The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Structure and content

The Protocols purports to document the minutes of a late-19th-century meeting attended by world Jewish leaders, the "Elders of Zion", who are conspiring to control the world. The forgery places in the mouths of the Jewish leaders a variety of plans, most of which derive from older antisemitic canards. For example, the Protocols includes plans to subvert the morals of the non-Jewish world, plans for Jewish bankers to control the world's economies, plans for Jewish control of the press, and – ultimately – plans for the destruction of civilization. The document consists of 24 "protocols", which have been analyzed by Steven Jacobs and Mark Weitzman, who documented several recurrent themes that appear repeatedly in the 24 protocols, as shown in the following table:

Hagemeister notes:

the text of the Protocols is completely devoid of the old, traditional accusations against Jews such as deicide, host desecration, well poisoning, ritual murder, blood defilement, fake conversion, or interest taking and usury... [T]he motives and images of modern, racially motivated antisemitism (such as physical inferiority, financial and sexual greed, racial intermixing) are also lacking. The only clearly anti-Jewish motives and defamations found in the Protocols concern the pursuit of world domination, the possession of money and gold, and global networking.

Conspiracy references

According to Daniel Pipes,

The book's vagueness—almost no names, dates, or issues are specified—has been one key to this wide-ranging success. The purportedly Jewish authorship also helps to make the book more convincing. Its embrace of contradiction—that to advance, Jews use all tools available, including capitalism and communism, philo-Semitism and antisemitism, democracy and tyranny—made it possible for The Protocols to reach out to all: rich and poor, Right and Left, Christian and Muslim, American and Japanese.

Similarly, Michael S. Broschowitz argues that

The lack of names, dates, or any specific references in The Protocols allow it to be used by disparate and contradictory political movements as evidence of international Jewish conspiracy due to the text’s assertion that Jews will use any and all methods at hand, including capitalism and communism, democracy and autocracy, to advance their agenda.

Pipes notes that the Protocols emphasizes recurring themes of conspiratorial antisemitism: "Jews always scheme", "Jews are everywhere", "Jews are behind every institution", "Jews obey a central authority, the shadowy 'Elders'", and "Jews are close to success."

As fiction in the genre of literature, the tract was analyzed by Umberto Eco in his novel Foucault's Pendulum (1988):

The great importance of The Protocols lies in its permitting antisemites to reach beyond their traditional circles and find a large international audience, a process that continues to this day. The forgery poisoned public life wherever it appeared; it was "self-generating; a blueprint that migrated from one conspiracy to another."

Eco also dealt with the Protocols in 1994 in chapter 6, "Fictional Protocols", of his Six Walks in the Fictional Woods and in his 2010 novel The Cemetery of Prague.

Publication history

Early publication history

The first known mention of The Protocols was in a 1902 article in Saint Petersburg's conservative newspaper Novoye Vremya by journalist Mikhail Osipovich Menshikov. He wrote that a venerable lady of the upper class had suggested he read a small booklet, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which denounced "a conspiracy against the world". Menshikov was strongly skeptical of the authenticity of The Protocols, dismissing its authors and spreaders as "people with brain fever". In 1903, The Protocols was published as a series of articles in Znamya, a Black Hundreds newspaper owned by Pavel Krushevan. It appeared again in 1905 as the final chapter (Chapter XII) of the second edition of Velikoe v malom i antikhrist ("The Great Within the Minuscule and Antichrist"), a book by Sergei Nilus. In 1906, it appeared in pamphlet form edited by Georgy Butmi de Katzman.

These first Russian language imprints were used as a tool for scapegoating Jews, blamed by the monarchists for the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and the Revolution of 1905. Common to all the texts is the idea that Jews aim for world domination. Since The Protocols are presented as merely a document, the front matter and back matter are needed to explain its alleged origin. The diverse imprints, however, are mutually inconsistent. The general claim is that the document was stolen from a secret Jewish organization. Since the alleged original stolen manuscript does not exist, one is forced to restore a purported original edition. This has been done by the Italian scholar, Cesare G. De Michelis in 1998, in a work which was translated into English and published in 2004, where he treats his subject as apocrypha.

