For those of you that are unfamiliar, the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is a mysterious Russian book from the turn of the century that details a specific and uncomfortably accurate description of a plan for the Jews to take over the world. After the Bolshevik revolution in 1918 it exploded in popularity. It was translated into many other languages and read by millions of people worldwide. Henry Ford famously promoted the book until 1921 when a Jewish newspaper in London presented evidence that it was a forgery. I first heard of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion a few months ago when I was reading Mein Kampf. Hitler mentioned being influenced by it and also briefly discussed the controversy behind it’s origins which intrigued me. So I thought I’d do some research into the document’s origins while reading it, and this post contains what I found and what my theories are on who wrote it and why. After finishing it, I can say that I found it absolutely fascinating from a historical, political, and religious perspective and that it still has enormous relevance today. In a lot of ways, the plan described in the Protocols is a more accurate depiction of today’s world than early 20th century Europe.

The document was supposedly exposed in 1921 as a forgery by Phillip Graves who worked as an editor for The Times in London (a Jewish newspaper). According to Graves, an anonymous Russian man he calls “Mr. X” (who also spoke French and English fluently) approached him and gave him an obscure French book written by Maurice Joly several decades before the Protocols which contained several sections that the Protocols had plagiarized from. Mr. X had conveniently done all of the research for Graves, and claimed he had discovered everything by coincidence. Mr. X also claimed that the Protocols were discovered in 1901 (without evidence) and used to discredit a particular Frenchman in Nicholas II’s court, and then later to encourage antisemitism to weaken Russian liberals politically. Presumably, this means he thought the Protocols were written by a conservative Russian political figure fabricating a phony story for political reasons. Graves speculated that Joly’s book was brought to Russia by a secret police officer of Napoleon III who later decided to work for Nicholas II although he had no evidence of this and admitted in his bombshell article that it was just a theory. Admittedly, the French book written by Joly is remarkably similar to the Protocols in several places, and while Joly’s book was obscure, it was verified that it was published in 1864. But beyond this detail, everything else in Graves’ article is extremely speculative, far-fetched, and even ridiculous.

First of all, the Protocols don’t have much to do with Russia (Russia is only mentioned once in the entire document). It seems odd that a forged document from the Russian government would describe an international conspiracy instead of an immediately Russian conspiracy. Secondly, if the Protocols are a forgery intended to provoke antisemitism, it seems odd that it would be necessary since pogroms had been going on in Russia for over two decades prior to its publication. Russia was already the most antisemitic country in the world at that time. Furthermore, protocol 15 mentions the papacy as being the opponent of Judaism. It seems odd that the orthodox Russians would promote Catholicism as one of the few opponents of the international Jewish conspiracy. Finally, fabricating documents to manipulate public opinion over the course of several years is more of a Jewish tactic than a Christian one.

Based on these points, it is reasonable to conclude that everything in Graves’ article was a complete fabrication except for the plagiarism accusation (I’ll come back to the plagiarism later). It is also reasonable to conclude that while it is true that Nicholas II encouraged the circulation of the Protocols, it is unlikely that he (or his government) had anything to do with its creation.

On the other hand, the original conspiracy theory for the Protocols claims that they were secretly presented to select members of the First World Zionist Conference in Basle in 1897 (the actual conference and official Protocol were public). The leader of this conference was Theodore Herzl (a known agent of the Rothschilds), and a few public statements made by Herzl loosely correspond to sections of the Protocols. The problem with this theory is that at the First Zionist Conference many Jews were vehemently opposed to the idea of Zionism and that wouldn’t change until the 5th Zionist Conference in 1901. While it’s possible that the Protocols were presented at a different Zionist conference or some other secret meeting of Jews, there isn’t any firm evidence to establish that. This theory also doesn’t address Graves’ plagarism accusation. Finally, the fact that the Protocols were written in Russian is also suspicious. If the Jews really had a secret document describing their plan for world domination, they would have written it in Yiddish or Hebrew so that if any of their enemies stumbled upon it, they wouldn’t be able to read it, but any Jew would. None of the people involved with the discovery or publication of the Protocols ever produced or claimed to have encountered an original document in Yiddish or Hebrew.

