depending on what day he's talking about it, have been working for a linear to enslave in the human race. Destroying these globalists will solve every problem that humans have. But an Alex's estimation, their precise member roster is always changing and their plans are always a out ten years away from completion. So like, no matter what

you do, it's always there. It's always if you could just solve the problem, everything would be better, but you never do. That's a fucking conspiracy theory. And in the modern sense of the word. Key believers on the other hand, and to tie every problem of their lives and nationwide to this cabal that's fighting Donald Trump and magical combat and yeah, like it it links up with all these different ship We've talked about this a lot on the show.

Historian Daniel Pipes laid out a short list of characteristics that virtually all conspiracy theories have in common. Power is the goal, benefit indicates control, Conspiracies drive history, nothing is accidental or foolish, and appearances deceived. Right. One of the big like key cat like tenants of Q and on is that there are no coincidences um. And part of this is just because like man, fucking wild ship happens

in the world. You know, sometimes the Archduke of Austria Hungary is trying to get a sandwich or is what is like driving down the street and a guy at a sandwich shop shoots him and then twenty million people die, and that's just the way the fucking world goes. But conspiracy, no, it's got to be you know, this guy was a part of like he was a part of an organization, but it was like just a bunch of poor serbians. But they've got to imagine, no, it was part of this.

There's people pulling the strings, the rothschilds needed it to happen, and like those babies in that pizza shop, yeah there's yeah, yeah, it wasn't just people talking about cheese, pizza. It's gotta be yeah. Nazism, as at its heart, was a conspiracist theology. All of Germany's problems could be laid at the feet of international Jewry, who are responsible not just for German defeat in World War One, but for the overthrow of

the Czars and the establishment of the USSR. When the war turned against the Nazis, Hitler and his high command diverted crucial war resources towards fueling the extermination camps in the East, because eliminating the Jews was for them a

military priority. Not all conspiracist beliefs center around the idea of an international Jewish conspiracy, but conspiracism itself has its origins intricately tied to anti Semitism, and in the most successful conspiracy theory ever made in human history, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The concept of grand conspiracies is not particularly old, as these things go conspiracy theories.

Grand conspiracy theories go back about nine hundred years and have only really become operational in the last two hundred years. The inciting incident for the birth of all modern grand conspiracy theories is the French Revolution. This makes sense when you really think about it. One of the world's great powers, the most powerful military force in the world at the time, the most established monarchy in the world, is overthrown seemingly

overnight and replaced with a radical left wing government. Blood letting and chaos ensues. Many people felt the changes that swept France couldn't possibly have been the result of long simmering unrest in kingly incompetence. It couldn't be the king was dumb, he fucked up. People took their chance and they got lucky, and things just worked out and they

overthrew the government. It couldn't be that. It has to be some some cabal was plotting this, And unfortunately for just a whole lot of people, the birth of modern conspiracy theories happened to very neatly coincide with something else, the birth of modern anti semitism. So these two things are really happening right at the same time. When I talk about modern anti semitism, not just talking about like it's it's what is the difference between racism and anti semitism.

Anti Semitism is a type of racism, but not all people, not all different groups of people have the same thing that that Jewish people go through with anti Semitism, which is anti Semitism isn't just bigotry against Jewish people, it's belief that they control the entire world. Right, That's not a thing that is universal in racism. It's a thing that it exists beyond that, but like that's a specific thing. Yeah, with Black people, they're never worried we're in charge. They're

pretty confident we are not. I think they're a little worried Lebron might be in charge, but everybody else they're like pretty certain we ain't got ship. Whereas Jewish people, they're real worried about being Lebron is in charge. And I hope so, I mean, god, that would be comforting, um, because he's good, big strong arms, that beautiful. It would just be nice to know that the person in charge of the world had at least a talent. Right, Well, you've got one skill, maybe he has other skill. This

will be fun. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's not going to bomb anybody. I've so comforted by that that future for us, Yeah, just just Lebron James. The only bombs he drops are basketballs. That would be nice. Did you just try to do a sports reference? I mean I did, I did my best. Really painful for me. I know, I'm sorry. I mean I'm brought of you for knowing Lebron's last name. Yes, yeah, I mean I do live in the world and he does run it. So it's

one of the things that's hard to miss. Yeah. Again, anti Semitism like and kind of the modern sense of the word. And we talk academically a lot of times to day if you're just if you're racist again Jewish people, that's anti semitism, and it is. But when we talk about it academically, we're talking about not just racism, but the theory that the Jews control everything, right, like that that conspiratorial belief that doesn't go back forever. Um. There's Again,

racism against Jewish people has a long history. You can find Romans like Cicero talking about Jewish gold and Roman poets like Juvenal decrying Jews is drunken and misbehaved. But the bigotry on display by these guys, these Romans is the same kind of bigotry they had about everyone who wasn't Roman, right, Like, you can find them saying the same ship about Carthagenians and stuff. The ancient Romans burnt down Jerusalem, but they didn't do it because they believe

there was a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. That were angry that Jewish people didn't worship the emperor, and we're you know it was it was. It was imperial ship. It wasn't like a belief in some sort of conspiracy. They burned it down and they said, this isn't personal, fellas, this is this is what we do. We're the Roman Empire. We burned down a lot of cities and that's what we're gonna last a thousand years. Please don't think this

is about your religious beliefs. This has nothing to do with that. I mean a little bit, but yeah, we don't think you're pulling the strings. We're pulling the strings were the Roman Empire. Yeah, early Christians spent a lot of time vilifying Jewish thinkers, and this is kind of

where the roots of anti Semitism go back. This was due partly to the fact that in the early days of Christianity, most people who and most people weren't Christians just saw it as like a kind of Judaism, right, Like, oh, you've got Christian Jews are kind of the same thing, Like they like Christian and Jewish people don't see it that way, but like Roman Pagans are like, well they're all they're all the same. They all believe there's just

one God, like a bunch of lunatics. Um yeah so um. Christians, early Christians wanted to differentiate themselves from Jewish people, and one way to do that was by attacking Judaism, an early Christian apologist, which is like a guy, you know, a hype man for Christianity, Like he's there trying to

drum up interest in the religion. Justin was maybe the first Christian to claim that Jewish people had quote killed the Christ and Justin is the origin of the like the Jews killed Jesus thing, right, that Mel Gibson movie and stuff. Yeah, I love that his name is Justin. That's great. That just another Justin fucking ship up for everybody. First, Justin really showed up. Justin the martyr just was a

piece of ship, right, thanks Justin. At least it wasn't a chet and he's one of the kind Justin you know, we we sure do. Justin was followed in sort of weaving the bones of anti Semitism by a guy called Tertullian who was one of the fathers of the Christian Church.

Tertullian called synagogues fountains of persecution. Now, these stereotypes is Jewish people as rebels who rejected Jesus and persecuted Christians evolved over the decades and centuries as Christianity went from kind of a fringe cult to the dominant religion of the Western world. And these the bigotry shaped the attitudes of a lot of medieval Christian communities towards the Jewish diaspora.