In 2020, the Russian historian Ljubov’ Vladimirovna Ul’Janova-Bibikova found a typescript version of The Protocols in the manuscripts collections of the Moscow Central Library. The copy included manuscript additions of terms and corrections found in the 1906 version edited by Georgy Butmi. The handwriting is similar to other manuscripts written by Butmi. This typescript copy confirms that the Protocols were written at least in part in Russia, and were not completely written or translated in France. Cesare G. De Michelis has signalled the importance of the discovery of this typescript.

As the Russian Revolution unfolded, causing White movement–affiliated Russians to flee to the West, this text was carried along and assumed a new purpose. Until then, The Protocols had remained obscure; it now became an instrument for blaming Jews for the Russian Revolution. It became a tool, a political weapon, used against the Bolsheviks who were depicted as overwhelmingly Jewish, allegedly executing the "plan" embodied in The Protocols. The purpose was to discredit the October Revolution, prevent the West from recognizing the Soviet Union, and bring about the downfall of Vladimir Lenin's regime.

First Russian language editions

The chapter "In the Jewish Cemetery in Prague" from Goedsche's Biarritz, with its strong antisemitic theme containing the alleged rabbinical plot against the European civilization, was translated into Russian as a separate pamphlet in 1872. However, in 1921, Princess Catherine Radziwill gave a private lecture in New York in which she claimed that the Protocols were a forgery compiled in 1904–05 by Russian journalists Matvei Golovinski and Manasevich-Manuilov at the direction of Pyotr Rachkovsky, Chief of the Russian secret service in Paris.

In 1944, German writer Konrad Heiden identified Golovinski as an author of the Protocols. Radziwill's account was supported by Russian historian Mikhail Lepekhine, whose claims were published in November 1999 in the French newsweekly L'Express. Lepekhine considers the Protocols a part of a scheme to persuade Tsar Nicholas II that the modernization of Russia was really a Jewish plot to control the world. Ukrainian scholar Vadim Skuratovsky offers extensive literary, historical and linguistic analysis of the original text of the Protocols and traces the influences of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's prose (in particular, The Grand Inquisitor and The Possessed) on Golovinski's writings, including the Protocols.

Golovinski's role in the writing of the Protocols is disputed by Cesare G. De Michelis, Michael Hagemeister, and Richard Levy, who each write that the account which involves him is historically unverifiable and to a large extent provably wrong.

In his book The Non-Existent Manuscript, Italian scholar Cesare G. De Michelis studies early Russian publications of the Protocols. The Protocols were first mentioned in the Russian press in April 1902, by the Saint Petersburg newspaper Novoye Vremya (Новое Время – The New Times). The article was written by famous conservative publicist Mikhail Menshikov as a part of his regular series "Letters to Neighbors" ("Письма к ближним") and was titled "Plots against Humanity". The author described his meeting with a lady (Yuliana Glinka, as it is known now) who, after telling him about her mystical revelations, implored him to get familiar with the documents later known as the Protocols; but after reading some excerpts, Menshikov became quite skeptical about their origin and did not publish them.

Krushevan and Nilus editions

The Protocols were published at the earliest, in serialized form, from August 28 to September 7 (O.S.) 1903, in Znamya, a Saint Petersburg daily newspaper, under Pavel Krushevan. Krushevan had initiated the Kishinev pogrom four months earlier.

In 1905, Sergei Nilus published the full text of the Protocols in Chapter XII, the final chapter (pp. 305–417), of the second edition (or third, according to some sources) of his book, Velikoe v malom i antikhrist, which translates as "The Great within the Small and the Antichrist". He claimed it was the work of the First Zionist Congress, held in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland. When it was pointed out that the First Zionist Congress had been open to the public and was attended by many non-Jews, Nilus changed his story, saying the Protocols were the work of the 1902–03 meetings of the Elders, but contradicting his own prior statement that he had received his copy in 1901:

In 1901, I succeeded through an acquaintance of mine (the late Court Marshal Alexei Nikolayevich Sukotin of Chernigov) in getting a manuscript that exposed with unusual perfection and clarity the course and development of the secret Jewish Freemasonic conspiracy, which would bring this wicked world to its inevitable end. The person who gave me this manuscript guaranteed it to be a faithful translation of the original documents that were stolen by a woman from one of the highest and most influential leaders of the Freemasons at a secret meeting somewhere in France—the beloved nest of Freemasonic conspiracy.

