Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion

From: Historical Ezra Pound (1885-1972) Speeches - Attempting to Prevent World War 2

If or when one mentions the Protocols alleged to be of the Elders of Zion, one is frequently met with the reply: Oh, but they are a forgery.

Certainly they are a forgery, and that is the one proof we have of their authenticity. The Jews have worked with forged documents for the past 24 hundred years, namely ever since they have had any documents whatsoever. And no one can qualify as a historian of this half century without having examined the Protocols. Alleged, if you like, to have been translated from the Russian, from a manuscript to be consulted in the British Museum, where some such document may or may not exist.

What we know for certain is that they were published two decades ago. That Lord Sydenham wrote a preface to them. That their content has been traced to another sketch said to have appeared in the eighteen forties. The interest in them does not lie in [the] question of their having been, or NOT been concocted by a legislative assembly of Rabbis, democratically elected, or secretly chosen by the Mysterious Order of Seven Branched Antlers or the Bowling Society of Milwaukee. Their interest lies in the type of mind, or the state of mind of their author. That was their interest for the psychologist the day they first appeared. And for the historian two decades later, when the program contained in them has so crushingly gone into effect up to a point, or down to a squalor.

What is interesting, perhaps most, to the historian is their definite campaign against history altogether, their declared intention to blot out the classics, to blot out the record, and to dazzle men with talk of tomorrow. That is a variant on the pie in the bait. As far as reality is concerned, as far as you and I are concerned it makes little difference whether prosperity is in heaven, or in the year 2300, or just round a corner that will never be turned.

A religious man might think his reward might be in heaven, but even a religious man ought to know that his reward will not be on earth in a hundred years time. In fact, the pie in the sky is a more reasonable proposition: an opium with more to it than Mr. Keynes’ day after tomorrow.

I am not concerned with fixing blame retrospectively so much as with judging the present: those who are against the true word, the protocolaires. Now Keynes whose fair is foul, foul is fair sentence can be taken as the quintessence of something or other, is the perfect protoclaire. It comes over me that on the one occasion I had the curious experience of seeing him, he managed to utter two falsehoods in a very short space of time. In fact never opened his mouth without doing so. First in stating that he is an orthodox economist, which he is not, second in saying that the then high cost of living was due to lack of labor, when there were millions of men out of work.

You couldn’t have done much better in two sentences if you were out for a record in the falsification. Protocol No. 8, second [paragraph]:

Is it possible to arouse any interest in verbal precision? Is it possible to persuade more than six or eight people to consider the scope of crossword puzzles and other devices for looking at words for something that is NOT their meaning? Cabala, for example, anything to make the word mean something it does NOT say. Anything to distract the auditor from the plain sense of the word, or the sentence? Even to communism that is NOT communism. To communism of the episcopal sort, which they want in England. A Bolshevism that is to leave the archibishops and curates just where they are, each with his living or benefice. A revelation against capital, allegedly against capital, that attacks property and leaves capital setting pretty.

Lenin all out for making banking a state affair. And then twenty years during which it has seemed to drop decidedly into the background, when the world revolution was very busy about something else.

It should by now be clear that some people fear NOT the outcome of the war, but the END of the war. Churchill, for example. Not defeat, not the ruin of the Empire that worries him, but the END of the war. End of the slaughter, end of the war conditions.

Robert Clive has been clear enough, ex-British ambassador in Tokyo. Tells you and the world Japan can not be beaten. But the war must go ON, according to Churchill and Roosevelt. Churchill sees the end of monopoly and privilege, or at least a shift when the war ends, no matter HOW. That is the point you should consider. In regard to the protocols, either there is and was a plot to ruin all goyim, all nations of Europe, or some people are stark raving crazy. They want war to go on to certain wreck. WHO are they? Mere cannon fodder. The American troops in N. Africa know they are not there thru any wish of their own. The war was started for gold, to maintain the fetish value of gold. Plenty of other sidelines. Minor advantages have been COMMERCIALLY taken. Did the present regime in England WANT the troops to return after Dunkirk? Every move for reform in England is a fascist reform, or proposition along fascist lines.

The supreme betrayal of Europe is inherent in the alliance of Anglo-Jewry with Moscow. Debts rise. That is one part of the war. It is a contest between STOPPING the war and going on with it. And only one side does any fighting. Namely the party that STARTED the war. They are for its continuance. Who are they?

BUT they are also for starting the next one. They openly proclaim that AFTER (that is IF) America finishes with Japan, she will have to fight Russia. IF Russia should break into Europe.

Only blindness and deafness can keep you unaware of these proclamations. The U.S. must protect the world? Why? Does the world want it? The U.S., once this war is over, must be strong enough to beat Russia.

The U.S. had a chance to maintain her prestige and unique position by staying NEUTRAL. Neutral while other powers exhausted themselves. And she DID not.

Who are the lunatics? Was there a deliberate plot? That is what should concern you. WAS there a plot? How long had it been in existence? Does it continue, with its Lehmans, Morgenthaus, Baruchs? Proposals to send the darkies to Africa, to work for Judea, and the rest of it? And WILL you, after Japan is thru with you, take on Russia? In order to maintain the banking monopoly? With Mr. Wille Wiseman, late of the British secret service, ensconced in Kuhn, Loeb and Co., to direct you and rule you?