There were programs and massacres inspired by these beliefs. In eleven ninety at least a hundred and fifty Jewish people were massacred in the town of York, and twelve ninety Jews were exposed in mass from England and an act of ethnic cleansing, one that was followed by France and thirteen o six in Spain in fourteen ninety two. In fifteen forty three, Martin Luther called the Church in Rome the devils Synagogue and derided Catholic Orthodoxy as Jewish in

his Greed. We don't talking about how racist Martin Luther was so Jewish, These Jewish Catholics, they only talk about how nice that dude was. And he was a piece of ship, massive piece of ship. Wrote a whole book about how he didn't like Jewish people. Real bad guy. I never I never trusted his air cut. So for me it was a no from the start. But I've only heard good news, and this is bad news on

the whole Martin different news. You're bad news about a couple of people in this it was well again, the Holocaust really changed a lot of this because after the Holocaust people started feeling some shame for saying bigger than things about Jewish people in public. Um. But man, everybody was racist against Jewish people right up until that moment. Right. There's these There are a couple of big myths in Christendom.

One of them was the idea of like the blood Passover is how it's referred to, which is that rabbis kidnapped Jewish babies and use their blood to make like mats of bread basically like to celebrate the Passover. And the other and you'll see there are churches in Europe today with stained glass reliefs of rabbi's killing Christians like to this day are still up like that they refused to take down or like that or whatever. I mean,

nobody's going to these churches. Yeah, it's one of those things like when it's often framed because of how kind of rapidly society changed after the Holocaust, it's often from it's like the Germans drummed all of this hatred up. No they didn't. It went back. There were ethnic cleansings in every country in Europe against the Jews and the centuries prior to the Holocaust. You know, it's a yeah and the the yes. And the other big myth is the judent sow, which is like a pig, that is,

Jewish babies are suckling at its breasts. And you'll see this. There are stained glass reliefs of Jewish babies like nursing from pigs in the great old cathedrals of Europe. It's deeply woven in the history of Christianity, is what I'm saying. We don't talk about it, so what really said? But again, this these aren't conspiracy. There's conspiracies about like yeah, Rabbi's murdering kids and stuff like that, but there's not nobody's talking about Jews running the world. Right, there's this idea

these are aliens that are missed. They're dangerous because they're different. There's not this idea that like, there's the secret masters of the universe. That really got started after the French Revolution in the seventeen hundreds UM. When the French Revolution hit, conspiracies were immediately woven to lay blame for it on the Jews. A couple of years after the revolution, Edmund Burke published a manifesto on the French Revolution where he

declared the revolutionaries jew brokers and old Julie. Now this is one of history's great ironies because you have seen a quote from Edmund Burke, if you've watched documentaries about the Holocaust, if you've watched documentaries about the Nazis, there's a specific Edmund Burke quote that shows up fucking concept I probably saw a hundred times as a kid. The quote is the only thing necessary for the triumph of

evil is for good men to do nothing. And that is often used in and like Holocaust documentaries and the never again since is that like, if only good people had done something, we could have stopped this. And the people who used that quote, I don't think generally know that Edmund Burke helped found modern anti Semitism. They don't know that he wasn't including Jews, and that he was not is like, listen, good men should do something, not you Jews, stay out of it. You're not good people.

That's the that's the field you get from Mr Burke. Um. And yeah, his Burke's attitude towards the French Revolution is very similar to Adolf Hitler's attitude towards the Russian Revolution because Hitler blamed it on Judeo Bolshevik's that was always the term he would use. They're the same, it's the same basic idea. Right, this cataclysm has changed Europe forever. This dynasty has been swept from power. It can't just have been because they were shipped and they made people angry.

It has to be the Jews, you know. Um. Obviously, the fact that the idea that Jewish people had been pulling the strings was not the only or even the most prominent conspiracy theory in the wake of the French Revolution. In seven of French Jesuit named Abbe Borrowell wrote a treatise blaming the revolution on a cabal of Freemason's Barrow was a reactionary, one of the French aristocrats who opposed

the revolution because it took his friends stuff. His argument was nonsense, since many of the nobles who had been massacred in the French Revolution had been Freemasons themselves. It was not like a poor dude thing. But there were a lot of conspiracies about the Masons um and Borrowell did not initially blame Jewish people for the revolution. He just thought the Freemasons did it. But he's got this conspiracy theory out that the Freemasons were behind it. Guys

like Burke are blaming it on Jewish people. And both of these conspiracy theories starts circulating at the same time, which meant the two were bound to cross pollinate. Now, it's worth noting that throughout this period, Jewish communities lived very much on the margins of most European communities. They were legally second or even third class citizens in most countries. As historian Richard Levy writes, quote, Jews living in European lands and in those parts of the world where Europeans

settled had gradually become a pariah people. The embodiment of evil instincts, a false religion, and inferior physical traits. Until the late eighteenth century, with few exceptions, they lived apart, wrapped in their own self sufficient religious culture, subject to severe legal disabilities, special taxes, occasion expulsion, and outbursts of popular fury. Although much on the minds of other people's, Jews were left for them to themselves. For long periods.

Their only connection to the larger societies in which they lived was in the economic sphere, where a few amassed legendary fortunes while the great majority pursued marginal, obnoxious occupations such as money lending, peddling, rent collecting, and tavern keeping. There was segregation against Jewish people in a lot of hear. You couldn't do certain jobs. You weren't allowed in public, you couldn't join the army, you couldn't do all of

the things that Christians could do. One of the few things Jewish people were allowed to do was lend money, which is where like this, the idea of the Jewish banker comes from us that and this is the same thing when in Islamic society you're not allowed to charge interest if you're like an Islamic banker. So in both Christian Christendom and and the Muslim world. A lot of banking is done by Jewish people because that's all they're allowed to do. Like, you haven't given us any other option.

What the funk else are we supposed to do? You know, you took away every other job here we are, and then you made fun of us for it and built a big old conspiracy experience. Yeah, you can't win with you know, racism um tale as old as time. Um. So as the modern world came into building being and secularism went vogue among intellectuals, some of the prescriptions against

Jewish people started. The fake Christianity stop stops being like dominant in government, And a lot of reasonable people are like, well, why are we restricting Jewish people If we're not we don't govern based on Christianity. We shouldn't oppress these people just for being Jewish. And so campaigns for emancipation started to pick up in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, and these are these are campaigns by Jewish people and their

allies for equal rights under the law. A lot of this was driven by the French Revolution because in the French Revolution, after the king was overthrown. Jewish people gained on paper at least equal rights. It didn't really work out that way, as it never does with emancipation campaigns, but things got a lot better for them. And this is part of why guys like Edwin Edmund Burke were so certain that Jews were behind the whole thing. Right, there's a revolution, a lot of prescription and and and

laws against Jewish people doing stuff are repealed. Of course it must have been them that orchestrated it, because they benefited. Right, It's a key aspect of conspiracism. You see a group that benefits, you assume they caused the thing. Um, it's

the way human brains work, I guess. In seventeen eighty nine, when the National Assembly of France approved the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen, one prominent French representative called upon his fellow citizens to acknowledge Jews as free French citizens. He argued that they were do everything any other citizen was doe, which sounds great, but then he went on to say this Jews should be given everything as individuals