Stolypin's fraud investigation, 1905

A subsequent secret investigation ordered by Pyotr Stolypin, the newly appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers, came to the conclusion that the Protocols first appeared in Paris in antisemitic circles around 1897–98. When Nicholas II learned of the results of this investigation, he requested, "The Protocols should be confiscated, a good cause cannot be defended by dirty means." Despite the order, or because of the "good cause", numerous reprints proliferated. Nicholas later read the Protocols to his family during their imprisonment.

The Protocols in the West

In January 1920, Eyre & Spottiswoode published the first English translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Britain. According to a letter written by art historian Robert Hobart Cust, the pamphlet had been translated, prepared, and paid for by George Shanks and their mutual friend, Major Edward Griffiths George Burdon, who was serving as Secretary of the United Russia Societies Association at that time. In an edition of Lord Alfred Douglas’ Plain English journal dated January 1921, it is claimed that Shanks, a former officer in the Royal Navy Air Service and the Russian Government Committee in Kingsway, London, had found post-war employment in the Chief Whip's Office at 12 Downing Street, before being offered a position as Personal Secretary to Sir Philip Sassoon, at that time serving as Private Secretary to British Prime Minister David Lloyd George in Britain's Coalition Government.

In the United States, The Protocols are to be understood in the context of the First Red Scare (1917–20). The text was purportedly brought to the United States by a Russian Army officer in 1917; it was translated into English by Natalie de Bogory (personal assistant of Harris A. Houghton, an officer of the Department of War) in June 1918, and Russian expatriate Boris Brasol soon circulated it in American government circles, specifically diplomatic and military, in typescript form, a copy of which is archived by the Hoover Institute.

On October 27 and 28, 1919, the Philadelphia Public Ledger published excerpts of an English language translation as the "Red Bible," deleting all references to the purported Jewish authorship and re-casting the document as a Bolshevik manifesto. The author of the articles was the paper's correspondent at the time, Carl W. Ackerman, who later became the head of the journalism department at Columbia University.

Having fled Ukraine in 1918–19, Piotr Shabelsky-Bork brought the Protocols to Ludwig Müller von Hausen who then published them in German. Under the pseudonym Gottfried zur Beek he produced the first and "by far the most important" German translation. It appeared in January 1920 as a part of a larger antisemitic tract dated 1919. After The Times discussed the book respectfully in May 1920 it became a bestseller. Alfred Rosenberg's 1923 analysis "gave a forgery a huge boost".

In 1923, there appeared an anonymously edited pamphlet by the Britons Publishing Society, a successor to The Britons, an entity created and headed by Henry Hamilton Beamish. This imprint was allegedly a translation by Victor E. Marsden, who had died in October 1920.

Britain and the exposure of a forgery

On May 8, 1920, an article in The Times followed German translation and appealed for an inquiry into what it called an "uncanny note of prophecy". In the leader (editorial) titled "The Jewish Peril, a Disturbing Pamphlet: Call for Inquiry", Wickham Steed wrote about The Protocols:

What are these 'Protocols'? Are they authentic? If so, what malevolent assembly concocted these plans and gloated over their exposition? Are they forgery? If so, whence comes the uncanny note of prophecy, prophecy in part fulfilled, in part so far gone in the way of fulfillment?

Steed retracted his endorsement of The Protocols after they were exposed as a forgery.

In 1920–1921, the history of the concepts found in the Protocols was traced back to the works of Goedsche and Jacques Crétineau-Joly by Lucien Wolf (an English Jewish journalist), and published in London in August 1921. Then an exposé occurred in the series of articles in The Times by its Constantinople reporter, Philip Graves, who discovered the plagiarism from the work of Maurice Joly.

In 1921, while at the US Embassy in Istanbul, Allen Dulles, who later became the first civilian US Director of Central Intelligence, helped expose The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a forgery. Dulles unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the US State Department to publicly denounce the forgery.

According to writer Peter Grose, Allen Dulles, who was in Constantinople developing relationships in post-Ottoman political structures, discovered "the source" of the documentation and ultimately provided him to The Times. Grose writes that The Times extended a loan to the source, a Russian émigré who refused to be identified, with the understanding the loan would not be repaid. Colin Holmes, a lecturer in economic history at Sheffield University, identified the émigré as Mikhail Raslovlev, a self-identified antisemite, who gave the information to Graves so as not to "give a weapon of any kind to the Jews, whose friend I have never been."

