Debunking Ford, Brasol, and the "Protocols"

The forgery known as "The Protocols" is still circulating, online and elsewhere, creating danger and ill-thinking. Here is some early history, to warn of and to disempower its treachery.

"The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" was a malicious hoax, a known fraud that became a classic of anti-Semitism because it was usable to foment extreme animosity toward the Jews.  The "Protocols" function as a distortive lens, to cast the Jews as the most extreme, conspiratorial, and immanent menace.

Norman Cohn entitled his book about the "Protocols" Warrant for Genocide, an apt description of how this contrivance functioned, and an apt description of its track record in the Twentieth Century.  The "Protocols" were an element of ill-thinking in the fabric of the Holocaust. 

Of what do they consist?  There are twenty-four so-called protocols that pretend to be incriminating words and malicious intentions of a body of Jewish elders plotting to control and destroy Christendom.  The introduction to the "protocols" will vary from one edition to the next, with the publisher claiming these "protocols" to have been discovered or uncovered, and constituting an appendix to the minutes of a secret meeting of this alleged body of Jewish elders.        

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Henry Ford incorporated ample  excerpts from "The Protocols" into his own massive propaganda crusade, in the "Dearborn Independent," the newspaper he bought for this purpose.  "The Protocols" fit into his propaganda to re-enforce scapegoating, and the tying in of endless assorted accusations into one hyperbolic menace, so as to warrant extreme responses.    

This use of excerpts was unfortunately effective, because the pamphlet in its entirety could become tedious for the reader, once the sensationalism of the concept wore off.  The incriminating statements put into the mouth of the Jewish Elders were verbose and thus potentially  tiring to the reader, a problem fixed by this excerpting.  Excerpting from "The "Protocols" also disguised the discrediting patterns that might be discerned from the pamphlet as a whole.  The actual authors of "The Protocols" were supporters of the Czar, the nobles, landowners, and clergy.

In other words, the "Protocols" made invisible any corruption or abuse of power by the Christian power structure, while creating a composite of Jewish wrong doing, using truths, half truths, falsifications, exaggerations,  creating an imminent, and powerful menace, so as to encourage an extreme response.  

Ford did not personally do this excerpting, or any of the writing or editing.  But he assembled and presided over a team of writers, researchers, and anti-Semites. It was a team effort with a modern division of labor,  a team effort that manufactured and mass produced anti-Semitic propaganda.  Ford was the very engaged organizer and supervisor of this project.  Who actually did the excerpting?  William Cameron, a professional  writer,  Ernst Leibling, Ford's secretary, and Boris Brasol,  who had fled Russia with "the Protocols," to spread this hoax internationally. 

In Russia, the "Protocols" functioned as a counter-revolutionary tool, to divert attention from the wrong-doing of the Czar, and to propose a more  urgent enemy, the Jews.  The "Protocols" were the favorite reading material of the White Army, that is, the Czar's army, whose job it was to crush the Red Army and the revolution throughout western Russia. 

When the Czar was about to fall, Boris Brasol, a devoted czarist and already a major anti-Semite, left Russia, with the "Protocols."

He personally brought the "Protocols" to the United States,  and arranged for a translation into English, sponsored by U.S. Army Intelligence.  Brasol claimed this rank forgery was necessary to understand the rise of violent revolution, and the rise of "Bolshevism," the political faction that came into power in the Russian revolution.

Naomi W. Cohen says the U.S. sponsors regarded the "Protocols"  as proof that Bolshevism  was part of a Jewish world conspiracy.

Morris Schappes described Brasol "as an agent of the tsar's secret police, who had been involved in the Mendel Beillis blood libel case."  According to Schappes:

"Now a refugee employed here by the U.S. Secret Service, Boris Brasol had the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion translated into English and placed in the Secret Service files as a document to 'explain the Russian Revolution.'" 

It seems Brasol himself, or someone else with this same method of operating,  brought the "Protocols" to England and to Japan where their early appearances were also among high ranked military officers.  Chaim Weitzman, in his autobiography, says he first encountered the "Protocols," when a high ranking British military officer took him aside, at a dinner, and warned him about this document. 

Han Suyin, in her journal, reports having witnessed Japanese military officers discussing the "Protocols," also at a dinner.  Their discussion was animated and about something novel.  And we know for a fact that Brasol was in Japan, as he reported so in a criminology journal. 

Brasol's promotion of the "Protocols" was the foremost but not the only path for its transmission internationally. 

The collaboration of Brasol and Ford at Dearborn was an especially potent treachery.  According to Pool and Pool, Brasol was one of a few different couriers who brought Ford money and other money to Hitler.

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The relationship of Ford and Brasol has been the subject of speculation in terms of who influenced whom.  I believe they influenced and goaded each other into evil toward the Jews.  They worked together and had a dynamic of friendly rivalry.  Boris Brasol had a track record of spreading the Blood Libel in the Mendel Beilis case, starting more than one pogrom, then spreading the "Protocols" internationally.  I believe Henry Ford was stimulated by this, and competitive with this as well.

At this point, I would like to say something speculative, rather than factual.  As I imagine it, Brasol would brag about the pogroms he helped bring about in Russia,  and Ford, always the competitor on scale, and use of technology  -- Ford competed with Brasol.

This is wholly speculative, but when I was in the thick of researching Ford's relationship with Brasol, I could imaginatively hear Ford saying to Brasol,  "Those pogroms might be alright for Russian peasants, but..."  And he would deliberately mispronounce pogroms, then compete with the bragging Brasol, compete with pogroms -- on scale, and modernity, and use of technology.  This is speculative, but it fits congruently with actual facts about them both, and about the characteristics of the "final solution."

This is speculative, this one point, that Ford may have had a hand in shaping the actual content of the "Final Solution," but it is not wildly speculative.  There was a moment in 1922, in the pages of the "Dearborn Independent" when the voice of Ford said the role of the reader was not to commit violence against the Jews, but to "hold the world in place," while "qualified people" solved the Jewish question.  They were already seeing to it.  What was this remark but a hint that a technological solution was already being discussed at Dearborn.