and nothing as a nation. Basically, I like a few of these guys, Yeah, I just don't like him as a group. Yeah, exactly, I'm fine with Jewish people as individuals were all humans. Their religion is bad and they need to give it up to integrate into society. That's what he's saying, right, Like, you, as long as you assimilate, then you get equal rights. If you continue to be Jewish,

then I'm not cool with you. And this was very common among like I guess what you'd call the woke left at the time, that like, we shouldn't restrict Jewish people from doing anything, but they should stop being Jewish. You know, that's a common idea. Just come on, we like us, we love you if you do everything we do and never argue with us again. A story that has never been repeated in history. So a major move towards the mass emancipation of your European Jews came courtesy

of a guy you might not suspect, Napoleon Bonaparte. He's actually a huge figure in Jewish emancipation in the early days of his empire. He was. One of the things that made him noteworthy is he welcomed Jewish men into his army as soldiers, which was not done in a lot of Europe. He was like because and this. He wasn't doing this because he was particularly woke or a good person. He was doing this because, like you're a

body's a body people to die for me. You guys die just as do Jewish people respond the same to getting shot as white. Bring it in, you Jewish dude, stand in front of me, Stand in front of me. I've got a good feeling about you. I don't care what you believe as long as you hold a gun for me. You know. That's that's Napoleon's attitude. Um And again, he's not doing this because he's a nice man. But it has really a positive impact on a lot of

Jewish communities in Europe because Napoleon conquers fucking everything. When his armies conquered the city of Padua in Italy, they knocked down the walls of that city's ghetto, basically to say that like this, your restrictions, like you, your your

life a second class citizens is over. We're destroying the wall that separates you from the wet rest of society, which is a huge moment for Italian Jews, right like Italian Jewish people who had been oppressed for centuries see French Jews carrying guns, giving orders and liberating them from bondage. It's a big fucking moment, and a Messianic fervor begins

to sweep through Europe, which is this idea. You know, Jewish people are still waiting for the Messiah, right like that's this He's He's going to come, He's going to come. A lot of them become convinced in this period that Napoleon's coming was a sign that the Messiah is about to come. Napoleon was sent by God to liberate us and our our time of our time of struggle and trial is almost over. Boy, they you're a little off

on that one, little bit off on that one. This only feels like when Suge Knight went to the source rewards and told everybody to come to death row. You know what I mean. It's yeah, he's offering an alternative option, but it's not gonna be good for anybody. You know, a lot of a lot of Italian Jewish historians compare Suge Knight to the It's it's an extremely common uh. Like Sugar Knight, Napoleon was shot twice at the VMA. Like Knight, Napoleon ran a dude over with this car

and then back over the guy again. Glad he did. Comparison, you know who else is a lot like Suge Knight. We're supported by suge Knight this podcast. Right, he backs us, it doesn't he backs us, He goes forward, he backs us again, and we're back. Uh, we're back, and we're just appreciating Night and Napoleon too, two dudes just racking up the WS at this point, both of them have a fall from grace, right, Napoleon and Shug both end up in prison. I stand behind my comparison. I think

it is a good one. They both did really well and then not well at all immediately after. If you could bridge the language gap between them, I actually do think they would probably have gotten all. All empire builders are the same kind of do you know? Uh so yeah. Jewish people, as a result of Napoleon's kind of liberate, liberatory rhetoric and the fact that like he really does improve things for Jewish people in his empire, start to feel like the Messianic period is here, We're about to

be freed. And for a few years you can see why they felt that way. Between eighteen o eight and eighteen fifteen, Napoleon's conquest of warsaw led to a mass liberation of Polish shoes, who overnight received full civil rights for the first time in their history. There were even whispers during the Egyptian campaign that Napoleon meant to reconquer the Holy Land for diaspora Jews and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The Napoleon went meant nothing of the sort.

He was never going to get. Napoleon give land to people. You have misunderstood Napoleon, sir, But he recognized the propaganda value in what he was doing, especially since the Jewish community all throughout Europe, in the countries he's going to war with, if I can get these people on my side, if I can get them to think I'm going to liberate them, maybe they will back me when I fight their governments. You know, it's this, it's this, This is it's a smart thing to do if you're a guy

like Napoleon. It's the thing the British Empire does all throughout theory as they control. As you find these different groups, these like marginalized groups in the countries that you're trying to conquer, and you support them against the people they have, you know, an issue with and that that's a good that's if you're a conqueror coming in, it's a smart

thing to do. Well. It's the sad part is governments are never nice to everyone, and so subsequently some dude coming in looking to take over is gonna find some folks that are pretty unhappy with the way things have been going this entire time. Yes, exactly. So. Napoleon in reality was number one, pretty racist against Jewish people. He was just better than the king had been. Um, and he didn't he didn't. He was like these guys we

were talking about, these early French revolutionaries. He he thought Jewish people had equal rights. He didn't think they had the right to be Jewish. Um. He wanted them to join secular French culture. He actually called a meeting of this like Jewish religious congress, the san Hedrin, that hadn't met in centuries. And they think that he's calling the meeting to be like, you know, it's time, you know, the Messianic periods here, like I'm going to liberate like

your homeland for you and take you back. That's what they think is happening. Napoleon is basically going to force all these Jewish representatives to vote that their loyal frenchmen who will fight for him. You know, that's what he wants to do, is he wants to get he wants to like he's running a show, vote to like get all of these people on his side. Uh. And his in reality, a lot of what he did for Jewish

people was really shitty. One of the things he did was he canceled all debts owed by Christians to Jews. And he didn't only do that, but he legally punished all Jewish people in the French Empire by burdening them with a communal debt to Christians that they had to repay. Basically, it's wrong that you were doing the only job we let you do and you owe all Christians money in order to pay back, like the like the loans and

stuff that you like. It's really it's it's bad. He's he's he's I mean, he's so he canceled Christian debt and then put that debt on Jewish people. Yeah, basically, yes, he's he's he I mean, he's Napoleon. He wasn't a good guy, you know. Um. And what was more fucked up? The really the most toxic aspect of this because even with that and even with that taken into account, life

got a lot better for Jewish people under Napoleon. Um. What was most fucked up about what Napoleon did was the way that his enemies reacted to his supposed pro Jewish leanings. See Napoleon went to war with basically everybody.

The rulers of Europe knew that all of these Jewish communities in their countries were talking about how the Messiah was nigh and Napoleon had been sent to free them, and they responded with a propaganda blitz that tried tied the dreaded Napoleon to the untrustworthy Jews trying to tear down the old order of Europe for their own nefarious ends.