In the first article of Graves' series, titled "A Literary Forgery", the editors of The Times wrote, "our Constantinople Correspondent presents for the first time conclusive proof that the document is in the main a clumsy plagiarism. He has forwarded us a copy of the French book [The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu] from which the plagiarism is made." In the same year, an entire book documenting the hoax was published in the United States by Herman Bernstein. Despite this widespread and extensive debunking, the Protocols continued to be regarded as important factual evidence by antisemites.

United States and Henry Ford

For nearly two years starting in 1920, the American industrialist Henry Ford published in a newspaper he owned—The Dearborn Independent—a series of antisemitic articles that quoted liberally from the Protocols. The actual author of the articles is generally believed to have been the newspaper's editor William J. Cameron. During 1922, the circulation of the Dearborn Independent grew to almost 270,000 paid copies. Ford later published a compilation of the articles in book form as "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem". In 1921, Ford cited evidence of a Jewish threat: "The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on. They are 16 years old, and they have fitted the world situation up to this time." Robert A. Rosenbaum wrote that "In 1927, bowing to legal and economic pressure, Ford issued a retraction and apology—while disclaiming personal responsibility—for the anti-Semitic articles and closed the Dearborn Independent". Ford was an admirer of Nazi Germany.

In 1934, an anonymous editor expanded the compilation with "Text and Commentary" (pp 136–141). The production of this uncredited compilation was a 300-page book, an inauthentic expanded edition of the twelfth chapter of Nilus's 1905 book on the coming of the anti-Christ. It consists of substantial liftings of excerpts of articles from Ford's antisemitic periodical The Dearborn Independent. This 1934 text circulates most widely in the English-speaking world, as well as on the internet. The "Text and Commentary" concludes with a comment on Chaim Weizmann's October 6, 1920, remark at a banquet: "A beneficent protection which God has instituted in the life of the Jew is that He has dispersed him all over the world". Marsden, who was dead by then, is credited with the following assertion:

It proves that the Learned Elders exist. It proves that Dr. Weizmann knows all about them. It proves that the desire for a "National Home" in Palestine is only camouflage and an infinitesimal part of the Jew's real object. It proves that the Jews of the world have no intention of settling in Palestine or any separate country, and that their annual prayer that they may all meet "Next Year in Jerusalem" is merely a piece of their characteristic make-believe. It also demonstrates that the Jews are now a world menace, and that the Aryan races will have to domicile them permanently out of Europe.

Italy

Fascist politician Giovanni Preziosi published the first Italian edition of the Protocols in 1921. The book however had little impact until the mid-1930s. A new 1937 edition had a much higher impact, and three further editions in the following months sold 60,000 copies total. The fifth edition had an introduction by Julius Evola, which argued around the issue of forgery, stating: "The problem of the authenticity of this document is secondary and has to be replaced by the much more serious and essential problem of its truthfulness".

Switzerland

Berne Trial, 1934–35

The selling of the Protocols (edited by German antisemite Theodor Fritsch) by the National Front during a political meeting in the Casino of Bern on June 13, 1933, led to the Berne Trial in the Amtsgericht (district court) of Bern, the capital of Switzerland, on October 29, 1934. The plaintiffs (the Swiss Jewish Association and the Jewish Community of Bern) were represented by Hans Matti and Georges Brunschvig, helped by Emil Raas. Working on behalf of the defense was German antisemitic propagandist Ulrich Fleischhauer. On May 19, 1935, two defendants (Theodore Fischer and Silvio Schnell) were convicted of violating a Bernese statute prohibiting the distribution of "immoral, obscene or brutalizing" texts while three other defendants were acquitted. The court declared the Protocols to be forgeries, plagiarisms, and obscene literature. Judge Walter Meyer, a Christian who had not previously heard of the Protocols, said in conclusion,

I hope the time will come when nobody will be able to understand how in 1935 nearly a dozen sane and responsible men were able for two weeks to mock the intellect of the Bern court discussing the authenticity of the so-called Protocols, the very Protocols that, harmful as they have been and will be, are nothing but laughable nonsense.

Vladimir Burtsev, a Russian émigré, anti-Bolshevik and anti-Fascist who exposed numerous Okhrana agents provocateurs in the early 1900s, served as a witness at the Berne Trial. In 1938 in Paris he published a book, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Proved Forgery, based on his testimony.

