Preface to 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', by Julius Evola

The importance of this document, which Vita Italiana has just reprinted, cannot be
sufficiently emphasised. It presents a spiritual 'motivation' like few others, it reveals
unsuspected horizons, and it draws attention to fundamental problems related to
action and to knowledge, which must not be neglected or postponed, especially in
these decisive hours of Western history, on pain of seriously prejudicing the offensive
of those who fight in the name of spirit, of tradition, and of true civilisation.

Two aspects particularly demand attention in the 'Protocols'. The first concerns the
Jewish question directly. The second has a more general importance, and leads us to
tackle the problem of the true forces at work in history. For the reader to understand
perfectly what we mean here, we think that it is suitable to bring forward certain
considerations essential to a good orientation on this matter.

For this purpose, it is first necessary to examine the famous problem of the
'authenticity' of the document, on which certain parties have attempted tendentiously
to focus all of the public's attention, by means of which alone they endeavoured to
determine the importance and the validity of the text. This is really a very childish
approach (1). Obviously, one can simply deny the existence of any secret directive
force behind historic events. But one cannot admit, even as a mere hypothesis, that
there may be something of that sort, without acknowledging that it must then become
necessary to do a kind of research very different from that which is based on
'documentary evidence' in the common sense. Here, as rightly pointed out by Guénon,
lies the decisive point, which puts the question of 'authenticity' into perspective : the
fact is that no truly and seriously secret organisation, whatever its nature, leaves
behind written 'documents'. It is only by inductive processes that the importance of
texts such as the 'Protocols' can be determined. This means that the problem of their
'authenticity' is secondary to the far more serious and essential problem of their
'veracity', as was already emphasised by Giovani Preziosi when he published them for
the first time seventeen years ago. The serious and positive conclusion of the whole
controversy which has developed since is that, even if we assume that the 'Protocols'
are not 'authentic' in the narrow sense, it comes to the same thing as if they were, for
two capital and decisive reasons :

1) because the facts show that they describe the real state of affairs truthfully ;

2) because their correspondence with the governing ideas of both traditional and
modern Judaism is indisputable.

As the Berne trial provoked by the 'Protocols' was widely talked about, we shall
describe it here, so that the reader knows where he stands and does not let himself be
influenced by tendentious reportage. The Berne trial was really just a manoeuvre on
the part of international Judaism, which attempted to use Swiss justice, or, to put it
better, Swiss marxist 'justice', to obtain a sort of official legal determination of the non-
authenticity of the document which so troubles Israel. That it was really just a
manoeuvre becomes clear from the very impossibility of raising the question of the
authenticity of the 'Protocols' there. Basically, the Berne court admitted the complaint
made by certain Israelite communities against a certain Silvio Schnell, who had
distributed some copies of the German edition of the 'Protocols' in a nationalist
meeting, on the basis of Article 14 of the law of the Canton of Berne regarding
subversive and immoral literature. Starting from this basis, from a strictly legal point
of view, the Berne court should not have taken any interest in the problem of the
authenticity or otherwise of the 'Protocols', but should simply have decided whether
the 'Protocols', irrespective of their truth or falsity, were or were not reprehensible
according to the aforementioned law, as being likely to incite one part of the Swiss
population against another. Judaism however distorted this requirement by focusing
attention on the problem of authenticity, in order to reach the desired conclusion. In
this respect, here is a significant declaration by the great Rabbi of Stockholm : "This is
not a process against Schnell and his friends, but one of all the Israelites of the world
against all their detractors. Seventy million Jews have their eyes fixed on Berne".

After a year of proceedings, the court of first instance ended up convicting Schnell,
from which the Jews happily inferred that they had got rid of the 'Protocols'. This
was a short-lived triumph. In November 1937, the Berne court of appeal quashed the
previous judgement, acquitted Schnell, ordered the plaintiff Jewish communities to
pay costs, and declared itself incompetent to rule on the question of the authenticity
of the 'Protocols'.

But the question of authenticity had already been raised in the first hearing. For what
results? Once again, negative ones. The Jewish front had tried to reach its objectives
essentially by two means : by false testimonies and by the thesis of 'plagiarism'. As
we cannot go into detail here, we shall limit ourselves to the following remarks : a
certain Madam Kolb, already sentenced for fraud and forgery as 'Princess Radziwill',
declared, in a deposition skilfully devised in conjunction with one of her woman
friends and a certain Comte du Chayla - a more than suspicious character, a paranoiac,
adventurer and traitor, once sentenced to the death penalty, then pardoned - that the
'Protocols' were written in Paris about 1905 by three agents of the Russian secret
police, with the intention of stirring up an anti-Semitic publicity campaign. However,
the 'Protocols' were shown to have been in the possession of a certain Stepanoff in
1895, and of Nilus in 1902, and to have been published fully in the Russian
newspaper 'Znamja' in 1903, i.e., two years before their purported compilation in
Paris! Furthermore, it was proved that none of the three Russians named, to wit,
Ratchkovsky, Manuellov and Golovinsky, were in Paris at the time when, according
to Madam Kolb, they supposedly "invented" the 'Protocols'.