One of these propagandists was Abbe Borrowell, who did initially blame the French Revolution on Freemasons, but in eighteen oh six he started circulating a forged letter, probably sent to him by members of the state police, who resented Napoleon's liberal attitude towards the Jews. The Jewish Virtual Library writes that this letter quote called attention to the alleged part of the Jews and the conspiracy that he had earlier

attributed to the Mason's. This myth than international Jewish conspiracy reappeared later on in nineteenth century Europe in places such as Germany and Poland. So this is where this this is where this myth starts. Right, is this guy who had first blamed the revolution on the Freemasons. He sees Napoleon doing some nice stuff for Jewish people. He loops the minute that conspiracy the Jews and the Freemason's overthrew the king of France, and now they're trying to destroy

the order in Europe. That's how this evolves. Now, the group in Europe who most dove into this new conspiracy theory, where the Czars of Russia their empire had a massive downtrodden Jewish population. Um. There there had been massive genocides and both Poland and Russia against the Jews for for centuries at this point, including one the Calumnisty massacre in eastern Poland that killed like three quarters of a million people. Um,

just like really really bad stuff. So obviously the Czars have reason to be worried that these people aren't loyal because they've been killing them. Yeah, you think I remember what we did, right, And they're worried because Napoleon's coming for them where they think it. I mean he did eventually, but they think at the time he's coming for them. Right. He's been beating his way through the Germans, which were kind of our bulwark against France, and he's going to

be in our territory soon enough. In eighteen oh six, they launched an unprecedented propaganda blitz that would somewhat inadvertently create the basic ideas of modern anti Semitism. The whole effort represented a massive propaganda reversal for Russia, who needed both to justify an alliance with their ancestral enemies Prussia, and also introduced a new enemy, the alien evil lurking

within preparing to tear the kind tread down. The culmination of this work was a mass produced propaganda pamphlet called The Appeal. And I'm going to quote now from an essay written by Johanna Petrovsky stern quote. The document climaxes with the entry of the Jews and the expansion of

the Jewish theme. Outwitted by a cutting Napoleon and disappointed by only partial emancipation, the gullibal Jews of Napoleonic France are portrayed as perfidious accomplices of France and true friends of Bonaparte, a Satan who insolently revolted against the Holy of Holies, the embodiment of absolute evil. Napoleon Bonaparte convened the Jewish synagogues in France, demanding and insulting public homage

to the rabbis. He established a new Jewish Sanhedrin, which the Russian document saw as the same godless institution which in its time conspicuously contemned our condemned our Lord and the Savior Jesus Christ to the cross. Napoleon maintained. The appeal attended intended to unify the Jews, whom divine rage dispersed throughout the land, and most importantly, to proclaim Napoleon

a false Messiah. And the Jews, those alleged haters of Christ, were more than eager to assist Napoleon in his infamy. So the real focus of this propaganda is still on Napoleon, but it's trying. This is like the first real document that throws all of this together, all this stuff that becomes modern anti Semitism. It's it's so strange that they're both Uh, he's both calling them idiots and like these

sort of like powerful figures in this whole thing. He's like, yeah, they're big dumb idiots, but we watch out for him because they're super dangerous. I mean, it's this thing. It's particular in anti Semitism, but you see it always in conspiracies. The enemy is simultaneously all powerful and incompetent. You know, like it's dumb enough that like you're able to like he doesn't like they can't stop us, they can't stop us from what we're doing, but also like they control everything.

It's the thing you see. You know, I keep going back to Alex Jones, but he's a good modern example. Um, it's it's the thing with like Q and on where the conspiracy is is worldwide. But also everyone has ten steps behind Donald Trump, the perfect genius. You know, Joe Biden can't read, but he also is somehow running this cabal andy and taking down their great savior. Yeah, it's

it's it never makes much sense, is the point. The Tsars wrote this appeal um, but it didn't stay like the official propaganda line for long because right after it gets published, Napoleon signs a peace treaty with Russia. The Czar's backpedal and they issue like a new pro France propaganda campaign to try to get everyone on board with the fact that now we're friendly with France. And obviously

this this doesn't last. They eventually go to war. But the government abandons this anti Semitic line of attack almost as soon as they began it. But the appeal made a terrible impact during its brief period of circulation. Russia had always been a land of pagrams, and distrust of Jewish communities ran deep. The appeal had provided a justification

for violence and confiscation of Jewish property. It was an act of self defense against an embedded alien in and so the appeal gives all these people who had always been violent to Jews a justification for why they're defending themselves by carrying out these proms. Independent newspapers started printing their own follow ups to the appeal, imitating its key motif, the idea of a vast Jewish conspiracy against the Russian people.

For the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Russian literature increasingly depicted Jews differently from European literature. Russian literary scholar Mikael Weisskopf writes, already in the eighteen twenties it becomes visible in Russian prose and the idea of a secret Jewish government which, together with other evil powers, is participating

in a plot against all humanity. It's almost like the appeal is a virus, right, and once it gets out, it starts to spread throughout Russia, throughout like the Russian intellectual community, and it becomes by the eighteen twenties, it's all throughout their fiction, it's all throughout their literature, this idea of a vast Jewish conspiracy. It's broken containment, you know, it's not in control of the czars anymore. Um, and

it it doesn't stay trapped in Russia. We see variants arising throughout the rest of Europe in the mid eighteen twenties. A good example of of of kind of one variant of this that's it's different from what's happening in Russia, but it has similar roots. Is the kind of anti Semitism that you saw expressed by Karl Marx. Despite having Jewish ancestry himself, Marx's early career involved some pretty rough claims. This is his early career but there's some bad stuff

in here. In eighteen forty three, he blamed the existence of modern capitalism on the Judaism, of Judaizing the Jews, you know, on Christian society being made more Jewish. Carl, I know, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, you always a reference. That's a good guy. Why Carl. He was right about a lot not um. He was wrong about stuff too, He wrote a lot. You know, we were all rooting for you, Carl. That's yeah, It's it's so common though.

It's the same thing if you look at like a out of the founding intellectual minds of modern anarchism, guys like Kropotkin and and prude Han super anti Semitic, really really racist, like because just because everyone it was very like all of Christendom was really bigoted against Jewish people. Was extremely common. It seems like it's like the one thing that can kind of bring everybody together at this point is just like, well, we all hate Jews, right,

That's why the Nazis picket. You know, you find the common enemy, and you rarely everyone around them, even though the enemy is actually has no power and isn't responsible for problems. It's just it's what works um. And again with Marx, we see because kind of this Russian propaganda hasn't reached to England yet. Where he's writing, Marx is more in kind of line with these those old French revolutionaries. He doesn't hate Jewish people, he doesn't like the Jewish religion, right.

He thinks that in his ideal society, Jewish people will emancipate themselves by giving up Judaism, right. Um. And he's not a fan of like Christianity in particular either, but he believes that Jewish people are like they're they're they're Religiou and his capitalists, so they have to give it up in order to like become part of the rest of the world. In eighty four, Marx wrote an essay

with the deeply Unfortunate title on the Jewish Question. He's not the only one using this phrase, like, that's why Hitler uses it, right, it is called that by a lot of people. And the Jewish question is what do we do with Jewish people? And of course the answer is never listened to. Let him, just let him do their thing, Just let's bite them over and have a nice brunch. I don't know, maybe stop being shitty to him,

but no, that's never the answer. Uh. In this pamphlet he described the Jewish religion as huckstering and the Jewish God as money. He had concluded that, in the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism. And again this sounds extermination. Is he's not saying that, He's saying the emancive mankind will be emancipated when they give up their religion. Right, we want the people,

we don't want their faith, which isn't good. But it's different from like the Nazi arguments that you're going to year later. This is kind of the standard liberal line at this point in time in history. And yeah, it's interesting you'll see people declare Marks anti semitic over this, and Marx was again had Jewish ancestry. But one of the people who will disagree with the claim that Mark santy semitic is Jonathan Sachs, chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom.