The biggest piece of evidence for the authenticity of the document is how predictive it was. In fact, the one thing about the Protocols that no one disputes is the fact that nearly everything in it directly corresponds to historical events that took place in the immediate aftermath of its publication and continue to happen in the modern era. And the information in it, while somewhat vague, is still quite specific (as much as could be expected from a high level plan).

Ironically, neither the Jewish theory nor the conspiracy theory adequately explains where the Protocols came from. After doing some investigating, I discovered that there is a significant amount of controversy regarding even the basic details of when the Protocols were first published. They were first widely published in book form in 1905 by Sergei Nilus who included them as an appendix to the second edition of his book “The Great Within the Small”. Some researchers mistakenly assumed that the Protocols were also published in 1901 in the first edition of the book, but that is incorrect. Nilus did however publish an edited version of the Protocols in the St. Petersburg daily newspaper Znamya in 1903 where he worked as an editor. This is the earliest, verifiable publication of the Protocols. Reports of the Protocols being published in 1897 by Philip Stepanov cannot be verified by anyone except Stepanov and so they aren’t credible. Stepanov’s claims were made in 1927 about events from 30 years earlier and so they couldn’t be properly investigated or verified. He may have had some connection to Nilus but it’s more likely he was trying to obscure instead of illuminate the origins of the Protocols.

Over the years, Sergei Nilus made many contradictory claims regarding how he obtained the Protocols. In 1905 he claimed that the Protocols were stolen from a leading, unnamed Freemason in France. In 1911 he claimed that he had received the Protocols from an unnamed woman living in Paris who had been given the Protocols from a Russian General named Pyotr Ivanovich Ratchkovsky who had stolen them from a secret Freemason vault in Paris. General Ratchkovsky died in 1910 so he was unable to corroborate the story, although he was in Paris at the time he allegedly obtained the Protocols. In 1917 Nilus claimed to have received the protocols from Alexey Nicolaievich Sukhotin, a Russian noble and later government official but by the time Nilus claimed this, Sukhotin was dead and couldn’t corroborate the story, so it’s probably not true.

Equally confusing are the claims Nilus made over the years regarding what meeting the Protocols refer to. Nilus claimed in his 1905 book that the protocols were from a zionist meeting in 1902-1903. Later, in 1911 Nilus claims he received the protocols in 1901. Then in 1917 Nilus claimed the protocols were from the First Zionist Conference in 1897. It is likely that Nilus changed his story in order to protect the source of the document, especially once they become much more popular. As a result, his earliest explanations are probably more credible, but none of his explanations can be trusted completely. Therefore, I conclude that Nilus believed they referred to a zionist meeting in 1902-1903 which would imply that he had just received them in 1903, shortly before printing them for the first time in his newspaper. It will never be known with any degree of confidence who gave the Protocols to Nilus.

Nilus himself admitted to editing the Protocols but Jewish claims that he authored the Protocols have no evidence and no realistic motive. There is no evidence that Nilus would have been familiar with Maurice Joly’s book (which was published when Nilus was only two years old and immediately banned) other than the fact that Nilus lived in France for several years. The writing of the Protocols is very disjointed. The chapters don’t really have much to do with each other. Some parts are fairly articulate, while others are crude and simple. Some parts are written in the singular first person, plural first person, and third person. Taking all of this into account, the Protocols were probably written by several different people who didn’t want to be publicly known (not Nilus). It’s also worth pointing out that Nilus never claimed to author the Protocols, but he admitted editing them. I believe this to be true.

