It's true, there are those on the far right who find their inspiration in the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" for the concept of the "Zionist Occupational Government" (or "Zionist Occupied Government"). How I wish this were the end of the story. But I am sad to say, the few on the far, far right (but hey, even one is too many) who still believe this, are now dwarfed by the multi-millions* of Islamic (mostly Arab) Fundamentalists who now belief this filth, wholesale. For them, like the far right, the "ZOG" and the "Protocols" are self-reinforcing, inextricably intertwined concepts that "explain" why almost any bad thing happens to Arabs (or skinheads) anywhere.

For examples, see just about any issue of the Arab News, http://www.arabnews.com/, which is the official, English language newspaper of the government of Saudi Arabia. To be fair, in the aftermath of the 2003 phase of the Iraq War, the Arab News editorial page (i.e. the front page <grin>) appears to be undergoing a sort of ideological schizophrenia, in which quite reasonable-sounding, progressive (by Fundamentalist standards), even modernist opinion pieces appear side-by side with pieces calling for violent Jihad against the ZOG. For additional fun, see if you can find Internet references to the article the Arab News published in 2002 by none other than...David Duke! They took the article down due to the outrage it caused, but trust me, it was there. It pretty much said what you'd expect to hear from Mr. Duke.

Although a version still is in print at Amazon, to my knowledge, the most recent group in the US to re-publish the infamous "Protocols" was the Patterson, N.J., newsletter / newspaper "Arab Voice", in the issue of approximately September, 2002. A further example: the week of November 15, 2002, Egyptian state television began airing a 41-part miniseries "Horseman Without a Horse," widely acknowledged to contain a screen adaptation of the "Protocols". See the November 15 op-ed "Conspiracy Theory" by Brendan Minitir of the Wall Street Journal, available at http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110002631. Your favorite comprehensive international news source, or even Reuters, will probably carry at least some mention of this Egyptian series, since the US State Department tried unsuccessfully to lobby Egypt to hold off airing it.

So sadly, the "Protocols", once the exclusive pre-occupation of the far, far right in world politics, has achieved a sort of "mainstream" status in, of all places, the socialist / pan-Arabist / fundamentalist Arab world, which I am sad to say has resonated** with far too many purported "leftists" in the West.


* And no, these many millions do not represent Islam, which is a religion of billions.

** I use the term "resonated" advisedly. I am not saying those who resonate with a concept such as ZOG actually agree with it, more likely, they are naive, or willfully ignorant. What else is one to make of incidents like the May 7, 2002 San Francisco State University's "Peace in the Middle East" rally organized by campus Jewish students? Amoung the participants at the rally was a survivor of the Shoah. Counter-demonstrators outnumbered the participants and surrounded them, taunting and screaming. The counter-demonstrators happily mingled traditional Left-wing anti-war slogans such as "Zionism=racism" "Jews=Nazis" (which in and of themselves aren't necessarily references to the ZOG) with clear references to the ZOG/Protocols meme such as "Hitler did not finish the job" and the now-infamous "Blood Libel" poster depicting a tin of meat labeled "Made in Israel / Palestinian Children Meat / Slaughtered According to Jewish Rites Under American License". You can see first-hand accounts at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SFSU/. This mingling, and the baffling reluctance of campus administrators to enforce the campus hate-speech code against the counter-demonstrators, is what I mean by "resonate". Sadly, it is only one of many, recent examples.

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