And Sax's argument is simple. The word anti Semitism didn't exist when Marx wrote his essay, and the bigotry he expressed in that essay was against a religion. It did not have a racial component, and he did not believe in a conspiracy of Jewish people. Marx was bigoted against the Jewish faith, but he didn't see there being He didn't think Jewish people were inherently involved in a plot.

The building strains of Russian anti Semitism hadn't crossed over into the West yet, and so the utterly commonplace bigotry against Judaism that Marx expressed hadn't been cross pollinated with conspiracism yet. That process wouldn't really get underway until the late eighteen hundreds. The actual word anti Semitism was popularized by a German journalist named Bill hell Mar in eighteen seventy nine. Now mar was an anti semit He's the guy who came up with the word. You know, like

you're high on the list. He wasn't pointing it out in someone else. It was like, no, this is what I am. We would have a word for the shitty stuff I think there as awesome as me. You need a title, You need a title. So Mark coined the term in an unhinged screed he wrote titled the Victory of Jewelry over Germandom. That was about what you'd expect. It to be about and has some real Nazi strains in it. You know, you can draw an electric line

from Mar to the death camps. Uh. And one of the things that's interesting about mars bigotry and about the idea of anti Semitism that he crafts, is that his hatred of Jewish people was not based in Christianity because he was secular, right, He didn't. He didn't hate Jewish people because he thought they were responsible for killing Jesus. He rejected myths about the ritual murder of Christian babies

by rabbis. Instead, according to an article in The Conversation, quote he do on the fashionable theories of the French academic Ernst Rennen, who viewed history as a world shaping contest between Jewish Semites and Aryan Indo Europeans. Mar suggested that the Jewish threat to Germany was racial. He said that it was born of their immutable and destructive nature, their tribal peculiarities and alien essence. Yeah, he was like, listen, I'm not falling for any of that previous propaganda. I

know they're not suckling at pigs. I know they're not. Their religion is fine. I don't like them at their core, their essence is what's broken in them. You don't understand. Let me tell you where the other racists fall short. You guys are so focused on the book. Forget the book. It's in their it's in their spirits, it's in their blood. Yeah, you know that. Like he He really is a terrible man um And one of the things that's so dangerous about guys like Mark, guys like Ranan, is that their

bigotry isn't based in like provincial, like religious stuff. They're not like bunch of old hillbillies who are superstitious against the Jews. Their intellectuals, their secular and their hatred of Jewish people. Their anti semitism is gets is intellectually respectable. They get articles published in journals, scholars have to debate their racism. And that's a big step forward. This isn't you know, Because the world secularizing, we're leaving the old

bigotries in the past. And Mark finds a way to be like, we don't have to leave this in the past. I've modernized it. Yeah, this iPhone got an update, and this iPhone got an update. Yeah, no planned obsolescence for racism. Now One thing we've seen throughout the last couple of decades of history that we've been covering today is that all of the stages of this growth and anti Jewish sentiment where a reaction to emancipation right, which again we

see this throughout history. This oppressed, marginalized group starts to get equal rights. They don't even get them. They start to get them, they start to agitate for them, and people who are oppressing them freak the funk out that this is a plot against the oppressors. In Russia's case, it was a panic that Jewish communities might back Napoleon in a coming war. Marx's essay on the Jewish Question was a reaction to the growing emancipation movements across Europe.

Raanan and mar were both trying to stop Jewish integration into Christian civilization. This happened throughout the Christian world. As Richard Levy writes, quote, only after Jews had begun to emerge from their isolation did anti Semitism begin to surface

in Europe. Instead of episodic repression and violence followed by decades of calm, anti Semites endeavored to make persecution of the Jews permanent, convinced that Jews had already gathered enormous power, and that, as one pamphlet of the time put it, the victory of Jewry was imminent. Anti Semites determined that constant struggle against the enemy was an absolute necessity for the survival of Christian civilization. They founded political parties, voluntary associations, newspapers,

and periodicals to this end. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the word anti Semitism expressed a new way of dealing with the problem of the Jews. So when the old days, in the medieval period, right when Christianity dominates everything, it's enough to just be racist against the Jews. It's enough to just be bigger, it's enough to just to share myths about them eating babies. When the world modernizes and Jewish people start to integrate with society,

that's where bigotry isn't enough, because biggotry isn't modern. What you need is a theory that there's a war. We're engaged in a battle with the Jews. They're trying to take over our society. These these campaigns for equal rights. They're fighting to oppress us. And that's that's modern, you know, like you can. You can have that in a scientific industrial society. They're managing the hate just fine. We have to create some sort of like hidden extra layer to

this bad boy, exactly exactly. And while Marx is proof that there was a lot of anti Jewish bigotry on the left, the vast majority of the growing anti Semitic movement was conservative in nature. This was due in part to the fact that as Jews gained political rights, most of them wound up as liberals or social lists, because those were the movements most effectively fighting for the emancipation

of all people. You know, like a lot of a lot of Jewish political activists in this period, because they're oppressed, understand the oppression of other groups and fight to liberate them, and fight not just like racial groups, like liberate the poor and stuff um. And the reactionary right sees this and they fold anti Semitism into their propaganda against socialists. And this brings us once again to Czarist Russia. The late eighteen hundreds were also a period of increasing left

wing resistance to the Czarist dictatorship. The People's Will a left wing political organization we might call accelerationist terrorists, although I think they were rad embarked on a campaign of direct violence aimed at destroying the Czarist regime. This culminated with their successful assassination by bomb of Czar Alexander the Second in eighteen eighty one. They just blew him up. They threw a bomb at his carriage and exploded him. No,

he had guys with them. They sunk up a lot of people like it's it's a big old thing, you know. And there were there had been a do you know who else would be very into that? You know who else would assassinate the Czar of Russia? Our sponsor Raytheon? Yeah, I mean yes they would, so, yes they would. Yeah. If there's one sponsor of ours that's good at assassinating zars, it's Ray You could really draw directly. The people's will

is just a precursor of Raytheon. They couldn't shoot knife out of the sky from drones, so a guy had to throw a big, comical spherical bomb carriage. But it's in Raytheon's d n a. That's why their motto is Raytheon, fuck the Czar. Here's products all right. So a bunch of Russian revolutionaries in this period, a lot of the people who were trying to overthrow the czar were Jewish

men and women. And this was both because a lot of Jewish people were heavily represented in socialist movements at this period and also because the Tsars had massacred Jewish people for centuries. You know, it makes sense again, I'm I'm thoroughly on the pro murdering the czar side of things. In case people are curious, they are terrorists. This is terrorism. They're just justified. You know, if you live under Azar, it's fine. I'm down with it. There their their chair

backwards to to you know what I mean? Yeah, exactly exactly. So the waves of anarchists and socialist terrorist text and a lot of these terrorists in this period and Russia are anarchists, right. This is idea from a coun and of propaganda of the deed. The best propaganda is like killing the fucking cs are like, we don't want a czar. What is the best way we can tell people we don't want the czar? What if we kill him? Um?

