Putting aside fine phrases we shall speak of the
significance of each thought: by comparisons and deductions we
shall throw light upon surrounding facts.
What I am about to set forth, then, is our system
from the two point(s) of view, that of ourselves and that of
the goyim (i.e., non-Jews).
It must be noted that men with bad instincts are more
in number than the good, and therefore the best results in
governing them are attained by violence and terrorization, and
not by academic discussions. Every man aims at power, everyone would like to become a dictator if only he could, and rare indeed are the men who would not be willing to sacrifice the welfare of
all for the sake of securing their own welfare.
What has restrained the beasts of prey who are called men?
What has served for their guidance hitherto?
In the beginnings of the structure of society they were
subjected to brutal and blind force; afterwards -- to Law, which
is the same force, only disguised. I draw the conclusion that by
the law of nature right lies in force.
Political freedom is an idea but not a fact. This idea one
must know how to apply whenever it appears necessary with this
bait of an idea to attract the masses of the people to one's
party for the purpose of crushing another who is in authority.
This task is rendered easier if the opponent has himself been
infected with the idea of freedom, so-called liberalism, and, for
the sake of an idea, is willing to yield some of his power. It is
precisely here that the triumph of our theory appears: the
slackened reins of government are immediately, by the law of
life, caught up and gathered together by a new hand, because the
blind might of the nation cannot for one single day exist without
guidance, and the new authority merely fits into the place of the
old already weakened by liberalism.
In our day the power which has replaced that of the rulers
who were liberal is the power of Gold. Time was when Faith ruled.
The idea of freedom is impossible of realization because no one
knows how to use it with moderation. It is enough to hand over a
people to self-government for a certain length of time for that
people to be turned into a disorganized mob. From that moment on
we get internecine strife which soon develops into battles
between classes, in the midst of which States burn down and their
importance is reduced to that of a heap of ashes.
Whether a State exhausts itself in its own convulsions,
whether its internal discord brings it under the power of
external foes -- in any case it can be accounted irretrievably
lost: it is in our power. The despotism of Capital, which is
entirely in our hands, reaches out to it a straw that the State,
willy-nilly, must take hold of: if not -- it goes to the bottom.
Should anyone of a liberal mind say that such reflections as
the above are immoral I would put the following questions: -- If
every State has two foes and if in regard to the external foe it
is allowed and not considered immoral to use every manner and art
of conflict, as for example to keep the enemy in ignorance of
plans of attack and defence, to attack him by night or in
superior numbers, then in what way can the same means in regard
to a worse foe, the destroyer of the structure of society and the
commonweal, be called immoral and not permissible?
Is it possible for any sound logical mind to hope with any
success to guide crowds by the aid of reasonable counsels and
arguments, when any objection or contradiction, senseless though
it may be, can be made and when such objection may find more
favour with the people, whose powers of reasoning are
superficial? Men in masses and the men of the masses, being
guided solely by petty passions, paltry beliefs, customs,
traditions and sentimental theorism, fall a prey to party
dissension, which hinders any kind of agreement even on the basis
of a perfectly reasonable argument. Every resolution of a crowd
depends upon a chance or packed majority, which, in its ignorance
of political secrets, put forth some ridiculous resolution that
lays in the administration a seed of anarchy.
The political has nothing in common with the moral. The
ruler who is governed by the moral is not a skilled politician,
and is therefore unstable on his throne. He who wishes to rule
must have recource both to cunning and to make-believe. Great
national qualities, like frankness and honesty, are vices in
politics, for they bring down rulers from their thrones more
effectively and more certainly than the most powerful enemy. Such
qualities must be the attributes of the kingdoms of the goyim,
but we must in no wise be guided by them.
Our right lies in force. The word "right" is an abstract
thought and proved by nothing. The word means no more than: --
Give me what I want in order that thereby I may have a proof that
I am stronger than you.
Where does right begin? Where does it end?
In any State in which there is a bad organization of
authority, an impersonality of laws and of the rulers who have
lost their personality amid the flood of rights ever multiplying
out of liberalism, I find a new right -- to attack by the right
of the strong, and to scatter to the winds all existing forces of
order and regulation, to reconstruct all institutions and to
become the sovereign lord of those who have left to us the rights
of their power by laying them down voluntarily in their
liberalism.
Our power in the present tottering condition of all forms of
power will be more invisible than any other, because it will
remain invisible until the moment when it has gained such
strength that no cunning can any longer undermine it.
Out of the temporary evil we are now compelled to commit
will emerge the good of an unshakeable rule, which will restore
the regular course of the machinery of the national life, brought
to naught by liberalism. The result justifies the means. Let us,
however, in our plans, direct our attention not so much to what
is good and moral as to what is necessary and useful.
Before us is a plan in which is laid down strategically the
line from which we cannot deviate without running the risk of
seeing the labour of many centuries brought to naught.
In order to elaborate satisfactory forms of action it is
necessary to have regard to the rascality, the slackness, the
instability of the mob, its lack of capacity to understand and
respect the conditions of its own life, or its own welfare. It
must be understood that the might of a mob is blind, senseless
and unreasoning force ever at the mercy of a suggestion from any
side. The blind cannot lead the blind without bringing them into
the abyss; consequently, members of the mob, upstarts from the
people even though they should be as a genius for wisdom, yet
having no understanding of the political, cannot come forward as
leaders of the mob without bringing the whole nation to ruin.
Only one trained from childhood for independent rule can
have understanding of the words that can be made up of the
political alphabet.