The other means of attack was the charge of 'plagiarism'. A serious misunderstanding
arose here. Basically, the problem of the value of the 'Protocols' is quite different from
that which might arise regarding a literary work, which could be settled by the
examination of its originality and the right of someone to consider themselves its
author. Here, the issue is totally dissimilar. The 'Times' had already raised the
question of plagiarism in 1903, by pointing out that the text copies ideas and
sentences from a pamphlet published in 1864 by a certain Joly (himself a half-Jew, a
revolutionary and a Freemason) about the methods to be used in a Machiavellian
policy of domination. This correspondence, or this 'plagiarism', is real, and not limited
to the work of Joly, but applies to various other then existent works. However, what
does this tell us? In deciding whether or not the 'Protocols' correspond to the program
of world domination of an occult organisation, it makes no difference whether the
author has composed and written them from start to finish, or whether, in the course
of his composition, he has also used ideas and elements from other works, thus
creating, from the literary standpoint, a 'plagiarism'. The anti-Semitic controversy has
already brought to light a whole series of 'sources' or antecedents to the 'Protocols',
which generally draw their inspiration from a single current of ideas, and reflect, often
in a 'fictionalised' form, the confused awareness of a truth. This truth is that the whole
orientation of the modern world conforms to an established plan, as implemented by
some mysterious organisation.

Thus, the problem of 'authenticity' brings us back again to that of 'veracity'. As far as
'authenticity' is concerned, the outcome of the trial of Berne is, as we have explained,
negative : the prosecution did not succeed in proving that the 'Protocols' were false.
But, legally, the defence is not required to prove the authenticity of an impugned
document ; it is up to the prosecution to prove its falsity. But since, despite all the
efforts of Judaism - the concerted testimonies, the thesis of 'plagiarism', the
tendentious documents provided by the Soviets, the manoeuvres which succeeded in
rendering all the documents of the defence inadmissible (at least, in the court of first
instance), an extremely one-sided assessor's report by Loosli, a notorious philo-
Semite, and so on - they did not succeed in proving this falsity, the field is clear, and
the question of 'authenticity' is liquidated, that is to say, it is once again subordinate to
a double test of superior character, which is, let us repeat again : 1) the proof by the
facts ; 2) the proof by the nature of the Jewish spirit.

Having given these clarifications, it is now possible to move on to the content of the
'Protocols'.

They contain the plan for an occult war, whose objective is the utter destruction, in
the non-Jewish peoples, of all tradition, class, aristocracy, and hierarchy, and of all
moral, religious, or supra-material values. With this aim in view, an occult international
organisation, directed by real leaders clearly conscious of their goals and of the
methods to be followed to achieve them, would appear for a long time to have been
exercising, and continuing to exercise, a unitary invisible action, which constitutes the
source of the main forms of corruption of Western civilisation and society : liberalism,
individualism, egalitarianism, free thought, anti-religious Enlightenment, and various
additions which, following on from these, bring about the revolt of the masses and
communism itself.

It is important to note that the absolute falsity of all these ideologies is expressly
recognised : they are stated to have been created and propagated only as instruments
of destruction and, in relation to Communism, the 'Protocols' go so far as to declare :
"If we have been able to bring them to such a pitch of stupid blindness is it not a
proof, and an amazingly clear proof, of the degree to which the mind of the GOYIM is
undeveloped in comparison with our mind? This it is, mainly, which guarantees our
success." (Protocol XV).

Not only they talk about political ideologies which will have to be instilled without
anyone being allowed to grasp their true meaning and their goal, but they talk also of a
"science" created with the purpose of general demoralisation, and significant references
are made to the scientistic superstition of 'Progress', to Darwinism, to Marxist and
historicist sociology, and so on. "Goyim are no longer able to think, in the field of
science, without our help", while, once again, the falseness of all those theories is
acknowledged (I, II, III, XIII).

In the third place, we find discussion of a specifically cultural action : to dominate the
principal centres of official teaching ; to control, through the monopoly of the popular
press, public opinion ; to spread in the so-called leading countries an unhinged and
equivocal literature (XIV) ; to provoke, therefore, as a counterpart of social defeatism,
a moral defeatism, to be increased by an attack upon religious values and their
representatives, to be carried out, not head-on and openly, but by stirring up criticism,
mistrust, and discreditable rumours regarding the clergy (XVI, IV).