And I think the people's will was kind of more just like, I don't know, I'm not an expert on this. I don't think I don't know if it would be right to call him anarchists, definitely left wing and socialist e um. But they killed Thizar, and this freaks the funk out of the government. Right, So there's, as you would expect, in the wake of the head of state being killed, this massive wave of repression, of repression not just against the actual group that had killed Thizar, but

against anyone doing socialist organizing in Russia. And there is this kind of unhinged panic among Russian conservatives that there's a that there's a conspiracy not just to kill Bisarre, but to overthrow the government, which there is. But they convinced themselves not that this is happening, because we're terrible at ruling Russia and we've oppressed people horrifically, and they

have good reason to want to overthrow the government. They're convinced it's the Jews, right, because this propaganda started circulating in eighteen o six, Right, this has been going on for a while, this idea that there's a conspiracy to destroy our government and it's the Jews behind it. Now, for some context, this is a bloody period in Russian history, not compared to modern Russian history, but compared to I

don't know. Most places, about seventeen thousand people are killed or wounded in terrorist attacks and less twenty years of the Russian Empire, there is a lot of violence. Yeah, um, like some bad ship going on. Uh. And it was a time of tremendous upheaval and rapid change. Zar Alexander the Second, before his death, had freed the serfs, right, So like Russia is industrializing rapidly, they d served them. There's a lot of political changes. There's also all this

terrorism and violence. There's these military defeats and crimea and again against Japan. And as we discussed at the top of the episode, when things are changing rapidly, when people, particularly conservatives, feel like they don't have any solid ground beneath their feet, that's the kind of situation in which conspiracism really breeds most effectively, because you need something to

explain it. You don't want to think that like, well, all of these economic and social forces have come together to cause rapid change and unrest, and we need to adapt to it. No, no, no, there's an evil cobal responsible for everything I don't understand, and if we can kill them, we'll solve all of our problems. It's it's hard to believe that the world just played out the way that it played out and you got fucked, So it's easier to like blame a specific party for you

getting fucked. Yeah, yeah, And it's it's a story as at least a couple of hundred years old. And this brings me finally to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. We had a long prologue this episode. So most people who write about the protocols, and we'll talk about exactly what they say in a little bit. Most people who write about them will authoritatively state that they were created initially by the Acrona, which was the Czarist secret police.

This the Acrona are like the precursor to the Gestapo and the KGB, even like the FBI and the CIA. You could argue they're one of the very first like secret services, and their whole job is to keep the Czarre in power. Right, They infiltrate We're supposed to infiltrate left wing movements. We're supposed to stop assassination attempts, were

supposed to stop people from changing the order. So I will say everyone says any article you read is gonna say like the Acrona created the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They probably did, but there's zero conclusive evidence that they did. History Rians who know this ship heavily debate the origin of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. We do not have a comprehensive, utterly proven example for like why they were made in the first place. Right, there's a chain of custody you can tell kind of

like how they evolved over time. We don't know at whose order they were crafted or if they were anyone, So that's just not that's not clear. I'll attached an article by a great historian who kind of breaks down why. Because there's a famous comic book about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion by a great Jewish m Stanley Siegel. I think it was um, a great Jewish comic book artist, and it's a good comic. It gets a lot of historical details about the people who we know were involved

in the creation of the protocols. Wrong, because there's a lot of myths about them. Again, the protocols are a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories arise to explain how they came into being. There's a lot of disinformation out there that said, broadly speaking, the Acrona are the most likely culprit for the creation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. If they didn't make it or order its creation, they

certainly had a major hand in its early distribution. But before we talk about how the protocol spread, I should explain precisely what they are. In short, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are a fake document that purports to be the minutes of a meeting of the global Jewish conspiracy to destroy Christianity. It's yeah, right, Like it's like, we had this meeting to talk about our evil world dominations games, and we wrote it down case like you

might not have been able to make the meeting. We gotta get you know, right back the minutes for me real quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with the minutes of our plan to destroy civilization. Yes, very funny that you would think it works that way, Um, but yeah, that's that's kind of how this is framed, I am. And it's kind of the document has written not just as minutes, but it's like kind of, oh, you missed the meeting, but you're a part of this organization. This will get

you up to speed on our plan destroy Christianity. You know, like it's so like you were on vacation the week we had the Global Conspiracy Conference. Take a look at this, Yeah, exactly. Anybody who missed the reading, it's all available here. Yeah, you fell asleep during the meeting, We get it. It goes on a while. Here's the minute. It will be good enough for a book report, but you'll at least be caught up. You you can find the quote separately,

but everything else is in there. It's very funny. Um, it's not funny. Millions die, um, but it's it's it's it's it's patently ridiculous, right any reasonable person. Of course, if there's a grand world conspiracy, they don't just have a document that says, here's what we're doing. But this is a lot we talk about in our Bill Cooper episode, A bunch of Bill Cooper's conspiracy theories were based on leaked military documents talking about their plans to destroy the world,

Like as if that would get written down. Um, anyway, I'm not going to read huge excerpts from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for obvious reasons, but it's necessary to read some pieces of it so you can understand how the arguments in it were framed. Here's how it opens, according to a nineteen seventy edition of the Protocols based on an Eard twentieth century British translation. Quote

protocol is from Protocol number one. If there's like a bunch of them right lines and might, freedom and idea only liberalism, gold, faith, self government, despotism of capital, the internal foe, the mob, anarchy, politics versus morals, the right of the strong, the invincibility of jew Masonic authority in justifies means, the mob a blind man, political abc, party discord, most satisfactory form of rule, despotism, alcohol, classicism, corruption, principles

and rules of the Jewish Masonic government, Terror, liberty, equality and fraternity, principle of dynastic rule, annihilation of the privileges of the goy aristocracy i e. Non jew As if they need to write that in them right like you got like, I should remind you that the words that we use um Putting aside fine phrases, we shall speak of the significance of each thought by comparisons and deductions.

We shall throw light upon surrounding facts. What I am about to set forth, then, is our system from the two points of view, that of ourselves and that of the goyum i e. Non Jews. They keep putting that in there, hoping that they were going to end that list by we didn't start the fire. That might be

a cover of Billy Joe. We don't need um. It must be noted that men with bad instincts are in more number than the good, and therefore the best results in governing them from them are attained by violence and terrorization, not by academic discussions. Every man aims at power. Everyone would like to become a dictator if only he could. And where indeed are the men who would not be willing to sacrifice the welfare of all for the sake

of securing their own welfare. What has restrained the beats of prey, the beasts of prey who are called men? What has served their guidance hitherto? In the beginning of the structure of society they were subjected to brutal and blind force, afterwards to law, which is the same force only disguised. I draw the conclusion that by the law

of nature right lies in force. So the author of the document, who was a rabbi standing in for the whole Jewish conspiracy, argues that because people are dumb and evil, they should be ruled, and of course they should be ruled by the Jews. The rest of the document goes on to propose ways to do this. It claims that for centuries, the white world was governed by a mix of the Church and monarchs, and as long as the Church and monarchs were in power, the Jewish conspiracy couldn't succeed.