In 1903 Sergei Nilus was based in St. Petersburg and working as a Tzarist official and newspaper editor and so he was not in a position to travel around Europe to find a document like the protocols and bring them to Russia. Therefore, someone brought the protocols to him. At the time of their first publication, he was a member of Nicholas II’s court so he would have had plenty of opportunities to come into contact with people from all over Europe.

In a stunning coincidence, Theodore Herzl, the international leader of zionism, was in St. Petersburg from August 5th-18th, 1903. Just ten days after this trip, the protocols were first published in the St Petersburg daily newspaper Znamya on August 28th, 1903 by Sergie Nilus. My theory is that this is no coincidence, and that Theodore Herzl brought the Protocols to St. Petersburg and ensured that they were delivered to members of the Tsar’s court. I don’t believe that the Protocols were stolen from Herzl because they were written in Russian. If Herzl had intended for the Protocols to be read only by Jews, it would have been written in yiddish which was the predominant language spoken by Jews in eastern Europe, and known by very few nonjews. The fact that it arrived to Nilus at St Petersburg in Russian means that it was always intended to be distributed to Russians. Herzl probably intended it to be circulated within the Tsar’s court to influence government policy, but not public opinion per se. Then someone in the Tsar’s court gave the document to Nilus, who widely printed it.

This theory explains the Maurice Joly plagiarism perfectly: the Jewish author of the document intentionally used the obscure french book as a template in several places so that Jews would be able to attack the Protocols as a forgery if the document ever started to gain too much traction. I call this common Jewish tactic the “Jewish Kill Switch.” An example of this was when Obama refused to release his birth certificate public, but once he was attacked for it by someone prominent (Trump), only then did he publicly release it to make his accusers look bad.

There are two main reasons that I believe Herzl and the Jews wanted the Protocols distributed in Russia. The first was to provoke antisemitism among the Tsar’s government in order to encourage Russian Jews to emigrate to Palestine. By 1903 Herzl had mostly united Jews throughout the world to support zionism, but very few Jews were actually willing to leave their homes and settle in Palestine. The first Aliyah from 1882 - 1903 was the first wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine. Antisemitism in Russia was the main driver, but roughly half of all the Jews that came ended up leaving a few years after their arrival. After 1903, the second aliyah began due to increased antisemitism, which was a substantially larger wave of immigration. 20,000-30,000 Jews came to Palestine during the first aliyah, but 35,000 to 40,000 Jews came in the second aliyah which lasted from 1904 to 1914 (less than half as long). More antisemitism was very good for getting Jews to go to Palestine. Russia was the ideal place to release the Protocols because it was geographically closer to Palestine than western Europe, had the largest Jewish population of any other country, and was the most underdeveloped. It would have taken considerably less to convince a Russian Jew to go to Palestine than a wealthy English or French Jew.

The second purpose of the protocols was to bait antisemitic people into promoting the Protocols and then activate the Jewish Kill Switch (by exposing the Maurice Joly book) to publicly embarrass them and discourage any other prominent figure from antisemitic allegations outlined in the book. Henry Ford for example, was forced to retract many public statements he made about Jews after the Protocols were “exposed” as forgeries. It’s brilliant because it allows the Jews to publicly lay out their plans, but since the Jews have “proven” it’s a forgery, they can publicly smear anyone who interferes. They can force people to accept any idea about Jewish manipulation but the truth.

By 1921, the Russian civil war was effectively won by the Bolsheviks, Palestine had been secured by the British empire, Nicholas II was dead, and prominent public figures were starting to publicly support the protocols. The time was right to activate the Jewish Kill Switch and expose the connection between Maurice Joly’s book and the Protocols in an attempt to destroy antisemitism among the western intelligentsia, and so Mr. X made an appointment with Philip Graves.

TLDR; The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were written by Jews and intentionally distributed in Russia to encourage antisemitism so that Jews would leave Russia and come to Palestine. The Jewish authors plagiarized Maurice Joly so that they could claim the secret plan was a forgery if necessary.