The 'mercantilisation' of life is indicated as being one of the principal means of

destruction ; hence, also, the necessity of having a crowd of 'economists' as conscious
or unconscious instruments of the secret chiefs. Once the spiritual values which were
at the root of the former authority have been destroyed and replaced by mathematical
calculations and material needs, all the peoples of the world must be brought to a
universal war, in which it is assumed each will follow its own interests, and all will
remain unaware of the common enemy (IV) ; finally, it is proposed to encourage the
ideas of the various competing groups, and, instead of attacking them, to use them to
realise the overall plan, so that a capacity for providing support for the most diverse
conceptions, from the aristocratic and the totalitarian to the anarchist or socialist ones,
is recognised, provided that the effects contribute to the common goal (V, XII). The
necessity of destroying family life and its influence on spiritual education is also
recognised (X), as is that of rendering the masses stupid by means of sport and
distractions of all kinds, and stirring up their passionate and irrational tendencies to
the point at which they lose any faculty of discrimination (XIII).
This is the first phase of the occult war : its goal is to create an enormous proletariat,
to reduce the peoples to a mush of beings without tradition or inner strength. Then
there is proposed a further action, on the basis of the power of gold. The secret chiefs
will control gold globally, and, by means of it, all the peoples already deracinated,
along with their apparent, more or less demagogic, leaders. While, on one hand, the
destruction will proceed through ideological poisons, revolts, revolutions and conflicts
of all sorts, the masters of gold will stir up crises of domestic economy everywhere,
with the purpose of driving humanity to such a state of prostration, despair, and utter
mistrust towards any ideal or system that it becomes a passive object in the hands of
the invisible dominators, who will then manifest themselves, and impose themselves
as absolute world-wide rulers. The King of Israel will be at their head, and the ancient
promise of the Regnum of the 'Chosen People' will be achieved.

This is the essence of the 'Protocols'. The more general problem which is connected to
it has various aspects.

The Jew Disraeli once wrote these significant words : "The world is governed by very
different personages from what is imagined by persons who are not behind the
scenes." The importance of the 'Protocols' consists, first and foremost, in arousing the
suspicion, the presentiment, that history has a 'third dimension', that an 'intelligence'
can be hidden behind apparent leaders and events, and that many presumed causes are
only the effects of a subterranean influence. What the 'Protocols' say about a pseudo-
scientific mentality, created solely with a pre-established plan in view, is particularly
important ; the so-called 'scientific' or 'historical' way of looking at history falls
exactly within this description, and aims to divert attention systematically from the
plane where true causes come into play. Nothing is more significant than this passage
from Protocol XV : "The purely brute mind of the GOYIM is incapable of use for
analysis and observation, and still more for the foreseeing whither a certain manner of
setting a question may tend. In this difference in capacity for thought between the
GOYIM and ourselves may be clearly discerned the seal of our position as the Chosen
People and of our higher quality of humanness, in contradistinction to the brute mind
of the GOYIM. Their eyes are open, but see nothing before them and do not invent
(unless perhaps, material things). From this it is plain that nature herself has destined
us to guide and rule the world." The same Protocol emphasises : "For the peoples of
the world in regard to the secrets of our polity are ever through the ages only children
under age, precisely as are also their governments."

It is not by chance that recent history shows us the phases of a systematic and
progressive work of spiritual, political and cultural destruction, and, in this respect,
the 'Protocols' offer us, to say the least, what a scientist would call a "working
hypothesis", that is, a basic idea whose truth is confirmed by its capacity to organise,
via inductive research, a body of facts otherwise apparently unrelated and
spontaneous, by bringing out their logic and their unique direction. This is the second
aspect which must be borne in mind.

The fact is that the content of the 'Protocols', in its first part, which concerns the
stages and the means of the destruction, corresponds in an impressive way to what
has already unfolded, and continues to unfold, in recent history, as if the chiefs of the
various governments, the apparent leaders of the various movements, and all those
who made 'history' in the previous century, had only been the unconscious executors
of a pre-established plan, announced a long time in advance, whether by that text or
by others, as we have already mentioned. This is why Hugo Wast (Oro, Buenos
Aires, 1935, p. 20) wrote : "The 'Protocols' may be false, but they are carried out
wonderfully," and Henry Ford, in the newspaper World, February 17, 1921 (2), wrote
: "The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what
is going on. They are sixteen years old and they have fitted the world situation up to
this time. They fit it now". Henry Ford refers here to the first edition, that of Nilus,
but the anti-Semitic controversy has established that they date back to about twenty
years earlier, and that the original document was known to Bismarck. History itself
thus proves the veracity of the 'Protocols' in a manner that the accusations of their
opponents cannot refute, and all the difficulties which 'positive spirits' claim to find,
and which they assert change the terms of the problem, result not merely from
superficiality but from outright irresponsibility - not from 'objectivity', but from
prejudice.