I mean, the first half of that was like a Trump tweet, just like keywords, it's nuns and they're all different. There's a bunch of different editions of the protocols. They're all a little bit different. This is the only one I found that has that weird little yeah, like Trump tweets at the start of it. So the fake author of this fake document continues to argue that the Jewish conspiracy, in order to get off the ground, had to destroy

faith in religion. So secularism and socialism were invented by Jews to destroy the church because the Church was standing in their way of power. After they got rid of the church, they had to overthrow the crowned heads of Europe because the kings are the least protection people had from the conspiracy the fine and this is again, this is why he gets drawn into the French Revolution, Right, the French Revolution is bad because they got rid of

the king. The Jews got rid of the king because the king was standing in the way of them succeeding. One of the protocols are really pro monarchist document right, like if we just had kings, everything would be better. Yeah. I think those uh, those bloodlines are the thing that we need to hold closest and cherish the most. Yeah, let's let's let's let's line up our our our city based off of incests babies, let's do that. Just some cousins with weird arms that that's who we need in charge.

There's a conspiracy to destroy our freedom, so we have to have kings. It's not it doesn't make a lot of sense when you think about it. Um. So. Yeah. The first version of the Protocols came out around eight nineties six, so they were largely talking about the end of the French monarchy in this like that. That was the the initial thing that the protocols are focused around

the monarchs have been overthrown. That's the big problem. And the protocols are basically a roadmap purportedly written during this convention laying out the plan to conquer and govern the world. I'll give a brief summary. Protocol one is to break down the national power of non Jewish states by fomenting

internal revolutions. Appeals to class hatred or key to this, i e. Socialists are doing the work of Jewish people by convincing the poor that the richer fucking them over right, poor people would be happy with their lot in life if it weren't for this conspiracy. If only these socialists were convincing that their lives suck, they'd be happy, and then our nation would be strong. Uh. These internal revolutions would be fomented by having Jewish agents convinced groups of

people to agitate for liberty, equality and fraternity. If you remember, liberty, egality, and fraternity are like that was the motto of the French Revolution, Like, that's what we're fighting for, is we want to all be equal citizens under the law, as opposed to having like a king and a class of nobles who rule over us. And the argument of the protocol, so that this is a Jewish conspiracy because people aren't

equal and liberty is a bad idea. It's just a it's just a plot in order to make our government's weaker so the Jews can take over UM. Again, it's a shitty argument by bad people who think that having a ZAR is the best thing you could possibly you could possibly have. UM And the basic idea is that the Jews are behind a global campaign for equal rights, which are evil. Autocratic governments are weakened by this, first

by liberalism, then by socialism, and finally by anarchy. The second protocol was that all law all wars would be shifted to an economic basis, ensuring that territorial advantages for

one side or the other didn't really happen. Basically, the author of this book took thee by then obvious fact that economics one wars and use that to claim that the way conflict work and worked in industrialized society was the fault of the Jews, because like they they control the economy, so wars aren't like noble and good anymore.

They're just like these these industrial butcheries because of the Jews. UM. Next is the strengthening of Jewish international rights i e. Emancipation, which the author claims comes at the expense of gentiles, because that's their argument. Racists always make right. The the idea is that like part of their conspiracy is agitating for equal rights, because if they have equal rights, then Christians have less rights. That's that's a huge part of

this document. And there's other ship. Right, there's a slid math that's math is checking out for me. I'm over here calculating that makes perfect. It's the same argument that powerful groups always make, you know, um in the face of an oppressed group agitating for more equal rights. And there's other ships in there. They argue that like alcohol was introduced by Jewish people to like numb the minds of Christians, like race poisons all this Nazi Sian it's a lot of Nazi ship you know um, And it's

it's very basic. Today, there's a million conspiracies, not all of which are on their surface anti Semitic. That's have this the same bay thing, right, there's this conspiracy they're they're weakening your minds with television and with popular music and with drugs and alcohols that you don't notice that

you're being controlled by this evil cabal. And most of the people who believe that do believe that call is the Jews, but they don't say it anymore usually, right, um now, in the late eighteen hundreds, this idea was revolutionary. This is the first conspiracy theory like this, right, it's

the father of them all. And the fact that the early nineteen hundreds were a period of calamitous wars that led to economic collapse in the fall of several governments, including the Czarist monarchy, convinced a lot of people that the Protocols had been perfectly accurate. In the years after World War One, a growing core of conspiracists would would claim, we know the Protocols are real because everything they predicted

is coming true. I actually found a nineteen twenty edition of the Protocols that argues a remarkable similarity between the protocols and acts of the Bolshevik government, which it claims

is under the control of Jewish leaders. And it's true that there were a lot of Jewish Bolsheviks, but you'll notice the guy who wound up in charge of the U s SSR was Joseph Stalin, who was not at all Jewish, and in fact j Staal's chief rival for power was a Jewish Man, Leon Trotsky, who he forced into exile and then assassinated when like he had a guy stabbed him to death with an ice pick in Mexico. Like, oh yeah, it's a pretty boss story. Ramon Mercat is

the name of the guy who killed Trotsky. Jesus, that's not a nice assassination at all that I mean, it's Stalin. Yeah, it's Stalin. Stalin better than I guess Hitler when it comes to treating Jewish communities. Not great on treating Jewish community, like in uss are a rough deal for Jewish people. During Stalin's air including like near the end of his life, became convinced that a cabal of Jewish doctors were planning his assassination, which is why he didn't have any when

he had his stroke. There was no medical aid because he purged all of these doctors because he was afraid of a Jewish conspiracy. The idea that the USSR was like Jewish, it's just nonsense. It's completely a historical um.

And there's a lot of suffering of Jewish people under Stalin's government, you know anyway, So I just I just like your low bar, you're like better than Hitler, Like really, I The sad thing is when you're talking about like that particular war, Stalin does look a lot better because he's standing next to Hitler. You know, it's he's a real Beyonce next to Michelle, you know what I mean.

I do also looks better because he was handsome, and I mean there's a lot of similarities between Beyonce and Stalin. We've all talked about this a lot off this. I'm like, you know who, you know who. I've noticed a lot of similarities between Stalin and is Conan O'Brien because Stalin big lover of pranks, huge lover of pranks. Conan O'Brien, legendary prankster. Just reading this is completely off topic. But there's this amazing thing that there's actually nobody named Conan O'Brien.

What do you mean what she's saying, he pronounced whatever whatever. Robert likes to mispronounce very famous people's names and doesn't realize he's doing it and then gets roasted. No one for everybody. Now, I think we have to accept that no one knows how he existed so long ago. No one can tell it's like Latin. We don't know how it was pronounced. It was so far in the past, famed late night shows. Scholars have their theories about how his name was pronounced, but no one knows for certain.

