The whole method of the Protocols may be described in one word, Disintegration. The undoing of what has been done, the creation of a long and hopeless interim in which attempts at reconstruction shall be baffled, and the gradual wearing down of public opinion and public confidence, until those who stand outside the created chaos shall insert their strong calm hand to seize control—that is the whole method of procedure.
Putting together the estimate of human nature which obtains in these Protocols, and their claims to a rather definite though as yet incomplete fulfillment of the World Program (these two comprising the themes of the previous two articles), some of the aspects of this propaganda of disintegration have become clear. But not all of them. There are yet other aspects of these methods, which will be dealt with in the present article, and there are yet future reaches of the program which will be considered later.
The first point of attack is Collective Opinion, that body of ideas which through men's agreement with them, holds large groups together in political, racial, religious, or social unity. Sometimes we call them "standards," sometimes we call them "ideals"; whatever they may be called, they are the invisible bonds of unity, they are the common faith, they are the great overarching reason for group unity and loyalty.
The Protocols assert that here the first attack has been made. The history of Jewish propaganda in the world shows that also.
The first wave of attack is to corrupt Collective Opinion. Now, to "corrupt" in the real sense does not mean anything unsavory or unclean. The whole power of every heresy is its attractiveness to the good mind. The whole explanation of the strong hold which untruth has gained upon the world of our day, is that the untruth is reasonable, inspiring and apparently good. It is only after a long discipline in false ideals—which are reasonable, inspiring and good—that the evil fruits appear in acts and conditions which are unreasonable, destructive and wholly evil. If you will trace the idea of Liberty as it has appeared in Russian history, from its philosophic beginning (a Jewish beginning, by the way) to its present ending (a Jewish ending also), you will see the process.
The Protocols claim that the Gentiles are not thinkers, that attractive ideas have been thrown at them so strategically and persistently that the power of thought is almost destroyed out of them. Fortunately this is a matter on which any Gentile may apply his own test. If he will segregate his ruling ideas, especially those that center round the thought of "democracy," he will discover that he is being ruled in his mind by a whole company of ideas into whose authority over him he has not inquired at all. He is ruled by "say so" whose origin he has not traced. And when, pursuing those ideas, he finds that they are not practicable, he is received by the explanation that "we are not yet sufficiently advanced." Yet when he does see men who are sufficiently "advanced" to put these very ideas into operation, he recoils from what he sees them do, because he knows that "advancement" such as that is deterioration—a form of disintegration. Yet every one of the ideas were "good," "reasonable," "inspiring," "humane," to begin with. And, if this Gentile will observe a little further, he will see that they are the most persistently preached ideas in the world; he will also see who the preachers are.
The Protocols distinctly declare that it is by means of the set of ideals which cluster around "democracy," that their first victory over public opinion was obtained. The idea is the weapon. And to be a weapon it must be an idea at variance with the natural trend of life. It must indeed be a theory opposed to the facts of life. And no theory so opposed can be expected to take root and become the ruling factor, unless it appeals to the mind as reasonable, inspiring and good. The Truth frequently seems unreasonable; the Truth frequently is depressing; the Truth sometimes seems to be evil; but it has this eternal advantage, it is the Truth, and what is built thereon neither brings nor yields to confusion.
This first step does not give the control of public opinion, but leads up to it. It is worthy of note that it is the sowing of "the poison of liberalism," as the Protocols name it, which comes first in order in those documents. Then, following upon that, the Protocols say:
"To obtain control over public opinion it is first necessary to confuse it."
Truth is one and cannot be confused, but this false, appealing liberalism which has been sown broadcast, and which is ripening faster under Jewish nurture in America than ever it did in Europe, is easily confused because it is not truth. It is error, and error has a thousand forms. Take a nation, a party, a city, an association in which "the poison of liberalism" has been sown, and you can split that up into as many factions as there are individuals simply by throwing among them certain modifications of the original idea. This is a piece of strategy well known to the forces that invisibly control mass-thought. Theodor Herzl, the arch-Jew, a man whose vision was wider than any statesman's and whose program paralleled the Protocols, knew this many years ago when he said that the Zionist (cryptic for "Jewish") state would come before the Socialist state could come; he knew with what endless divisions the "liberalism" which he and his predecessors had planted would be shackled and crippled.