The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a literary article alleging a Jewish and Masonic plot to achieve world domination. The piece has been revealed to be antisemitic and anti-Zionist plagiarism and hoax first published in 1903 in Russian, in Znamya.
"The Protocols" (the most brief title by which the text is known) is an early example of contemporary conspiracy theory literature, and takes the form of a speech describing how to dominate the world, the need to control the media, finance, replace traditional social order, etc. It is one of the best known and discussed examples of literary forgery, and a hoax.
The text was popularized by those opposed to Russian revolutionary movement, and was disseminated further after the revolution of 1905, becoming known worldwide after the 1917 October Revolution. It was widely circulated in the West in 1920 and thereafter. The Great Depression and the rise of Nazism were important developments in the history of the Protocols, and the hoax continued to be published and circulated despite its debunking.
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In a single year 1920, five editions of Protocols sold out in England. That same year in the United States, Henry Ford sponsored the printing of 500,000 copies, and from 1920 to 1922 published a series of antisemitic articles, entitled The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem, in The Dearborn Independent, a newspaper he owned. In 1921 Ford cited it as 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." In 1927, however, Ford retracted his publication and apologized, claiming his assistants duped him. On the other side, he did so only after court ordered him to. Moreover, he later expressed his admiration for Nazi Germany.
In 1934, an anonymous editor expanded the compilation with "Text and Commentary" (pages 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 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.
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