Via capitalism, the mentality of the Ghetto spreads to the Aryan civilisations, which
at the same time lays the foundation for the revolt of the working masses. In
accordance with this, the Jews, Marx, Lassalle, Kautsky, and Trotsky, give the
masses the most powerful ideological weapons, in the form of materialistic
falsifications of the messianic myth, always subordinating the movement to a precise
goal : the destruction of every last remnant of true order and of differentiated
civilisation. Parallel occult tactics, to the same end, engender the most profound
international conflicts, and Jewish financiers arm each militaristic front extensively,
while, on the other hand, the Judaeo-Masonic ideology of liberalism and democracy
prepares opportune coalitions. The world-wide conflict of 1914-18 breaks out, whose
true signification, according to the official declarations of an international Masonic
Congress which was held in Paris during the summer of 1917, was the holy war of
democracy, "the crowning of the work of the French Revolution" (sic), which had in
view not this or that territorial claim, but the destruction of the great European
empires and the formation of the League of Nations as an omnipotent demo-masonic
super-state. Judaeo-American capitalism finances the Russian Revolution (with which
the English aristocracy was also involved) and, as, with the collapse of Russia, a first
goal is reached, America intervenes directly, without any manifest reason, and the
Central Empires meet the same fate as Russia.

After the war, revolutionary flames flare up everywhere, both in the vanquished
nations and in the victorious ones, and the power of Judaism takes a phenomenal leap
forward, through world-wide debt, through a secret tyranny in the Soviet state, and
through the control of public opinion world-wide and general cultural influence.
However, since the objectives of the revolt in Europe are not reached, they pass to a
new phase.

The Third International abruptly changes tactics and allies itself, via the Popular
Fronts, with the Second International and the great capitalist democracies, unveiling
thus the framework of the secret war. After the failure of sanctions, all these things
happen at once : the Soviets provoke the revolution in Spain, they ally themselves
resolutely with Judaeo-Masonic France, and they assume, in co-operation with the
secret anti-fascist politics of England, a guiding role in the League of Nations. Decisive
alliances are prepared in this way. The reader will find an excellent reconstruction of
the 'occult war' in a book by Malinski and de Poncins which is called, precisely, 'La
guerre occulte', and in Vita Italiana's article : 'Is Israel provoking a war?'. This is indeed
the prelude to the final stages of the plan of the 'Protocols'. In reality, to adopt as
working hypotheses the essential ideas of this 'apocryphal' manuscript is to find a
reliable guide to the deeper unitary meaning of all the most important disruptions of
recent times. This is why Adolf Hitler considered it to be undoubtedly the most
powerful means of awakening the German people (3).

We can now move on to further considerations which demonstrate the veracity of the
'Protocols', not only as sigillum veri, but also as testimony to a specifically Jewish
influence. Basically, even assuming that the subversion of the West has as its
background some superior causality, we still have to prove strictly that the Jews are
truly responsible for it. In other words, even assuming that the 'Elders' exist, we must
ascertain whether they are really 'Elders of Zion', if we wish not to be suspected of
making a tendentious interpretation, derived merely from a determination to hold the
Jew responsible for any and all subversion and thus justify an extremist anti-Semitic
campaign.

This is certainly a legitimate question, but only to the extent that we can ask it
regarding an organisation which is ex hypothesi occult. In Freemasonry, even the
highest dignitaries are unaware of exactly who their so-called 'Unknown Superiors', to
whom they owe their obedience, actually are, and they could even stand right next to
them without being able to identify them. We cannot therefore be expected to produce
the duly authenticated identity cards of the 'Elders' in order to place the problems
following on from the 'Protocols' into the context of the Jewish question. This
however does not prevent us from arriving at a fairly precise 'evidentiary process'.

Let us start by saying that we cannot support the sort of fanatical anti-Semitism
which sees the Jew everywhere, as a deus ex machina, and finally falls into a sort of
trap. In fact, as Guénon pointed out, one of the means of defence of the real concealed
forces consists in drawing the whole of the attention of their adversaries tendentiously
upon persons who are only partially responsible for certain upheavals, thus making
them into scapegoats of a sort, on which all the reactions are discharged, and leaving
themselves free to pursue their game. This is true, to some extent, in respect of the
Jewish question. Merely noting the pernicious rôle that the Jew has played in the
history of civilisation must not prejudice a deeper investigation, which can make us
become aware of forces for which Judaism itself may have been, to some extent, only
the instrument.