On November 1, 1937, the defendants appealed the verdict to the Obergericht (Cantonal Supreme Court) of Bern. A panel of three judges acquitted them, holding that the Protocols, while false, did not violate the statute at issue because they were "political publications" and not "immoral (obscene) publications (Schundliteratur)" in the strict sense of the law. The presiding judge's opinion stated, though, that the forgery of the Protocols was not questionable and expressed regret that the law did not provide adequate protection for Jews from this sort of literature. The court refused to impose the fees of defense of the acquitted defendants to the plaintiffs, and the acquitted Theodor Fischer had to pay 100 Fr. to the total state costs of the trial (Fr. 28,000) that were eventually paid by the canton of Bern. This decision gave grounds for later allegations that the appeal court "confirmed authenticity of the Protocols" which is contrary to the facts.

Evidence presented at the trial, which strongly influenced later accounts up to the present, was that the Protocols were originally written in French by agents of the Tzarist secret police (the Okhrana). However, this version has been questioned by several modern scholars. Michael Hagemeister discovered that the primary witness Alexandre du Chayla had previously written in support of the blood libel, had received four thousand Swiss francs for his testimony, and was secretly doubted even by the plaintiffs. Charles Ruud and Sergei Stepanov concluded that there is no substantial evidence of Okhrana involvement and strong circumstantial evidence against it.

Basel Trial

A similar trial in Switzerland took place in Basel. The Swiss Frontists Alfred Zander and Eduard Rüegsegger distributed the Protocols (edited by the German Gottfried zur Beek) in Switzerland. Jules Dreyfus-Brodsky and Marcus Cohen sued them for insult to Jewish honour. At the same time, chief rabbi Marcus Ehrenpreis of Stockholm (who also witnessed at the Berne Trial) sued Alfred Zander who contended that Ehrenpreis himself had said that the Protocols were authentic (referring to the foreword of the edition of the Protocols by the German antisemite Theodor Fritsch). On June 5, 1936, these proceedings ended with a settlement.

Finland

The first Finnish edition of the Protocols was published in Swedish in 1919. In 1920, the Protocols were published in Finnish as "The Jewish Secret Program“. Four additional editions of the Swedish edition were quickly published, and the Finnish edition was re-released in 1933 under the title "The Scourge of Nations“.

Another edition of the Protocols was published by the Nazi group Blue Cross in 1943. The Party of Finnish Labor also published their edition of the Protocols translated by party secretary Taavi Vanhanen.

The State Police had copies of the Protocols in its libraries available to those wishing to read them, along with other antisemitic books, until it was reorganized into Red (pro-Communist) State Police post-Second World War. It is unknown if the Protocols were officially considered legitimate, but the chief of the State Police Ossi Holmström subscribed to the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy theory.

Nazi Germany

According to historian Norman Cohn, the assassins of German Jewish politician Walther Rathenau (1867–1922) were convinced that Rathenau was a literal "Elder of Zion".

It seems likely Adolf Hitler first became aware of the Protocols after hearing about it from ethnic German white émigrés, such as Alfred Rosenberg and Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter. Rosenberg and Scheubner-Richter were also members of the early Aufbau Vereinigung counterrevolutionary group, which according to historian Michael Kellogg, influenced the Nazis in promulgating a Protocols-like myth.

Hitler refers to the Protocols in Mein Kampf:

... [The Protocols] are based on a forgery, the Frankfurter Zeitung moans [ ] every week ... [which is] the best proof that they are authentic ... the important thing is that with positively terrifying certainty they reveal the nature and activity of the Jewish people and expose their inner contexts as well as their ultimate final aims.

The Protocols also became a part of the Nazi propaganda effort to justify persecution of the Jews. In The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry 1933–1945, Nora Levin states that "Hitler used the Protocols as a manual in his war to exterminate the Jews":

Despite conclusive proof that the Protocols were a gross forgery, they had sensational popularity and large sales in the 1920s and 1930s. They were translated into every language of Europe and sold widely in Arab lands, the US, and England. But it was in Germany after World War I that they had their greatest success. There they were used to explain all of the disasters that had befallen the country: the defeat in the war, the hunger, the destructive inflation.

Hitler did not mention the Protocols in his speeches after his defense of it in Mein Kampf. "Distillations of the text appeared in German classrooms, indoctrinated the Hitler Youth, and invaded the USSR along with German soldiers." Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels proclaimed: "The Zionist Protocols are as up-to-date today as they were the day they were first published."

