Secret Societies: Inside the World's Most Notorious Organizations (39 page)

With the czar's directive, the Russian Okhrana secret police force plundered various sources for inspiration. They found it in Goedsche's novel, and in 1897 published as fact the section dealing with the Jewish plot. Eight years later, the Protocols were translated into English and widely circulated as minutes recorded during the First Zionist Congress held in Basel,
Switzerland, in 1897 presided over by “the Father of Modern Zionism,” Theodor Herzl.

The
Protocols
, intended to be read like an instruction manual for running the world, are either chilling or absurd, depending on your gullibility and appreciation for black humor. Assisting in the ambitious project of global domination, the documents declare, are the Freemasons, whose agenda is being manipulated by the Elders, and the Bavarian Illuminati, who are either dupes or willing participants.

Practical lessons in the Protocols vary between chilling generalizations and outright farce. Protocol No. 1, for example, lectures, “Therefore, in governing the world the best results are obtained by violence and intimidation, and not by academic discussions,” while Protocol No. 23 proposes that the general public should be made unhappy, and thus subdued, by passing laws prohibiting drunkenness.

Many of the most troubling Protocols were adopted by right-wing politicians of their day as a means of motivating their most ardent supporters. By selecting the elements that best served their needs and loading them on the always-rolling anti-Semitic bandwagon, everyone including Adolf Hitler claimed the
Protocols
were authentic.

They became a treasure-trove of rationales for racists. “We shall destroy among the masses the importance of the family and its educational value,” Protocol No. 10 declared. Protocol No. 12 promised, “We shall saddle and bridle [the press] with a tight curb…. Not a single announcement will reach the public without our control.” To tighten the thumbscrews a little more, Protocol No. 14 proclaimed, “It will be undesirable for us that there should exist any other religion than ours…. We must therefore sweep away all other forms of belief.”

In the economic and political chaos that followed World War i and the Russian revolution, it took only the briefest of references to the
Protocols
for much of American and European popular culture to seize on them as proof of a secret conspiracy. Among the advocates was automotive magnate Henry Ford, who launched the Dearborn
Independent
newspaper in 1920 partially as a means of disseminating the
Protocols
, along with periodic attacks on Communists. For a time, Ford clung stubbornly to his opinion that the
Protocols
were indicative of a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. In an interview appearing in the February 17, 1921, issue of the New York
World
, Ford said: “The only statement I care to make about the
Protocols
is that they fit in with what is going on. They are sixteen years old [
sic
], and they have fitted the world situation up to this time. They fit it now.” Meanwhile, Hitler was quoting the
Protocols
in
Mein Kampf
, and selections from the book were being read in the Romanian parliament as a rationale for expelling Jews from that country.

Theodor Herzl, “the Father of Modern Zionism,” is assumed in some quarters to be the creator of
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
.

Little by little, thanks to serious investigation conducted by skeptical journalists, the truth of the
Protocols’
origins became known. Among the first to expose their fraudulent basis was a London
Times
reporter named Philip Graves, who traced their genesis back to Joly and Goedsche. Slowly, the weight of proof rose to such a mass that even crusty Henry Ford admitted he had been mistaken. In 1927, in a public retraction, he apologized for his support of the
Protocols
hoax, blaming his assistants for duping him.

The perception persists, however.
Holy Blood
’s weak denunciation of the
Protocols
before employing them later as support for its premise adds to the suspicion, among those who grasp at any available straw, that such wild speculation bears heeding.

Among the political and industry leaders who promoted the truth of the
Protocols
was Henry Ford.

Hitler quoted from the Protocols in
Mein Kampf
.

By inserting the
Protocols
into their opus, the authors of
Holy Blood
create the mirroring effect mentioned earlier. In their case, a work of reputed non-fiction treats a fictional event as though it contained vestiges of reality. In his book
The Da Vinci Code
, author Dan Brown uses a work of fiction to deride a real organization, Opus Dei, as though it were a threat to humanity as genuine and treacherous as the fictional
Protocols
.

Brown's reckless use of facts to add verisimilitude to his work of fiction has been criticized in great detail by numerous critics elsewhere; in this context, only the author's skewed depiction of Opus Dei will be dealt with.

