Summary
Title: A Rumor About the Jews: Reflections on Antisemitism and the 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion'
Author: Stephen Eric Bronner
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 0195169565
Pros:
• Clear, understanable introduction to development of modern antisemitism
• Provides insights into how and why modern reactionaries identify humanists as 'the enemy'
Cons:
• None
Description:
• Explains context in which the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was written and gained influence
• Shows how modern anti-semitism is largely a reaction against modernity
• Demonstrates the dangers of allowing reactionary forces to identify any one group as scapegoats
Book Review
Why should this topic interest nonbelievers and skeptics? There are two obvious reasons and one less obvious reason. First, the 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion' represented a continuation and political expansion of traditional Christian antisemitism. Understanding it can help explain how religious opposition to Judaism developed into the political and racial movement known as antisemitism:
The Protocols unifies the religious, the social, and the political elements of Judeophobia in a particularly striking way. It expresses the resentment of a Christian world against the undermining of its faith and it seeks to close public life to the Jews. ... The Protocols made Judeophobia part of a more "total" and distinctly modern, form of political anti-modernism: it crystallized the idea of the Jew as scapegoat.
The second reason is that the 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion' is perhaps one of the world's most famous and persistent forgeries. Gullible people have believed its veracity almost since it was published, and even though it has been decisively debunked, it continues to hold people's attention and influence the political machinations of far-right extremists. American militias, for example, treat it as a sort of scripture and basic explanation for why they must exist.
Finally, and perhaps more interestingly, the 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion' is about a lot more than the threat of world domination by Jews. Indeed, much antisemitism is not about the Jews - they are simply made to be the scapegoats for the fears and problems of members of the extreme right. When the Protocols, or any other similar document, complains about what the Jews are doing, what we find is in fact a litany of what people fear most about the modern world.
The Protocols, for this reason, are an example of what traditionalists have long found most distressing about modernity. It is a diatribe not so much against Judaism as it is against the Enlightenment and the liberation it represented from traditional restrictions on religion, gender, economics and social status:
The Protocols solidifies the connection between the true believers in Christianity, those nineteenth-century reactionaries intent on combating the Enlightenment, and the fanatics of a seemingly antireligious and revolutionary Nazi movement desirous of establishing the primacy of a single race.
Christian institutions and the first genuinely reactionary movements, no less than the Nazis, overwhelmingly aligned themselves against the modern ideas and values generated in the age of democratic revolution: secularism and science, rationalism and materialism, tolerance and equality, capitalism and socialism, liberalism and marxism. Antisemitism was never simply an independent impulse. It was always part of a broader project directed against the civilizing impulse of reason and the dominant forces of modernity.
Bronner begins his history of antisemitism by tracing the history of "Judeophobia" (his word for antisemitism of this sort) in the ancient world when people's distrust was aimed more at Judaism than at the Jews themselves. What upset pagan rivals was the "arrogance" of Judaism's exclusivity and monotheism. There also existed some economic envy directed at successful Jews, but poorer Jews escaped the negative attention.
The development of Christian antisemitism was much more dangerous because all Jews, even the secular or poor, became demonized. The blood of Jesus was considered to be on all their heads and, over time, people believed that they were in league with Satan. The goal of Satan and his minions was, of course, to overthrow "Christian civilization" with their insidious doctrines like secularism or liberalism.
With this background, it wasn't hard for people to find credible the thesis of 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion' that Jews were scheming to economically, politically, and culturally replace Christian civilization. This was based on realistic fears of losers in the march to democratic freedoms and modernity, but it was all combined with the paranoid fantasies of religious myths.
Today, antisemitism is much less fashionable or acceptable among many in the far-right, but their fears about modernity have not lessened. This means that they require a new scapegoat, at least for their more public complaints. Although no group is as attractive for this role as Jews (given their long history as social outcasts), communists, and more recently humanists, have taken on the job.
Everything that is wrong with society is condemned today as being caused by the "humanists" who, despite their small numbers, have managed to gain control over everything. Sometimes Jews join the humanists, but understanding antisemitism can help in better understanding the nature of anti-humanism which is becoming more common.