Richard S. Levy criticizes the claim that the Protocols had a large effect on Hitler's thinking, writing that it is based mostly on suspect testimony and lacks hard evidence. Randall Bytwerk agrees, writing that most leading Nazis did not believe it was genuine despite having an "inner truth" suitable for propaganda.

Publication of the Protocols was stopped in Germany in 1939 for unknown reasons. An edition that was ready for printing was blocked by censorship laws.

Post–World War II usage

Middle East

Neither governments nor political leaders in most parts of the world have referred to the Protocols since World War II. The exception to this is the Middle East, where several regimes and leaders have endorsed them as authentic, including endorsements from Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat of Egypt, President Abdul Salam Arif of Iraq, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya. A translation made by an Arab Christian appeared in Cairo in 1927 or 1928, this time as a book. The first translation by an Arab Muslim was also published in Cairo, but only in 1951.

The Protocols circulated in the Middle East in the early years of the Cold War, and have exerted influence on literature. Between 1965 and 1967 alone, approximately 50 Arabic-language books on political subjects were either based on the Protocols or quoted from them.

The 1988 charter of Hamas stated that the Protocols embodied the "plan of the Zionists;" The reference was removed in the new covenant issued in 2017. In 2005, it was reported that the Palestinian Authority was referring to the Protocols in a textbook for 10th grade students; after media exposure, the PA issued a revised edition of the textbook that does not include references to the Protocols.

Recent endorsements in the 21st century have been made by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ekrima Sa'id Sabri, and the education ministry of Saudi Arabia. In 2001–2002, Arab Radio and Television produced a 30-part television miniseries entitled Horseman Without a Horse, starring prominent Egyptian actor Mohamed Sobhi, which contains dramatizations of the Protocols. The United States and Israel criticized Egypt for airing the program. Ash-Shatat (Arabic: الشتات The Diaspora) is a 29-part Syrian television series produced in 2003 by a private Syrian film company and was based in part on the Protocols. Syrian national television declined to air the program. Ash-Shatat was shown on Lebanon's Al-Manar, before being dropped. The series was shown in Iran in 2004, and in Jordan during October 2005 on Al-Mamnou, a Jordanian satellite network.

Former Grand Mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa, asserted that the Protocols was a forgery, having made an official court complaint concerning a publisher who falsely put his name on an introduction to its Arabic translation.

Iran

The first Iranian edition of the Protocols was issued during the summer of 1978 before the Iranian Revolution, after which the Protocols were widely publicized by the Iranian government. A publication called Imam, published by the Iranian embassy in London, quoted extensively from the Protocols in its issues of 1984 and 1985. In 1985, a new edition of the Protocols was printed and widely distributed by the Islamic Propagation Organization. Parts of the Protocols were published by the daily Jomhouri-e Eslami in 1994, under the heading The Smell of Blood, Zionist Schemes. Sobh, a far right monthly newspaper, published excerpts from the Protocols under the heading The text of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for establishing the Jewish global rule in its December 1998 – January 1999 issue, illustrated with a caricature of the Jewish snake swallowing the globe.

Iranian writer and researcher Ali Baqeri, who researched the Protocols, claimed that the Protocols were merely part of an even more grandiose scheme, saying in Sobh in 1999:

"The ultimate goal of the Jews ... after conquering the globe ... is to extract from the hands of the Lord many stars and galaxies".

In April 2004, the Iranian television station Al-Alam broadcast Al-Sameri wa Al-Saher, a series that reported as fact several conspiracy theories about the Holocaust, Jewish control of Hollywood, and the Protocols. The Iran Pavilion of the 2005 Frankfurt Book Fair had the Protocols, as well as The International Jew available. In 2008 The Secret of Armageddon, an Iranian TV program claiming that "a Jewish Plan for the Genocide of Humanity," included a conspiracy for the takeover of Iran by local Jewish and Baháʼí Faith communities was based on the Protocols.

East Asia

Masami Uno's book If You Understand Judea You Can Comprehend the World: 1990 Scenario for the 'Final Economic War' became popular in Japan around 1987 and was based upon the Protocols.

Jewish Conspiracy and the Muslim World, published in Malaysia in 1991, includes the complete text of the Protocols alongs with new conspiracy theory material authored by Malaysian Misbahul Islam Faruqi, who claims that the Protocols explains the threat posed to the Muslim world from Israel, India and other world powers.