Besides, the 'Protocols' often speak imprecisely about Judaism and Freemasonry, so
that one reads "Judeo-Masonic conspiracy", "our divided Free-Masonry", and at the
bottom of the first edition : "signed by the representatives of Sion of the 33rd degree".
Since the theory that Freemasonry is exclusively a creation and instrument of Judaism
is, for various reasons, untenable - see our 'The relations between Freemasonry and
Judaism', in Vita Italiana, June 1937, where we show that the judaisation of
Freemasonry occurred essentially in the eighteenth century - it follows that it is
necessary to refer to a much larger network of corrupting occult forces, which we are
even inclined to believe is not purely human. Besides, the principal ideologies
indicated by the 'Protocols' as being instruments of destruction, which have indeed
have this historical effect, viz., liberalism, individualism, scientism, and rationalism,
are only the last links in a chain of causes which are unthinkable without antecedents
such as, for instance, humanism, the Reformation, and Cartesianism, all of which are
phenomena which no one would seriously think of ascribing to a Jewish conspiracy -
except Nilus, insofar as, in an appendix to his edition of the 'Protocols', he makes the
Jewish conspiracy date back to 929 B.C. (4).

Perhaps, though, Nilus perceived a certain truth, in a confused fashion. The various
stages in the progress of the destructive Symbolic Snake, of which he informs us, are
mostly perfectly real, but it is advisable to examine them in a far wider and more
objective framework : the fall of ancient, sacral, Dorian Greece, and the coming of the
'humanist' Greece ; the degeneration of the Roman empire ; the degeneration into
absolutism of the Sacred Empire of the German people with Charles V, and the
Reformation ; the preparation of the French Revolution (Enlightenment, rationalism,
absolutism) ; the anti-traditional manoeuvres of mercantile England ; the attacks upon
Austria and the plots within Germany ; and the anticipation of Bolshevism, the point
of arrival of the "serpent". However, by contrast, we should remember that the
positively destructive action of the international Jewish organisation developed in a
more recent period, and that the Jews found a ground already undermined by
processes of decomposition and involution, whose origins date back to very distant
times, which are linked to a chain of very complex causes (cf. 'The Crisis of the
Modern World', René Guénon ; 'Revolt against the Modern World', Julius Evola).
They have used that ground, and, so to speak, grafted their own action onto it,
accelerating the rhythm of these processes. Thus they cannot be solely responsible for
the entire world-wide subversion. The 'Elders of Zion' are really a much more
profound mystery than most of the anti-Semites, or those who, contrarily and for
different reasons, reduce everything to Masonic internationalism or something of that
sort, can imagine.

We feel that this caveat is eminently justified. However, having established this, the
'presumption' which we have indicated, and which constitutes the second basis of the
veracity of the 'Protocols', is completely justified, and leads to very precise results.

Here, we must distinguish two aspects, the one practical, the other ideological. In
practical terms, are we to imagine that so many events which ended as victories for
Judaism, along with the infallible presence of Jews, half-Jews, or agents of Judaism in
connivance with judaised Freemasonry, in all the principal seats of modern social,
political and cultural subversion, are fortuitous? Are we to ignore the fact that Israel
not only remained united, despite the dispersion, but that agents of Judaism, quoting
almost literally the words of the 'Protocols', have recognised that such a dispersion has
a providential character, since it facilitates the universal domination promised to
Israel? And, let us not be mistaken, in this respect, there is also a unity which is quite
different from the abstract and ideal unity. Israel, the unassimilable cell in every
nation, the people within every people, and, in some cases, such as Czechoslovakia,
even the state in the state, has its own supra-national parliament, with legitimate
delegates elected by the Jews of each country, which regularly meets and takes
decisions, without, obviously, being obliged to provide a complete and public report
of these to any Goy who wishes for it. On the other hand, there is a domain within
which suppositions and inductions give way to overwhelming statistics : the fact is
that, wherever the Jews obtained emancipation and equality, they did not use it to
establish normal relations with the Goyim, but to rise immediately to all the principal
positions of responsibility and social privilege, and thus to develop, more or less
visibly, real hegemony. Whether the principles of democracy and liberalism were
created by the 'Elders', or not, the fact is that, in all countries and epochs in which
those principles have prevailed, the Jew has pervaded, parasitically or tyrannically,
the highest rungs of culture and society, where he has undeniably exercised a
destructive and corrosive influence and has woven a cord of international racial
solidarity which, leaving aside the plane of a true secret war, does have the character
of a conspiracy. Is all this mere 'chance'?

But this practical aspect of the Jewish influence is linked at its root to the theoretical
problem. To present the Jewish problem properly, so as to understand the true danger
of Judaism, it is necessary to work on the premise that what is fundamental to
Judaism is not so much race (in the strictly biological sense) as the Law. 'The Law'
means the Old Testament, the Torah, but also, and especially, its further
developments, the Mishnah, and, finally, the Talmud. It was rightly said that, as
Adam, the Jew was shaped by the Law, and the Law, by its age-old influence
throughout the generations, has awakened special instincts, a special way of feeling, of
reacting, of behaving, has passed into the blood, and has continued to act on the Jew
without his even being directly conscious of it or wanting it. It is an essence, an
incoercible way of being, which has allowed Israel to preserve its unity, and its
principle, Jewish Law, the Talmudic spirit, persists and acts today, fatally, whether in
an atavistic and unconscious manner, or in an occult manner, or in some other more or
less tortuous manner.