Um anyway, look up Conan's history of this conversation. Yeah we did, Sophie, and I just said. Scholars Scholars debate like the origin, like like the origin of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Scholars still debate his the pronunciation of his name. Yeah, you know, it's true. Hanging out with your favorite singer Arianna grand Sophie, it's pronounced grande. Oh, good to know. I know you missed these things a lot because you're not keyed in the pop culture like

I am. All right, So the Protocols were written well ahead of the fall of the Czarist government. Um, but they were written about the fall of another monarchy. And so a lot of the stuff written about the French Revolution sounded like it was talking about the Russian Revolution. Right. This book is about how the Jews are going to overthrow kings. They're writing about something that had already happened

in blaming it on the Jews. Then there's another revolution that overthrows the Tsar of Russia, and a lot of people see like, oh, this is proof the protocols are true, right, everything that they've predicted is coming true. Look like this is the only reason people would want to overthrow the Czar, not that he got them into a war that killed eight million people. Um, it must just be the Jews are tried to invade Germany and got his ass kicked in one of the most epic beat downs in military history.

After getting his ass kicked by the Japanese and another one of the most epic beat downs in military history. It's not that the Czar had his soldiers fire on crowds of people protesting for bread. It was it was it was the Jews. No other reason to want the Czar out anyway, not a pro Csar podcast, I do apologize, so yeah, Now, the actual facts of world history did

not matter in the least. The people of the early nineteen hundreds were living and dying through the greatest war in history, a terrible plague that killed millions right after the war, and the collapse of the largest land empire on Earth, Russia. The Russian Empire is like a seventh of the world's land mass, like it's fucking huge. Yeah, we we don't talk like Russia fucking big big, big, big, big,

big big country. And suddenly, you know, in the twenties or in late teens, early twenties, it's just this massive pile of people murdering each other. The Russian Revolution is horrifically bloody. Um. And it just the the entire period of time up to, during and after World War One is just this, this period of violent chaos that hopefully we will never see the like of again, right unless

it happens next month. So the fact that all everything was falling apart seemed to be explained by the protocols, and millions of people bought into them. Now the reality is that the Protocols of the Elders of Giant Zion wasn't just a forgery. It was an act of plagiarism. And it wasn't just an act of plagiarism. It was an act of plagiarism of an act of plagiarism. Um, yeah,

it's it's it's meta. I'm gonna I'm gonna read again from the Jewish Virtual Library here quote the direct predecessor of the protocols can be found in the pamphlet Dialogues in a Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, published by the non Jewish French satirist Maurice Jolie in eighteen sixty four. In his dialogues, which make no mention of the Jews, Jolie attacked the political ambitions of the Emperor Napoleon the Third using the imagery of a diabolical plot in Hell.

The dialogues were caught by French authorities soon after their publication, and Jolie was tried and sentenced to prison for his pamphlet. Jolie's Dialogues, while intended as a political satire, soon fell into the hands of a German anti Semite named Herman Getch, writing under the name of Sir John Retcliffe. Getch was a postal clerk and a spy for the Prussian secret Police. He had been forced to leave the postal work due to his part in forging evidence in the prosecution against

the Democratic leader Benedict Waldeck. In eighteen forty nine, Getch adapted Jolie's dialogues into a mythical tale of a Jewish conspiracy as part of a series of novels entitled Barets, which appeared in eighteen sixty eight. In a chapter called the Jewish Cemetery in Prague and the Council of Representatives of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, he spends the fantasy of a secret centennial rabbinical conference which meets at midnight and whose purpose is to review the past hun of

years and make plans for the next century. So this satirist writes a book like throwing shade on fucking Napoleon the Third and like he frames it as a dialogue between these two dead guys, but he's yeah, yeah, he gets sentenced to prison for this, and it probably was a pretty good joke, right, And a German secret policeman finds his dialogue and writes it into an anti Semitic novel about a Jewish conspiracy because he thinks that like the wording of the dialogue, which this guy had meant

to be about like how the King of France is power hungry, he makes it about how the Jews are trying to seize power. Um, so that happens. Now, The most plausible theory for the origin of the Protocols as we know them is that get getches novels, which are again a plagiarism, wound up in Russia. They were translated in eighteen seventy two, and in eighteen ninety one a new edition was published and the Council of Representatives meeting in Prague were con solidated under the name Rabbi's Speech.

So the whole dialogue between Monscuieu and um Machiavelli is like put in the mouth of a rabbi. This translation probably wound up in the hands of the Okrana and and specifically the Okranna in France, because they have fourign offices, just like the CIA and the Acrona. See a used for this when the dry Fuss affair convulses France from eight eight now we talked about Dreyfus in detail during

Behind the Insurrections. The short of it is that he was a Jewish French military officer falsely accused of selling secrets to the Germans. After France's defeat in eighteen seventy, the case became a massive culture war issue in France. Dreyfus was acquitted, but the whole period spawned a bunch of fringe newsletters that blamed French defeat on this Jewish man. At the time, Russia was allied with Germany and France was her enemy. The same story we saw in eighteen

o six repeated itself. The Czarre secret police created the protocols in order to pop up his conservative stances against a wave of liberal sympathy that kept pushing for warm Since many prominent liberals were Jewish and nice, anti Semitic conspiracy would help to divide the left, to make regular Russians less likely to trust any reform. And that is more or less where the Protocols of the Elders of

Zion came from. The acronic plagiarizes, a work of plagiarism by oppression in order to like prop up the Czar against liberals. And it's it's again like that that first appeal in eighteen o six, that first piece of big anti Semitic propaganda. It's not meant to go worldwide. It is meant to have a very specific impact within France and Russia on a specific series of political issues. But

it fucking gets out of here. It breaks containment right like a virus, and it goes viral immediately and within a few years, the Elders of Zion, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion have spread all over the world. We're gonna talk about fucking Colombia in our next episode. Um and provided went on to provide like inspire slaughter and all over the planet and provide a lot of the fuel for what became the Holocaust. Well, I have

is like, how does it spread like that? Like this isn't the Internet doesn't exist, and I'm an idiot, so I don't know how things. Uh, We're gonna break that down in part two. I'm gonna we're gonna talk about specifically the nation of Columbia, and I'll walk you through exactly how it's spread throughout Columbia and the impact that it has because it's very interesting and the story in Columbia, similar things happen all over the world of different countries spread.

Don't worry, we bring it. We bring it back to the Midwest too. Don't worry a little don't worry a little bit. It's a little bit of Henry Ford. But first, just just a teeny bit that there's a lot to say about him doing this. I didn't include a whole lot in here, just because there's so much else to get over but we'll do a Henry Ford episode at some point. Be a long one guy, no good, no good, not a not a nice dude. Well you've got any plug,

double plug Langston. Yeah, yeah, you can listen to my podcast. It's called My Mama told me. It's available everywhere. We talk about conspiracy theories, and I'm gonna use a lot of this information to apply to my own nonsense. So this is exciting. Yeah, Well I love I don't know, I don't know, I don't love anything. Just greatly on just raid theon and kill him Bazaar. I do love killing Tazar. So why don't you all go out and while you wait for at part two, find us are

you know, deal with him? Kill him, kill him kill kill a fuckings art, Go find us art, take him out. Get an old timmy bomb and take out that tsar. Yeah, one of those, you know, the kind like it's a big sphere. It's got like a little knob on the top, like a very long, just long wik that burns pretty slow, but not slow enough to get away. You kill him not yeah, you fucking take that czar anyway. This is behind the bastards once again inciting violence against the Russian

Royal family. Um as is our want