A people left to itself i.e., to upstarts from its midst,
brings itself to ruin by party dissensions excited by the pursuit
of power and honours and the disorders arising therefrom, Is it
possible for the masses of the people calmly and without petty
jealousies to form judgments, to deal with the affairs of the
country, which cannot be mixed up with personal interests? Can
they defend themselves from an external foe? It is unthinkable,
for a plan broken up into as many parts as there are heads in the
mob, loses all homogeneity, and thereby becomes unintelligible
and impossible of execution.
It is only with a despotic ruler that plans can be
elaborated extensively and clearly in such a way as to distribute
the whole properly among the several parts of the machinery of
the State: from this the conclusion is inevitable that a
satisfactory form of government for any country is one that
concentrates in the hands of one responsible person. Without an
absolute despotism there can be no existence for civilization
which is carried on not by the masses but by their guide,
whosoever that person may be. The mob is a savage and displays
its savagery at every opportunity. The moment the mob seizes
freedom in its hands it quickly turns to anarchy, which in itself
is the highest degree of savagery.
Behold the alcoholized animals, bemused with drink, the
right to an immoderate use of which comes along with freedom. It
is not for us and ours to walk that road. The peoples of the
goyim are bemused with alcoholic liquors; their youth has grown
stupid on classicism and from early immorality, into which it has
been inducted by our special agents -- by tutors, lackeys,
governesses in the houses of the wealthy, by clerks and others,
by our women in the places of dissipation frequented by the
goyim. In the number of these last I count also the so-called
"society ladies," voluntary followers of the others in corruption
and luxury.
Our countersign is -- Force and Make-believe. Only force
conquers in political affairs, especially if it be concealed in
the talents essential to statesmen. Violence must be the
principle, and cunning and make-believe the rule for governments
which do not want to lay down their crowns at the feet of agents
of some new power. This evil is the one and only means to attain
the end, the good. Therefore we must not stop at bribery, deceit
and treachery when they should serve towards the attainment of
our end. In politics one must know how to seize the property of
others without hesitation if by it we secure submission and
sovereignty.
Our State, marching along the path of peaceful conquest, has
the right to replace the horrors of war by less noticeable and
more satisfactory sentences of death, necessary to maintain the
terror which tends to produce blind submission. Just but
merciless severity is the greatest factor of strength in the
State: not only for the sake of gain but also in the name of
duty, for the sake of victory, we must keep to the programme of
violence and make-believe. The doctrine of squaring accounts is
precisely as strong as the means of which it makes use. Therefore
it is not so much by the means themselves as by the doctrine of
severity that we shall triumph and bring all governments into
subjection to our super-government. It is enough for them to know
that we are merciless for all disobedience to cease.
Far back in ancient times we were the first to cry among the
masses of the people the words "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,"
words many times repeated since those days by stupid poll-parrots
who from all sides round flew down upon these baits and with them
carried away the well-being of the world, true freedom of the
individual, formerly so well guarded against the pressure of the
mob. The would-be wise men of the goyim, the intellectuals, could
not make anything out of the uttered words in their abstractness;
did not note the contradiction of their meaning and inter-
relation: did not see that in nature there is no equality, cannot
be freedom; that Nature herself has established inequality of
minds, of characters, and capacities, just as immutably as she
has established subordination to her laws: never stopped to think
that the mob is a blind thing, that upstarts elected from among
it to bear rule are, in regard to the political, the same blind
men as the mob itself, that the adept, though he be a fool, can
yet rule, whereas the non-adept, even if he were a genius,
understands nothing in the political -- to all these things the
goyim paid no regard; yet all the time it was based upon these
things that dynastic rule rested: the father passed on to the son
a knowledge of the course of political affairs in such wise that
none should know it but members of the dynasty and none could
betray it to the governed. As time went on the meaning of the
dynastic transference of the true position of affairs in the
political was lost, and this aided the success of our cause.
In all corners of the earth the words "Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity" brought to our ranks, thanks to our blind agents,
whole legions who bore our banners with enthusiasm. And all the
time these words were canker-worms at work boring into the well-
being of the goyim, putting an end everywhere to peace, quiet,
solidarity and destroying all the foundations of the goya States.
As you will see later, this helped us to our triumph; it gave us
the possibility, among other things, of getting into our hands
the master card -- the destruction of the privileges, or in other
words of the very existence of the aristocracy of the goyim, that
class which was the only defense peoples and countries had
against us. On the ruins of the natural and genealogical
aristocracy of the goyim we have set up the aristocracy of our
educated class headed by the aristocracy of money. The
qualifications for this aristocracy we have established in
wealth, which is dependent upon us, and in knowledge, for which
our learned elders provide the motive force.
Our triumph has been rendered easier by the fact that in our
relations with the men whom we wanted we have always worked upon
the most sensitive chords of the human mind, upon the cash
account, upon the cupidity, upon the insatiability for material
needs of man: and each one of these human weaknesses, taken
alone, is sufficient to paralyse initiative, for it hands over
the will of men to the disposition of him who has bought their
activities.
The abstraction of freedom has enabled us to persuade the
mob in all countries that their government is nothing but the
steward of the people who are the owners of the country, and that
the steward may be replaced like a worn-out glove.
It is this possibility of replacing the representatives of
the people which has placed them at our disposal, and, as it
were, given us the power of appointment.
...Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion: Protocol No. 2.
And please, keep in mind... this is a hoax.