16. This Great American Businessman Popularized the Modern Era’s Greatest Anti-Semitic Hoax
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are one of history’s most insidious hoaxes. It began in 1903 when a conservative Russian newspaper published what it claimed were the minutes of a nineteenth-century secret meeting of Jewish leaders. According to the minutes, they discussed their goal of global Jewish domination, to be brought about by Jews infiltrating and dominating the global media and economy. From such positions of influence and power, the Jews would act as agents saboteur to weaken the Gentiles, by subverting their morals and undermining their societies’ foundations.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were actually crude forgeries that first made the rounds in Russian right-wing circles. A Russian Tsarist official, Sergei Nilus, edited several versions of the Protocols, each time with a different account of how he came by them. In 1911, for example, he claimed that his source had stolen them from a (nonexistent) Zionist headquarters in France. It was common knowledge among the educated that The Protocols were a hoax. That did not stop the great manufacturer Henry Ford from becoming that hoax’s greatest advocate.