Here another decisive proof of the veracity of the 'Protocols' as Jewish document
becomes apparent, namely, that to draw from that Law all its logical consequences on
the plane of action means, precisely, to arrive more or less at what is essential in the
'Protocols' : International Judaism has striven to prove that the 'Protocols' are 'false',
while always taking great care to avoid the question of whether that document, true or
false, corresponds to the Jewish spirit. And it is precisely that question which we
would like to examine now. Jewish Law is based on the radical distinction between the
Jew and the non-Jew, which is presented more or less in the same terms as that
between human and animal, or that between élite and slaves ; from this is derived the
promise that the universal Reign of Israel will come sooner or later, and that all
peoples will have to submit to the sceptre of Judah ; it is the duty of the Jew to see
only violence and injustice in any law which is not his Law, to manifest a torment, and
a baseness, wherever his power is less than absolute ; from this is derived a double
morality which limits solidarity to the Jewish race, while approving every form of
lying, trickery, and treachery, in the relations between Jews and non-Jews, thus
making the latter into outlaws ; finally we find the sanctification of gold and interest as
instruments of the power of the Jew, to whom, by divine promise, all the wealth of
the earth must peculiarly belong, and who must 'devour' any people that the Lord will
give to him. The Talmud goes so far as to say : "Even the best of the non-Jews
(goyim) deserve death." In the Shemoneh Esreh, a Jewish daily prayer, one reads :
"May the apostates lose all hope, the Nazareans and the Minim (The Christians)
perish on the field, be erased from the book of life and have no contact with the
righteous."

"Limitless ambition, devouring thirst, blind desire of vengeance and excessive hate",
one can read in Protocol XI, and it is difficult to find a more fitting expression for
what is revealed to the one who penetrates the Jewish essence. The hope of the Reign
has never departed from the Jew, and within this hope lies the secret of the unheard-of
force which has allowed Israel to persist and to remain true to its own nature
throughout the centuries, tenacious, obstinate, proud and vile all at once. Even today,
yearly, all the Jewish communities evoke the following promise during the celebration
of Rosh Hashanah : "Raise your hands towards the sky and acclaim God while
rejoicing, for Jehovah, the Most High, the terrible one, will bring all the nations to
submission, and will prostrate them at your feet." For these textual quotations, and
for the declarations of the official representatives of Judaism, even today, we refer the
reader to the May and June issues of 'Vita Italiana', and to 'Fatti e Commenti', as well
as to the following works : E. Vries de Heekelingen : 'Israël, son passé, son avenir'
(Paris, 1937) ; U. Fleischhauer : 'Die Echten Protrokolle der Weisen von Zion' (Erfurt,
1935) ; E. Jouin : 'La judéo-maçonnerie et l'église catholique' (Paris, 1921).

The reader will find in an appendix [not included here] specific documentation of
textual quotations and declarations of representatives, including contemporary ones,
of Judaism, of this Israelite 'tradition'.

Thus, the theoretical convergence between the essence of the 'Protocols' and that of
Judaism is indisputable, and we can infer that, even if the 'Protocols' are invented, the
author has written what Jews faithful to their tradition and to the deep will of Israel
would have thought and written.

One should not imagine, then, that this discussion is a matter of retrospective
disinterment, and that the Law is merely a religious myth from a remote and 'outdated'
past. Jews faithful to their tradition are far more numerous than is commonly believed,
or than one is led to believe. But it is necessary to recognise that the influence of
Judaism is not limited to these faithful : the influence of a law followed continuously
for centuries does not vanish from one day to the next, but perpetually manifests
itself, in one form or another, in any Jewish substance. According to what has been
said above about the essence of the Law, which regards as unfair and violent any order
which is not led by the 'chosen people', it follows necessarily that the Jew is prone,
consciously or unconsciously, to all agitation or subversion, to a continuous project of
corrosion. It is so today and so will it be forever. In the classical era, Jewry was
already significantly assimilated to the 'Typhonian' stock, that is to say, to obscure
disintegrative forces, enemies of the solar god, generators of the 'sons of the powerless
revolt'. Theodor Herzl, founder of Zionism, recognised that the Jews, on one hand,
always formed the body of non-commissioned officers, as it were, of revolutionary
parties, and, on the other hand, always used the terrible power of gold in multifarious
ways. The opposition between the two Internationals, the revolutionary one and the
financial one, is only apparent,and merely expresses the nature of the two strategic
objectives ; the Jewish millionaire, Schiff, who bragged publicly of having financed and
brought about the Bolshevik revolution, is only one revealing case among many others,
hidden behind the scenes of Western history. Again, the appendix [not included here]
offers precious materials to the reader, to which can be added what 'Vita Italiana' has
brought to light methodically since.