Africa

The Palestinian Solidarity Committee of South Africa distributed copies of the Protocols at the World Conference against Racism 2001. The book was sold during the conference in an exhibition tent set up for the distribution of antiracist literature.

Europe

Finland

Pekka Siitoin's Patriotic Popular Front published a new edition in the 1970s. In the 2000s, the Protocols were published by the Magneettimedia. In the 2020s, the Protocols have been republished by a pseudonymous individual suspected of being a researcher at the University of Helsinki according to Demokraatti.

Greece

In 2012, the Protocols were read aloud in the Greek Parliament by one of its members, Ilias Kasidiaris, of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn.

Italy

In 2010, an Italian editor was convicted on charges of libel for publishing the Protocols. He had been sued by the Jewish community of Turin. The conviction was later overturned by the Italian Supreme Court of Cessation.

Russia

Despite stipulations against fomenting hatred based on ethnic or religious grounds (Article 282 of Russia Penal Code), the Protocols have enjoyed numerous reprints in the nationalist press after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

As recently as 2005, the Protocols was "a frequent feature in Patriarchate churches". On January 27, 2006, members of the Public Chamber of Russia and human rights activists proposed to establish a list of extremist literature whose dissemination should be formally banned for uses other than scientific research.

By the decision of the Leninsky City District Court of Orenburg dated 26 July 2010, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was considered an extremist publication. However, the court did not ban the work itself as such, but the pamphlet. According to the national standard of the Russian Federation (ГОСТ 7.60-2003), a pamphlet means a book publication with a volume of more than 4, but not more than 48 pages.

In March 2011, the Russian human rights movement 'For Human Rights' and member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation Alla Gerber appealed to the prosecutor's office of the Northern Administrative Okrug of Moscow with a demand to stop the distribution of the Protocols. The prosecutor's office rejected the demand stating that the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences conducted a psycholinguistic and socio-psychological examination of the texts. According to conclusions of the experts, Protocols has a critical historical-educational and political-educational focus and that "there is no information in the book that encourages action against other nationalities, social and religious groups or individuals as its representatives."

In April 2011, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia placed an order for the supply of sets of spiritual and moral literature to Russian diplomatic missions, which included the books The Great within the Small and Antichrist by Sergei Nilus, the Protocols and other antisemitic publications, which resulted in public outcry. In May 2011, Evgeny Velikhov, head of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, wrote a letter to Prosecutor-General of Russia Yury Chaika, demanding the labelling of the Protocols as extremist, in order to get it banned from publication.

In November 2012, the Protocols was added to the Federal List of Extremist Materials under the entry number 1496 by the decision of the Leninsky City District Court of Orenburg.

United States

The Protocols were republished as fact in 1991 in Milton William Cooper's conspiracy book Behold a Pale Horse, though Cooper primarily targets the Illuminati at the center of his conspiracy theory. In 2011, Christian writer and conspiracy theorist Texe Marrs published an edition of the Protocols, with a foreword of his own authorship and additional notes by Henry Ford. The Protocols have also been distributed in the United States by the Nation of Islam.

The American retail chain Walmart was criticized for selling The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on its website with a description that suggested it might be genuine. It was withdrawn from sale in September 2004, as 'a business decision'.

Contemporary conspiracy theories

The Protocols continue to be widely available around the world, in multiple formats, including print, the Internet, and social media, and remain influential in contemporary conspiracy literature. The work is widely considered influential in the development of other conspiracy theories, with its themes repeatedly adapted into new ideological contexts.

Notions derived from the Protocols frequently reappear in modern conspiratorial narratives, including claims that the "Jews" depicted in the Protocols are a cover for groups such as the Illuminati, Freemasons, the Priory of Sion or, according to David Icke, "extra-dimensional entities" and/or "Rothschild Zionists" or a "Sabbatean-Frankist Death Cult”. In his book And the truth shall set you free (1995), Icke asserted that the Protocols are genuine and accurate. Similarities have been noticed between the Protocols and the Eurabia conspiracy theory. Scholars have documented that these structural themes continue to influence contemporary conspiracy narratives and online disinformation, which became significantly prevalent during the COVID‑19 pandemic, where longstanding tropes about hidden global control were repurposed.