Opus Dei is the de facto villain in Brown's tale, so dedicated to protecting the secret of Christ's supposed bloodline that it employs hired assassins, at least one of whom is a decidedly sadistic character. This may be suitable for James Bond stories and the fictional spectre, or Len Deighton tales involving familiar evils of Nazism, but ascribing such illusory qualities to an existing organization in support of a fantastic premise strikes many people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, as outrageous.

The Roman Catholic Church is as appropriate a target for criticism as any, and considering many of its less admirable activities over the past millennium, more suitable than most. But the family-oriented agenda of Opus Dei, as much as liberal Catholics may disagree with its conservative bent, is portrayed in an especially bizarre manner by Brown. Key to the author's plot involving a sadomasochistic albino monk is the premise that Opus Dei operates as a monastic order. This is a fabrication and a complete reversal of the organization's actual premise: monks seek holiness by withdrawing from society; Opus Dei chooses to function in the midst of secular society.

Other aspects of Brown's tale can be considered nothing less than character assassination. These include references to Opus Dei recruits being drugged into silence, the use of a barbed
cilice
belt as a masochistic tool, and the suggestion that Opus Dei “bailed out” the Vatican when its bank encountered financial difficulties, purchasing special favors from the papal office in the process. In a manic effort to denigrate the organization, Brown even got the entrances to the Opus Dei Manhattan headquarters wrong. Men and women may enter any door to the building they choose, but since the headquarters includes separate residences for celibate men and women, occupants of each section enter through one door or another to reach their own quarters more directly. Brown stretches this to claim that all men must enter through the main door on Lexington Avenue, and all women must enter through a side door. Not only is this gender restriction false, it is backwards regarding the residents: women enter their residence area off Lexington; the entrance for male residents is via the adjoining street.

Apologists for Brown and his publisher note that
Da Vinci
is, after all, a work of fiction and carries the familiar disclaimer opposite the dedication page (“All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”). Turn that page, however, and you encounter Brown's claim that the Priory of Sion “is a real organization,” that Opus Dei has been alleged to conduct “brain-washing, coercion and a dangerous practice known as ‘corporal mortification,’” and that “all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.” All three claims are made without any hint of irony.

How seriously should we take these and other discrepancies in the book? After all, it
is
merely a novel, and not a very serious one at that. Authors must be permitted the luxury of freedom when giving their imagination rein to create tales whose primary goal is entertainment, whether their basis is a cheap detective novel or a tome worthy of Dickens or
Hemingway. This premise will not be challenged in this book or, it is hoped, elsewhere.

Imagination is one thing; unfairly and inaccurately maligning an existing organization or individuals for the purpose of adding realism is another matter. It is no exaggeration to compare the initial and extended impact of
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
with
Da Vinci
, and their first appearance in a work of fiction; while the Catholic Church is not nearly as vulnerable to the kinds of abuse the
Protocols
created for Jews, the principle remains unchanged.

For hundreds of years Masons, Rosicrucians, Druids, Gnostics, Wiccans and others whose practices were benign, if out of the mainstream, suffered attacks from people who see a conspiracy behind every innocent symbol and plots behind every unforeseen event. In many cases, these fringe elements influenced the main fabric of society with unfortunate results. For almost a century now, the hysterical and anti-Semitic scribblings of Nesta H. Webster have been accepted as factual by otherwise astute readers of her book
Secret Societies & Subversive Movements.

Webster's work, turgid almost without exception, has nevertheless remained in print for almost eighty years. Impressively comprehensive (her references to often obscure sources are exceptional in their scholarly approach), it represents an ideal example of a blend of good academic research leading to a shaky premise and motivated by deeply rooted racism. From her viewpoint immediately following World War i, Webster identified the major threats to world peace as Grand Orient Freemasonry, Theosophism, Pan-Germanism, International Finance and World Jewry.

As a superpatriotic Briton, her concerns about German nationalism were not quite as prescient as they appear; the entire British Empire remained furious at the inhuman Huns while Webster was writing her book in the early 1920s. Her political stance was extreme right wing, her hatred of any socialist goals was almost palpable, her anti-Semitic stance was
unwavering, and her blinkers were large and narrowly set—she made no mention, for example, of Marx, Lenin or any reference to Communism at all, and she continued to insist that the French Revolution was conducted according to an agenda of various secret societies. Interestingly, the American Revolution received as much attention from her as Communism did.