Attention should also be drawn to the destructive work which Judaism has
accomplished, quite in accordance with the stipulations of the 'Protocols', in the
specifically cultural field, where the destruction has become protected by the taboos
of Science, Art, and Thought. Freud, whose theory aims to reduce internal life to
instincts and unconscious forces, or to conventions and repressions, is a Jew ;
Einstein, whose 'relativism' has become fashionable, is a Jew ; Lombroso, who has
perversely equated genius, crime and madness, is a Jew, as are Stirner, the father of
absolute anarchism, and Debussy (a half-Jew), Schönberg and Mahler, the main
representatives of musical decadence. Tzara, creator of Dadaism, extreme limit of the
disintegration of the so-called avant-garde, is a Jew, and so are Reinach and many
representatives of the sociological school, which is characterised by a degrading
interpretation of ancient religions. Nordau, who wants to reduce the essence of
civilisation to conventions and lies, is also a Jew. The 'primitive mentality' is to a large
extent a discovery of the Jew Levy-Brühl, and it is to the Jew Bergson that we owe
one of the most striking forms of irrationalism, the exaltation of 'life' and 'becoming' at
the expense of any higher intellectual principle. Ludwig, whose biography contains so
many tendentious distortions, is a Jew. Wassermann and Döblin are Jews, as well as a
whole series of novelists within whose works corrosive and mordant criticism of
essential social values can always be found. And so on. Are we so naïve as to consider
all this, once again, a matter of 'chance'? The same influence emanates from all those
personalities, whose destructive effect propagates itself in their respective domains,
and one can hear cries of 'barbarism' and 'fanatical racism' as soon as they are
impugned. To debase, to make all fixed points variable, to make all certainties
problematic, to sensualise, to tendentiously exalt what is inferior in man, to spread a
sort of terror, calculated to favour self-abandonment to obscure forces and to pave the
way for occult influences of the sort described in the 'Protocols' ; this is the true
meaning of cultural Judaism. We do not think that there is a genuine plan here, or even
a precise intention on the part of every individual ; what comes into play is 'race', i.e.,
an instinct ; in the same way, it is in the nature of fire to burn. The fact remains that
the whole, disorganised, unconscious influence is in perfect accord with the occult,
integral, unitary influence of the hidden forces of world-wide subversion. In order to
recognise the existence of international Judaism, it is not therefore necessary to assert
that all Jews are led by a genuine organisation, and that their whole action consciously
follows a plan. The link is established to a large extent automatically, by nature. Once
this becomes clear, another aspect of the veracity of the 'Protocols' is confirmed
immediately.
What is debatable, however, is the true nature of the main goals of that indisputable
influence. The problematic part of the 'Protocols' is that which deals with
reconstruction, not with destruction. When Nilus compares, in an apocalyptic tone,
the principal ideal of the 'Protocols' to the coming of the anti-Christ (the obsession of
the Slavic soul), he simply raves. The truth is that this ideal, basically, is the imperial
ideal, no more and no less - and even in a higher form : an absolute and inviolable
authority of divine right, a system of classes, a government of men who possess a
transcendent knowledge and make light of all the rationalist, liberal and humanitarian
myths ; defence of craft industry, and struggle against luxuriousness. Gold, once its
mission is carried out, will be overcome, as will be demagoguery, all the 'immortal
principles', and all the illusions and suggestions used and spread as means. There
remains a promise of peace and liberty, respect of property and person, for
whomsoever recognises the Law of the Elders of Zion. The sovereign, chosen by God,
will dedicate himself to the destruction of all ideas dictated by instinct and animality ;
a personification, in a way, of destiny, he will be inaccessible to passion, and master
of himself and of the world around him ; his power will be so unshakeable that he will
not need an armed guard about him (III, XXII, XXIII, XXIV).

The 'Protocols' lose much of their significance if one does not separate that part from
the rest, for, if that was their true goal, they could basically receive a justification. But,
to us, all that is fantasy. We have tried, instead, to analyse the process which has led
to the paradoxical association between these revivals of traditional ideas, linked to the
ideal of the 'Regnum', and the motifs of anti-traditional subversion : here, we see rather
a deviation, culminating in a true 'inversion', of certain elements from which the
original spirit has withdrawn ; elements which, left to themselves, have come under
the influence of forces of a quite different kind. We have tried elsewhere to determine
the successive phases of this inversion and perversion (see our 'Trasformazioni del
Regnum', in Vita Italiana, November 1937). The positive part, which we have traced
in the 'Protocols', is that from which we have shown how, in all the destructive
processes of the modern world, there is something which did not happen 'by chance',
something which shows a 'plan' and the presence of hidden forces. We have already
talked about the rôle which the Jew has played therein, and we think that it is wrong
to conclude that everything he has done, he has done with the ideal of the spiritual
empire, as described in the 'Protocols', in view. And even if this were not the case, for
us who are not Jewish, the result would be the same, for we dispute Israel's right to
consider itself as the 'chosen people' and to claim an Empire which would imply the
submission of all the other races. We are in no way willing to grant absolution for this
crime. We know all the greatness of our former imperial, aristocratic and spiritual
Europe, and we know that that greatness was destroyed. We fought against the forces
which caused that destruction, and we know what rôle the Jews played then, and play
now, within it, and we know that they can be found necessarily, today, in all the most
virulent centres of international revolution. Our knowledge regarding this does not in
itself require us to pose for ourselves any additional questions. We do however
acknowledge that most anti-Semitic positions are not up to the true task, since, by the
idea of race, of nation, of anti-revolution, of anti-Bolshevism, of anti-capitalism, this
or that sector of the Jewish front and of the vaster front of subversion to which it is
linked, can certainly be affected, but we will not reach its centre. The political myths
of the majority do not count for much, their breath is short, their validity is often
affected by the evils which they hope to cure. What is necessary is the full return to
the spiritual idea of the empire, the precise, hard, absolute, will of a truly traditional
reconstruction in every domain, and, therefore, first, in that of the spirit, on which all
the rest depends. Protocol V contains a really significant remark, recognising that only
a Sovereign drawing his authority from a 'divine right' can really aspire to universal
empire, and the 'Protocols' add that only someone similar appearing in the opposite
front would be in a position to fight the 'Elders of Zion' ; and then the conflict
between him and them "would be of such a nature that the world had never known its
like."

The 'Protocols' conclude : "But it is too late for them" - i.e., for us. Our view is the
opposite of this. At the present time, forces are leaping everywhere to the reconquest,
because the destiny to which Europe seemed condemned may be averted. These forces
must be completely conscious of the tasks and principles which inflexibly determine
their action, and must have the courage to be radical, firstly on the spiritual plane, and
to reject all compromise, to prepare the conditions of the formation of an international
traditional front, and continue in this direction until the conflict "of such a nature that
the world has never known its like" finds them united in a single robust, unshakeable,
irresistible block.

Julius EVOLA

Notes

(1) Comte Alexandre du Chayla was a French aristocrat who converted to orthodoxy
and subsequently fought in the White army against the Bolsheviks. In 1909 he met
Nilus, who showed him the 'original' of the document and later said that the question
of its authenticity did not matter much to him : "Let's admit," he told du Chayla, "that
the 'Protocols' are false. However, can't God use them to unveil the iniquity of what is
brewing? Can't God, because of our good faith, turn dog's bones into miraculous relics?
He can thus put into a lying mouth the heralding of truth!"

(2) The title of this newspaper is actually New York World.

(3) "... The extent to which the whole existence of this people is based on a
continuous lie is shown incomparably by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, so
infinitely hated by the Jews. They are based on a forgery, the Frankfurter Zeitung
moans and screams once every week : this is the best proof that they are authentic.
[...] The important thing is that, with positively terrifying certainty, they reveal the
nature and activity of the Jewish people, and expose their inner contexts, as well as
their ultimate final aims." (A. Hitler, 'Mein Kampf'). Alfred Rosenberg, in his 'The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Jewish World Politics', published in Munich in
1923, concludes that "Today's politics is true in every detail to the quotations and to
the plan exposed in the 'Protocols'." Incidentally, Evola's remark about Hitler is not
found in the Italian on-line version of the preface, and, furthermore, the last paragraph
is slightly different.

(4) Yet, in 'La scienza ebraica, la teoria della relatività e la "catarsi demoniaca"' (Vita
Italiana, May 1940), Evola, under the pen-name 'Arthos', brought to light "the
relations which have existed since the most ancient times between Judaism and the
inclination to an abstract and lifeless mathematical speculation", and noted that "that
relation, in its turn, brings us back to an opposition between general world-outlooks,
and originates in that denial of the world as cosmos, as organic and living unity, which
characterised the Semite as opposed to the Aryan". More concretely, he added that "it
can be noted that algebra and arithmetics were brought to the West by the Semites and
the Arabs ; the numbers which allow algebraic operations are precisely those called
'Arabic', and unknown, for instance, to the Romans, who had their own methods of
calculation - since, obviously, with Roman numbers it is impossible to perform the
most basic arithmetical operations known to everyone today". Ourselves, we don't
find these considerations, which can be developed to enable us to conclude that
modern so-called 'Western science' would not have been possible without a Semitic
contribution, particularly ludicrous.